BIRDS. 



frequented ground ; and again I have been utterly at a loss to 

 account for it at all ! And I am so still ! Places I have known to 

 have been frequented year after year regularly have been apparently 

 deserted for a number of years after, and that suddenly in the first 

 instance, and quite without any patent or assignable cause ; and other 

 localities again taken possession of, equally without any apparent 

 reason. This has long been a puzzle to me, and I do not seem to 

 get any nearer to the causes. I can only refer my readers to my 

 pre\aous remarks in the last volume of this series, and to others in 

 the prior volumes. 



Col. Drummond Hay spoke of it as a species which had very 

 greatly decreased in numbers during the thirty or forty years 

 previous to the date of his writing — say 1880. 



Mr. Milne mentions it in his list as " resident, and occurring in 

 flocks in autumn." That is, at the date of 1896, when he sent me 

 his list. 



Mr. D. Dewar reported it as "only a summer visitor to the hills 

 around Loch Tay," and gave it as "not very numerous in 1901." 



Mr. Godfrey only met with it upon the westerly slopes of the 

 hilltops around the head of Loch Earn, and above Glen Ogle, both in 

 the summer of 1903 and in that of 1904. (I may here mention that 

 I have myself found the Golden Plover nesting on both east and west 

 exposures, and also on north and south slopes in many localities.) 



Perhaps they still maintain their old value in some parts of the 

 north-east of our area. Thus the Eev. Mr. M'Connochie says of 

 them : " Common on the hills. Flocking in the lowland country 

 and among the fields occasionally, towards the end of the season." 



There is no doubt that great numbers were formerly shot on 

 certain haunts they frequented around Loch Tay— say some thirty 

 years ago — and that in later years they became much less abundant. 



Squatarola helvetica (i.). Grey Plover. 



It is difficult to judge in every case what is meant by " Grey Plover" 

 in the records of the old Statistical Account, and therefore 1 have 

 usually given these little heed. Not truly gregarious. 



In this district of Forth — the coast of Stirlingshire and the 

 estuary of the Forth generally — the Knot is the bird which goes by 

 the names of both "Silver" and "Grey Plover." But the name 

 Silver Plover is the one usually applied. That name is an importa- 

 tion from the Humber by Humber puntsmen — the Wells, and even 



