30 THE SCOTTISH NATURALIST 



CURRENT LITERATURE. 



The Journal of the Wild Bird Investigation Society. 

 We would like to extend a hearty welcome to our new contemporary, 

 The Journal of the Wild Bird Investigatioji Society, the first number 

 of which appeared in November 191 9. The papers are as a whole 

 too general in character to require special mention from the point 

 of view of Scottish ornithology, but we should like to draw atten- 

 tion to a valuable contribution from Dr CoUinge on the food of 

 the Barn Owl (p. 9), showing the great service this bird renders to 

 agriculturalists. 



There are two interesting cases of melanism at St Andrews 

 (p. 15), one being a Blue Tit, the other, a Swallow. While a 

 Heron, near Aberdeen, was found strangled on a telephone 

 wire on 3rd April, a strange accident to happen to the species. 

 {loc. cit., p. 15). 



Birds in Shetland in 1919. ^In a note in British Birds 

 (magazine), vol. xiii., p. 159, Rear-Admiral C. Greatorex records 

 considerable increase in the numbers of Fulmar Petrels "which 

 now appear to breed on every cliff round the Shetlands," Arctic 

 and Great Skuas and Red-throated Divers, while the reports of 

 the breeding of the Red-necked Phalaropes are very satisfactory. 



Willow Tits in Ross-shire and Aberdeenshire. In British 

 Birds (magazine), vol. xiii., p. 195, a party of Willow Tits is recorded 

 in East Ross-shire on 24th June 1919, and a bird of the same 

 species on the hills between Braemar and Aviemore just under 

 2000 feet above sea-level on 17th September. 



Great Snipe in Caithness and Lanarkshire. A Great 

 Snipe {Gallinago major) was shot on the Rattar Estate on the 

 1 2th of September last, and was forwarded to the naturalist 

 editor of The Field for identification by Mr H. Crum Ewing. 

 This specimen, the editor remarks, was "in a state of plumage 

 quite unlike that of an adult bird. Instead of having the under 

 parts barred and the outer tail feathers white for the greater 

 portions of their length, the under parts were white below the 

 breast and the outer tail feathers barred, as in the Common Snipe. 

 On this account we at first sight mistook it for a Common Snipe 

 of unusual size and weight. But all points considered, including 

 the number of tail feathers, which in the Common Snipe are 

 fourteen and in the Great Snipe sixteen, we regard it as an 

 immature specimen of the latter species, which apparently does 



