226 WILD SPORTS OF THE HIGHLANDS chap. 



'. ' F" ' 



This year I am sorry to see that, owing to sorrie repairs in the 



bridge, the birds have not returned to their former abode. The 

 nest, when looked at from above, had exactly the appearance 

 of a confused heap of rubbish, drifted by some flood to the 

 place where it was built, and attached to the bridge just where 

 the buttress joins the perpendicular part of the masonry. The 

 old birds evidently took some trouble to deceive the eye of those 

 who passed along the bridge, by giving the nest the look of a 

 chance collection of material. I do not know, among our 

 common birds, so amusing and interesting a little fellow as the 

 water -ouzel, whether seen .during the time of incubation, or 

 during the winter months, when he generally betakes himself 

 to some burn near the sea, less lilcely to be frozen over than 

 those more inland. In the burn near this place there are 

 certain stones, each of which is always occupied by one 

 particular water-ouzel : there he sits all day, with his snow-white 

 breast turned towards you, jerking his apology for a tail, and 

 occasionally darting off for a hundred yards or so, with a quick, 

 rapid, but straight-forward flight ; then down he plumps into 

 the water, remains under for perhaps a minute or two ; and 

 then flies back to his usual station. At other times the water- 

 ouzel walks deliberately off his stone down into the water, and, 

 despite Mr. Waterton's strong opinion of the impossibility 

 of the feat, he walks and runs about on the gravel at the bottom 

 of the water, scratching with his feet among the small stones, 

 and picking away at all the small insects and animalcules which 

 he can dislodge. On two or three occasions, I have witnessed 

 this act of the water-ouzel, and have most distinctly seen the 

 bird walking and feeding in this manner under the pellucid 

 waters of a Highland burn. It is in this way that the water- 

 ouzel is supposed to commit great havoc in the spawning beds 

 of salmon and trout, uncovering the ova, and leaving what it 

 does not eat^ open to the attacks of eels and other fish, or 



' Mr. St. John in another excellent account of this bird's habits (Natural History and 

 Sport in Moray, p. 88) again repeats the charge that it feeds on trout spawn. Mr. Buck- 

 land (see note, same page) says ' ' the water-ouzel is guiltless of eating trout or salmon 

 spawn. " At p. 283 Mr. St. John does not draw the bird's character in such dark shades : 

 " I am inclined to think that it attacks the trout spawn more frequently than that of the 

 salmon. If so, this bird also does fully as much good as harm ; the most deadly enemy 

 to salmon being the larger burn trout, whose favourite food is, undoubtedly, the ova of 

 the salmon. " On the other hand it is a great pleasure to refer the reader to Mr. Knox's 

 admirable defence of the water-ouzel (Autumns on the Spey, pp. 150-154). He concludes : 

 ' ' Instead of being a destroyer of fish spawn, he really assists in its preservation, by 



