118 BIRDS OF THE WEST OF SCOTLAND. 



fNSESSORES. ALAUDID.E. 



CONIROSTRES. 



THE SHORE LAKK. 



ALAUDA ALPESTRIS. 



THOUGH the Shore Lark has been known as a British bird for 

 the last forty years, it appears to have been, with a single excep- 

 tion, entirely unknown as a visitant to our Scottish coasts until 

 1859. Early in January of that year a small flock made its 

 appearance on the estuary of the Tyne, in Haddingtonshire, and 

 three specimens at least were procured, one of which was exhibited 

 at a meeting of the Royal Physical Society of Edinburgh. I had 

 an opportunity of seeing these birds, shortly after their capture, in 

 the hands of the late Dr Nelson, Pitcox, near Dunbar, who informed 

 me that they were shot by Mr Evans, farmer, at Tynefield. Six 

 years afterwards, namely, in the winter of 1865, another flock was 

 observed in the estuary of the Eden, near St Andrews, in Fifeshire. 

 Mr Robert Walker of that city has informed me that two speci- 

 mens were obtained; one of these, having been taken alive in a 

 trap, was kept for some time as a cage-bird, but ultimately made 

 its escape; the other, less fortunate than its neighbour, fell into the 

 hands of a local taxidermist, and is now preserved in the college 

 museum there. I have no doubt that this species is a frequent, if 

 not an annual, visitant to the eastern shores of Scotland, ranging 

 from the Ythan to the Tweed. In January of the present year 

 (1870) similar flights to those already mentioned had apparently 

 visited the same estuaries. On the first of the month a specimen 

 was shot near St Andrews, and was procured by R. G-. Wardlaw 

 Ramsay, Jun., Esq., of Whitehill, Lasswade, who saw the bird 

 before it was skinned. Mr Ramsay obligingly forwarded the speci- 

 men for exhibition to a meeting of the Natural History Society of 

 Glasgow, and has informed me that when killed the bird was flying 

 in company with snow buntings. Lord Binning informs me that 

 a Shore Lark was shot by a Dunbar fisherman on Tyne Sands, 

 East Lothian, in the end of November, 1869, and is now in the 

 collection of Mr Balfour of Whittingham, and also that there is a 

 specimen in the Mellerstain collection, which was shot on Spittal 

 Sands at Berwick-on-Tweed in 1840. I am therefore indebted to 

 Lord Binning for an opportunity of recording the earliest and, with 



