HILL BIRDS OF SCOTLAND.*
MR. SETON GORDON is- a pioneer. Even in these-days, when so many have set out after the first discoverers, he has contrived to mark down a field of search and observation for himself ; and he has succeeded in writing an admirable account of what he has seen and done. His field is the Scottish hills, particularly the slopes of the Grampians above the springs of Dee, and the range of his study extends from the golden eagle—or black eagle, Iolaire dhubh, as Mr. Gordon and his High- landers would prefer to call it—to the crested titmouse, which nests in a single area of the Western Highlands perhaps fifteen miles by four, and nowhere else in Great Britain. Mr. Gordon works his field by his own methods. He has the patience and persistence, as well as the zeal for adventure, of the true discoverer ; ' he has spent many days and nights in all weathers, and at every season of the year, in collecting his facts at first hand, and the result is a conspicuous addition to the sum of our knowledge of the habits of certain birds—particularly the larger birds of prey, which are possibly Mr. Gordon's favourites. He has watched over the nurseries of the golden eagle with the importunity of a photographer and the attention to diet of a family doctor. He has even succeeded in partially taming an eaglet, which fed in the eyrie from his hand, and he has incidentally disproved the popular tradition of the parent eagle's bravery in defending its young. His camera has been placed on the edge of the eyrie while the mother eagle sat quietly by, regarding the intrusion upon her children with philosophic indiffer- ence. We get many other intimate and charming associations with the great birds of the hills ; we read of the golden eagle being mobbed by hoodic crows, for instance, and never betraying by sign or movement that he is even aware of their presence ; and one unforgettable sight Mr. Gordon describes as only a man can who has lived among the hills —the meeting of the eagle and his mate. "He had come from tho highest grounds, from out of the impenetrable mist which had stolen softly across the hill-faces with the strengthening of the day, and ho was sailing in a straight line for a hill on the far side of the glen. With the aid of a powerful glass, I marked the eagle until ho had reached a point above the far ridge. Here, with a sudden stoop from the higher skies, his mate joined him, and for a time they circled round each other with manifest signs of happiness, before alighting together on the ridge from where they could command the glen."
Mr. Gordon's best pages deal with the big birds —the golden eagle, sea eagle, osprey, peregrine, and raven. But he writes not less authorita- tively of the smaller subjects of his study—the grouse, curlew, oyster- catcher, golden plover, and snow bunting. He has more than one warning note on the propensities of the collector. As regards the future of the golden eagle, probably we need not be alarmed ; the bird is protected, and plentiful enough in some of the deer forests to cause considerable perturbation to the gamekeepers on neighbouring grouse moors. But it is angering to read of the two "well-known ornithologists" who were mainly responsible for the destruction of ospreys in Scotland in the last century ; and it is by no means reassuring to hear of "egg-collectors and gunners" abounding in the very small district which alone is used as a breading-ground by the crested tit. The collector in various guises, however, will probably be always with us ; and perhaps the loving enthusiasm of a writer such as Mr. Seton Gordon for the living bird is the best antidote to his depredations.
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