SAXBY : BIRDS OP SHETLAND. 



liad caiiglit one — a handsome specimen with a new skin — on our way to the 

 river on Saturday ; we next disturbed a nightjar, which flew into an oak 

 close by, shewing us its peculiar way of sitting lengthways on a branch. On 

 calling at a cottage hard by, whose inmates — a man, wife, and little boy, — 

 we knew, we found they were out, and soon after came across them engaged 

 in reaping, alone, a six acre field of wheat. There is a great scarcity of 

 hands here for harvesting. On one side of the corn-field is a wood, and 

 several of its feathered inhabitants — tomtits, long-tailed tits, etc. were 

 engaged in eating a little of the corn, which who can grudge them as wages 

 for keeping down noxious insects ? It was funny to notice the long-tailed 

 tit hanging on a stalk, and picking the ear ; while I was looking another 

 way, Stacy saw eight or ten jays fly into the wood; I have seen near here as 

 many as twenty together. Our road hence lay through the wood, and we 

 noticed how the birds had deserted the end of it remote from the corn-fields. 

 Cup-moss was abundant on the banks, and the show of blackberries very 

 large ; we also found some bright red /^^7^p'^', which are common here; passing 

 May Green and Martyr's Green, the cottagers round each of which fatten a 

 great many geese, we crossed the slades or low parts of Wisley heath, and in 

 a pheasant preserve saw figures of men with guns in their hands, which the 

 gamekeeper told me are to frighten away foxes. We returned by train from 

 Weybridge station, bringing back with us some Hart's Tongue — there called 

 Seaweed-Ferns, which Smith had kindly dug for us in one of the few 

 localities where they grow in the neighbourhood. 

 4, Grove Place, Denmark Hill, London, 



A CATALOGUE OF THE BIEDS OF SHETLAND. 



By Henry L, Saxby, M.D, 



Although the accounts of the Ornithology of Shetland which have been 

 published during the last forty years, are not only numerous, but, as a rule, 

 accurate, circumstances have lately occurred, leading me to the belief that an 

 entirely new list of the species which have hitherto been observed in these 

 islands, will not be unacceptable to the readers of the Naturalist, more espe- 

 cially to those who have lately applied in vain for specimens which are 

 seldom or never observed in this locality, under the impression that they 



No, 33, September 1. i 



