26 ANNALS OF SCOTTISH NATURAL HISTORY 



Tummel about the first week of September of this year in a 

 starved and exhausted condition, though one correspondent 

 mentions some having been seen in small parties of two and 

 three, to the amount perhaps of a dozen or more, on the 

 Tay at Dalguise as early as August. There had been 

 previously, at the end of that month, much rain and heavy 

 gales from the westward, from whence in all probability they 

 came, having wandered inland in the same way as described 

 by J. Gilmour, Esq., of Montrave, Fife, in a most interesting 

 letter to the Rev. Dr. Stewart of Ballachulish, which appeared 

 in the "Inverness Courier" of the 29th of November, de- 

 scriptive of a similar invasion at the head of Loch Leven 

 in Argyleshire on the 3Oth of August, where many of these 

 birds were found in an exhausted condition. This the 

 editor, ably commenting, attributes to the excessive rainfall 

 on the West Coast during that month, causing the waters of 

 the Loch to be brought into a condition of brackishness and 

 turbidity so unusual as to have forced the fish out of it into 

 the pure water of the open sea. The fish disappearing, the 

 birds, starved and dazed from want of food, had stupidly 

 wandered, instead of seawards, inland to the head of Loch 

 Leven, which in a direct line from the watershed of the 

 Tummel would be from 10 to 11 miles, and from 15 to 20 

 from the nearest point of Loch Etive (which may have been 

 affected in the same way) to that of Loch Tay, and not 

 more than 30 to the Loch itself. This visitation, however, 

 seemed to reach from Pitlochry downwards to the Tay ; 

 numbers having been met with at Dunkeld and Stanley, as 

 well as on stations between, coming by the Tummel and 

 not by Loch Tay. Many were picked up dead, floating on 

 the water, and others stupid and in a half-dazed condition. 

 Those which came under my special notice were young birds, 

 which I suspect them all to have been, and which I think 

 must have come from the head of Loch Leven ; for though 

 Mr. Dewar of Remmony Lodge (in lit. roth December 

 1895) informs me that he also noticed these birds, of which 

 the Guillemots were the more numerous, to have visited 

 Loch Tay on the 6th of September for a fortnight, they 

 were comparatively in good condition. These, I take it, 

 may have come from Loch Etive, as the Tummel and Tay 



