VOL. viii.] NOTES. 221 



distinctly suffused with pink, a dark patch at the angle of 

 the lower mandible, and was black at the base of the upper 

 mandible. The iris was reddish-orange, a narrow white 

 line encircling the pupil ; the eyelid and the naked patch 

 of skin extending from the eye to the mouth were pink. 

 The outside of the leg and the under-surface of the toes 

 were black ; the inside of the leg and the two inside toes 

 (upper-surface) pale bluish-grey, the outside toe and the 

 hind toe very dark bluish-grey. 



It was very fat and weighed just one pound. (Mr. Abel 

 Chapman, in his Bird-Life of the Borders, gives the weights 

 of a series of Slavonian Grebes as ranging from Hi ozs. 

 to 13i ozs.). The stomach contained a mass of shredded 

 water-weed and a few feathers. D. G. Garnbtt. 



[Mr. Garnett has kindly sent this bird for examination, 

 and it appears to me to be a young one which has nearly 

 completed the moult into first winter-plumage. In a female 

 example (apparently an adult) sent to me by the Duchess 

 of Bedford in November, 1913, the bill is described as 

 " flesh-coloured at base, centre slaty-blue, tip colourless.'" 

 The colouring of the soft parts of Grebes no doubt varies 

 according to age and season (and perhaps also individually), 

 and it is important in recording the colouring to make sure 

 if possible of the age and sex of the individual in question. 

 It is possible that the presence or absence of a pink suffusion 

 at the base of the bill is dependent upon the mode of death 

 and the position in which the bird Ues or is carried immedi- 

 ately after death.— H.F.W.] 



Eider Nesting est Woods rsr Scotland. — Miss A. Balfour 

 remarks [Scot. Nat., 1914, p. 263) that at Tyninghame, East 

 Lothian, many of the Eiders [Somateria m. mollissima) 

 which formerly bred on the links, having been much harried 

 by Rooks, are now nesting in the adjacent woods. 



Moult of the Scoters. — In the Auk (1914, pp. 293-308) 

 Dr. Jonathan Dwight, Jun. , discusses the moults and sequences 

 of plumage of the American species of Scoter, Oidemia nigra 

 americana, 0. perspicillata, and 0. deglandi, and he thinks it 

 probable that the moults of our Common and Velvet- Scoters 

 foUow on the same lines. Dr. Dwight brings forward two 

 points of considerable interest, one being that Scoters have 

 a spring moult (March-Maj^) confined to the body-feathers, 

 the other, that in the Common Scoter the first (outermost) 

 primary of the young bird has its inner web straight while 

 in the old bird the inner web of this primary is very distinctly 



