250 Miss Baxter and Miss Rintoul on the \}^^^^, 



there, while the Peregrine, wliich formerly bred on the cliffs, 

 now only visits the island in pursuit of prey. Writing in 

 1886, Dr. Harvie Brown includes in his list of breeding-birds 

 the Song-Thrush, Wheatear (about 50 pairs), Linnet ''a few 

 pairs), Hedge-Sparrow (one pair in 1884 for tlie first time), 

 and Cormorant, none of which now nests there. All that we 

 have found breeding are the Starling, Pied AVagtail, Meadow- 

 Pipit, Kock-Pipit, Blackbird, Eider, Shag, Oystercatcher, 

 Redshank (one year only), Herring-Gull, Kittiwake, Razor- 

 bill, Guillemot, and Puffin. It is difficult to find a reason 

 for many of the changes which have taken place, the island 

 affording many apparently suitable breeding-places. 



Migration on the Isle of May. 

 We have notes from the Isle of May of the arrival and 

 departure of summer visitors, winter visitors, partial migrants, 

 passage migrants, occasional visitors (viz. birds which visit us 

 under certain weather conditions only, such as Yellow-browed 

 Warblers and Little Buntings), and rare stiagglers (that is, 

 birds that have lost their way and of wliich only one or two 

 occurrences have been recorded, as the Indian Stonechat 

 and Pied Wheatear) ; also of weather movements and move- 

 ments of cliff- and sea-birds. It must be remembered that 

 on an island, owing to its limited size and lack of covert, a 

 much larger proportion of the birds present can be seen and 

 identified than is possible on the mainland. Also that it is 

 much easier to ascertain when a bird arrives than on a larger 

 space : for instance, if a Barred Warbler be beaten out of 

 covert one morning, there can be but little doubt that it has 

 arrived since the previous day ; should a bird of the same 

 species appear on the mainland, it is next to impossible, owing 

 to the amount of covert, to say whether or no it had been 

 there for some time previously. 



Weather conditions have a great influence on the move- 

 ments of birds: the main facts are not in dispute; but when 

 we come to the more subtle effects of wind and weather, 

 opinions differ as to the extent and direction of their in- 

 fluences. We find on the Isle of May that the weather in 



