60 THE ZOOLOGIST. 



Eaven (unhappily very rare) depicted in Section I. of Kirkman's 

 'British Bird Book.'* It would, I suppose, be quite useless to 

 appeal to collectors to spare the eggs of this bird. They are, 

 indeed, indistinguishable from those of the common form, but so 

 were the St. Kilda Wren's. 



At 8.45 there is the cry of Gulls in the air — the " ow-oo, 

 ow-oo " of the Great Black-backed — and the partner Eagle floats 

 up. The Gulls have the impertinence to molest him, but he 

 floats grandly away from them each time that they stoop at him. 

 As he passes in the line of the eyrie, and not now much above 

 it, the sitting bird flies out to him, with a shrill little " quee, 

 quee, quee, quee," as of greeting — such a cry as might be uttered 

 by a much smaller creature. I keep the two great birds distinct, 

 and it is the newly arrived one, who, after a circle or two with, 

 or, rather, in the proximity of its mate, now flies in to the cliff, 

 and takes the place of the latter on the nest. Thus there has 

 been a change upon it, but the sitting bird has gone off, whilst 

 the other was still on the wing. It may very well have been the 

 same, therefore, on the former occasion, though I did not think 

 so at the time. In any case, both sexes incubate. 



Just about 9 there is an extraordinary croaking noise which, 

 at first, I take to be made by a Eaven, but which turns out to 

 proceed from a Grouse or Eock Ptarmigan — Lagopus rupestris, 

 unless the name has changed lately — which, a moment after- 

 wards, flies, in a wild, tumultuous way, down from the cliffs, 

 either on to a large rock, against which the tent is pitched, or 

 on to the tent itself — now all over patches of moss — and there 

 makes still more extraordinary sounds, which I am quite unable 

 to transcribe. It seems like a call or challenge, but nothing, I 

 believe, comes of it. Earlier in the afternoon I had seen one of 

 these birds, for the first time. My attention was directed to the 

 rock on which it sat, and with which, as a general proposition, 

 it harmonized. Also, as a general proposition, I could not, for 

 some time, see the bird, but I did see, very quickly, a particular 

 part of it, namely, the patch of red above the eye, and this 

 blazed out so brilliantly that I at first thought, with wonder, 

 that I was looking at some gorgeously plumaged small bird, and 

 then did not know what to make of it. Of course, predaceous 



* Plate i., to face p. 10. 



