BIRDS. 



241 



silently engaged in searching for food, at times, when, in ordinary 

 years, they would be singing. 



An albino variety of the Willow Warbler was sent us by our 

 friend the late Campbell Macpherson Grant ^ of Drumduan, Forres, 

 in the summer of 1890. There was a brood of these albinos there 

 that season. 



In 1893, along with most other woodland species, the Willow 

 Warbler was extremely abundant, and Hinxman and Eagle-Clarke 

 recorded it from Loch Builg side, at an elevation of 1600 feet, where 

 it was quite common. The abundance of land insects afforded 

 specially early and good feeding to avian life, but there was great 

 destruction of water insects by the long drought, and fish were 

 largely indebted to larval forms in the water. 



Phylloscopus s'lbWaXnx (Bechst.). Wood Wren. 



The Wood Wren is not uncommon in the south-east of Sutherland, 

 and was first observed in that county near Rosehall in 1875. The 

 next year it was seen in the strath of Kildonan, and the following 

 year at Dunrobin, where a nest was taken in 1883. 



Hepburn mentions that the Wood Wren was common about 

 Foyers in 1847, and he also thought he heard it at Glenmoriston 

 at the same date. We have notes of it from Glen Cannich, where 

 it is numerous in the lower birch woods. Strath Glass, Glen Affric 

 (Doncaster 2), and Invergarry. The Wood Wren is widely dis- 

 persed, though rarer than the Willow Wren, and there are few 

 woods suited to it from which it is absent. They seem to prefer 

 open woods with little bottom cover. They are abundant about 

 Inverness. 



The late Mr. J. Martin ^ — whose portrait we have given in our 

 frontispiece — is certain he identified the Wood Warbler in the 



^ We deeply regret to have to record, just as we were going to press, the death 

 of our friend Mr. C. Macpherson Grant, who died at his residence at Forres on 

 the morning of February 28th, 1895, at the age of fifty-one. See Scot^tmaji of date 

 March 1, 1895. 



- Mr. J. D. Doncaster of Sheffield (v. V. Fauna of Argyll, p. xi.). 



' Mr. John Martin, long Curator of Elgin Museum, who left behind him long 

 faunal lists of species of Vertebrates, Invertebrates, and Plants of Moray, and much 

 good material, most of which has already been utilised in Dr. Gordon's Fauna of 

 Moray. All his MS. is in our possession at Dunipace, we having purchased the 

 whole from the Provost, and Town Covmcil of Elgin in 1885. 



Q 



