Miscellaneous. 75 



in this specimen the point of the beak and the claws are exceedingly 

 sharp, and the breast and abdomen slightly mottled with dusky or 

 grayish lines), the white colour probably spreading more and more 

 over the secondaries as the bird gets older 1 



The next bird to which I shall allude is also an accidental visitor 

 or straggler ; coming however from a totally different region from the 

 last, — the frozen north, to spend a milder winter with us. It is the 

 Wax-Wing or Bohemian Chatterer, Bombycilla garrula, Flem. 

 — This beautiful bird is, I doubt not, so well known as to require no 

 description : I may only remind you that in adult birds, the points of 

 the secondaries have attached to them the curious vermilion ap- 

 pendages to which it owes its name. Coming from the north, its 

 distribution through our island is just the reverse of the last ; being 

 more common in Scotland than in England. About the end of 

 January, or beginning of February, 1850, a small flock of these birds, 

 some seven or eight in number, were seen in the neighbourhood of 

 Melrose, and instead of being very shy, as they are generally described, 

 they were so tame that one man shot no fewer than four of them, one 

 after another, as they were hopping about in some trees, before the 

 rest became so much alarmed as to take to flight : other two were 

 shot in one of the cottage gardens of Melrose ; and another was killed 

 some ten days after in the Abbotsford plantations. From the singu- 

 larly knobbed or distorted appearance of this bird about the crop, 

 the person who shot it considered it as diseased, and therefore not 

 worth preserving, and accordingly his curiosity being excited, he set 

 to work with his knife to discover if possible the cause, and was asto- 

 nished to find as many as three large-sized hips of the common dog- 

 rose in its crop — sufficient fully to account for its peculiar shape. 



Although this bird makes its appearance irregularly from time to 

 time in this country, during the winter months, and often in consider- 

 able numbers, still it is only as an accidental visitor that it occurs, 

 and it is undoubtedly to be considered as a very rare bird. I may 

 mention that in the ' Courant ' newspaper of Saturday last, I observed 

 a notice of a Wax-wing having been killed the preceding day in a 

 garden at Portobello, in this immediate neighbourhood. 



About the same time that the Wax-wings made their appearance 

 near Melrose, a gardener at Dryburgh Abbey, a few miles farther down 

 the Tweed, shot in his orchard the next rare bird which I t shall 

 notice — 



The Great Spotted Woodpecker, Picus major, Cuv. — This 

 bird is one of our rare permanent residents ; it is described as being 

 extensively distributed over Britain, but in all parts is rare, and in 

 Scotland is rarer than in England ; it is said to occur in some of our 

 extensive northern forests ; but in the south of Scotland it is very 

 rarely to be seen. This specimen is now in the possession of J. 

 Meiklam, Esq., Torwoodlee. 



In the beginning of May last, a very fine specimen of an eagle, 

 described as being the 



Cinereous Eagle, or Erne, Haliaetus albicilla, Cuv., was 

 shot by a gamekeeper within a few hundred yards of Bowhill House, 



