162
BIRD HARMONIES.
unison with the scene below ? Destruction is written in every line of
his flat, cruel head, and his fierce eyes and his clutching talons. As
he stands there preparing himself for flight, he is like the Spirit of
Death presiding over Desolation.
We talk of the eternal fitness of things, can it be more strongly
exemplified in Nature than here ? Imagine any other bird sitting on
that pinnacle of rock; say a turkey cock trying to preserve his centre
of gravity, and at the same time to display his tail to the elements—
fancy hearing his pompous bubbly-jock clatter instead of the wild
scream of the eagle ! Or imagine a peacock up there with nothing
to look at and admire him, or indeed any other bird beyond the
vulture and hawk tribe. The two eagles wing their way together on
their errand of blood, and we pass down to the heather covered moor
at the foot of the mountain. The soft, springy carpet of heather,
over which the wild bees are busily humming in the sunshine, is rich
with colour; purple and pink, with the dark green of the undergrowth,
where the bilberries nestle; and green and gold with gorse. There is
life here too, for a frightened rabbit scuttles away before us, and then
a little brown weasel crosses the path, and after a moment's startled
gaze at the intruder he gallops away.
Presently we are startled by a sudden whirring of wings and a
sharp "Coq-coq-coq !" and glancing round we see a little group of
red-brown birds, mottled and barred with darker brown, flying along
with strong, heavy, noisy flight just above the heather tops, and skim-
ming over the shoulder of the hill, they disappear. These are grouse,
the Red Indians of the moors. Nature has been kind to her children,
and has plumed them with the colours of the heather stems and
sprigs, and they can lie amidst the undergrowth almost invisible.
Next we put up a grand old blackcock, who protests against our
presence by an indignant "Birr-birr-bick." He is the bird king of
the heath with his small game looking head, a brilliant scarlet patch
over his bright sparkling eye, clothed in glossy feathering purple in
the light, and velvet black in the shade, with white barred wings and
a tail with double curves.
These are the spirits of the moorland, as the eagle is the spirit of
the mountain top. We cross the moor, and descending the gradual
slope pass down through a fir wood with the sound of running water
near us, and at last we come out on a patch of marshy ground with a
beautiful loch stretching away directly before us, enclosed to right
and left by walls and slopes of rock, fringed at the foot with green