50 NOTES ON THE BirDs OF DUMFRIESSHIRE. 
Waxwing with this unenviable reputation®® and it is surely 
curious that August, 1914, should have seen a verification of 
this tradition. I find that since 1914 the Waxwings which 
have visited Great Britain have only been stragglers, and 
that the winters when the species has occurred in consider- 
able numbers are 1686, 1834-35, 1849-50, 1866-7, 1872-3, 
1892-3, 1903-4, besides, as already stated, 1913-14.°" 
Possibly some of these dates may synchronise with wars but 
this I have not investigated. It may be noted that the 
Chinese, of olden times, believed that the southerly arrival 
in multitudes of Pallas’s Sand-Grouse foretold the irruptions 
of the Tuh-Kiueh horde.*® 
On 24th January, 1921, two Waxwimgs were seen and 
shot at Grennan {Penpont). At first they were thought to 
be Fieldfares but, on closer approach, their crested heads 
and lemon-yellow-tipped tails gave them away. Only the 
two birds were seen in one of the unfenced thickets (or 
‘“ sklinners ’’ as they are called) on the moor. The birds 
were singularly tame and fearless and kept to the tops of 
some old ash-trees below which there was an abundance of 
berry-bearing bushes. On dissection the birds proved to 
be male and female and both were young birds. The 
appearance of this species locally is generally associated with 
severe winters but on this occasion the weather was un- 
usually mild. 
9 
Two Waxwings were seen near Glenairlie Bridge 
(Durisdeer) on 26th November and a single bird near Dum- 
fries about 23rd December, 1921. One of the most striking 
events of the autumn was the extensive incursion of Wax- 
wings to Great Britain from the middle of November 
onwards and from all quarters the species was recorded 
from Caithness to Norfolk and from east to west. Early 
86 Rev. Charles Swainson: The Folk Lore and Provincial Names 
of British Birds (1886), p. 48. 
87 A Practical Handbook of British Birds, edited by H. F. 
Witherby (1920), Vol. I., p. 281. 
88 Notes and Queries, 12 S. IX., p. 139. 
