240 BIRDS OF THE WEST OF SCOTLAND. 



seen chickens in a hot day. I tried him with all sorts of seeds, 

 but though he liked rape, hemp, and canary seed, there was nothing 

 he was so fond of as chickweed. I was so much absent from home 

 that we never became great friends, but he was quite attached to 

 the gardener, and on seeing him would utter three or four peculiar 

 chirps, running to meet him with his wings touching the ground 

 like a turkey cock, and his tail spread almost in the form of that 

 of a fantail pigeon. He would eat from his hand, and was very 

 partial to a bit of dry bread. On seeing a stranger he would give 

 a grunt, or if much frightened a squeak, and run with wonderful 

 rapidity to the further corner of his enclosure. 1 kept him for 

 about eighteen months; at last a young dog frightened him, and 

 on flying up, a projecting point of the wire netting entered his 

 skull, killing him instantaneously." 



October 1 3th. One a solitary specimen was shot on the island 

 of Benbecula, Outer Hebrides, by C. W. M'Rury, Esq., surgeon, 

 and is now in the collection of Dr Dewar of Glasgow ; and finally 

 Dr Saxby writes, that in the same month several appeared in Unst, 

 Shetland, with a steady breeze from the south-east, and that he 

 succeeded in shooting one a female, in perfect plumage. 



Professor Reinhardt found this bird breeding on the west coast 

 of Denmark, and communicated some interesting notes to Professor 

 Newton of Cambridge, a portion of which is given by Mr Stevenson 

 in his 'Birds of Norfolk' a work in which the reader will find a 

 very full account of the local captures, besides other valuable 

 information on the species. Forty years ago, according to Sir 

 William Jardine, Delanoue " found the nest of the female among 

 some stones, collected under a shrub, containing four eggs of a 

 reddish white, spotted with brown. The nest was perfectly simple, 

 constructed with only a few stalks of grass, and the female exhibited 

 the utmost solicitude for her precious deposit."* 



* Nat. Lib. Orn., vol. iv., Game Birds. Edinburgh, 1834. 



