280 



BIRDS. 



Dornoch, and we have an egg in our collection stated to have been 

 taken in the county. 



In looking through Macleay's ledgers, in every instance where 

 the Goldfinch was entered it proved to be a cage-bird. In the 

 Statistical Account, 1794, vol. xii. p. 274, the bird is stated to have 

 been abundant in Eoss-shire. 



The late Dr. Aitken informed us that it used to be found not 

 uncommonly in the neighbourhood of Inverness, but, in lit, 8/iii/86, 

 he said it was then very rare, if not extinct ; his sons had only 

 once found the nest there. Mr. Jennings says that about Tain he 

 was informed it was formerly common ; now, he thinks he may say, 

 it is extinct. At Guisachan the late Lord Tweedmouth had not 

 seen one for twenty years. 



Mr. A. Craig, writing of the bird in Glen Urquhart, in 1882, 

 says that the Goldfinch was not rare there fifteen or twenty years 

 ago, but that it is now extinct. He assigns bird-catching and the 

 improved system of farming, whereby the thistles have been eradi- 

 cated, as the causes of this species' disappearance. The extinction 

 of the bird, he says, was gradual. 



Gray, writing in 1871, says the bird was a well-known species 

 about Dingwall, but that the rapid advancement of agriculture in 

 Strathpefi'er and Strath Conon had rooted out many spots which 

 were formerly attractive to these birds, and that during a residence 

 of some weeks in that neighbourhood in 1868-69 he himself never 

 once noticed it. 



The Goldfinch is recorded from Fairburn, Koss-shire, by Cap- 

 tain Stirling, but several of our correspondents pass the bird over 

 in silence, and to all our inquiries, for answer we get the same 

 statement that it was once common, but is now extinct. The cause 

 of the extinction of the species from our northern area may be 

 from the ease with which it is caught by the bird-catching frater- 

 nity, but certainly not from the extinction of the thistle. These 

 North of Scotland Goldfinches never, so far as we know, had the 

 gaps in their ranks filled up by migratory birds, as, were this the 

 case, we should see some of these visitors now. They appear to 

 have been stationary, or at least only locally migratory, possibly 

 even as far as the South of England ; but if they did get so far, 

 they ran still greater risks from the bird-catchers there, so that 

 fewer and fewer would be left to return each year, until at last 



