THE SHOVELER. 365 



instance Sir George Leith shot a female, and found the nest in 

 Dumbartonshire, and it is not unlikely that the pair seen at 

 Inchinnan in June were breeding when the male was shot. A few 

 straggling pairs may also remain in the eastern counties. Sir 

 William Jardine mentions in his History of British Birds that he 

 saw a nest and eggs, with the female bird, that had been brought 

 from Gullane Links, in East Lothian. * 



Regarding the occurrence of the bird itself on the east coast, the 

 Earl of Haddington informs me that he shot a beautiful male at 

 Tyninghame. in February, 1861, and Dr J. A. Smith of Edinburgh 

 has sent me word of a pair male and female which he examined, 

 having been shot at Kincardine-on-the-Forth, on the 1st April, 

 1859. In December of the same year, a young male was obtained 

 near Aberdour, in Fifeshire. Mr Harvie Brown has also informed 

 me that Mr Samuel Singer of Kincardine, has, on two occasions, 

 shot the Shoveler on the Firth of Forth. The species is included 

 in Don's Fauna of Forfarshire a county in which it is still found. 

 The last specimen that came under my observation was shot in 1867, 

 in the loch of Forfar by one of the Earl of Strathmore's keepers. In 

 Aberdeenshire it has several times been procured, as I am informed 

 by Mr Angus, who has given the following account illustrating 

 how much may be done sometimes by earnest perseverance in 

 tracing species correctly: 



"In the spring of 1856, Mr Davidson, gamekeeper, Seaton 

 House, shot an adult female Shoveler in the dam near the toll-bar 

 at the Bridge of Don. It is now in Mr Mitchell's museum. I 

 shot an adult male at the same place on 21st April, 1866. The 

 tinting of the plumage was almost perfect; the stomach contained 

 seeds, insects, and a large quantity of gravel. On the 4th of May 

 of the following year I learned that two " wigeons with braid 

 nebs " had been shot at the dam, but on calling at the house of 

 the person who killed the birds, I was told they had been cooked 

 and eaten. I fortunately found, however, the heads, which had 

 been thrown out, and recognised them as female Shovelers. On 

 the 6th, I visited the dam by 4 A.M., and had the good luck to find 

 three Shovelers two males and a female busy diving and 

 feeding. By crawling behind the embankment on the south side 



* Mr St. John found the nest of the Shoveler on the banks of Loch Spynie, 

 in Morayshire. Several pairs bred there in 1852. 



