vni HOOPOE AND SHRIKE 83 



German forests, giving additional weight to the legends and 

 superstitions of the peasants of that country, inclined as they 

 are to belief in supernatural sounds and apparitions. 



The hoopoe^ has been killed in the east of Sutherland, on 

 the bent-hills near Dornoch, and so also has the rose-coloured 

 ousel.^ These birds must have been driven over by the east 

 winds, as neither of them are inhabitants of Britain. Indeed, 

 many a rare and foreign bird may visit the uninhabited and 

 desert tracts of bent and sand along the east coast without 

 being observed, excepting quite by chance ; and the probability 

 is, that nine persons out of ten who might see a strange bird 

 would take no notice of it. 



Last winter I saw a great ash-coloured shrike' or butcher- 

 bird in my orchard. The gardener told me that he had seen 

 it for some hours in pursuit of the small birds, and I found 

 lying about the walls two or three chaffinches, which had been 

 killed and partly eaten, in a style unlike the performance ot 

 any bird of prey that I am acquainted with ; so much so, in- 

 deed, that before I saw the butcher-bird, my attention was 

 called to their dead bodies by the curious manner in which they 

 seemed to have been pulled to pieces. Having watched the 

 bird for a short time as he sat perched on an apple-tree very 

 near me, I went in for my gun, but did not see him again. 

 The tawny bunting and the snow-bunting* visit us in large 



* The hoopoe ( Upnpa epops) has been seen once or twice in Shetland by Dr. Saxby, 

 out "can only be regarded as a. straggler in any part of Scotland" (Gray, p. 198). 

 One was killed in the west woods of Moncreiff. 



* Pastor raseus. The rose-coloured pastor (or ousel), A very rare visitor. I have 

 killed it in Morayshire in June : the bird at the time was flying over my head. I saw 

 one which had just been killed near Inverness in July ; also near Dornoch. — C. St. J. 



" A rare visitor. I once or twice have seen it near Forres. — C. St. J, 

 ^ "I have seen the snow-bunting on 4th September on a high mountain near Loch 

 Rannoch while ptarmigan-shooting. They appeared to be a family ot two old and 

 three or four young birds " (C. St. J.). " The snow-bunting (Plectrophanes nivalis) is 

 a circumpolar bird, breeding principally on the tundras of the Arctic regions beyond 

 the limit of forest growth. It is an irregular migrant driven southwards In severe seasons 

 in larger or smaller flocks to Central Europe, South Siberia, North China, Japan, 

 and the Northern States of America. These birds seem to lead a roving, gipsy life 

 during winter, perpetually trying to migrate northwards with every appearance of milder 

 weather, and perpetually driven southwards with each recurring frost " (Seebohm, p. 50). 

 It has long been suspected by ornithologists that the snow-bunting bred In Scotland. 

 It was reserved for Mr. B. N. Peach and Mr. L. N. Hlnxman of the Geological Survey 

 of Scotland to verify this surmise. On 3rd July 1886 a nest with five young birds was 

 discovered by them 2800 feet above sea-level on the eastern face of one of the wildest 

 corries on the highest mountains of Sutherland. A most interesting description of this 

 nest and an account of the old ones feeding the little ones may be seen in Harvie- Brown 

 and Buckley's Vertebrate Fauna of Sutherland and Caithness (Douglas, 1837), p. 138 sej. 



