PREFACE 
IX 
a whole. That is to say, a species described as " a resident " 
indicates that it is a resident in some part of, not necessarily 
throughout, the county ; but the text, it is hoped, will in 
each case elaborate the summary so as to make its meaning 
clear. As regards the value of the term " resident," the 
reader is referred to the chapter on Migration (sec p. lxxix). 
Parishes are designated throughout the book by being 
placed in parentheses directly after the place-name to 
which they refer : thus : — Capenoch (Keir) ; denotes that 
Capenoch is in the parish of Keir. 
It has been my endeavour in dealing with each bird to 
arrange the records in sequence, so as to obtain as far as 
possible a chronological history in every case. 
Any species whose occurrence locally has seemed at all 
doubtful, has had attention drawn to it as such, by the use 
of square brackets, thus [ ] ; a system advocated and used 
by Mr. J. A. Harvie-Brown in his Scottish faunas. 
The " Sol way Area " is so often mentioned throughout 
the following pages, that it may be well to state that this 
" area " covers all Dumfriesshire, Kirkcudbrightshire and 
Wigtownshire from the watersheds of the Esk and Liddel 
in the east, to the western seaboard of the last-named 
county : a considerable part of Cumberland, and portions 
of Ayrshire, Roxburghshire, and Northumberland, are also 
included. 
The sub-title of this book announces it as "a contri- 
bution" to the fauna of the Solway Area; and it may be 
found of assistance when that larger work comes to be 
written — a task which it is hoped will be undertaken by 
Mr. Robert Service. 
The majority of the places mentioned in the text will be 
found marked in the map folded in at the end of the volume ; 
but its necessarily small scale has rendered it impossible to 
show them all. 
Throughout this book, I have confined myself to those 
birds that have occurred in Dumfriesshire, and mention of 
external occurrences, or general distribution have only been 
