360 Stray Notes on the Birds of Anglesea. [Sess. 



VIII. — STRAY NOTES ON THE BIRDS OF 

 ANGLESEA. 



By Mr ARCH. CRAIG, Jun. 



{Read March 36, 1890.) 



It was with considerable pleasure that, last May (1889), I 

 found myself able to accept of a kind invitation from a friend 

 to spend a few days in the island of Anglesea, the more readily 

 as his account of the bird life of that locality had aroused my 

 interest in no small degree, many of the species mentioned by 

 him being uncommon, and in some instances very rare, to 

 Scotland. The prettily situated town of Bangor was the ter- 

 minus of our railway journey, but the ultimate destination was 

 an old-fashioned farmhouse on the opposite side of the Menai 

 Strait. Crossing what was at one time considered to be the 

 greatest engineering feat of the age — the Menai Suspension 

 JBridge — but which is now dwarfed and rendered insignificant 

 by the completion of that wonder of the world so close to our 

 own doors, our road ascended in very tortuous fashion up the 

 sloping side of the island, running through a country to a great 

 extent broken up by irregular-shaped knolls that barely rose 

 to the dignity of hills, yet sufficiently pretty to render this 

 part of the journey both pleasant and interesting. Great 

 quantities of whins in full blow grew everywhere, but amidst 

 these quaint-looking snug farmhouses cropped up now and 

 again, surrounded by patches of cultivated land, these in turn 

 divided by stone dykes much in the same style as prevails in 

 Scotland. If we exclude the sea prospect, the whole aspect 

 of this part of the island, with its broken hummocky ground, 

 its crofting-looking plots, and its distant view of the high 

 mountain-ranges of Carnarvon and Denbigh shires, brought 

 one forcibly in mind of similar scenes in the Lennox and 

 various districts of Perth and Argyle shires, where much the 

 same character of scenery is found intervening betwixt the 

 rich agricultural laud of the Lowlands and the truly typical 

 mountainous Highland country. The road, like most of those 

 in the island, was very narrow, and bordered on each side by 



