A LIST OF THE BIRDS OF BERWICK-ON-TWEED 71 



September. Adults are much less frequent, and it is but rarely that 

 we have the pleasure of hearing the ever welcome notes of the 

 Cuckoo in Berwick. The late Dr. Philip Maclagan has recorded in 

 The Naturalist for 1888, p. 222, that he heard one calling in a tree 

 behind his house, about 5 A.M. on ist May 1888, and that he had 

 a similar experience three or four years before. I have also occasion- 

 ally heard it in our garden, in Ravensdowne, in the early mornings ; 

 and in 1884, heard one calling there, in rather a subdued voice, on 

 6th July. Captain Norman, R.N., informs me that he both saw and 

 heard a Cuckoo, near his garden at Cheviot House, on 3oth May 

 1898. 



I have on two or three occasions met with the interesting red 

 phase of plumage in the adult Cuckoo, in which state the bird has 

 sometimes been given the name of Cucidus hepaticus. Two instances 

 of this occurred in 1895 one on yth June, when I picked up the 

 remains of a recently killed individual in Fenwick wood, in 

 Northumberland ; the other on Coldingham Moor, in Berwickshire, 

 on 7th July. 



GREAT SPOTTED CUCKOO, Coccystes glandarius (Linnaeus). The 

 specimen in the museum at Newcastle, and which was shot at 

 Clintburn, near Bellingham, on 5th August 1870, is well known, and 

 is the only record for the Borders, as indeed it still is for Great 

 Britain. 



STRIGES. 



BARN OWL, Strix flammea, Linnaeus. A species once a common 

 resident in the surrounding district, but which has for many years 

 past been little better than a rare casual visitant. Like the Jay, and 

 some other birds, however, it has apparently, within the last few 

 years, been making attempts at re-establishing itself in some of its 

 old quarters by immigration, for several have occurred in some years, 

 in autumn, and those which were not destroyed, have been known 

 to remain through the summer, and probably therefore bred with us. 

 Selby ("Illustrations of British Ornithology," published in 1825) 

 describes it as " the most common of the British species " ; while in 

 " A Report on the Ornithology of the District," read to the Berwick- 

 shire Naturalists' Club in December 1840, he alludes to it as a 

 permanent resident, " well known and abundant." Hancock ("Birds 

 of Northumberland and Durham ") was still able to write of it, in 

 1874, as "a common resident species, but gradually diminishing in 

 numbers like other birds of prey, and from the same cause." 



I do not recollect of any occurrence within the Borough itself, 

 but one of the old breeding stations of this owl, on the banks of the 

 Whitadder, below Paxton, is only a short distance beyond our 

 boundary : the late Mr. Evan G. Sanderson told me that he had 

 seen a nest there in 1880. 



