NATURAL HISTORY SOCIETY OF GLASGOW. 313 



" Ross-shire. — All reports are very favourable." 

 The above favourable prognostications have for the most part 

 been fulfilled, but disease had begun to appear in not a few 

 localities by the date of the closing of this Report — the end of 

 September, 1880. 



GOLDEN PLOVER. 



Charadrius pluvialis, Lin. 



Golden Plover remained unusually, late, in the autumn of 1879, 

 upon the elevated moors. On the 15th October I saw three Golden 

 Plovers on the hills around Glen Queich, Perthshire ; and on the 

 16th two small flocks passed over my head during a small grouse- 

 drive. On the 15th there was J inch of ice on the moor-puddles and 

 moss-holes, which remained unmelted all day; and on the 14th 

 was a snowfall, which sprinkled the higher Perthshire hills, and 

 which lay unmelted all the 15 th and 16th. 



Golden Plover were scarcer than usual on the Stirlingshire 

 coast in winter, and are reported as having been fully a month 

 late of arriving in flocks this autumn near North Berwick [Dr. J. 

 L. Crombie, in lit, 12, xii., 79]. There are usually large flocks of 

 Plover and Curlew in the fields round North Berwick, but it was 

 well on in November before they came [see " Curlew "]. They 

 continued scarce all winter at North Berwick, the flocks being 

 fewer and smaller than usual. A decrease is also quite evident in 

 Sutherland, not only during the present winter, but all through 

 the summer of 1879 also. The present winter has been remark- 

 ably mild at Tongue, which, however, generally registers a higher 

 temperature than at other localities around. Plover are decidedly 

 scarcer in Islay; and, as recorded by Capt. Clarke Kennedy, * their 

 almost total absence from Dumfriesshire and the south of Scotland, 

 where usually they are found in vast flocks, is most remarkable. 



Plover began to appear on the moors of Stirlingshire on or 

 about the 6th March, 1880. 



NIGHT HERON. 



Nycticorax grisea (Lin.). 

 In the First Report, under this species, I committed the error of 

 saying that " there is no record of any having been seen since 

 1823" until the specimen was obtained at Alloa, having neglected 



* Zoologist,'' Feb., 1880, p. 66. 



