i86i] A Heavy Correspondence. 137 



for the Shetland Islands was furnished by Dr. Saxby, who 

 had lately obtained there the first authenticated British 

 eggs of the Snow Bunting. Mr. Bond drew up lists for 

 Hertfordshire and Middlesex. One of his two authorities 

 for Nottinghamshire was Mr. H. Milner, whom he had 

 first met at Castle Taylor, and had such good reason to 

 remember in connexion with the discovery of Zygaena minos 

 in Ireland. To another old acquaintance, Mr. Hugh Reid, 

 (the Doncaster bird-stuffer who got and described the first 

 " British " Bartram's Sandpiper) he was indebted for a list 

 which proved of peculiar interest as yielding probably the 

 last instance of the breeding of the Avocet in England. 

 Mr. Reid described how he had been brought " eggs of the 

 Avocet in the flesh " from near the mouth of the Humber 

 about 1845, twenty years later than the date from which 

 this " Lost British Bird " (once so abundant) is generally 

 said to have ceased to breed amongst us. 



Still it is not too much to say that, on 'an average, each 

 list entailed the writing of four or five letters in many of 

 which some adroitness was necessary to minimise the risk 

 of offence. At least half-a-score of birds which could not 

 be accepted as nesting in Britain, and some whose eggs 

 and breeding haunts were as yet totally unknown, were 

 reported to him from divers counties during the first six 

 months of 1861. But even these mistakes were easier to 

 deal with than others, real or suspected, regarding acknow- 

 ledged British breeders; for here the hundred questions 

 which arose seemed to range through every degree of 

 doubtfulness. Could the Whimbrel have nested south of 

 the Tweed ? or the Cirl Bunting north of the Humber ? 

 or the Manx Shearwater off Berwickshire r or Montagu's 

 Harrier in Yorkshire r or the Dartford Warbler in Suffolk ? 

 or the Black Redstart in Wales ? Then there was raised 

 an exciting question about the Skuas of Caithness. On 

 a large inland moor studded with lakes, one of the few 

 remaining breeding haunts on the Scottish mainland of 

 Richardson's Skua, a few pairs of Buffon's Skuas, distin- 

 guished by their longer tails, were reported to have nested 

 for a number of years, intermixed with the other kind. 



