424 The Rarer Birds of the Solway Area. 



a few years hence, or the ordinary every-day things of this year of 

 grace may ere long be, alas ! verging on extinction. 



Thirty years ago the stock dove was a very great rarity — it 

 passes us daily without notice now. Ten years earlier than the 

 apparition of the stock dove, a starling's nest was the wonder 

 and talk of a whole district — one wonders now where all their 

 vast hordes find a living. When I was a boy the chough was to 

 be seen fairly numerously all around our Galloway shores, now 

 you may wander from the Heughs of Colvend to the precipices, 

 above Portpatrick, and it will be a note well worth booking if you 

 see a single example, yea, even in many rambles. These are 

 instances of the rise or fall of species from purely natural causes. 

 The relative numbers of any species are always in a state of 

 ebb or flow, but the process is in the great majority an exceed- 

 ingly slow process, and is only seldom so marked as in the 

 cases quoted. The occurrence of rarities points, like index 

 fingers, to changes in prospect. These may be attributed to one 

 or other of several things, that the particular species is (i) more- 

 or less voluntarily altering its direction of migration-flight, owing 

 probably to some varying meteorogical condition; (2) widening- 

 or lengthening the area of its seasonal occupation ; (3) for some- 

 more or less inscrutable reason getting into questionable migra- 

 tion compan}^ and being led astray into strange areas, not in- 

 tended and unsuited for the species; and (4) in the case of the- 

 so-called gypsy migrants, they are the scouts and fore- 

 runners of species desirous of a temporary sojourn onlv. 

 It is thus obvious that the occurrence of rarities opens up' 

 a riiost interesting field of study in many directions, and at the 

 migration seasons more especially they point out to us the mean- 

 ing of much that is going on which would be otherwise obscure. 



Whether attributable to our geographical position or to the 

 far more likely cause — scarcity of observers, the fact remains- 

 that Solway is, perhaps, the poorest area in Great Britain in its 

 record of rarities. Comparing Solway with its two neighbour 

 areas, Lakeland and Clyde, I find that in Lakeland they have 28 

 rarities that we have not got, while we have only seven that they 

 have not recorded. In Clyde there are 13 more rarities than 

 we have, and we have about nine that have not yet been recorded 

 there. 



I now proceed to give you my catalogue of Solway rarities. 



