OCCASIONAL NOTES. oD 
in the year, the young being hatched before many other birds have laid 
their eggs. —Ep. ] 
BrarpEp Tir anD HawrincH 1n ABERDEENSHIRE.—Being in Aberdeen 
recently, I had the pleasure of visiting the Free Church College Museum, 
where I observed, in a case (said to contain birds of the locality), a splendid 
specimen of the Bearded Tit. On asking the keeper, Mr. Beaveridge, 
about its claim to be there, he told me that he himself had shot it at a 
place called Monymush, in the County of Aberdeen. I mention this fact 
because in all works on Ornithology to which I have access I find it stated 
that the Bearded Tit is not found in Scotland. In the same case I also 
noticed a fine Hawfinch, and was delighted to hear that it was procured 
in the same district as the Tit, and by the same individual.— THomas 
Epwarp (Banff). 
(The Bearded Tit is included in Don’s ‘ Fauna of Forfarshire’ (1813), 
and a writer in Loudon’s ‘ Magazine of Natural History’ for 1830 states 
that he saw a bird of this species at Inchannan, in Renfrewshire, where the 
River Gryfe joins the Clyde. These are the the only records known to us 
of the occurrence of this bird in Scotland. As regards the Hawfinch, 
although unknown in the West of Scotland, it-occurs in the southern and 
eastern counties, where it has been traced from Dumfriesshire to Hast 
Lothian, thence to Aberdeenshire, Banffshire, and Caithness, in all of which 
counties several specimens have been obtained. See Gray’s ‘ Birds of the 
West of Scotland,’ p. 144.—Ep.] 
Nestine oF THE Brampiine. — I think a statement of Mr. Mitchell's, 
in the ‘ Zoologist’ for May is calculated to convey an erroneous impression. 
He states that the nests of the Brambling “ are usually placed in the birch 
trees at heights of from four to eight feet, and the number of eggs never 
more than four.” I have found several nests at double the greatest height 
mentioned, and I think the birds must have been laying when Mr. Mitchell 
found his nests, as, out of nine nests found by myself and friends in Norway 
only one contained so few as four eggs, and the bird was not sitting. The 
other nests contained respectively five, five, five, five, six, six, seven, and 
eight eggs. One of these nests may possibly have been a Chaffinch’s. — 
Joun P. THomasson (Alderley Edge). 
MoorHEN DEFENDING 11s YOUNG FROM A SroaT.— Some time ago a 
parishioner of mine (Mr. John Gay Attwater), a keen observer of Nature, 
was walking by the side of the river, when he was attracted by the 
gambols of a newly hatched brood of Moorhens with their mother. While 
he was watching them the parent bird gave its peculiar sharp cry of 
warning, and the young ones scuttled under the friendly shelter of the 
bank in various directions. On looking about to discover the cause of 
alarm, he perceived a Stoat on the opposite bank of the stream to that to 
which the Moorhens had fled for shelter, which was sniffing up the air in 
