3i



on Rambles among the Wild Birds.



but there are others which do not entirely desert the British

Islands, but leave some of their number in the North of Scotland

where they lay their eggs and rear their broods.


It was with the object of seeing some of these winter

visitors to the South in their Summer homes that my brother

and I journeyed northward last May to spend a fortnight’s

holiday in Sutherland. When the long train journey was over

there were yet more than 20 miles to be covered by coach before

our destination was reached. This was through a country of very

varied scenery. Lofty mountains, still capped with snow ; swift

salmon rivers running through rocky and well-wooded straths;

bleak water-sodden moors ; lochs, some small and nestling on the

shoulders of the mountains, others more extensive and dotted

with birch-clad islets ; all these presented features unfamiliar to

the dweller in the South, and gave promise of affording a

Summer home to many interesting species of birds.


A good deal of our time was spent in trout-fishing on the

beautiful lochs of West Sutherland, and so it was with those

birds which haunt the lochs that we became most familiar.

We very soon found that we were not alone in our attempts to

beguile the wily little trout. We had a most conspicuous and

very successful fellow fisherman in the Black-throated Diver

(Colymbzis arcticus). A pair of these fine birds were to be seen

on most of the larger lochs of the neighbourhood, and very

handsome they looked in their smart Summer plumage, quite

different from the more sober-coloured dress they wear during

their stay in southern waters. We found two nests of this

species, each containing a pair of long-shaped, olive-brown eggs,

dotted with a few black spots. In both cases these had been

laid on tiny islets in the lochs, and were placed in shallow

depressions, scantily lined with moss and weeds, only a few feet

from the water’s edge.


A good deal has been written about the position of the

Divers and their allies the Grebes, when on land, so we

determined to watch one of these birds leave the water and go to

her eggs, and so settle the question for ourselves. This, how¬

ever, we found to be no easy matter, for the birds -were so shy

that they would not approach the nests while we were in sight.



