1762 Thf. Zoologist— July, 1869. 



behind them and seized as many as I required in my hand, slipping 

 each one as it was captured into a covered basket. Although none of 

 the trees exceed fifteen feet in height, they would slill have been too 

 tall for us had not the birds chosen the branches below the level of 

 the wall top, for the sake of avoiding tlje cold wind. The result of our 

 last attempt was the capture of twenty-seven greenfinches, two house 

 sparrows and a chiff-chaff: several times we caught bramblings and 

 chaffinches. When the greenfinches first appeared the wind was 

 N.W., but for some days ])reviously it had been blowing stronglv from 

 S. and S.W. 



Siskin. — On the 1.5th of October, during a gale from S.W., a siskin 

 was shot on the jetty below Buness. 



Goldeneye. — On the morning of the 27th October a woman brought 

 me a female goldeneye, which she had caught about an hour before in 

 a burn which runs out of the Loch of Quoyhouse : her attention was 

 first attracted by a frequent splashing in the water and the eager 

 behaviour of a dog which was running up and down the bank, evi- 

 dently on the watch for something — a large fish, the woman imagined : 

 running to the spot where it last disa])peared, she indistinctly saw 

 some dark object near the bottom of the channel, when— still sup- 

 posing it to be a fish, for the ripple was very strong — she plunged in 

 her hand, and to her surprise brought up a bird. On my questioning 

 her, she told me that it held quite tightly to the weeds, and " came 

 up feet foremost." From this, and also from the fact that the head 

 was pointing towards the upper part of the stream, there can be no 

 doubt that the bird was holding on to the weeds, though whether the 

 bill was above the surface or not is uncertain : the plumage was so 

 saturated with wet, probably from the extremely heavy rain, that flight 

 was impossible, otherwise the bird would have escaped by flight. I 

 kept it living for some time : when irritated it erocted the feathers of 

 the whole head, causing that part to appear disproportionately large. 

 In a former volume of the ' Zoologist' (Zool. 9436) I have recorded a 

 remarkable instance of the escape by diving of a bird of this species. 



Longeared Owl.— On the 28th October, a strong N.W. wind brought 

 a longeared owl to the garden at Halligarth, where, after some little 

 trouble, for it was very shy, I killed it several days afterwards. It 

 proved to be an adult female : the stomach was full of mice— a fact at 

 which I was surprised, for at that time the garden was swarming with 

 small birds. The longeared owl is n other addition to the Shetland 

 list. 



