NATURAL HISTORY SOCIETY OF GLASGOW. 18^ 



7itsticola) in the down, and communicated the following interesting 

 particulars on the nesting habits of that bird in the neighbourhood 

 of Loch Lomond : — 



This season I have found two Woodcock's nests. The one I 

 first saw on the 8th of April, but the nest had been known to 

 the gamekeeper for about a week previous. When I saw it the 

 bird was sitting on four eggs. The nest was placed in an open 

 field, about ten or a dozen yards from the edge of a young larch 

 plantation. It was quite bare, but the bird was not easily seen, 

 from its colour resembling so closely the dead leaves and withered 

 grass which were lying about it, and from the manner in which 

 it sits with its long beak thrust down into the fog in front 

 of it. It sat quite still until I went up to it and touched 

 it with the end of my stick. About a fortnight after my first 

 seeing the nest, it was discovered to be "run." Three birds 

 had come out, leaving one rotten egg. The ground all round 

 was carefully searched, but no trace of the chicks could be 

 found. Most likely the old bird had carried them away as soon 

 as hatched. 



The second nest was hatched on the 9th of May. It also 

 contained four eggs. I had known of it for about a week, when 

 on the 9tli of May the gamekeeper brought me word that the 

 nest was " run J' and that he had seen the old bird sitting witliin 

 a few feet of the nest, and, on putting her up, had seen the four 

 young ones, all the eggs having come out. I went up to the place 

 at once, but only to find the old bird and two of the young ones 

 gone, and the other two lying dead at the place where the keeper 

 had seen them a couple of hours before. Something must have 

 disturbed them, and the old one had carried away the first 

 two, leaving the others, which had perished from the cold and 

 wet in her absence, as the day was very cold, and heavy hail 

 showers falling. This nest was in an oak wood, on a bare spot 

 at the foot of a small tree. 



Upon the 13th of May some men who were cutting timber 

 came upon an old bird with four young ones, within a few 

 hundred yards of the places where the two nests were, which 

 must have been a third brood hatched in the same neighbourhood, 



Mr Gray then read some notes from Mr John Gilmour on the 

 nesting of the Woodcock and of the AYild Turkey {Meleagris 

 gallipavo) at Ardlamont. 



