40 The Natural History of British Ducks 
In Scotland Wigeon are visitors in large numbers to the estuaries of the 
Eden and the Tay ; and they are particularly plentiful in the Moray, the 
Beauly, the Cromarty, and the Dornoch Firths, as well as the Little Ferry — 
all these waters being tidal and on the east coast. On the west coast Wigeon 
are common in the Solway, the Clyde estuary and Loch Fyne ; but with 
one or two exceptions the waters to the north-west are too deep and rocky to 
suit their tastes. { — 
We first hear of the nesting of Wigeon in Scotland in 1834, when 
Sir W. Jardine and Mr. Selby took a nest on an island in Loch Laighal. 
Mr Robert Gray, writing in 1858, considered that, at that time, it bred annually 
in some of the lochs of the Outer Hebrides, although no nest had been taken 
there. Soon after this, however, it became known that the species nested 
regularly in Ross and Sutherland, principally on the eastern side of those 
counties, and it is now quite established there, having also extended its range 
to the Naver district on the west coast, where I found it breeding on Lochs 
Remisdale and Syre in 1886. 
It was not, however, until the year 1880 that a great southern movement 
took place in the choice of nesting places of this duck ; and although I had 
always expected to find female Wigeon with young in my annual summer 
visits to Loch Leven, where the species now breed regularly, I never came 
across a brood or heard of a nest in the south of Scotland previous to 1883. 
Shooting, however, one day on Lord Moray's ground at Doune, in 1886, 
Winter, the keeper, told me that four years previously Wigeon had come in 
spring to the little lake on the grouse moor known as Loch-Ma-Haich, and 
had stayed and bred there regularly ever since. He also promised to send 
me in the following year old birds and young in July — a promise which he 
duly fulfilled. In 1888, I first had reliable information of Wigeon breeding on 
Loch Leven, and, in 1889, the first pair remained on the bog at Murthly and 
bred there. In August of that year my retriever caught a young bird unable 
to fly, whilst several times during that month I saw the old birds. Since then 
the increase in the number of breeding birds in the south of Scotland has 
