300 THE HEN-HARRIER. 



shepherds, to have frequented the moors there long ago.-^ Mr. 

 Abraham Mack, Abbey St. Bathans, has told me that when 

 he was a boy, about 1826, he used to see big Grey Gleds in 

 the dean between Blackburn and Bowshiel, where one was 

 shot and given to Mr. W. Aitchison, Cockburnspath. Mr. 

 William Patterson, late of North Berwick Abbey Farm, has 

 informed me that he killed a Hen-Harrier at Greenhead, in 

 the parish of Coldingham, in the winter of 1845, while snow 

 lay on the ground. It had caught a partridge when he first 

 observed it. A few years afterwards, his brother obtained 

 a beautiful male on the farm of Blackhill, in the same parish. 

 Mr. Hardy records that in his boyhood, about 1820-30, he 

 often saw the Grey Gled on Coldingham Moor.^ 



Dr. Henderson, Coldstream, has informed me that, in 

 1872, a female Hen-Harrier was shot in the woods behind 

 Eumbleton Law, by Mr. Eoberfc Henderson, East Gordon. 

 On the 16th of October 1874, a bird of the same species 

 and sex, was seen by me in a plantation at the side of the 

 Tweed, near Paxton. It rose from the branch of a tree on 

 which it had been sitting apparently asleep, for it allowed 

 me to approach within thirty yards of its perch, and on 

 rising it hovered away over towards the Whitadder, at a 

 considerable height in the air. A female was killed near 

 the Hunter's Well, on Quixwood Moor in January 1877, 

 and is in possession of Mr. John Hogg of Quixwood, who 



1 Mr. Hardy says in his MS. Notes : — " The Gled must have been numerous 

 formerly in the Cockburnspath district. The ancient name of Ewieside, accord- 

 ing to the tradition of the very old people, was Gledstane Forest. The Gled's 

 Stane was a large stone near a road leading across the hill, that stood on the hill 

 top on the boundary between Cocklaw and the Tower, and was removed, to the 

 disapproval of many old people, by the tenant of Bowshiel, a century ago, pro- 

 bably to build some cottars' houses at Ecklaw, which were then being erected. 

 Sir John Hall regarded the few old trees on the east end of Ewieside as the 

 remains of an old forest, and forbade their being cut down. These notes were 

 taken in 1855, from information by an old shepherd who was brought up at 

 Bowshiel." He adds that a game at which children play is called " Shoo- 

 gled-wylie." 

 2 Hist. Ber. Nat. Club, vol. vii. p. 247. 



