xxxviii 



DESCRIPTIVE CHAPTERS. 



Only of some of the remoter parts will I speak, and that as shortly 

 as may be — induced to do so by my latest visit to the glens, renewing 

 acquaintance with many an old remembered haunt, or seeing for 

 the first time some others— and as opportunity occurs, recalling here 

 and there some points of light from the darkened chinks and crevices 

 of memory. 



BELL ROCK. 



I have always felt some dubiety as to whether the Bell Rock should be 

 considered as a stepping-stone of bird-migrants as leading to Tay, or more 

 accurately to Forth, or, as indeed it may be, to both in some degree. If we 

 consider the known directions of migratory flights, in so far as taught 

 by returns from the lighthouses in the schedules, both in autumn and in 

 winter, and again in spring, it certainly seems that a much greater bulk of 

 these migrants pass the Isle of May than appear to pass the Bell Rock. About 

 the Isle of May there can be scarcely any real doubt that it forms a direct 

 stepping-stone and important lead to Forth ; but though the geographical 

 position of the Bell Rock in the North Sea, lying off the coast opposite the 

 estuary of the river Tay, may appear to influence the latter highroad of 

 "birds as travellers," I doubt if that has been at all satisfactorily proved. 

 If the trend of migrants in normal conditions is from the north-east over 

 all our coasts — which, however, I am not yet prepared entirely to 

 accept — then Bell Rock seems to lie much more directly in the line for 

 the entrance of Forth, than in that of Tay. But if the principal lines be 

 found to be more directly from the east, then Bell Rock may prove quite as 

 much in the line for Tay as for Forth. Bell Rock, at all events, does not 

 appeal to me as the key to Tay in the same way that Isle of May appeals as 

 the " Key of the Forth." i To use other words — which I think I first used 

 in our earlier reports on migration — a " closed fan of migration " would, 

 with a north or north-east wind, have the effect of concentrating the flights 

 upon the entrance of the Firth of Forth. But if a following vnnd came, 

 these same flights would open out and cause a " spread fan " of migration, 

 which would then land a number of our migrants — though not all — upon 

 the coasts of Forfar and Kincardine, and thus have an influence on Tay 

 direct. But if we accept the normal direction of the arrivals of migrants to 

 our shores as with a north-west wind, and to be from a north-east direction 

 — as indeed Mr. Eagle Clarke has pointed out in his digest — then the really 

 true line of flight would miss out the entrance of the Tay to a very ap- 

 preciable extent. Perhaps this may appear a little more likely to be the 

 case if my readers mil compare the much greater abundance of shore-birds 

 ^Wthin the arms of Forth than that within the arms of Tay. 



^Ir. William Evans has expressed himself as satisfied to accept the Isle 

 of May as the key of migration to Forth, and to give up Bell Rock on 



^ The map under *' Little Auk," p. 347, may help to illustrate my meaning 

 somewhat, though that bird is scarcely to be called a migrant. 



