NOTES 275 



Acanthis cannabina nesting in Renfrewshire. The 



Linnet is well known in Renfrewshire from autumn till early spring. 

 During that period large flocks are met with. As soon as the 

 nesting season comes round the birds mostly disappear. We have 

 known of a district in the eastern division of the county in which 

 it has nested for years. A gamekeeper in this (Kilmacolm) district, 

 who knows the bird well, assures me he has seen an odd nest now 

 and again. This year my son found a nest with five eggs on 20th 

 May. A week later we visited this stretch of gorse and found a 

 brood which had just left the nest. A careful search revealed the 

 empty nest an exact duplicate of the one containing the eggs. 

 The definite finds are so few that this one is worthy of record. 

 T. Thornton Mackeith, Kilmacolm, Renfrewshire. 



Strange Nesting Site of the Pied. Wagtail. A somewhat 

 strange nesting site of the Pied Wagtail {Motacilla lugubris) was 

 brought to view this morning (20th July 191 7) at Crathes Station, 

 on the Deeside system, when a number of railway chairs which had 

 been stacked on the embankment for years was removed. The 

 nest had been built between two rows of chairs on the ground, with 

 very little depression to support its sides. It consisted of dried 

 tree-roots and withered grass and other plant stems on the outside, 

 and was lined with rabbits' fur, a few hairs, and one or two feathers. 

 There were four eggs well advanced towards hatching in the nest. 

 An old nest, evidently used in 191 6, occupied a similar position 

 half a foot further from the edge of the embankment. Whether the 

 present was the second clutch of eggs in this year's nest was 

 uncertain, but the evidence pointed in that direction. Alex. 

 Macdonald, Durris. 



Swallows in Picardy. I don't know whether, amongst the 

 numerous " Nature Notes " from France, which no doubt appear in 

 home journals, attention has been drawn to the remarkable 

 abundance of House-martins, Swallows, and in lesser degree, Swifts, 

 in the destroyed villages of Picardy. It is a feature which forces 

 itself on the attention in all the territory evacuated by the Germans 

 in the spring, and in the damaged villages behind the line not 



entirely levelled with the ground. Here, in P , House 



martins in particular swarm to an extraordinary degree. All the 

 houses in the place have at least the upper stories or sides destroyed, 

 with, as a result, an unlimited supply of nesting-sites ; in many of 

 these the nests are collected together in large bunches, and the 

 birds go in and out in clouds, while at the present moment (mid-July) 

 the young birds are to be seen sitting about in little rows of thirty 



