42 THE SCOTTISH NATURALIST 
CLYDE. 
An occasional winter visitor, sometimes lingering far into the 
spring. 
SOLway. 
A winter visitor. 
As a whole it will be seen that the Pintail is commoner 
both as a winter visitor and a breeding species on the east 
coast of Scotland than on the west. It seems to us, therefore, 
more probable that those which breed with us come from 
Scandinavia, Finland, and Northern Russia, rather than from 
Iceland. It would appear to be a duck that is experiencing 
great difficulty in colonising Scotland, and the nesting colony 
on Loch Leven seems to be the only one on the mainland 
sufficiently well-established to be becoming a centre of 
dispersal to surrounding lochs. Doubtless the protection 
afforded to the birds in this sanctuary may be, at least, 
partly responsible for this desirable state of matters. This 
is one of the duck for which a good lookout should be kept, 
so that its spread over Scotland may be carefully traced and 
accurately recorded. Had this been done in the past in the 
case of other species, fewer problems would have been 
presented to the ornithologists of to-day. 
Breeding of Shoveler in 1899.—On 1st August 1899, 
I shot a female Shoveler at the mill-dam at Balcreggan, Sandhead, 
Wigtownshire, and shortly after the dog caught a half-grown one 
at the same place.—Harry Houmes, Whithorn. 
Goldfinch Immigration to Dumfriesshire.—‘“ I have never 
seen so many Goldfinches in this district (Dumfries) as during 
last autumn,” writes Mr E. E. Dennis in the /e/d (22nd January 
1921, p. 97). “They were here daily in dozens, whereas previously 
a pair seen was always worth talking about.” The birds were 
apparently attracted by the seeds of the common ragwort, a plant 
which ‘‘has spread at an alarming rate during the past year or 
two,” and has rapidly established itself on the sites of pine-woods 
cut during the war. 
