BIRDS. 



209 



shot it or had something to do with its capture otherwise. I was 

 informed of the fact by Mr. Scutts, taxidermist in Oban, in 1891 

 (see my Journals, 1891, p. 47 1).^ 



Towards the east side, I have to record an Osprey which was 

 shot in the Rannoch district and sent in the flesh to Mr. P. D. Malloch, 

 of Perth, on the day it was killed. It was shot by one James 

 Macdonald, Taignahuirn, near The Barracks, Rannoch Station {aucf. 

 Rev. H. A. Macpherson in his notes entered in his copy of Yarrell's 

 British Birds, which were copied out for me by Mr. L. E. Hope, and 

 which volumes are carefully preserved in the Carlisle Museum. 

 I am indebted to the Museum authorities for kindly allowing me 

 to have these and other extracts). 



Before returning to the eastern portion of central Tay, where 

 I have a melancholy account to put on record, I desire to complete 

 what remains to be said about reputed nesting of Ospreys on Loch 

 Baa and Loch Luydon. 



It is true there was an Osprey's egg, said to have been taken on an 

 island of Loch Luydon, which was offered for sale at Stevens's auction 

 rooms, and it was described as follows : " Osprey, one egg, Argyll- 

 shire, Scotland, 1856 (taken in 1856 by Stewart M'Kinley, a keeper)." 



Now, all the evidence of the fact of Ospreys ever having nested 

 there is quite inconclusive, if not contradictory. I have the state- 

 ment, but quite vague and insufficient, that the Osprey once bred 

 at a loch in the Black Mount Deer-forest called Loch na 

 h'Aclaise, which forms one of the chain above, and connecting with. 

 Loch Baa and Loch Luydon. But in absence of definite data, I 

 cannot bring myself to believe in this site for these birds. All I 

 could myself learn about these Ospreys, or about any site in that 

 neighbourhood — when I was stalking deer on the Moor of Rannoch 

 in 1874 — from old and young people alike, was far too vague, and 

 too mixed and contradictory to be of any value. The oldest resident 

 — who was our pony-man at " The Bothy " on the moor, Duncan 

 Campbell — was clearest and most emphatic in his statement and 

 description of the " Eagles " which had nested upon a tree on an island 

 on Loch Luydon, which tree, as I have already stated in the article 

 upon White-tailed Eagles, ante, was occupied in 1874 by a pair of 

 Herons ; and afterwards the same island was taken possession of by 

 a colony of some fourteen or sixteen pairs of the latter birds. 



' Mr. Scutts was formerly with ^Ir. Lamont, who was taxidermist to the Duke 

 of Fife at Mar Lodge, and who was known to the late Mr. Mitchell, the recent 

 taxidermist of Aberdeen, and also to Mr. George Sim of that city. 



O 



