110 BIRDS IN EDINBURGH. By JAMES SMAIL 



on the part of these birds. They arrive at dawn, and fly 

 hither and thither to within an hour or so of sundown, 

 when they leave. 



There are a considerable number of small rookeries in 

 Edinburgh, some of them very old. 



[Magpies may very often be seen in the Botanical Gardens, 

 Edinburgh, and I saw two nests there in 1899, the young 

 of which were fledged, and frequenting the trees on the east 

 of the gardens, their tameness (in contrast to their country 

 cousins) being most striking. In reference to the Q-ulls 

 having of recent years begun to frequent Edinburgh in hard 

 weather, it may be interesting to note that the same thing 

 applies to Berwick. Prior to 1892 I never saw a Gull on 

 our streets, nor in gardens in the town; but when the hard 

 frosts of February of that year were at their height (and 

 the thermometer, it will be remembered, fell considerably 

 below zero on several occasions) a few Gulls began to 

 appear, hawking about the streets, particularly in such wide 

 places as the top of Castlegate, and in the more open 

 parts of the Greens. These were, almost without exception, 

 Black-headed Gulls. In February 1895, however, when we 

 had again a very low temperature, and a long continuance 

 of hard weather, the Black-heads were usually accompanied 

 by Common Gulls, and occasionally even by Larus argentatus, 

 many of the latter going regularly at breakfast time to be 

 fed in gardens in Castle Terrace. The habit thus acquired 

 very quickly caught on, and it may now be said to be quite 

 an established custom that, as soon as we have a day or 

 two's hard weather, our streets and gardens in the town 

 will be besieged by flocks of Black-headed Gulls, and the 

 more open places, like Castle Terrace and Bank Hill, visited 

 also by Herring Gulls. During the last severe snowstorm, 

 dozens of Black-headed Gulls came regularly to be fed with 

 the small birds in front of our windows, while it was quite 

 a common sight to see long rows of them sitting upon the 

 roofs of houses, or dipping into the streets to secure any 

 scraps or offal thrown out. — G.B.] 



