VOL. IX.] NOTES. 255 



CREAM-COLOURED WHIMBREL IN IRELAND. 



A BEAUTIFUL cream-colourefl example of the Whimbrcl 

 (Numenius ph. phceopus), with legs and feet of pale lavender, 

 has recently passed into my possession. It was shot at Lough 

 Mask in May, 1915, and is in excellent plumage. I know of 

 only one other " variety " Whimbrel, but Waders only verj- 

 exceptional^ assume abnormal plumage. C. J. Carroll. 



LAND-RAIL ON ST. KILDA. 



On page 189 antea an extract is given from The Scottish 

 Naturalist in which Mr. Eagle-Clarke states that so far as 

 he knows the Land-Rail has not been mentioned as occurring 

 on St. Kilda for the last seventy-five years. I should like to 

 mention that on June 9th, 1888, when I was on a visit to 

 St. Kilda, a boy named Willie McDonald brought me in 

 the flesh a freshly-killed Land-Rail which he had caught 

 in a hole that day. Doubtless it was a newly-arrived 

 migrant which was resting in the shelter of a slight hole 

 or hollow on the hillside. It was on account of this 

 specimen that Howard Saunders in his Ma}iual recorded 

 the Land-Rail as having been obtained on St. Kilda. I gave 

 the skin to Mr. Harvie-Brown and it may possibly be still 

 in his collection. Robert H. Read. 



Recoveries of Marked Birds {Aberdeen Inquiry). — ^Mr. 

 A. Landsborough Thomson gives in the Scottish Naturalist 

 (1915, pp. 313-17, and 339-43) a "second Interim Report 

 (1912-14) " of the " Aberdeen University Bird-Migration 

 Inquiry." Here some very interesting records are given. 

 Two Starlings ringed in Edinburgh in February and March, 

 1911, were captured in Norway, one at Nord-Trondhjem in 

 April, 1913, and the other near Christiania in March, 1914. 

 Another Starling ringed in North Wales in October, 1912, was 

 captured at Svendborg, Denmark, in May, 1914. A Song- 

 Thrush ringed as a young bird near Aberdeen in June, 1911, 

 w^as reported from Armidel, Sussex, in January, 1912, while 

 another ringed in Aberdeenshire in May, 1913, was killed at 

 the Eddystone Lighthouse on February 27th, 1914. A Sheld- 

 Duck ringed as a duckling in Hampshire, in July, 1912, was 

 reported from Schleswig-Holstein in August, 1913. There 

 are two cases of Oyster-Catchers ringed in Aberdeenshire as 

 nestlings travelling to the west of Ireland in the following 

 autumn. Three Lapunngs ringed in Scotland and one in 

 Yorkshire are reported from Landes, France, and Oporto 

 and Guarda, Portugal, in the following winter. There are 

 two very interesting Herring-Gull recoveries : both were ringed 



