On Jottings from Scotland.



77



At the moment of writing one young bird shows a distinct

tinge of yellow on throat and breast, while the other is still

unchanged, probably therefore they are cock and hen.


They eat seeds now, but still go to the soft food pan, where

they seem to pick out the egg flake from the other ingredients.



JOTTINGS FROM SCOTLAND,


By “ Sylvia.”


Among the littoral birds of the Clyde estuary there are

few species more familiar to the local observer than the Common

Heron (Ardea cinerea, Linn.). In my locality there is one or more

of these birds, usually immature specimens, to be seen on the

beach at low tide almost every day in the year, either standing

perfectly motionless in the shallow water at the mouth of a burn,

or strutting about among the wet seaweed in search of small

crustaceans. They also resort to a small fresh-water loch among

the hills a few miles distant, where I have sometimes counted ten

or a dozen birds posted among the reeds at its margin ; and at

the edge of a small wood close by two Herons’ nests in fir trees

were regularly occupied for many years in succession.


There is no lack of heronries in our western counties, nor

indeed in most districts of Scotland, and in estimating the

number of them, our ornithological authorities have generally

been below the mark. Mr. J. E. Harting, for instance, in the

Zoologist many years ago, put the number of heronries in the

whole of Britain at two hundred, and Professor Newton in his

Dictionary of Birds (1893-6) allowed “above fifty” to be

Scotland’s proportion. Recent and accurate investigations

however shew that Scottish heronries are really far more

numerous, and at least two hundred nesting localities in Scotland

alone have been recorded.


In this district the Heron shows a preference for the

Scotch fir as a nesting place ; larch, spruce, and beech are also

used, and in the north of Bute, nests were found some years ago,

on the tops of thick hawthorns. The eggs, it may be mentioned,

are sometimes laid so early as the first week of March. Our



