82 WILD SPORTS OF THE HIGHLANDS chap. 



The eastern coast of Scotland, owing to its pi-oximity to 

 Sweden and Norway, and also to the great prevalence of 

 easterly winds, is often visited by foreign birds. Amongst these 

 is that splendid stranger the snowy owl,^ who occasionally is 

 blown over to our coast from his native fastnesses amongst the 

 mountains and forests of the north of Europe. Now and then 

 one of these birds is killed here, and I was told of one having 

 been seen two or three years back on part of the ground rented 

 by me. He was sitting on a high piece of muirland, and at a 

 distance looked, said my informant, " like a milestone." This 

 bird was pursued for some hours, but was not killed. The 

 snowy owl has been also seen, to the astonishment of the fisher- 

 man or bent-puller, on the sand-hills, where he finds plenty of 

 food amongst the rabbits that abound there. One was winged 

 in that district a few years ago, and lived for some time in 

 confinement. He was a particularly fine old bird, with perfect 

 plumage, and of a great size. I am much inclined to think 

 that the great -eared owl, Strix bubo? is also occasionally a 

 visitor to the wildest parts of this district. A man described 

 to me a large bird, which he called an eagle. The bird was 

 sitting on a fir-tree, and his attention was called to it by the 

 grey crows uttering their cries of alarm and war. He went up 

 to the tree, and close above his head sat a great bird, with large 

 staring yellow eyes, as bright (so he expressed it) as two brass 

 buttons. The man stooped to pick up a stone or stick, and the 

 bird dashed off the tree into the recesses of the wood, and was 

 not seen again. I have no doubt that, instead of an eagle, as 

 he supposed it to be, it was the great Strix bubo. The colour 

 of its eyes, the situation the bird was in on the branch of a tall 

 fir-tree, and its remaining quiet until the man approached so 

 close to it, all convince me that it must have been the great 

 owl, whose loud midnight hootings disturb the solitude of the 



> The snowy awl is an occasional visitor on the east coast, apparently driven over by 

 continued severe gales from the north-east. — C. St. J. 



Continental skins of this bird are worth a pound each in London. About 1845 a 

 friend was shooting a wild-duck in a snowstorm in the north of Caithness, when a snowy 

 owl swooped upon the falling duck, and carried it off in its claws. The sportsman's 

 second barrel laid the owl low, and they have been both stuffed and set up together. 



Tengmalm's owl (N. Tenginalmi) was killed at Spinningdale, Sutherland, by Mr. 

 Dunbar.— C. St. J. 



' Buho maximus. Gray. It " has almost become extinct in the British Islands, but is 

 still a resident in the mountainous districts of most parts of Europe. " — Seebohm, Siberia 

 in Europe, p. 84, 



