66 ANNALS OF SCOTTISH NATURAL HISTORY 



the Pier, are favourite winter resorts, and a pair or two may generally 

 be met with there, in company with the Rock Pipits, but the greater 

 number move southwards in autumn, to return the following March. 

 A nest in the wall, by the side of the pathway, below Castle Hills, 

 contained three fresh eggs, on Sth August 1881. 



GREY WAGTAIL, Motacilla melanope, Pallas. Another partially 

 resident species. A pair or two always nest on the Whitadder, 

 within the Bounds, and in winter single birds, or a pair together, 

 are not unfrequently to' be met with along the river banks from the 

 boathouse to Castle Hills, especially in very severe weather when 

 their haunts, by the side of the inland streams, are frozen up. I 

 have also occasionally observed them, about the rocks, on the sea 

 coast, during hard weather. 



BLUE-HEADED WAGTAIL, Motacilla flava, Linnaeus. I have 

 seen this species in spring at no greater distance from our boundaries 

 than Holy Island, and to the north it has occurred at Dunbar, but 

 we have no records for the Borough itself. 



YELLOW WAGTAIL, Motacilla raii (Bonaparte). Not common 

 upon the east coast, but occurs on both sides of the Border, on 

 migration, in spring, and may possibly remain to nest in some 

 places. I have only once observed it actually within our limits, 

 and this was near " Dodds' Well" on i5th April 1888. On 5th 

 May 1882, I saw one by the side of the Whitadder, below Clarabad 

 Mill, which, though strictly speaking in Berwickshire, is within half 

 a mile of the " Boundary Road." The Rev Charles B. Carr informs 

 me that he shot a specimen, on a field, near Horncliffe Mill, a few 

 years ago. 



TREE PIPIT, Anthus trivia/is (Linnaeus). A common summer 

 visitor throughout both the adjoining counties, wherever hardwood 

 trees are found. It delights especially in rather thinly wooded 

 banks, and " the Plantation," on the side of the Tweed, below New- 

 water Haugh, is never without two or three nests every summer, 

 and this notwithstanding the fact that a brood can seldom be safely 

 brought off there, owing to the bird-nesting proclivities of the boys 

 of our good old town. 



Locally the Tree Pipit is known as the Wood Lark, and Burns 

 evidently had this bird in his mind, when he wrote the beautiful 



lines 



O stay, sweet warbling wood lark, stay, 

 Nor quit for me the trembling spray. 



MEADOW PIPIT, Anthus pratensis (Linnaeus). A resident, and 

 always common, though possibly most numerous about Berwick, in 

 late autumn, when the migratory bands are passing. At that season, 

 small flocks of this, and the next species, may be met with frequenting 

 the heaps of decaying seaweed, and debris, behind the Pier, and 



