The Zoologist— May, 1870. 2113 



Bird-hnunts of ilie Outer Hebiklea. 

 By Theodork C. Walker, Esq. 



(Continued fruin S. S. 2077.) 



II. 



Early next morning we emerge from the stifling hut into the joyous 

 fresh air: we are accompanied by the schoolmaster, an intelligent 

 Edinburgh student, and two of the best climbers of the island. The 

 storm, mist and rain of the night before have vanished, and the west 

 wind blows strong and fresh off the Atlantic. There being little 

 heather in Mingalay, the Avifauna is rather different to some of the 

 other islands. The natives depend for their subsistence partly on 

 sheep, and partly on fish and birds and their eggs. As we tramp over 

 the short turf up the hill-side, the rock pipits are blithly rising in the 

 air, and sweetly singing with quivering wings, as they descend to their 

 nests among the stones. Great ragged-looking hills rise on all sides, 

 till they break off into abrupt precipices of tremendous height; a very 

 thin covering of short turf, with black patches of stunted heather, 

 a few inches high, with bare rock peeping out everywhere; lichen- 

 covered gray stones, fallen from the hill-sides ; the weird melancholy 

 bleat of the sheep, the drifting clouds yet clinging to the highest 

 pinnacle of rock, the hoarse croak of the raven, as flying lazily along 

 he answers his mate, add to the desolate look of the scene. The whin- 

 chat is " chacking" on every bare rock ; the common bunting is sitting 

 singing on the turf dykes, and the lark is carolling high in the air, as 

 we toil up the hill-side. These four birds — the rock pipit, the bunting, 

 the whinchat and the lark — seem the commonest insessorial bii"ds of 

 these islands. 



Reaching the edge of the precipice, what a scene unfolds before us ! 

 We are on the verge of the highest precipice of the whole " Long 

 Island," as they call the Outer Hebrides; but the wind is so strong 

 that it is dangerous to approach the edge. Close on our left is the 

 Isle of Bernera or Barra Head, with its white lighthouse on the edge 

 of the precipice, Sinclair's Isle and Horse Isle between, and at every 

 point of this island the precipices are split up into seams, rents, 

 caverns and bridges of rock : the huge billows of the Atlantic are 

 dashing with the rage of despair, sending the white foam and spray- 

 in salt tears of agony streaming down their sides. Under us, to the 



SECOND SERIES-^VOL. V, Y 



