PICARlAi. ( 271 ) UPUPJDAi. 



THE HOOPOE. 



Upupa epops. 



The ^7-eeri Cicada chirping 'mid the grass. 

 The crested Hoopoes si7iging as they pass. 



Mitchell, Ruin of many Lands. 



This interesting bird is very rarely seen in Berwickshire. 

 In the Old Statistical Account of Scotland (1795) it is stated 

 that, "On 18th Sept. 1790, was found, three miles south- 

 east from Duns, a bird very rare in Scotland. It was 

 killed by a cat, and discovered to be the bird called Hoopoe 

 by the English, Wedhope by the Germans, the Upupa of 

 the ancients, and described by Pliny, Aristotle, Pausanias, 

 ^lian, and others."^ The Eev. A. Baird, writing in the 

 New Statistical Account of Scotland (1835), mentions this 

 bird as an occasional visitor to the parish of Cockburns- 

 path.^ In April 1884, Mr. Alexander Blackball, Starchhouse 

 Toll, near Mordington, showed me an old stuffed specimen 

 very much decayed, which he said had been shot near 

 Lamb's Mill, on the Whitadder, in a field of turnip seed, 

 in July, about 1844. One was shot on Eyemouth Fort,^ 

 about the beginning of May 1879, and sent to a bird- 



1 Old Stat. Ace. of Scot. vol. iv. p. 392. 



2 New Stat. Ace. of Scot. vol. ii., Berwickshire, p. 299. 



3 The beautiful bay of Eyemouth is bounded on the north by a bold and 

 picturesque headland, on whose summit the Duke of Somerset erected a fort in 

 the year 1547, which was soon afterwards dismantled. Mary of Lorraine, during 

 her regency, repaired the fortifications, which were, after the lapse of a few 

 years, again demolished, and never afterwards repaired. 



