BREEDINa OP ARCTIC BIRDS IN SCOTLAND. 21 



not feed in company, and, tliougli two or three may be seen 

 together, they are usually solitary. 



Grebes resemble divers in their habits when on the coast. 

 The Sclavonian (P. cornutus) is the commonest Grebe we have 

 during winter, but the Eared, P. awitus, and Great Crested 

 Grebe, P. cristatus, occur, the latter being the commoner of 

 the two. I noticed one of the latter birds on October 22nd. 

 The Eed-necked Grebe, P. rubricollis, occurs, but I have never 

 shot it. 



ON THE BREEDING OF ARCTIC BIRDS IN SCOTLAND. 



By Henry Seebohm. 



In * The Zoologist ' for August last my friend and travelling 

 companion, Mr. Harvie Brown, placed beyond doubt the 

 long-suspected fact that the Snow Bunting, Emberiza nivalis, 

 breeds in Scotland. No one knows better than he does the 

 significance of this statement. It is not known that any 

 bird breeds farther north than this species. Major Feilden 

 found a nest in Grinnell Land above lat. 82|-°. When I was in 

 Lapland with Mr. Collett we saw nothing of it until we reached 

 lat. 70°. It passes through Archangel every spring and autumn, 

 but retires farther north to the extremity of the Karim Peninsula 

 to breed. In the valleys of the Petchora and the Yenesay 

 thousands crossed the arctic circle in spring, but we saw them 

 no more until in the former locality we reached lat. 68°, and in 

 the latter lat. Tlj". The Snow Bunting is during the breeding 

 season an exclusively arctic bird. 



The Ptarmigan, Tetrao mutus, is quite as arctic a bird, 

 though perhaps not so exclusively so. No arctic traveller has 

 ever reached a latitude too high for this species to be found, and 

 wherever it occurs south of the arctic circle it frequents the 

 mountain tops where an arctic climate is to be found. In 

 Scotland it comes down to 2000 feet, but in South Siberia and 

 Japan only to 6000 or even 9000 feet. The only locality where 

 it is found at a low level south of the arctic circle is on the 

 Kurile Islands, a fact the significance of which will shortly 

 appear. 



The Eed-necked Phalarope, Phalaropus hyperhoreus, is 

 another arctic species which breeds in Scotland. In Europe 



