Iviii 



DESCRIPTIVE CHAPTERS. 



part, long, steady, straight slopes ; and beneath them Mr. Norrie found 

 ice formed which took him some trouble to break. 



After leaving the trap, he and his guide mounted at once up- 

 wards in order to get above the deep gashes of many side-burns 

 which ran into the main glen almost at right angles — these being the 

 tributaries of the Alt na Corrie Cruach Schneideadh, which flows 

 from the sides of Scoupa. A fine distant view of the mass of Scoupa 

 was obtained as, a few days later, we drove over the high summit- 

 level on the road between Kinloch and Struan, and Mr. ISTorrie was 

 able clearly to point out the exact nesting ground of the Buntings, 

 as distinctly shown to him by his guide, and which was very 

 accurately indicated on a tracing on the survey-map by my first 

 informant, Mr. Norman Kinnear, who possesses the single egg taken 

 in 1903. 



After two impossible days of wet and wind, but still upon a far 

 from promising morning — the 3rd of June — I gave up all idea of 

 fishing the loch, and hired a trap to drive with Mr. Norrie round 

 Loch Eannoch, and to visit Loch Eigheach (pronounced Each), We 

 came to Camusericht, where Mr. Godfrey found the Crossbills nesting 

 in 1903, and there refreshed our horses with meal and water, and 

 ourselves with potash water and accompanying liquid ! Then drove 

 on past Eannoch Lodge and shooting-lodge to Loch Eigheach, the 

 long-since-deserted breeding haunt of the Eed-necked Phalarope and 

 the present haunt of Wigeons, and about the southern limit of the 

 nesting range at the present time of the Greenshank, which haunts, in 

 the nesting season, the wild stone-cropped ground behind Eannoch 

 Lodge. The wind and north-west rains were bitter and perishingly 

 cold, and we had to wait a weary hour to get a desired photograph 

 of Loch Eigheach. Gladly then we turned our backs on its drear 

 inhospitality, and returned by the south road alongside Loch 

 Eannoch. Another attempt to get a decent view of the Black Wood 

 of Eannoch failed, as the wind blew with increased vehemence, and 

 the cold rain — from which no good shelter could be found — fairly 

 beat us off after another weary waiting. Vainly we had waited for a 

 " rift in the dense blackness above the lift." Next day Mr. Norrie, 

 under scarcely brighter auspices, managed to take a few views. One 

 is taken from the round, birch-clad knobbie where, in 1874, I twice 

 had a male Hobby pass close overhead, when shooting the covers of 

 Crosscraig. 



