284 THE SCOTTISH NATURALIST 



this interesting occurrence, we visited the shore at Cambo on 29th 

 June and found hundreds of dead Guillemots, lesser numbers of 

 Razorbills and Puffins and eight or nine adult Eider, and one fluffy 

 duckling. Unfortunately most of the specimens were so much 

 decomposed as to render the task of determining the cause of 

 death very difficult ; luckily two of the Eider were comparatively 

 fresh, and these we sent to Professor Sutherland. He kindly 

 examined them for us, and reports that the cause of death was 

 starvation. Evidently the oil had clogged their feathers to such an 

 extent as to make it impossible for them either to fly or dive, thus 

 preventing them from obtaining sufficient food. Since then we 

 have found many dead birds of these same species in Largo Bay, 

 all very emaciated, and have been sent notes of numbers of dead 

 and oil-caked birds round the shores of Fife, from the b .nks of the 

 Tay opposite Dundee to Kirkcaldy ; these were chiefly Guillemots, 

 but also some Razorbills and Puffins. A few of the first-named 

 species were also found on the other side of the firth, on the shore 

 below Dirleton. — Leonora Jeffrey Rintoul and Evelyn V. 

 Baxter, Largo. 



Coloration of Mouth of Young Hawfinches.— It was my 



good fortune to see the nests of three pairs of Hawfinches in an 

 East Lothian wood this spring. On 26th May, the date of my 

 second visit to them, two of the nests contained young birds four or 

 five days old. When the nestlings gaped, the beautiful colour of 

 the insides of their mouths at once arrested my attention : bright 

 lake-red with some yellow about the flanges, is how I noted it down 

 at the time. No record of the coloration of the mouth in the young 

 of this species has come under my notice. In British Birds a few 

 years ago {cf. vols. iii. and iv.) there appeared numerous records on 

 this character in the case of other species, among them the 

 Crossbill, the young of which seem to have the inside of the mouth 

 very similarly coloured — a combination of vivid carmine and purple 

 is how one observer describes it — to those of the Hawfinch. 

 Perhaps we have here an indication of a closer relation between 

 these two species than is usually assigned to them, and it is not the 

 only circumstance pointing in the same direction. The period of 

 incubation of the Hawfinch, to judge from the observations made 

 upon the above nests, is about fourteen days. — William Evans, 

 Edinburgh. 



Pied Flycatcher at Stonehaven. — Cycling to Stonehaven 

 on several occasions about the second week of July, a pair of Pied 

 Flycatchers were noted each time near the " Dark Brig," about three 



