Transactions. 25 



entitled " Notes on the Local Ornithology of the last Six Months." 

 As usually happens when we have a mild autumn and winter, 

 more of the scarcer birds have put in an appearance than in 

 severe weather. In hard seasons the birds go farther south to 

 winter, and the scarce species, when they happen to call in 

 passing, make such a brief stay that their presence is scarcely 

 noticed. In the weather of the autumn months the birds found 

 no cause for hurrying ; but, on the contrary, frequent and violent 

 gales detained the later migrants for weeks, when in calmer 

 weather they would have passed rapidly southwards. Towards 

 the end of September the quick and simultaneous departure of the 

 Sylviidfe and some others was a very noticeable fact. In ordi- 

 nary seasons the numbers gi-adually lessen day by day — or rather 

 night after night, for it is during the night that they depart — 

 during perhaps the entire month of September, and so gradually 

 do they disappear that, when all have left, we hardly seem to 

 miss them. But this was not the case last autumn, for some 

 species left entirely within a couple of days. For instance, the 

 Swifts were in their usual numbers up till the evening of the 6th 

 August. I saw a few stragglers — not more than half-a-dozen — 

 the following day, but not one afterwards in this district (although 

 I may remark parenthetically that I saw a pair of Swifts at 

 Ravelston, near Edinburgh, on the 26th of August). The stay 

 of these and other soft-billed insect-eating birds is of course in a 

 great measure influenced by the abundance or scarcity of par- 

 ticular kinds of food, and this again depends upon the weather. 

 Some of the warblers can subsist upon berries after their usual 

 food has disappeared, and instances have been often recorded of 

 individual Blackcaps being met with long after their summer 

 companions had gone. I can now add another instance to those 

 that have been I'ecorded of the stay of this species in this country 

 till after winter had begun. This Blackcap which I now exhibit 

 was brought to me on 29th November by a boy who had killed it 

 with a stone, from off" a rowan tree in his father's garden, which 

 is situated behind the row of houses forming the east side of 

 Galloway Street. The boy said he had observed the bird feeding 

 on the rowanberries every afternoon for about a week previous. 

 It was accomjjanied by another of the same species, which was seen 

 frequently on the same tree during the first fortnight of December. 

 It is a cui'ious coincidence that the only Blackca]) procured later 



