﻿President's Address. 



63 



with there {Itineraries, p. 192).^ Of the writings and observa- 

 tions of Sibbald, Walker, Fleming, Neill, Macgillivray, Weir, 

 Hepburn, Turnbull, Nelson, J. A. Smith, Gray, and the many 

 others, still living, who have since contributed to the building 

 up of that list, it is impossible now to speak ; but in an 

 account of the Ornithology of Forth, on which I am engaged, 

 their contributions will receive due recognition. There are 

 two publications, however, which I ought to mention here, 

 namely, Macgillivray's lists of birds observed in the Lothians, 

 given in vols. i. and ii. of his History of British Birds (1837 

 and 1839), and W. P. Turnbull's Birds of East Lothian, a 

 booklet first published about 1855, and in a revised form 

 in 1867.^ Many notes and short papers by myself relating 

 to the birds of the area have, I may say, already been 

 published, chiefly in the Proceedings of this Society and in 

 the Annals of Scottish Natural History. Pending the com- 

 pletion of the treatise alluded to, I have prepared a list of 

 the birds in connection with this paper.^ 



There are various reasons, geographical, physiographical, 

 etc., why the Forth area should possess a comparatively rich 

 Avifauna. Its eastern boundary faces the North Sea, while 

 its western extremity penetrates the Highlands of Perthshire. 

 Besides the attractions of a highly diversified land-surface, it 

 includes a noble estuary or firth, with rocky and muddy 

 shores, and an island at its mouth lying right in the line of 

 the east coast migration. This island — the Isle of May — has 

 acquired considerable fame as a bird observatory in connec- 

 tion with the migration reports with which the names of 

 Mr Harvie-Brown and Mr Eagle Clarke have been so long 

 associated.* About twenty years ago I spent ten days on 

 it, in the month of September, and witnessed the pheno- 



1 The number of gannets in the Bass colony has been variously stated. 

 After many visits to the rock, and with a series of photographs covering the 

 whole range of cliffs, which I took a few summers ago, before me, I estimate 

 the number of nests at fully 3000, and the number of birds in the colony at 

 between 7000 and 8000. 



^ Cf. R. Gray's notice of Dr Turnbull in Proc. Berw. Nat. Club., vol. viii., 

 p. 77. 



^ This list will probably be published separately. 



4 "The Isle of May: its Faunal Position and Bird-life," was the subject 

 of an address to this Society by Mr Harvie-Brown in November 1886 

 {Proceedings, ix., pp. 303-325). 



