26 THE SCOTTISH NATURALIST 



and occurs there chiefly as a passage migrant. The 

 American Brent is stated in the same work to be "a 

 winter visitor, met with among flocks of B. bernida on 

 the east coast of Great Britain, mostly to the north of 

 the Humber, and notably on the Northumberland coast, 

 where it appears to be more abundant than B. bernida. 

 The same seems to be true about the south-east coast of 

 Ireland. In the Cromarty Firth it is not uncommon among 

 the vast flocks of Brent Geese. It has also been recorded 

 from the Solway Firth and Essex." Besides these, there 

 are Scottish records from the Moray Firth (A Fauna of the 

 Tay Basin and Strathmore, p. 226) ; Skye [A Fauna of the 

 North- West Highlands and Skye, p. 225), where it is said 

 to be the commoner form off Waternish ; and Balgray Dam, 

 East Renfrew, where one was seen on 1st January 191 1 

 {Glas. Nat., iii. 52). By the kindness of the authorities 

 at the Royal Scottish Museum, we have been able to 

 examine the Brent Geese in the collection there, and 

 found, somewhat to our surprise, that the large majority 

 belonged to the American form. These comprise two 

 males one from Fair Isle, 16th January 1914, the other 

 from the Firth of Forth, February 1912; a female from 

 Fair Isle, 30th April 191 3 ; and a young male from Dunross- 

 ness, Shetland, 19th December 1902. Also three not 

 sexed one from the River Tay, 10th February 1879, an< ^ 

 two from Barra, Outer Hebrides, January 1909 and 19th 

 October 19 14. The only representatives of the typical 

 form in the Museum are two birds one from Shetland, the 

 other from the Outer Hebrides. 



From a study of the foreign distribution of the two sub- 

 species, one would expect the typical race of Brent to be by 

 far the commoner on the shores of Scotland ; how far this 

 is so cannot be satisfactorily established from the meagre 

 evidence at present available. Our desire is to arrive at 

 a just estimate of the relative numbers of the two races 

 occurring in Scotland, and we shall be grateful to anyone 

 who will send us definite records of the occurrence and 

 abundance of either from any part of the kingdom. 



