220 ANNALS OF SCOTTISH NATURAL HISTORY 



species, as he assured me, on a few occasions previously, but 

 had never fully identified it until the occasion just mentioned. 

 The specimen to which I refer was shot on the iSth of 

 August 1888. Nicol saw another Spotted Redshank in the 

 same neighbourhood on the 4th of September 1889. He 

 did not succeed in shooting it then ; but it was shot on the 

 following day, 5th September 1889. In 1890 another 

 Spotted Redshank was shot on the same estuary, on the 

 2nd of September, by a man named Story. 



No Spotted Redshanks were seen in 1891 until October, 

 when Nicol recognised the (to hint] familiar note of this 

 scarce bird. He saw it several times, when working up 

 to Wild Ducks in his punt ; but it escaped unscathed. I have 

 no local notes of Totanus fuscus in 1892. Two were seen 

 in 1893. The first of these was seen on 7th September. 

 It remained some weeks in the neighbourhood ; but was very 

 wild, and would never allow Nicol to get within shot. The 

 other was shot by a young lad on the 7th of September. 

 This is one of the many specimens which I have had the 

 pleasure of presenting to the Carlisle Museum. No Spotted 

 Redshanks were detected in 1894. In 1895 a single bird 

 of this species appeared in the customary haunts towards 

 the end of August. Nicol often saw it, but could never get 

 within shot. No Spotted Redshanks were discovered in 

 jg96 a year in which the Ruff (Machetes pugnax} visited 

 the salt-marshes of the English Solway in unusual numbers. 

 In 1897 Nicol met with a Spotted Redshank in the second 

 week of August. He could easily have shot it, had he had 

 a gun, but he was fishing ; and illness prevented his search- 

 ing for it afterwards. 



On the 1 3th of September 1897 a Spotted Redshank 

 was seen by James Smith on a salt-marsh a few miles 

 higher up the Solway. He and another wild-fowler watched 

 it feeding in the creeks for more than half an hour (they had 

 no gun with them). Nicol thinks that this may have been 

 the identical bird that he saw about a month earlier, as it 

 was tamer than usual. We have thus given chapter and 

 verse for the occurrence of at least eight Spotted Redshanks 

 in the neighbourhood of the Solway Firth between 1888 and 

 1897, a single decade (I have mislaid the date upon which 



