250 THE SCOTTISH NATURALIST 



breasts, and one on which the' plumage of the throat, breast, 

 and belly was of a uniform dusky grey." With the latter 

 specimen in his mind he makes the following remarks : — 

 " No opportunity of examining the young having fallen to 

 my share, I am unable to state the colouring of their first 

 feathers ; it is probable, however, that these dark-tinted 

 birds were immature." In October 1887, I visited Booth's 

 Museum at Brighton, and noted, among other interesting 

 birds procured in the Forth Area, the case containing these 

 Shearwaters, two white-breasted specimens and the dusky 

 one. In the index to the Catalogue (1876, p. 7) they are 

 entered as " male, female, and immature." 



The presence of large numbers of Manx Shearwaters in 

 the Firth of Forth during the summer half of the year has 

 long been known, and has been a matter of peculiar interest 

 to me (see notes in Ann. Scot. Nat. Hist., 1903, p. 26, and 

 BritisJi Birds, ii., p. 421). Where are the breeding haunts of 

 these parties — at times they amount to flocks — that visit the 

 Forth in summer? That they do not breed in this area,^ 

 or, indeed, anywhere on the east of the mainland of Great 

 Britain, is practically certain. Are they birds belonging to 

 a Shetland or other northern (or even western) colony, or 

 are they from some southern nesting-grounds down in the 

 Atlantic — the Madeira group of islands, for instance, which 

 is understood to be a great stronghold of this Shearwater? 

 That those present in the Forth in mid-summer, wherever 

 they come from, are non-breeding birds — chiefly birds, let us 

 say, but one year old — seems highly probable, when we 

 consider that the breeding-season is at its height in May 

 and June at Madeira,"^ as well as in the British habitats. 



1 In an article on the Birds of the Bass, etc., by the Hon. Walter 

 (now Lord) Rothschild, which appeared in the Nineteenth Century 

 Magazine for October 1898, it is stated that the Manx Shearwater 

 breeds on the Bass Rock. The author subsequently informed me 

 {in lit. 3.12.98) that his grounds for the statement were that he had seen 

 old and young in the neighbourhood of the Rock, and that fourteen or 

 fifteen years previously the late Mr Robert Chambers told him they 

 bred there. Did they really breed on the Bass, we may be sure proof of 

 the fact would have been forthcoming ere this. 



2 See Bannerman, Ibis, 1914, p. 473. 



