loo WILD SPORTS OF THE HIGHLANDS chap. 



the river, but does not breed anywhere in our immediate neigh- 

 bourhood. This very beautiful bird drops like a stone on any 

 unlucky fish that its sharp eye may detect in the clear pools of 

 the river, and I believe she seldom pounces in vain. Having 

 caught a trout or small salmon, she flies with it to land, or to 

 some rock, and there tears it up. When the river is too high 

 and black for the fish to be attainable, no dead carcass comes 

 amiss to her ; and in floods on the Findhorn there is seldom 

 any dearth of food of this kind. Mountain sheep or wounded 

 roe are frequently swept down its rapid course, when swollen 

 with much rain or by the melting of snows on the higher 

 mountains from whence this river derives its source. This 

 winter, a young red deer (a calf of about eight months old) 

 was found in the river. The animal had been shot with a slug 

 through the shoulder, and had probably taken to the water (as 

 wounded deer are in the habit of doing), and had been drowned 

 and carried down the stream. 



That beautiful bird, the kite,^ is now very rare in this 

 country. Occasionally I have seen one, wheeling and soaring 

 at an immense height ; but English keepers and traps have 

 nearly extirpated this bird, as no greater enemy or more de- 

 structive a foe to young grouse can exist. Their large and 

 ravenous young require a vast quantity of food, and the old 

 birds manage to keep their craving appetite well supplied. 

 Not only young grouse and black game, but great numbers of 

 young hares are carried to the nest. Though a bird of appa- 

 rently such powerful and noble flight, the kite appears not to 

 be very destructive to old grouse, but to confine her attacks 



Dunbar, shot probably the last ospreys in Sutherland on Loch Assynt. They used to 

 build a huge nest, which from year to year had been added to until it attained size enough, 

 as my informant said, to fill a cart, on the top of the ruined castle of Macleod by the edge 

 of that loch, and formed a very noticeable feature on it by their sailing over and plunging 

 into its waters for food. 



The osprey (Pandion haliatus) is a rare visitor to the British Isles during the spring 

 and autumn migration. It is a circumpolar bird, and may almost be said to be cosmo- 

 politan in its range, breeding in Europe, Asia, Africa, America, and Australia. It has 

 been recorded too from New Zealand (Seebohm, Siberia in Europe, p. 138). The 

 osprey is now protected on several estates in Scotland. 



' The kite is nearly extinct in this country, though tolerably numerous a few years 

 back. A tame kite which I have feeds on almost anything that is dead, and also eats 

 porridge, etc., with the hens and chickens, never touching the live poultry. — C. St. J. 

 See Natural History in Moray, p. 254. 



The kite (milvus vulgaris) is now never seen in Assynt, and is hardly to be found in 

 Scotland. Mr. J. Smith in 1879 had been told that a pair bred on Speyside, at Rotbie- 

 murchus. 



