202 BIRDS OF DUMFRIESSHIRE 
sometimes carries off a young lamb in view of the 
shepherd."* , ^ « u 
The Rev. F. O. Morris writes of the Erne that it has 
been noticed on an island in Loch Skene, among the 
high hills on the confines of Dumfries, Peebles and Sel- 
kirk "+ and he goes on to say, " On one occasion a large 
salmon was found dead on the shores of Moffat Water, 
and an immense Erne lifeless also beside it, havmg met its 
death by being hooked by its own claws to a fish too large 
and powerful for it to carry off."J I have not found the 
origin of this story, which, if true, may well refer to Loch 
Skene at the head of Moffatdale. 
Robert Gray ^-riting in 1871 states : " Macgilhvray 
mentions having found a Sea Eagle's nest in an island in 
a Hebridean lake, on a mound of rock not higher than 
could have been reached with a fishing rod, and a similar 
eyrie existed many years ago in an island m Loch Skene 
in Dumfriesshire."§ , , . 
I am indebted to Mr. J. Bartholomew for his energetic 
inquiries on the subject in Moffat. In 1908 he interviewed 
Mr WilUam Nettleship, a man of eighty-six years of age, 
who could remember his father and grandfather speaking 
of the Eagles which nested at Loch Skene, and who 
described them as " black, with white taUs." Mr Nettleship 
also spoke of having known a man named David Don who 
when gardener at Beattock Inn, "swam out to the island 
and took the young ones. This," he said, would be 
about a century ago." ., j -n i 
Such is the evidence we have of the White-tailed Eagle 
nesting at Loch Skene, and on visiting this wild spot m 1908 
it was difficult to make oneself beheve that so tiny an islet 
(as shown in the accompanying photograph) had formerly 
been the nesting-place of a bird so fitting to that lonely loch. 
• Hiat. Peebles, p. 526. 
t Morris, Hiat. Brit. Bird; 1870, Vol. I., p. 8. 
t Op. cit., 1870, Vol. I., p. 13. 
§ Birds ot West Scotland, 1871, p. 11. 
