ANNALS OF SCOTTISH NATURAL HISTORY 



they had only appeared there one year before. He said they were 

 quite rare. Eastwards now they are quite common. J. A. HARVIE- 

 BROWN. 



Nesting- of the Woodcock in Dalmeny Park. Although the 

 presence of the Woodcock in the nesting season has previously been 

 noted, up till this year there has been no actual record of its breeding. 

 On the 2nd of April one of the foresters in Ualmeny Park found a 

 nest with four eggs, which were duly hatched. In the course of the 

 next two weeks four other nests were discovered ; of these one clutch 

 was destroyed by crows, but in the other three the young birds got 

 safely away. The Woodcock has also been noted nesting in 

 Hopetoun Estate this season. CHARLES CAMPBELL, Cramond 

 Bridge. 



Woodcock and Snipe nesting in Central Scotland. In 

 May 1902 a season, it may be remembered, of exceptional 

 lateness and severity, almost approaching arctic conditions we 

 had a phenomenal number of Woodcock and Snipe breeding on 

 this estate of Uunipace. I mention the details more fully else- 

 where. 1 It is sufficient to say that on the night of the 2nd- 3rd May 

 seventeen degrees of frost were registered here, and the weather, mild 

 and sunny during the latter ten days of April, suddenly became arctic 

 in character, and continued so for many weeks, with N.E. blizzards, 

 scarcely shifting a single point of the compass, and this throughout 

 the north of Scotland. This to all appearance, resulted in a crush- 

 ing down upon our warmer coverts in Stirlingshire of a larger 

 number of Woodcocks than we ever saw before, at least twelve nests 

 in a covert where some three nests are the usual complement. It 

 also resulted in a very phenomenal invasion of Snipe to certain 

 marshy fields on this same estate. Further, while the Woodcocks 

 successfully hatched off and reared their young in the shelter of the 

 coppice facing the south, a large number, and probably all, of the 

 newly hatched Snipe were found dead within a few feet of the 

 broken egg-shells. Most of these were upon a dry knoll and on 

 an aspect facing the north-east. The Woodcocks on their eggs were 

 so tame as to permit of the gamekeeper and my butler stroking 

 their backs, and if they left the eggs they again came and covered 

 them while the men were present. I accounted for this by believing 

 that first layings had been destroyed at localities further north on 

 the night of the 2nd-3rd May 1902. And, as regards the Snipe, 

 that they were overtaken at their breeding time, driven south, and 

 again overtaken here at the hatching off of their first eggs. So 

 much for the "early summer" of 1902. 



In 1903 we had only our normal number of Snipe and Wood- 

 cock nesting in our meadows and coverts. 



1 In a forthcoming volume now passing through the press, on "The Fauna 

 of the N.W. Highlands of Skye." 



