2$o THE SCOTTISH NATURALIST 



Gulls devouring Turnips. This phase of feeding has been 

 well known on the Aberdeenshire coasts for over a dozen years, and 

 was recorded by the late George Sim, A.L.S., Mr A. Mackie, M.A., 

 and others. The birds eat the pulp of turnips, scooping out large 

 holes in the bulbs, and after apparently absorbing the nutriment con- 

 tained, eject masses of soft stringy substance. As noted, this occurs 

 in hard weather. A. Macdonald, Durris School, by Aberdeen. 



I was interested to read the note in the Naturalist for May 

 regarding Black-headed and Common Gulls eating turnips. In the 

 Orkney Islands I have frequently noticed the Herring Gull resort to 

 the same food, and further, on walking along the shore and coming 

 to places where the Gulls are in the habit of sitting, I have frequently, 

 in fact hundreds of times, found small heaps of disgorged turnips. 

 Evidently these did not agree with them, as they were disgorged raw 

 and undigested, almost as hard as when picked. 



I remember a former principal keeper with whom I served, 

 Mr John Tulloch, father of the late William Tulloch, telling me 

 twenty-eight years ago that when he was at North Ronaldshay, 

 1878 to 1888, he reported this fact to the late Mr Harvie-Brown, 

 viz., that the Gulls were flocking to the turnip fields and eating the 

 turnips. Mr Harvie-Brown did not enter this note in his report as 

 received, but put it that the Gulls were going among the turnips 

 picking worms. This note could possibly still be found in some of 

 Mr Harvie-Brown's reports. The time, as I have noted above, was 

 somewhere between 1878 and 1888. I had it from Mr Tulloch 

 verbally, but remember it quite distinctly. John R. Laurence, 

 Davaar Lighthouse, Campbeltown. 



Stock-dove in Aberdeenshire. When Sim wrote his 

 "Fauna of Dee "in 1903, the Stock-dove was confined in Aberdeen- 

 shire to a small area of sandy coast, with St Fergus, where it had 

 appeared in 1890 or 189 1, as a centre, and extending on one side 

 to the Links of Mennie and on the other to the "black bar," 

 a stretch of sand dunes between Loch of Strathbeg and the sea. 

 Sim rejected the suggestions that the " Rock-doves " reported as 

 nesting beside the rivulets of the Coreen Hills in the " eighties " 

 were really Stock-doves. Since 1903 it appears to have extended 

 its range inland as well as along the coast, for, in addition to the 

 Deeside extension to Banchory-Ternan in 1907 recorded by Mr 

 Macdonald, a pair were found this summer on Donside, nesting in 

 a rabbit's burrow on his farm, by Mr Rennie of Wester Fintray, 

 near Kintore. Thomas Tait, Broomend, Inverurie. 



