128 Brrp NOTEs. 
feeding with the utmost unconcern within half-a-gunshot of the 
hedge. Although he stood up without any attempt at conceal- 
ment, they went on feeding, oblivious of his presence, which was 
rather an ususual thing, a similar incident having never occurred 
before in his experience. He came upon another movement in 
the same accidental way some weeks ago. He was on business 
on the Dalbeattie road between Whiteside of Kirkgunzeon and 
Lochanhead, and he passed several hours in that direction. That 
was the day before the great snowfall, and a long stretch of fields 
along the road was covered with birds of many different species, 
such as gulls, plovers, starlings, in thousands. Probably there 
would be twenty thousand of them, and they were in an ex- 
tremely restless mood, fighting with each other as if they were 
strangers, as no doubt they were. He thought perhaps that 
an early migration movement was the explanation of their pre- 
sence, but he found that he was quite mistaken in that; and that 
this was entirely one of these movements caused by the bad 
weather in front driving the birds back from their usual travels. 
He saw them in a long stretch of fields, where they were com- 
paratively sheltered from the storm. They had strong gusts of 
westerly wind, driving showers of snow before it, and the birds 
appeared to be in a tired state and glad indeed to get the shelter. 
Such a movement as that, retarding migration, did not occur in 
this country to any extent, and this was the only one of any 
magnitude in the course of a long while he had seen. Ornitho- 
logical literature was often taken up with descriptions of similar 
things elsewhere, and especially the countries around the Baltic 
Sea, where millions of birds were driven back in the same way 
by some unexpected snowstorm. He wished to refer to another 
subject for the purpose of voicing, he hoped, their as well as his 
own great reprobation of an act that was paragraphed recently 
which took place at Auchenskeoch in the shooting of a golden 
eagle. He considered it a most dastardly and uncalled for act. 
As a rule, he did not agree very much with the rather ignorant 
sentimentalism that was sometimes expressed at the killing of 
rare birds. The shooting of some of these birds was the means 
sometimes of finding out many of the problems attached to the 
study of bird life, and particularly the migration and distribution 
of birds. But the killing of a bird such as the golden eagle 
was, he thought, very reprehensible indeed, and all the more so 
