BIEDS. 



135 



breeding haunts ; but if severe winters intervene, they next remove 

 their quarters further southward, following the shore-lines. I cannot 

 believe otherwise than that we have a proportion of birds which are, 

 indi\idually, permanent residents all the year throughout. 



Family ALAUDID^. 



Alauda arvensis, L. Skylark. 



Old Gaelic name, Uiseag. 



Eesident. Fairly common. Breeds. Many immense flights are 

 also, of course, migrants to our isles. 



But it is by no means so abundant on waste lands and moorlands 

 as it is known to be, for instance, in the Outer Hebrides and in some 

 other parts of Scotland north of the Grampians. In the north-east 

 Mr. Milne considers it " much scarcer than formerly " (writing in 

 1896). He blames the advance of agriculture more than the supposed 

 destruction by Starlings. But Mr. Milne, I think, strikes the truer 

 chord when he speaks of the comparatively recent practice of grazing 

 cattle, and sheep especially, on our lower-lying pastures in winter and 

 onward into spring, into April and May, and even later in the more 

 northerly districts. I have witnessed this scores, if not hundreds of 

 times, and any one who has been in the habit of " early spring 

 trout-fishing " in Scotland (not being allowed to do so in England's 

 preserved waters), if he happened to be an observant man, could 

 surely not have been blind to the puddled state the enclosures were 

 reduced to in a very few days by flocks of sheep put in to pick and 

 trample the sprouting grass as bare as the palm of one's hand. In 

 the space of two or three days the pasturage becomes reduced to a red 

 till, almost in some cases Like a newly harrowed field, and not a turf 

 is left in green throughout the whole extent of the field. When no 

 more sustenance can be got out of the grass, aided by feeds of tiu-nip 

 the sheep are penned in the next run or pasturage, and the same 

 thing recurs. To me it seems indeed a marvel if a single Skylark 

 returns to such devastated land, which is gi^'ing two rents (1) instead 

 of one. 



Skylarks are not to be called common, even up the valleys, except 

 very locally. During a drive, for instance, of twenty miles between 

 Pitlochry and Aberfeldy, the late Eev. H. A. Macpherson saw only 

 two — both singing. These were both near Grandtully. 



There are a good many near Locheamhead, but they are seldom 



