BIRDS. 



317 



Col. Drummond Hay records a buff-coloured variety of the 

 Common Snipe as having been shot on the north bank of the Tay, 

 opposite the mouth of the Earn, on 3rd October 1892. The example 

 is now in the Perth Museum (Annals Scot. Nat. Hist.y vol ii. p. 44, 

 1893).! 



Millais says : "Large numbers of Snipe rest on passage in Perth- 

 shire, especially about the Errol marshes, Loch Leven (Forth), and 

 Murthly Bog. I have seen twenty to thirty couple killed in a day 

 at Murthly." 



[06s. — A Sabine's Snipe has been recorded by Mr. R. Gray {Birds of the 

 West of Scotland, p. 514). This is in a MS. note by Mr. Gray, in my copy, 

 with interleaves, bound in two volumes. The bird was brought to market 

 with Golden Plovers, about the 9th March 1872, and was seen by me — J. A. 

 H.-B.— at Sanderson's, of Edinburgh, 10th May 1872 ; and I find that I made 

 the note : " Fourteen tail-feathers ; colour dark and rich brown ; tarsi shorter 

 than in examples of the Common Snipe " ; and I have the additional note : 

 " Keddie told me he had known of another which occurred on Tents Muir, 

 Fife, but he had no note of the exact date."] 



Gallinago gallinula (L.). Jack Snipe. 



Winter visitant. General. Fairly abundant, and regular in its visits. 

 But some seasons more abundant than others. 



They arrive about the first week in October as a rule, but some 

 seasons earlier. Horn, indeed, told me he had shot (or seen 1) Jacks 

 as early as the 12th August in Strathtay, but 1 have never known of 

 birds so early anywhere else in Scotland, and certainly not within 

 the present area.^ 



In the north-east Mr. Milne only quotes Col. Drummond Hay for 

 that district — "a winter visitor." 



Col. Drummond Hay told me that the Jack Snipe was formerly 

 more abundant, and used to frequent the ooze of the tidal reaches 

 of the Tay, but does so no longer (1880), or to a less extent than 



1 Col. Drummond Hay tells us he saw, in a box sent from Shetland, two hundred 

 Snipes' eggs, ** aU blown in the most approved manner, to be consigned to a London dealer 

 as ordered " ; and he adds, as a rider in connection with decrease in their numbers of late 

 years : " There are hosts of gunners." Thus both ends of the candle are being burned ! 



Recent correspondence in some of the sporting papers {e.g. The Field, September 

 and October 1904) expresses surprise at the appearance of Jack Snipes in September. 

 I possess many records of their appearance between the 27th September and the 6th 

 October 1903, and in September 1904, and others previously. Witness the vast numbers 

 seen by Mr. Eagle Clarke upon the Flannan Isles in September 1904 {Annals Scot. 

 Nat. Hist., 1905, p. 82), and again in Fair Isle in 1905 {ibid., 1906, p. 75). 



