76 OTIS TETRAX. 
Mr. Salmon and several other good judges of eggs pronouncing it to 
be a Little Bustard’s, that I determined to write to Dr. Sinclair of 
Wick". 
Soon after leaving Thurso I was a day or two at Wick, where I was 
shewn by Dr. Sinclair there, in the month of July or August, a bird 
which he at first called a Bittern; but upon seeing which I at once 
pronounced to be a Little Bustard. It was then stuffed, thongh not 
quite completed, by the Doctor. In the meantime I had been to 
Shetland and had thought no more of the egg. 
On the 8th of March, 1853, I wrote to Dr. Sinclair to ask him 
what he could recollect of the bird’s capture. He answered me as 
follows :—‘‘ I have made every enquiry about the Little Bustard, but 
have been completely foiled and cannot learn any one thing of her. 
I shall tell you how she came into my possession, One day in the 
middle of June, 1848, I went into the bar of the Caledonian Hotel 
here { Wick] as I was told a rare bird was there. To my great delight 
and surprise I found this rare and beautiful bird laid with some dead 
domestic fowls. I took it up and walked home with it and sent 
Mr. Leith [the hotel-keeper| three hens for it, which he thought 
was a good exchange. On further enquiry I found that she had been 
shot by a ‘poacher’ in the parish of Halkirk, sixteen miles from 
this and five miles from Thurso, or otherwise—almost in the middle 
of the county; and that part of the country being very flat and 
swampy with a good river running through it, I have not the least 
doubt but she had a nest.” 
The egg was broken badly when I got it. At the time I was dis- 
tinctly given to understand that it was taken in Caithness, but with 
no further particulars, for which, unfortunately, I did not press. 
I mended it some time ago. My having obtained the egg so near to 
where the bird was shot appears greatly to increase the probability 
of its having belonged to her. In my letter to Dr. Sinclair I eare- 
fully avoided all allusion to my egg. I asked him to see the man 
who shot the bird and ask whether she had long been about? how 
she got up? on what kind of ground? and whether there was any 
reason to suppose there was a male bird or a nest. 
1 {No doubt the “ Mr. Eric Sinclair, Surgeon,’ mentioned by James Wilson 
(‘Voyage round the Coasts of Scotland,’ ii. p. 178) as having in 1841 a collection 
of Caithness birds. When in Caithness, in 1881, I made what enquiry I could 
touching this “ Dr,” Sinclair; but all I could hear was that he had died some ten 
years before, and that his widow had “gone south.” No one seemed to know 
anything of bis collection Eb. ] 
