250 BIRDS OF DUMFRIESSHIRE 
quite certain of the species, and had first observed them 
in the month of March feeding on the marsh close to 
Glencaple, and again on April 15th. "I approached," 
writes Mr. Wilson, " so close to them with my boat that I 
could have shot them both." The birds were said to have 
been seen also by several people on the opposite side of the 
River Nith just below the village of Glencaple, and at a 
distance of about one hundred yards. 
The alleged occurrences of this species in Great Britam 
are mostly unsubstantiated, and but seven records are given 
by Howard Saunders.* It breeds in Arctic Russia, north 
of the Hmit of forest-growth, from the Ob to the Boganida, 
whence it migrates southwards in autumn past the Aral and 
Caspian Seas.] 
THE BARNACLE-GOOSE. 
Bernicla leucopsis (Bechstein). 
A common winter-visitant to the Solway. 
Since the memory of man, the Barnacle-Goose has been the 
dominant and characteristic goose of the long wastes of 
sand and mud constituting the shores of the Dumfriesshire 
Solway. Sir WiUiam Jardine writes in 1843 : " On the 
shores of the Solway Firth they are at times very abundant ; 
and although it is not much practised, they are occasionally 
shot during their flight by waiting, or, as it is caUed on the 
Northumbrian coast, ' slaking.' "f Nowadays they are sub- 
ject to incessant persecution from the shore-shooters, and 
although comparatively easy of approach for the first few 
days after their arrival, they soon become excessively wary. 
Mr. R. Service has recorded how in early October, 1881, he 
and his friend the late WiUiam Lennon came upon an im- 
mense flock of Barnacles asleep on the Blackshaw Bank. They 
* Man. Brit. Birds, 1899, p. 407. 
t Nat. Lib., 1843, Vol. XIV., p. 78. 
