ROSE-COLOURED PASTOR. 161 



and female which I examined, were shot in the outskirts of 

 Glasgow, and were presented to the Andersonian Museum by Dr 

 Hugh Colquhoun; and on the 7th August, 1868, I had an oppor- 

 tunity of seeing a male specimen, which had been shot on the 

 previous day by one of Mr Harvey's servants at Hundred-acre 

 farm, within two miles of the city. It was seen flying about with 

 a flock of common starlings. A specimen in my own collection 

 was obtained near Cupar, in Fifeshire, in the autumn of 1863. 

 Specimens have also been obtained in Perthshire, Ross-shire (near 

 Ding wall in several instances), Sutherlandshire, and Caithness- 

 shire. In Aberdeenshire it has occurred frequently. Mr Angus 

 sent me the stomach of one crammed with beetles, which was shot 

 near Aberdeen in June, 1867, and Professor Dickie has obligingly 

 sent me word of another killed about the same time within a few 

 miles of that city. 



Mr John Wilson has informed me, through Mr Angus, that in 

 the summer of 1840, the nest of this species was obtained in a 

 burrow in a sandbank near Methlick, in Aberdeenshire. On the 

 nest being destroyed by some boys, the birds removed to another 

 sandhole about a mile distant, but Mr Wilson does not think they 

 succeeded in rearing a brood. 



In the Orkneys it has occurred several times; and Dr Saxby 

 states that he shot two specimens at Balta Sound, in Shetland, 

 one on 10th August, 1860, the other in September, 1863. Both 

 were males. 



In referring to the habits of the Rose coloured Pastor during 

 the breeding season, Messrs Elwes and Buckley, in a contri- 

 bution to the Ibis for 1870, on The Birds of Turkey (see page 

 1 92), write as follows : " This bird is, in some years, very abun- 

 dant in Bulgaria, but does not come regularly. It is one of 

 the latest summer visitors to arrive, as the flocks do not make 

 their appearance before the latter end of May, when they at once 

 take up their quarters in a sandpit or bank of earth, and com- 

 mence nidincation. The nests are made at the end of a hole bored 

 in the earth, like a sand martin's, sometimes to a considerable 

 depth. The eggs are like a starling's, but much more glossy, and 

 of a paler blue. Near Milchooa, in the Dobrudscha, we saw the 

 breeding-place of a large colony; and Mr Barkley informed us that 

 in the summer of 1867 a cutting on the Varna and Rutschuk 

 railway was frequented by two or three hundred of this species." 



