The Scottish Naturalist. 83 



Green Shank was observed at Kinnord, near Ballater, and one of each of the 

 five prior to it has been shot here, but I am not aware of more. I also observe 

 that Mr. Forbes has got in Drumblade and Huntly the eggs of four birds that 

 J. have not met with here, viz ,— Wood Lark {Alauda arborea) ; Mountain Finch 

 tFringilla montifringilla) ; Short-eared Owl (Oti/s brackyotus) ; Jack Srn; e 

 {Scolopax gattinu la). I am doubtful of the two first named breeding in Scot- 

 land. The Short-eared Owl I have got, but never its eggs ; I have observed the 

 Jack Snipe nere during the summer months, but I have never got its eggs. — 

 James Garkow, 40 Market Place, Inverurie. 



NOTES ON CERTAIN ABERDEENSHIRE BIRDS. 



By Stuart M. Burnett. 



Jacksnipe— (Scolopax Gallinula). — Some of these breed with us every 

 year. Solitary, and never anywhere numerous, they seem least scarce in 

 the end of autumn and during the winter, when sportsmen most observe them, 

 and they then occur chiefly in low spots, ditches, &c. A wet patch in a 

 pasture field, or even in a tolerably open wood, is often a haunt to which one will 

 pertinaciously adhere for a considerable time. The common Snipe (Scolopax 

 gallinago), as is veil known, is not confined in the spring and summer to low- 

 lying lands, but often breeds in wet grassy places, by the sides of hills, and there, 

 too I have flushed the Jacksnipe at the end of May. We have some bogs in 

 which a good many Snipe are bred, and in most of them during the spring you 

 will find a Jack or two I flushed one last year in Borradale Moss in the Parish 

 of Keith hall, on 30th April, as also this year in the same locality on the 1st of 

 May. I have to record a nest and egcis, the only one ever found by me, as long 

 ago as May nth, 1848, and described from notes made at that time. The loca- 

 lity, a marshy hollow now mostly drained, near the junction of the parishes of 

 Kintore, Skene, and Kemnay. The bird sat closer than is even the wont of 

 that close-sitting species. Nest like that of the common Snipe, of dried marsh 

 grass, in the midst of a tussock of the same. Four eggs, proportionally smaller 

 and shorter than the common Snipe's ; somewhat less smooth on the surface of 

 their shells ; of a somewhat different shape, the taper towards the small end 

 beginning lower down, and much more sudden, so that the extremity was 

 proportionally less. A little above it, each egg had a sort of contraction, 

 like what is seen towards the small end of some pears. General ground 

 colours of each egg, a beautiful light olive, tinged with blue, like what 

 is seen in some eggs of the Carrion Crow and Blackbird. The markings varied 

 a little in the different eggs as to density and distribution, but were in all most 

 numerous and distinctly made out towards the small end, and were arranged in 

 masses, spots, and smaller patches of deep dusky brown, intermixed with shades 

 of darker, approaching to black, — the latter colour often disposed in veined 

 streaks and curious serpentine lines, like those on the egg of the Black-headed 

 Bunting f Ember iza SchoeniclusJ, and making with the dark brown a most 

 beautiful sort of marbling. The eggs, indeed, were singularly beautiful ; in that 



