96 A VERTEBRATE FAUNA OF THE MORAY BASIN. 



pine-wood, lie the bay and village of Findhorn and the bay and 

 town of Burghead, forming a marvellously fine panorama. Yet 

 close though these positions are to Forres, how few English 

 tourists who pass that town even know of their existence ! 



Bird-life in the centre of this Sahara is at a discount. A pair 

 of remonstrative and wailing Curlews have their young among 

 the bents by the verge of the pine-belt, and in a small clump of 

 birches Willow Warblers can be heard afar off or seen trooping 

 through the maze of leafage, and a few Missel Thrushes show light 

 against the dark pine- wood. Not far from this giant among the 

 Culbins, Mr. Scott — Major Chadwick's gamekeeper — discovered the 

 young of Pallas Sand Grouse {see vol. ii.). A single Herring Gull 

 or a Lapwing occasionally passes over. Bird-life on the Culbins, 

 indeed, is confined to the deeper hollows nearest the coast-line, and 

 to the shingles above the tide-mark on the shore. On the great 

 ridges no birds could succeed in rearing their young, owing to the 

 furious sand-drift. But upon the Old Bar, innumerable Terns, 

 Oyster- catchers, Eing Plovers, and a few Dunlins have their nests, 

 as also along the half dried-up Loch of Buckie — part of the old 

 course of Findhorn. Near the sea, bird-life is more abundant; 

 while in the dense young pine-woods, in rabbit burrows. Shel- 

 drakes are very abundant, and Stock Doves are also spreading 

 towards the west. 



What are these sandhills like in a westerly gale of wind 

 without accompanying rain? Have you seen a vast concourse 

 of sheep passing over an upland in the distance, till all their 

 individuality is lost in one great white mass moving onward, 

 like snow drifting before a gale ? Or, have you seen a vast 

 drift of powdery snow, in perpetual fleece-like rolls, coiling and 

 flowing up hill, and curling down into the hollows, and not 

 likened it to a great concourse of white sheep, the wind also 

 raising waves of fleece upon their backs ? Such is the appearance 

 also of the Culbins; only, instead of the fleecy curling of the 

 snow-drift, or the undulating ripples of white sheeps' backs, 

 substitute the golden, gleaming, curling successions of the sand- 

 drift, here and there, where sun and cloud cast shadows, deepening 

 almost to the * meerut ' colour of the Shetland wool, or lengthening 



