Birds. .2013 



birds. Early in the past summer, an eagle, which had been caught by one foot in a 

 trap on Mealfourvenie, flew about the neighbourhood for the space of a month, and 

 was afterwards found on the heights above Glen Morrison, shortly after his death. A 

 friend of mine knows a man who saw the trap in the scale, and it weighed 4§ lbs. 

 The voice of the kestrel and the cooing of the wood-pigeon were very common ac- 

 companiments to the music of the innumerable cascades that I visited in wooded glens. 

 The latter is comparatively a recent colonist, and migrates from the uplands to the 

 sea-coast on the approach of winter, where turnips and red clover are largely culti- 

 vated ; but as the cultivation of these plants is on the increase, even in the upper parts 

 of Strath Glass, to assist the flock-masters in keeping their sickly stock in good heart 

 at all seasons, it is probable that ere long a few of these parasitic farmer's birds will 

 remain the winter through, Neither pheasants nor wood-pigeons can subsist comfort- 

 ably apart from the cultivated fields : where they abound, they are a grievous curse to 

 the farmer, and therefore to this bread-importing nation. Do swifts ever nestle about 

 rocks ? I saw a pair cruising over Loch Bennavian, which is many miles distant from 

 church or castle. The bank martin is not so numerous as the other species of the ge- 

 nus, in the upper part of Strath Glass. One fine evening in July, when wandering 

 amongst the groves of the graceful birch which lie to the eastward of the celebrated 

 fall of Foyers, I heard the whirr of the goatsucker ; from the top of the wood his fel- 

 lows took the note, and soon the air resounded with their strange spinning-wheel-like 

 note ; and from the peculiar nature of the ground, I readily perceived how a bird 

 would spring from his perch, glide smoothly along, fluttering at intervals, or rising and 

 falling and smiting his wings over his back, like the wood-pigeon during the breeding 

 season. Jealousy was there, and strongly did their busy contention sound on that 

 lone hill-side, amidst the roar of the distant cataract, the sighing of the night's wind, 

 the hush of Loch Ness, and in the light of the moon, high over the noble hills of 

 Strath Errick. The great abundance of the gray flycatcher and the willow-wren 

 proves that the entomology of the banks of Loch Ness must be very extensive ; their 

 young ones, and those of the redbreast, had just come abroad, so that, what with their 

 clamourous calls and the choral chirpings of troops of tits, the woods were very ani- 

 mated. Memory will ever associate the lively ring ouzel and the whinchat with the 

 wild scenery of Glen Affrick and the loch of that name. Black and sterile mountains 

 towered up to a vast height on either side of the glen, their rugged tops were often 

 enveloped in tempest, and beautiful masses of mist floated along their sides, which 

 were rent into huge corries. There were the mountain streams, streaking the upper- 

 most slopes, now buried amongst rocks, now flashing in the fitful sunshine, now leap- 

 ing in glorious cataracts, now growling away amidst huge boulders of gneiss and 

 granite, and amongst thickets of stunted birch, alder, hazel and juniper, into the dark 

 waters of the loch. Few wild flowers deck these solitudes: Saxifraga aizoides and 

 Ranunculus flammula by the streams, Narthecium ossifragum in the bogs, and the 

 eye-bright smiles as you pass. Here stood one of the noblest primeval pine-forests of 

 the north, sacred to freedom, where Rome's conquering eagles never flew ; but a com- 

 pany of merchants, from Norwich I believe, have been here, and few and sad are the 

 memorials of the past : scattered over the rocky knolls of scanty soil, or dotting the 

 mountain side, with twisted stem, gnarled bark, scanty foliage and many a scathed 

 limb, these old trees link the past with the present, and the wind stirred them with a 

 melancholy tone. Now and then a little band of blue and black-headed tits would flit 

 from tree to tree, but the attention was speedily arrested by the ' clack clack ' of the 

 VI I 



