548 Notes on Sand Grouse. By George Bolam. 



which I am aware, and the recent Act, protecting the species for 

 three years, from 1st February 1889, would seem therefore to 

 have been a sort of Parliamentary shutting of the stable door 

 after the horse had escaped ! 



On the north side of the Tweed, two females and a male were 

 killed out of a flock of over twenty, upon Oldhamstocks Mains 

 near Cockburnspath, on 1 7th May, by Mr Clark, the tenant of 

 the farm ; and Dr Hardy tells me that several others were 

 noticed in that neighbourhood about the same time ; while in 

 the Scotsman of 4th June, Dr Stuart records a female captured 

 on 25th May, out of a flock of twelve, at Foulden West Mains, 

 and presented by Mr Craw to the Zoological Gardens in London. 

 Dr Stuart has informed me that the birds were thought to have 

 been seen between Foulden and Chirnside, a few days prior to 

 this capture, and that he himself saw a male in the beginning of 

 June, sitting alone in a field on the side of the road leading from 

 his house to the village of Ay ton. 



On 5th June a very fine male, now preserved in the Berwick 

 Museum, and said to have been shot a few miles south of the 

 town, was brought to the late Mr Scott, who purchased it for 

 the museum ; it had been dead only a few hours, and is in 

 beautiful plumage, in fact as fresh-looking, though somewhat 

 paler, as any that were killed in the autumn. It was upon the 

 same day that I saw my first live Sand Grouse ; we were playing 

 tennis upon the Berwick Cricket Field, about 7.30 in the evening, 

 when eight birds came up as if straight from the sea, and flying 

 in a south-westerly direction, passed within sixty or seventy 

 yards of us. They flew close together in a slightly broken line, 

 and when approaching looked much like Oystercatchers or 

 Plovers, though perceptibly larger than the latter birds. The 

 flight was swift, the stroke of the wings being rapid and regular, 

 and the long pointed feathers of the wings and tail were readily 

 distinguished. As the light fell upon them as they passed, the 

 birds presented a conspicuous yellow or sandy colour, and the 

 stripes and dark chestnut patches on the lower parts of the body 

 were also visible. 



A solitary bird was seen on 14th August near Low Cock Law, 

 two miles north-west of Berwick, by Dr Charles Fraser, who also 

 informs me that two were observed by Leslie, gamekeeper with 

 Mrs Jerningham, flying past Longridge Towers, a few days 

 before. The bird seen by Dr Fraser was running about the 



