liiiai Notes from Eskdat,!-;. Ti 



not either see their nests, or a pair or two diving- at my doys in 

 such an ag-g-ressive way as to leave no doiiljt that a nest was in 

 close proximity. I knew two cases of serious attacks 1 )y these 

 l)irds, one on a man and another on a young lad, the latter 

 having the back of his head mucii cut with their claws. 



During the plague the short-eared owls bred on most of the 

 farms ravaged by the voles. One evening when driving along a 

 road stretching for some miles over moorland I counted fifteen 

 parties of these birds, each consisting of from four to eight, and 

 I have no doubt they were separate families, as they kept 

 together hawking after voles, and at long distances from each 

 other. They began to breed very early in the season, as one of 

 my shepherds saw a nest so early as 29th February, 1892 — leap 

 year. The female was sitting on twelve eggs, with only her 

 head visible above the snow, which covered the ground to some 

 depth. Round the nest were 17 dead voles, evidently Ijrought 

 there by the male bird. 



STARLINGS. 



The very same farms which suffered from the voles were 

 ravaged by two other plagues, caused by the caterpillar of the 

 antler moth, of which the first outbreak occurred in June, 1S8.^. 

 My attention was drawn to it by seeing immense flocks of star- 

 lings passing the house during two hours each evening. They 

 flew in continuous streams, the time chosen being invariably 

 between the hours of G and 8 p.m. Each flock consisted of from 

 one to several hundreds, and their combined numbers must have 

 amounted to very many thousands. They followed each other 

 in close succession, and generally kept well overhead, but one 

 flock in particular flew a few feet only above the bed of the river. 

 It consisted of so many birds that the stream stretched for a 

 length of above a quarter of a mile, with a breadth of ten or 

 twelve yards. When looking from the window I could easily fix 

 the length of this flock, because when its head was at a certain 

 pool in the river, its tail was at another. I could not understand 

 the reason for such a migration of starlings so early in the season 

 — the month of June. The number was so great that I could 

 scarcely think so many were bred in the whole of Scotland, and 

 the track chosen was one which I had never seen used before. 

 After this supposed migration had gone on for several days I was 



