OCCURRENCE OF THE EASTERN PIED CHAT IN SCOTLAND 3 



had gone back into the West again ; and we had always 

 found that the West wind brought us few treasures. How- 

 ever we did our usual rounds without seeing anything 

 unusual till noon, when, among the rocks on the East side, 

 we put up a Chat, which we at once decided was not a 

 Common Wheatear. It was considerably darker than 

 S. cenantke, looked smaller, and seemed to show less white 

 patch on the rump when it flew ; it was restless and rather 

 wild, flitting from one rock to another in a hurried manner. 

 Then began a most exciting chase, up and down the steep de- 

 clivities and among broken jagged rocks until, at last, a lucky 

 shot laid the quarry low. On picking it up, we found that 

 we had got a bird quite unknown to us ; nor did Saunders's 

 " Manual " and various other books help us, for we could find 

 no description which corresponded with it. Full of high hopes 

 we consigned it to Mr. Eagle Clarke at the Royal Scottish 

 Museum, to whom it also presented difficulties (added to by 

 the fact that the bird was a female in autumn plumage), 

 and being uncertain of its identity owing to want of adequate 

 material with which to compare it, he sent the bird to 

 Dr. Hartert at Tring, and to our great satisfaction our 

 capture was pronounced by him to be a bird new to the 

 British List, being the Eastern Pied Chat, Saxicola plescJianka 

 (the .$. uwrio of some authors), but of the white-throated 

 form usually considered a distinct species, the 5. vittata 

 of Hemprich and Ehrenberg, now considered by Dr. Hartert 

 to be merely a variety of vS. plescJianka, The usual habitat 

 of this species, according to Dresser, is Eastern Europe 

 (Cyprus, Crimea, Lower Volga), east to Kashmir, S.E. Siberia, 

 Tibet, Mongolia, and N. China ; wintering in India, Abyssinia, 

 and Arabia. It has also occurred in Italy and Heligoland. 

 Our specimen proved to be a female ; it is 5.7 inches in 

 length, wing 3.6 inches. Head dull greyish-brown with 

 faint indications of darker streaks ; eye-streak bufifish-white ; 

 ear-coverts brownish-black, much streaked with greyish- 

 brown ; mantle black, each feather broadly margined with 

 greyish-brown, lighter at the tips ; rump and upper tail 

 coverts white ; central pair of tail feathers black with basal 

 third white, remaining tail feathers white broadly tipped 

 with black, the outer ones more so than the inner ; primaries, 



