Mr Scot-Skirvinr/ on the Natural History of Islay. 41 



and arrive towards the end of November in considerable 

 numbers. About seventy swans generally frequent the loch. 

 I have mentioned Loch Gurom, which being translated means 

 the Blue Loch, and it well deserves its name. 



The wild geese come earlier. All the species of really 

 British wild geese visit Islay, but from personal observation 

 I can only speak of three. The bean-goose, so numerous in 

 East Lothian ; the pink-footed goose, and the gTey-lag (which 

 I am told is the common goose of the northern Hebrides), I 

 have never met with in Islay. The other three species of 

 geese — the brent, the bernicle, and the white-fronted — are 

 very common ; but so far as both my observation and my 

 information goes, they are strictly, and very singularly, as it 

 seems to me, confined to certain special localities. Perhaps 

 this may not be absolutely true as regards the brent goose 

 {Anser hrenta). This is much more a sea-bird than any of the 

 others. It very seldom comes inland, and feeds almost ex- 

 clusively on marine vegetation. It arrives early in Loch-in- 

 daal, and remains there all the winter. The beautiful 

 bernicle goose, so far as I know it, arrives in a flock of about 

 five hundred (I am told that twenty years ago fifteen hundred 

 was nearer the mark). This flock appropriates to itself a 

 small island to the north of Islay, close to the shore, and it 

 is only when the season is advanced that it ventures to take 

 up its abode on the adjacent coast of Islay itself. 



One of the songs of Islay (and they have many songs there) 

 enumerates the distinguishing features of the island. One of 

 these is — " Strings of wild geese long and grey." Islay, how- 

 ever, is not visited by one grey goose for a hundred that 

 come to feed on the broad stubble of East Lothian. My 

 information does not serve me as to whether portions of Islay 

 which I do not know, are, or are not, visited by wild geese ; 

 but a flock of eighty or a hundred come as regularly as clock 

 work to the locality which I know best, arriving early in 

 October. These are the white-fronted goose {Anser alhifrons), 

 and unlike bean-geese. They really are rather stupid geese, 

 because they persist in frequenting the small fields of small 

 crofters, where there are great opportunities of stalking them, 

 whilst every day they fly over several very large fields of oat 



