REFERENCES TO BIRD-LIFE OF THE ISLE OF MAY 53 



there was exhibited alive a Black Guillemot which had 

 been shot at St Abb's Head two days before. " Probably," 

 says the account, " had come from the Isle of May, where it 

 [the species] is known to breed" {Proceedings, i., p. 182). 



In his Rapacious Birds, published in 1836, MacGillivray 

 alludes to the Peregrine Falcon as having had an eyrie on 

 the May. His words (p. 167) are : " The rock of Dumbarton 

 Castle formerly afforded a breeding place to it, as did the 

 Isle of May, and the Bass Rock." In his British Birds, vol. 

 iii., 1840, p. 307, he gives a definite record of a nest on the 

 May, in 1829, which was visited in the first week of June by 

 George Craven, a Fifeshire gamekeeper, who was in the 

 habit of procuring young falcons for Lord St Albans, the 

 royal falconer. One would have expected to find an earlier 

 reference than the above to the May peregrines, but if such 

 there be I have not met with it. In a footnote on p. 151 

 of vol. iii. of the 1876 edition of Wilson's American Orni- 

 thology, Jardine says : " The Bass Rock and the Isle of May 

 in the Firth of Forth each possess a pair long renowned in 

 deeds of falconry." * No authority, however, is given for 

 the statement. 



We now come to Jardine's records to which allusion was 

 made above. Although few, they are of special interest, as, 

 with one exception, they refer to the breeding on the May of 

 species which have long ceased to do so. These records 

 have been culled from the fourth volume, dated 1843, of the 

 author's British Birds (Naturalist's Library Series), and are 

 here reproduced in his own words : 



Black Guillemot, Uria grylle (p. 222) ". . . we have shot speci- 

 mens on the Isle of May, where one or two pairs breed annually." 

 Then follows an account of the finding of two young birds, a few 

 days old, at the extremity of a cave, among some loose rocks, on 

 which he could land and scramble up. This record Jardine repeats 

 in his Contributions to Ornithology, for 1850, p. 112, where, in an 

 editorial footnote to a paper by Wolley " On the Birds of the Faroe 

 Islands," he remarks, with reference to the Black Guillemot, " It 

 used to breed upon the Isle of May in the Firth of Forth. We 



1 See Postscript in which a much earlier date, 1832, for this editorial 

 note is cited. 



