INVEREHNE. 75 



February 20tJi. Saw a pair of crested cormorants,^ at least 

 I consider the birds which I saw to be of this kind. They had 

 the white mark on the hip, and appeared to be different from the 

 cormorants which I usually see here, both in being of a dark 

 colour and of a shorter and heavier shape. 



February 2 1st. Tracks of three otters in the Burn of Moy. 

 The tracks on the banks are always going up stream, as the otter 

 fishes all the way down, and seldom leaves the water till he has 

 done fishing ; when, on returning up the stream to his daily 

 hiding-place, he frequently comes out on the sandy banks, etc. 



February 24:th. liennie brought in a wild swan weight, 

 18 Ib. ; breadth, 7 feet 1 inch. He shot it in a small pool, near 

 which he was waiting for wild ducks yesterday evening. After 

 he had fired at it with duck shot, the bird Hew about thirty 

 yards, when one of its wing bones broke close to the body, 

 having been cracked by the shot, and then broke entirely by the 

 weight of the bird. Kennie goes this evening to wait for the 

 otter in Moy Burn. He expects to get a shot as it goes down 

 one of the shallow fords of the stream. Going down the burn 

 towards the sea, the otter fishes all the way, seldom leaving the 

 water ; but having eaten all he requires and reached the end of 

 the stream, he then returns up to his hiding-place under some 

 root or tree two or three miles up the water. In going up the 

 otter comes very frequently out of the water, sometimes climbing 

 up the bank and sometimes walking along the beds of shingle 

 and gravel which occur in his way, at all events avoiding all the 

 strong currents, streams, and waterfalls. 



February 26th. Shot some hares on the Calif er, as they are 

 not at all getting worse yet, though we generally find them now 

 being in pairs, that is, within fifty or one hundred yards of each 

 other. Great flocks of peewits about. In skinning the swan I 

 was much struck with the immense quantity of fat being all over 

 his body. The quill feathers are so strong that, although several 

 of them had been struck with No. 1 shot, it had not penetrated 

 through them, but had evidently rebounded, as they would have 



* [The shag. ED.] 



