38 BIRDS OF THE WEST OF SCOTLAND. 



been written in his journals for 1847, thus speaks of it: "The 

 Goshawk is now nearly extinct in this country. A few years ago 

 it bred regularly in the forest of Darnaway, and it may still do so. 

 It also breeds in the Glenmore, near Grantown, on the Spey."* 

 Macgillivray states, that upwards of twenty years ago it was 

 occasionally met with on the Grampians; and the Rev. John 

 Lapslie, who was a clever and a discriminating naturalist, mentions 

 in his interesting account of the fauna of Campsie, in Stirlingshire, 

 that about the end of last century it was a native of that district, 

 building its nest in trees in sequestered places. 



Mr Alston has drawn my attention to a curious fact in the his- 

 tory of this bird, in the following communication, from which it 

 would appear to have been a marked species in the south of Scot- 

 land six hundred years ago: " Professor Cosmo Innes states, in 

 his 'Scotland in the Middle Ages,' pp. 129, 130, that when the 

 Avenel family granted Eskdale to the monks of Melrose, they 

 specially reserved the eyries of falcons and tercels. 'Even the 

 trees in which hawks usually built were to be held sacred, and 

 those in which they had built one year were on no account to be 

 felled, till it should be found whether they were about to build 

 there the next year or no.' This charter, Professor Innes kindly 

 informs me, is dated A.D. 1235, and has been printed by the 

 Bannatyne Club (Liber de Metros, vol. i., p. 179). Now, of what 

 species could these birds have been 1 ? None of the commoner tree- 

 building species, as kites, sparrow-hawks, etc., were much valued 

 by the falconer, and it seems to me that the birds thus carefully 

 protected must have been goshawks. If so, we have here distinct 

 evidence that they bred regularly in the south of Scotland in the 

 thirteenth century." 



Messrs Baikie and Heddle state that the species is frequently 

 observed in Orkney, and that some apparently remain there 

 during the whole year. In Shetland, however, it appears to be 

 rare, Dr Saxby having in his possession the only specimen known 

 to have occurred there; it was shot at Scaw, in the winter of 

 1860. 



* Natural History and Sport in Moray, p. 258. 



