30 BIRDS OF THE WEST OF SCOTLAND. 



As far back as the close of last century, the Hobby was included 

 in a very complete and apparently accurate list of birds found in 

 the parish of Luss on the banks of Loch Lomond by the Rev. Mr 

 Stuart, and about twenty years afterwards Mr G. Don, in his 

 " Fauna of Forfarshire " a very meritorious essay published as an 

 appendix to the Rev. J. Headrick's " View of the Agriculture " 

 of that county mentions it as " rather rare " in his district. 

 Again, in 18:23, a specimen appears to have been shot at Branx- 

 holm, near Ha wick, as I have been informed by Mr J. Heckford 

 of the Kelso museum; and later still, Mr Tottenham Lee 

 procured two, and saw a third, in 1853 at Glenlee Park, Kirkcud- 

 brightshire, where he at that time resided. The Hobby is also 

 mentioned by the late James Wilson of Woodville, in his "Voyage 

 round the Isles of Scotland," as having been shot in Caithness 

 a specimen, which he saw, being in the collection of Mr E. S. Sinclair, 

 surgeon, Wick; and in a list of the birds of Caithness, published 

 in the second volume of the Proceedings of the Royal Physical 

 Society of Edinburgh, Mr R. J. Shearer states that a specimen 

 which he saw in the hands of Charles Wilkinson, gamekeeper, 

 was killed at Thrumster, in that county. Dr J. A. Smith, Secre- 

 tary to the Society just named, has obligingly communicated to 

 me the occurrence of another which was shot near Portobello, 

 Mid-Lothian, in July, 1863, in which year one was obtained at 

 Rothiemay, in Banffshire its second occurrence in that county, 

 one having been killed about twenty-three years ago near the town 

 of Banff. Mr W. C. Angus of Aberdeen has informed me that in 

 the autumn of the same year an immature specimen was captured 

 at sea off the coast of Aberdeenshire, and sold to Mr Sim, Taxider- 

 mist, 20 King Street, who obtained a second specimen, also 

 immature, in the autumn of 1868, from a person who picked it up 

 dead at Kittybrewster station, near Aberdeen, where it had been 

 killed by the telegraph wires. In addition to these Aberdeenshire 

 records, I have the pleasure of adding a third, communicated to 

 me by Mr Alexander Mitchell, who shot a fine adult male on the 

 8th June, 1868, at Broadhill, near Aberdeen. The stomach of 

 this specimen, which, with the two in Mr Sim's possession, I have 

 since seen and examined, was crammed with beetles. Being in full 

 breeding plumage, it was probably a wanderer from Glen Dye 

 a district in the west of the neighbouring county of Kincardine, 

 where, as I have been informed by Mr Brown, who is assured 



