The Zoologist— September, 1867. 895 



Creeper. — Local name, " tree-speeler." Mr. Harting, in his able 

 little work on the 'Birds of Middlesex,' says that he has never heard 

 this bird utter any sound in winter. On the 10th of January, of this 

 present year, I watched one or two of these little birds, and distinctly 

 heard their cry ; and also on other occasions, when no other bird was 

 near whose cry in the least resembles theirs, I have distinctly heard 

 them utter their feeble but startling little cry, and this when snow was 

 on the ground: this note is not so continuous in winter as in spring 

 certainly, but I am perfectly satisfied that they do occasionally give 

 utterance to it. 



Wren. — Plentiful. Local name, " kutty wren." I found a 

 wren's nest in a cavity in a clay bank, formed by the dislodgement 

 of a mossy stone, which in falling had left the moss hanging over it. 

 Mrs. Wren had simply lined the cavity with moss and made a hole 

 through the piece which hung over it. There was nothing to indicate 

 a nest save the little round hole, and it was by the merest chance that 

 I found it. 



Cuckoo. — The cuckoo is generally heard here for the first time 

 between the 1st and 5th of May, though often a day or two earlier. It 

 is pretty plentiful. 



Kingfisher. — This magnificent beauty is a common bird along the 

 banks of the Carron River, frequents the burns that run from the hills 

 into Loch Lomond, haunts the banks of the River Endrick, and is 

 occasionally seen and occasionally breeds on the low banks of the 

 Torwood Burn, near Dunmore. I have seen a full brood of kingfishers 

 in company with the parent birds, following one another as they flew 

 along the river, in a long metallic-blue line, the sun glancing on the 

 changing green and blue of their backs, and each of the birds in turn 

 uttering its startling shrill cry. I have also, from a distance of some 

 ten yards, watched the kingfisher plunge into the water, catch a small 

 minnow or stickleback, and, returning to its perch, devour it, while 

 unobserved I looked on. In winter, when the river was frozen up, 

 some three or four kingfishers used to frequent a marsh here which 

 forms a dam for a mill below : when the water was dammed back it 

 overflowed the old ice, and the minnows, getting up through cracks or 

 dislodgments of the same, were eagerly pounced upon by the expectant, 

 birds : when this new water was again frozen the kingfishers 

 decamped. I have frequently seen the kingfisher perched near the 

 top of a high tree at least fifty yards from water, and have observed 

 him to remain there for some time. I have a note on the scarcity of 



