WEST COAST OF SCOTLAND. 67 



sentences were written, I have received the first of the 1883 

 schedules from the Isle of May, and may here state what the 

 effects of the succession of N.E. gales in March have been on ine 

 spring migration, leaving however the details of Mr. Agnew's 

 schedules to be worked into our next — 1883 — Eeport. I give 

 this in Mr. Agnew's own words, as I entirely coincide with the 

 opinions expressed. Mr. Agnew writes on the back of the 

 schedule as follows : — " With reference to your note on the 

 schedules sent, as to the effect of the N.E. gale of March 6th, 

 7th, and 8th, 1883, you will see from the entries inside that the 

 effect of that gale was almost to stop migration at the Isle 

 of May. Migration that had set in pretty briskly on the 2nd 

 almost ceased on the 5th, and from that date we had only a few 

 stragglers of the strongest wings, up to the 19th. I believe the 

 effect of that gale was to drive the birds that should have come 

 this way, away to the southward. Had the gale been from the 

 S.E. it would have been different here." 



In fact, a N.E. wind reaching such strengths as those 

 of March 1883 did, acts very much in the same way upon spring 

 migrants, pressing them more to the southward, as north-westerly 

 strong winds and gales act upon the autumn migrants, whose 

 normal course is from E. to W., or S. of E. to N. of W. It will 

 be interesting to trace this further from the schedules returned 

 from other stations, when they come in for 1883. Another point 

 to note in spring migration of 1883, will be the greater westering 

 of the return migrants, if we may use the expression, partly 

 consequent upon the greater westering of the autumn migrants, 

 caused by the long-continued and strong south-easterly winds 

 of the preceding autumn, and partly upon the north-easterly winds 

 of March pressing them down and deflecting their course to more 

 inland and sheltered lines. 



In this connection I would speak here of the great assembly 

 of the Pied Wagtails on the narrow stone horizontal moulding 

 above the upper windows of the General Post Office, Edinburgh, 

 where, upon March 17th, 1883, A. B. H., who recorded the facts 

 in the * Scotsman ' of that date, counted more than sixty ; and 

 he adds, in a subsequent letter to to me, "there was at least one 

 in every niche of the carved capitols of the columns. I think I 

 am quite within the mark when I say there were 150 birds 

 altogether." This flock roosted there on March 17th and 18th, 



