{Authors are responsible for nomenclature used.) 



The Scottish Naturalist 



No. 1 6.] 1913 [April 



THE BIRDS OF THE ISLAND OF TIREE. 

 By Peter Anderson. 



WITH INTRODUCTORY REMARKS, 

 By J. A. Harvie-Brown, LL.D., F.R.S.E, 



Introduction. 



ACQUAINTANCE which ornithologists have formed with the 

 Island of Tiree dates back to 1870. Before that time we 

 had in some measure been instructed in its capabilities from 

 an ornithologist's and sportsman's point of view by the 

 earliest tenants of Tiree shootings, Messrs J. Henderson 

 and Boyd, and by the owner, the late Duke of Argyll. And 

 since that time I have had continuous correspondence with 

 Mr Peter Anderson, who was the first gamekeeper on the 

 island in 1886, as well as information freely conveyed by a 

 succession of shooting tenants, nearly all of whom were more 

 or less interested in the fauna, apart from merely sporting 

 matters. I visited the island also on several occasions, 

 during the summer time, and became personally acquainted 

 with the resident avifauna; and in 1897, with a sporting 

 friend, by the kind invitation of the late Mr West, spent 

 three weeks shooting snipe and wildfowl at the close of the 

 season 1896-7. 



In 1892, along with the late Mr T. E. Buckley, I issued a 



volume of The Fauna of Scotland, relating to " Argyll and 



the Inner Hebrides," and therein utilised all the material 



we had then at our disposal relating to Tiree. Between the 



16 K 



