204 ANNALS OF SCOTTISH NATURAL HISTORY 



stream of the birds do not return through the Pentland Firth till 

 July comes in, and then, as fully recorded in our Migration 

 Reports, they pass from W. to E. in continuous battalions ; and 

 not one, unless fishing at the time, is ever seen to fly from E. to 

 W. after this real movement fairly sets in again. The observations 

 made at Cape Wrath and at Butt of Lewis are most excellent and 

 useful in this connection. No doubt other currents, so to speak, 

 of Gannets set upon our west coasts from Sulisgeir, and from the 

 Faroe colonies, joining in with the others already mentioned, unless 

 indeed a few fly so far to the west as Rockall, where we found only 

 a very few in the month of June 1896. I have never heard that 

 Rockall was a herring-bank, and have only heard it spoken of as a 

 cod-bank fishery. The few Gannets which we found there were 

 probably dependent for food upon the young of other species than 

 herring. 



NIGHT HERON (Nycticorax griseus), p. 96. The single occur- 

 rence of this bird in the Outer Hebrides was recorded by Mr. Eagle 

 Clarke in the "Ann. Scot. Nat. Hist." Since then I have a letter 

 from the gentleman who shot it. He says : " I secured a specimen 

 of this rare visitor in Benbecula on October 12, 1896, after a gale 

 from the south. It was an immature male." 



BITTERN (Botaurus stellaris], p. 96. This is an addition to the 

 Birds of the Outer Hebrides. A specimen of this species was 

 caught upon the coast of Harris by Mr. J. Finlayson, gamekeeper, 

 and sent for in the flesh, and was added to the Dunipace collection 

 in January 1890. 



SPOONBILL (Platalea kucorodid), p. 96. - - Remove square 

 brackets. The records, rather incomplete, referred to in the 

 " Fauna of the Outer Hebrides," have had a good light thrown 

 upon them by the discovery of a copy of MacGillivray's " British 

 Birds" which belonged to the late Dr. Charles Gordon of South 

 Uist, and in which occurs an interesting note in pencil on the 

 margin, which I reproduce : " Dr. W. MacGillivray, half-brother of 

 the author, showed me a skin of a Spoonbill which he related had 

 been shot by himself on the farm of Ormaclete, South Uist. Two 

 other specimens were also got in Barra at the same time " signed 

 " C. G." I have never been able, however, to ascertain where any 

 of these specimens were placed, if indeed they were ever pre- 

 served. 



GREYLAG GOOSE (Anser cinereus), p. 97. I have no definite 

 information which will guide me in arriving at any exact estimation 

 of the numbers of this species now, as compared with its numbers 

 at the time that Buckley and I wrote our "Fauna," but I believe their 

 numbers have not seriously decreased, at least in North Uist, owing 



