1 91 8.] Birds of the Isle of May. 249 



Migration of Birds. Mr. T. E. Arthur contributed good 

 notes from 1898 to 1903 for tlie Report on the Movements 

 and Occurrences of Birds in Scotland. Mr. J. McCuish 

 i'rom 1907 to 1909 sent notes to the Report on Scottisli 

 Ornithology, while Mr. S. Baigrie has kept a splendid 

 series of records from 1911 onwards. Dr. Harvie BroM'n 

 spent three weeks on the island in the autumn of 1884 ; 

 Mr. William Evans has paid frequent short visits there, and 

 has kindly given us the benefit of his observations ; while we 

 ourselves spent a month or six weeks there in the autumns of 

 1907-13and a fortnight to a month in the springs of 1911-14, 

 when the war put an end to ornithological expeditions. 



We are very much indebted to the Commissioners of 

 Northern Lights for so kindly giving us permission to 

 visit the island, and we thank them very heartily for having 

 enabled us to do so much work at this important station. 



A good many of the old writers mention the birds of the 

 Isle of May. Perhaps the most interesting of these accounts 

 is the " Statistical Account of Scotland/' published in 1792, 

 in which it is stated that the Isle of May ''is frequented by 

 a great variety of sea-fowl, such as Kittiwakes, Scarts, 

 Dunters, Gulls, Sea-pyets, Marrots, &c.^' ; while Sibbald, 

 in his 'History of the Sheriff-doms of Fife and Kinross' 

 (1710), says: — "Many fowls frequent the rocks of it, the 

 names the people gave to them, are skarts, dunturs, gulls, 

 scouts, kittiewakes ; the last is so named from its cry, it is 

 of the bigness of an ordinary pigeon, some hold it to be as 

 savoury and as good meat as a partridge is. The scout is 

 less than an ordinary duck and of its colour; the Hesh of 

 it is hard; it has eggs l)igger than these of geese, the shells 

 are of a green colour, with some black spots scattered here 

 and there upon them." 



Sir William Jardine in the second quarter of last century 

 states that the following birds bred there: — Black Guillemot, 

 Green-crested Cormorant, Sandwich, Roseate, Common, and 

 Arctic Terns. Several species of birds which used to breed 

 on the island now no longer do so ; for instance, these four 

 species of Terns and the Black Guillemot do not now nest 



