164 THE SCOTTISH NATURALIST 



laying must have begun about the 6th or 7th. At Beil, near 

 1 >unbar, a Partridge's nest with several eggs was found on 3rd May. 

 Sea-birds, too, began laying early. On 8th May I disturbed an 

 Eider-duck from her nest of five eggs at the Isle of May; there 

 was some down, and incubation had commenced. On the 9th I 

 examined a portion of the cliffs, putting one Guillemot and five 

 Razorbills off their eggs ; next day I saw another Guillemot's egg 

 and other three Razorbills'. One of the lighthouse staff informed 

 me that he saw a Guillemot's egg on the 7th. At the Bass Rock, 

 according to the lighthouse-keeper there, Razorbills and Puffins had 

 eggs in evidence by the nth of May, but the Guillemots had not 

 then started laying. On the 19th, however, I was assured by North 

 Berwick fishermen that they took three Guillemots' eggs from the 

 rock on the 8th. Mr Harold Raeburn tells me that on the 17th he 

 saw hundreds of Guillemots' eggs at St Abb's Head. I was on the 

 Isle of May again on the 19th, and found that one or two Kittiwakes 

 had begun laying. Also there were half a dozen Herring-gulls' 

 nests with eggs, but this is a late rather than an early date for them. 

 In putting forward the above records as indicative of an early 

 nesting season, I am relying on a comparison with the local data 

 I have accumulated in the course of past years. In the case of the 

 Guillemot, the Razorbill, and the Kittiwake, 1914 has furnished 

 my earliest dates, the next earliest for the first two species being 

 the 12th of May (191 2), and for the last the 23rd of May (1905). 

 William Evans, Edinburgh. 



Willow-tit nesting in Renfrewshire. On 13th April, 

 while searching in a wood for the nest of the Tawny Owl, my friend 

 Mr Malloch and I came upon a pair of Willow-tits {^Pari/s atri- 

 capillus kleinschmidti). Our attention was drawn to them by their 

 quaint alarm note, "chey chey." Being in the wood again on 6th 

 June we were fortunate enough to find the nest with young almost 

 fully fledged. It was placed in a rotten stump about eight feet 

 from the ground, and was lined with wool. The hole had evidently 

 been excavated by the birds themselves. We watched the parent 

 birds for about half an hour. The black on the head was a dull 

 sooty black. I think this is the first nest that has actually been 

 seen with eggs or young in the county. There is a record of 

 adults feeding young that had left the nest. T. Thornton 

 MacKeith, Kilmacolm. 



Little Gull in Forth in June. On 10th June I had several 

 excellent views of a Eittle Gull (Lams minutus) in Largo Bay. It 



