162 THE SCOTTISH NATURALIST 



were picked up, more or less in an extended line of about five to six 

 hundred yards to the west of Aldermanseat farmhouse, showing that 

 some of the victims, which had been flying from west to east, had 

 struggled on a short distance before falling. One had actually fallen 

 within a few feet of the front door of the farmhouse, and this 

 particular bird was kept by the tenant, Mrs Fergusson ; the others, 

 however, all found their way to various cottage kitchens in the 

 district. I was told that the bodies of a few appeared singed, but 

 the only specimen preserved bears no external signs of injury, though 

 the bird-stuffer, Mr William Cowen, to whom it was sent, writes to 

 me "that the flesh was almost black." Within the next few days 

 two, or possibly three, more bodies were reported to have been picked 

 up, one being said to have been found so far off as Canonbie. An 

 account of a similar occurrence, when fifteen Pink-footed and four 

 White-fronted Geese were struck by lightning in Norfolk on 8th 

 February 1906, has been described by Mr J. H. Gurney. Hugh S. 

 Gladstone, Capenoch, Thornhill, Dumfriesshire. 



An Unclaimed Marked Woodcock. Some time ago Mr J. 

 S. Robertson, Cawdor Estate Office, Nairn, reported to us that a 

 ringed Woodcock had been shot near Cawdor Castle on 25th 

 November 1912. The inscription on the ring is " 1906. H. 46," and 

 so far our inquiries as to its possible origin have been fruitless. It 

 is to be hoped that publication of the facts will be more successful. 

 A. Landsborough Thomson, Aberdeen University Bird-Migration 

 Inquiry. 



Nesting of the Dunlin in Berwickshire. For many years 

 there has been a strong suspicion that Dunlins made the Lammer- 

 moor Hills one of their breeding-places. In The Birds of Berwick- 

 shire, Mr Muirhead writes: "Although there is no record of the 

 nest of the Dunlin having been found in Berwickshire, yet the 

 presumption is that the bird has bred on the moors about 

 Longformacus, for Colonel Brown has informed me that on the 

 16th of July 1885, he shot a Dunlin on swampy, mossy ground, 

 high up, near where the ' Grey Mare ' and the ' Grey Mare's Foal ' 

 (two detached boulders) lie on the moor." Since then increasing 

 evidence as to their nesting on the western reaches of the Lammer- 

 moors, and further east as far as Spartleton heights on the 

 Whitadder, has come to light. In the parish of Lauder there are 

 at least two distinct small nesting colonies high up on the moors, 

 where the ground in places is comparatively moist and overgrown 

 with tufts of wiry natural grasses among the heather. Mr G. Hunter, 

 Glenburnie, on nth June of this year, after watching the old birds 



