NATURAL HISTORY SOCIETY OF GLASGOW. 113 



More, and flew out to sea against a gale of wind, but sliortly 

 turned, and alighted on the grassy top of the island. On landing 

 and going up to search for it, I failed in seeing it again. It 

 appeared to be in very fine summer plumage. 



On the 2Gth and 27th May, 1870, Captain H. W. Feilden and 

 I saw Purple Sandpipers on the shores of Barra Head and 

 Mingalay, in the Hebrides; and on the 27th, Capt. Feilden shot 

 two specimens in beautiful summer plumage. These specimens, 

 both females on dissection, were exhibited by Mr Robert Oray, at 

 a meeting of this Society in November following. In Faroe, Mr 

 John Wolley informs us, this species breeds " on the summits of 

 the mountains in small numbers: young just fledged in the end of 

 June " {vide Sir W. Jardine's " Contributions to Ornithology " for 

 1850). Now, if young Purple Sandpipers are just fledged in the 

 end of June, the question naturally arises, as Captain Feilden 

 pointed out : What were those, that we saw in the Hebrides, doing 

 there at so late a date 1 We feel inclined to answer the question, 

 either by the supposition that, as many male birds of difl'erent 

 species, especially among the Waders, are known to sit upon the 

 eggs, and assist in the labours of incubation, it is possible that, 

 whilst these females were feeding on the shore or resting there, the 

 males may have been engaged in incubation on the top of the hill of 

 Mingalay. Or, again, we might answer it with another supposition, 

 viz., that these late migrants were barren birds, and therefore had 

 no call in particular to hurry northward to Faroe or elsewhere, 

 with the body of the migrating flocks. 



GREENSHANK. 



TOT ANUS GLOTTIS {Pallas). 



This species is very generally distributed over the whole of 

 Sutherland, extending into Caithness, and southward into west 

 Ross-shire, west Cromarty, west of Inverness-shire, Argyleshire, and 

 Perthshire, and is present in the Hebrides. I consider it far from 

 an uncommon species in Sutherland. They are wild and wary, 

 much more so than the Redshank, in the breeding season, and the 

 male is wilder and shyer than the female. 



The cry of the Greenshank, from which it gets its local Gaelic 



name in West Sutherland — Teochvingh (the accent on the last 



syllable) — is somewhat like that of the Redshank, but slower, 

 VOL. IL H 



