LIEUT.-COL. DUTHIE ON BIRDS OF THE MOUNTAIN TOPS. 195 
feet and wings, and occasionally uttered a strange barking cry. The 
object of each was to rise above the other, and so they ascended 
higher and higher, and for a time were lost to sight among the 
clouds; eventually the stranger departed, sailing away to his own 
home among the far away hills. Birds of prey are very tenacious of 
their territorial rights, and when established in the spring time in 
their ancestral eyries, which are often of great antiquity, they look 
upon a certain area around them as their own special hunting ground, 
and, while freely admitting birds of other families within this sphere, 
they object to the presence of those of their own species. 
Golden Eagles are beginning to recover their position in Scot¬ 
land, and in some districts they are decidedly on the increase owing 
to the protection afforded to them by proprietors of deer forests, but 
their nests need to be carefully watched against the incursions of 
stealers. 
We had now left the heather behind us, and the bracken, and the 
cloud-berry with its white blossoms, and were walking in a wilderness 
of rocks and stones. On the slopes these were lying one upon 
another in loose confusion, with edges sharply cut as if recently 
broken by a hammer; on the flats they rested on a thick carpet of 
moss, lichen, and bilberry, over which a dwarf juniper crept, and 
clung like ivy to the ground, and a few hardy ferns were holding their 
own in chinks and crevices of the larger rocks. We noticed an 
abundance of small pink and white flowers no larger than peas, which 
it was difficult to realize as those of the common thrift, or sea pink, 
which, with better nourishment, covers the rocks along the seashore 
with crimson blossoms; but everything is dwarfed at this height, and 
nothing is allowed to grow to any size by the fierce winds which tear 
over these desolate solitudes. Below us, and stretching away to the 
far horizon, was spread out a seemingly interminable sweep of brown 
moorland and grey mountains, which was only relieved from 
monotony by the splashes of light playing on the waters of innumer¬ 
able tarns and streams, and by the shadows of the clouds as they 
chased one another over the landscape. 
The eagles’ nest was below us, so we first paid our attention to 
the Ptarmigan, and quartering the ground like spaniels, we searched 
the stone-strewed plateaux and rocky ridges at an average height of 
2300 feet, but although we found plenty of feathers and fresh signs 
of Ptarmigan, we got no sight nor sound of a single bird. 
After a long fruitless search, we descended to the eagles’ crags. 
The large nest was round and neatly made, and rested on a flat slab 
under an overhanging rock, so placed that it was impossible to look 
into it from above, and it was quite inaccessible from below. The 
o'round beneath the nest was strewn with bones, hares feet, and 
