45 
THE PTARMIGAN. 
White Grouse. 
Tetrao lag opus, Linn. 
Is not known as indigenous^ nor even as a visitant to Ireland. 
On the loftiest mountains of England — those of Cumberland and 
Westmoreland, and, it is said, of Wales — this bird once found a home, 
but has long ceased to do so. Within the British seas, Scotland and 
her islands only can now claim it as a native species. That there is 
not in any part of Ireland a continuity of mountains sufficiently ele- 
vated to be the ptarmigan’s abode, I was disposed to believe until 
lately, and thus to account for its absence from the island. But hav- 
ing ascertained in Islay that it always inhabits, though in very limited 
numbers, the loftiest stony ridges of that island, and is common at all 
times on the Paps of Jura, its absence from Ireland must be attributed 
to some other cause, as in various parts of the latter kingdom are 
extensive ranges of mountains of superior altitude to those of Islay 
and Jura, and possessing granitic and schistose summits, such as 
this bird chiefly frequents.* It is remarkable that the species should 
thus at the present day be found in the two most southern islands, 
which lie oceanward from the western mainland of Scotland, and so 
near to Ireland as to be almost daily visible from her shores ; yet that 
there is no record (at least none known to me) of the ptarmigan having 
at any period been a denizen of our soil. 
The want of such a bird is to be regretted, associated as it is in the 
mind with the sublimity of nature. Its favourite haunt is on the lofty 
mountain summit where rarely any human being, except the lonely shep- 
herd, intrudes upon the solitude ; or where perhaps once or twice in the 
year the adventurous naturalist or sportsman may be tempted to wander. 
In ignorance of man’s evil intents against them, a family of ptar- 
migan will admit of his near approach, walk off before his dogs, or tak- 
* The present keeper at Ardimersy, Islay, when once accompanying the “ young 
laird ” there, shot a ptarmigan, which, to his astonishment, appeared on the fence of 
a stubble field, in open weather, close to a farm-house, and two or three miles 
from the nearest mountain-top. Islay is more southern than any Scottish island 
which I have seen named as the abode of the species. A gentleman has assured 
me of his shooting several of these birds in autumn so far south on the mainland as 
a mountain-top near Dunoon, on the Clyde, in the wild district of Cowal. 
