NOTES 55 



Choughs in Peeblesshire. On 2nd September a Chough 

 {Pyrrhocorax gmcith/s) was killed in the parish of Urummelzier in 

 this county. I subsequently examined the skin and it appeared 

 to me to be that of an immature bird. Two Choughs were seen 

 at the time when the one was got, and the second bird has been 

 seen nearly every day since, in the same locality. During the 

 greater part of the day the surviving Chough frequents a rocky 

 hillside, but during the morning it is often seen feeding on the 

 low ground. Henry D. Simpson, The Priory, Peebles. 



[Since we received this note from Mr Simpson, Mr F. R. S. 

 Balfour, of Dawyck, Stobo, has informed us that the keeper shot 

 the Chough in mistake for a Carrion Crow, and that strict instruc- 

 tions have been given not to molest the remaining bird. Eds.] 



Occurrences of the American Wigeon in Scotland. 



I have read the articles by Mr J. Alastair Anderson and the Misses 

 Leonora Jeffrey Rintoul and Evelyn V. Baxter on the above subject 

 in the January-February issue of the Scottish Naturalist {a7ite pp. 

 13, 14) with much interest, and especially so with regard to the 

 suggestion put forth as to how these supposed wanderers reached 

 the shores of Scotland. If I may be allowed to do so, I would like 

 to put forward another solution, and one which I venture to think 

 may prove more acceptable to the majority of ornithologists than 

 the suggestion that these birds were diverted from their migratory 

 route by adverse and very strong gales. 



Surely, had the winds been so strong as to bring this about we 

 should have had an invasion of American Wigeon and many other 

 species from the Western Hemisphere, and not just an isolated 

 couple of adult male Mareca americana. Here is my theory, to be 

 taken for what it may be worth. For some years now, many " foreign " 

 species of duck have been extensively bred in a wild state on Sir 

 Richard Graham's ponds at Netherby, on the shores of the Solway 

 Firth. I have myself had strange sensations when walking through 

 the Larch woods surrounding the ponds by suddenly seeing the head 

 and neck of the Mandarin Duck {JE,x galericulata) peering down 

 at me from the hole in a nesting-box placed some 20 ft. up a tree; 

 and as for the gorgeous sight of nearly every species of surface- 

 feeding duck known to the Paltearctic regions swimming on and 

 flying about the ponds well, it is a picture which Time can never 

 efface from my memory. I therefore venture to put forward the 

 suggestion that it is very much more probable that the two male 

 American Wigeon severally noted on the West and East of Scotland 

 hailed from Netherby, rather than from the American Continent. 



