North- West Coasts of Sutherland and their Bird Life. 487 



landscape is taken within the compass of the eye, and a good 

 view of the stack itself is obtained. With a good binocular I 

 could see the several species of birds which breed upon it. 

 A very large colony of pufiins breed upon the sloping top of 

 Clachbeag which faces south-east. On its south extremity 

 is a colony of Green Cormorants {Phalacracorax gramlus), — 

 say fifteen pairs, — and in numerous little niches and shelves 

 are guillemots and razorbills, the latter more numerous than 

 the former. A pair or two of greater black-backed gulls 

 {Larus marimcs) were made out amongst the puffins. Herring 

 gulls (Larus argentatiis) have a colony on the inner and 

 lower rocks, and in scattered pairs about the larger Clach 

 (literally a round-topped lump). A few lesser black-backed 

 gulls {Larus fuscus) were also flying about. A pair of 

 peregrines kept screaming overhead, and a pair of oyster- 

 catchers made their presence known. On the rocks below 

 me rock pipits were very abundant, and on the grassy 

 ground of the interior of the peninsula meadow pipits 

 were almost equally plentiful, whilst skylarks were also 

 common; and I saw a few corn buntings. Sparrows are 

 in Durness and at the farm steading of Balnakeil and at 

 the Durness Manse, but are not very plentiful. Flocks of 

 immature herring gulls were feeding or resting on the far- 

 stretching sands of Balnakeil Bay. Amongst the abrupt faces 

 of the sandhills broken by the tides, — often broken as if 

 cut down by a spade, — where the roots of the marram grass or 

 bents made a thick matted screen or cover, I searched in vain 

 for a nest of the Twite (Linaria montana), nor did I get a 

 glimpse of a bird. In North Uist similar favourable ground 

 is thickly populated by this interesting species. 



My friend, Mr Allan Scott of Balnakeil Farm, tells me he 

 knows of one rabbit upon the peninsula of Far-out Head. 

 How or when it came there he cannot tell. It frequents the 

 stony ground and broken slopes of the hills at Far-out Head 

 facing the east. 



During our drive from Ehiconich yesterday, I observed 

 the whinchat to be common here and there. The wheatear 

 is also abundant, but scarcely so much so as it is in the 

 Assynt limestone ranges ; and it is hard to say why it is less 



