BLACK-THROATED DIVER. 
COLYMBUS ARCTICUS. 
This handsome species is a summer resident on many of the larger sheets of water in the Northern 
Highlands, as well as a spring, autumn, and winter visitor to almost every portion of our southern and 
eastern coasts with which I am acquainted. In the choice of a situation for their breeding-quarters the 
Red- and Black-throated Divers differ considerably — the former delighting in the flat moors and floes to 
be found in Caithness and the east of Sutherland, while the latter prefers the grassy or sandy islands in 
hilly districts, or at least where the view is shut in by the lofty mountains whose rugged outlines prove 
an endless source of attraction to the visitors to those wild and romantic regions in the west of Ross- 
shire and Sutherland. 
V ithout, I believe, a single exception, every nest (if such it may he termed) of this species that 
has come under my observation was placed on an island, coarse grass, moss, and heather usually forming 
the site on which the eggs were laid. The fact that these plants are broken down and killed by the 
weight and warmth of the body of the bird, and the depression gradually assumes the shape of her 
breast, has led to the idea that a nest is constructed. This is evidently a mistake, as in several instances, 
and more particularly on Loch Shin, I observed the eggs laid on the sandy shores of the small islands 
without the slightest attempt having been made by the birds to line their cradle, which was evidently 
only formed by their breasts while engaged in the labour of incubation. In one instance, on an islet near 
the centre of tbe loeh, I remarked that the eggs were almost completely buried in the fine gravel which had 
been gradually worked over them by the body of the old bird wdiile shuffling backwards and forwards from 
the water. This species, though usually wary and difficult to approach, becomes exceedingly confiding 
when unmolested, paying little or no attention to those intruding on their haunts I remarked this fact 
on several of the retired lochs in the deer-forests to which the tourist and the collector is seldom allowed 
to penetrate. 
Even in summer adults in perfect plumage are often seen in company on the inland waters in the 
Highlands ; on the 18th of June, 1868, half a dozen were observed on Loch Doula, near Lairg in Sutherland. 
These birds all proved exceedingly animated, chasing one another above and below the surface, and giving- 
utterance while on wdng or on the water to a variety of harsh cries and occasionally yelping like a dog. 
Diving and fluttering while pursuing or pursued, they repeatedly came up within thirty yards of where, 
in company with four or five keepers and gillies, we were sitting on the rough heather-bank by the 
loch-side. Some three weeks later the same summer, ten or a dozen, all in full adult plumage, were seen 
on Loeh Craggie, a short distance to the east of the last mentioned loch. These birds were also sportively 
inclined, dashing about over the water with loud cries, till a party of eight or ten passing over, they rose 
• The fearless behaviour of a pair watched for several hours on a loch in the west of Ross-shire in May 1868 is referred to under the heading 
of the “Common Gull,’’ page 2. 
