264 THE ZOOLOGIST. 



upon the projecting branch of an alder. About a minute afterwards it flew 

 from the tree and settled upon the support of a wire fence close by, where 

 it was almost immediately followed by another Cuckoo, which came from 

 an adjoining tree and settled near it on the same fence. I was close enough 

 to observe that both birds were of the ashy-grey colour which denotes the 

 adult bird. — Hugh Mackay (33, King Street, Dumfries). 



[Will some of our correspondents state whether in their experience it is 

 a common occurrence, or not, for Cuckoos to call while on the wing. An 

 instance of this is reported in the Natural History columns of ' The Field ' 

 of the 15th March last as evidence that the observer who stated that he had 

 seen a Cuckoo in March was not mistaken. — Ed.] 



Short-eared Owls in Solway. — On May 24th I once more spent 

 another long day in rambling through a corner of that delightful region of 

 Galloway known as the Southern Highlands, a country not yet known to 

 the touring public, and that has been but casually investigated by a few 

 field naturalists, mostly botanists and geologists. Here the last of the 

 southern outposts of the Ptarmigan were occupied till well into the present 

 century ; the Golden Eagle nested till far on in the sixties, the Osprey 

 having ceased to breed here only a few years sooner. The Peregrine and 

 the Buzzard still frequent its precipices, and the Dotterel nests annually on 

 its mountain shoulders, while round the margins of its tarns and lochs the 

 Dunlin breeds in numbers, and the young of the Greenshank have been 

 seen. The district is not likely to remain much longer a terra incognita, 

 for in Mr. Crockett's very popular novel of ' The Raiders ' most of the 

 scenes are laid within its picturesque bounds, which bids fair to send a crowd 

 of tourists into new haunts. But I am getting quite away from the subject 

 of my note. Between lochs Trool and Dee we noted at least four pairs of 

 Short-eared Owls on the wing, quartering the ground in the manner which 

 their recent great immigration has made familiar. Eastwards of loch Dee 

 a solitary individual of this species was fiercely assailed by a pair of Carrion 

 Crows, which were flying alternately at it. We watched the fight for a 

 long time, during which the Owl acted strictly on the defensive, but appa- 

 rently tiring of that game, it sought to escape its assailants by a circling 

 upward flight, and the three were finally completely lost to sight high above 

 the summit of Meikle Millyea. The pair of corbies returned to their nest 

 in about ten minutes in a particularly vociferous mood. During our ramble 

 of some seventeen miles neither my companion nor I ever saw a single Vole, 

 and none of their workings that could be said to be quite recent. It is 

 rather singular to find even this small number of Short-eared Owls still 

 there, when they have disappeared, along with the voles, over the remainder 

 of the great extent of country that was under the domination of the plague. 

 On the sheep farms of the Galloway hills the voles found their western 

 limit as a plague, and they were a year or two later than elsewhere 



