BIRDS OF DUMFRIESSHIRE 269 
winter about 1896 or 1898. I identified it from the plate 
in A. Fritsch, Birds of Europe, Tab. 49, Fig. 8. It was not 
preserved." Mr. R. Service informs me that a fine female, 
taken at the mouth of the Nith by Mr. Charles Turner, game- 
dealer, Dumfries, on February 3rd, 1900, passed into his 
possession. 
Sir Richard Graham, of Netherby, Cumberland, informs 
me (1908) that he has reared a few Gadwall there each year 
since 1903 ; these birds being kept in a semi- wild state so 
near our border, may occur any day in this county. Sir 
Richard also tells me that he has bred a number of hybrids 
between a female Gadwall and a Wigeon male, and the know- 
ledge of this fact may at some future date be useful to the 
ornithologist called upon to identify some strange-plumaged 
duck from the Solway shores. 
The Gadwall may briefly be said to breed in central and 
eastern Europe, central Asia, and North America, migrating 
south in winter. The descendants of a pair turned down 
at Narford Hall, Norfolk, about 1850 by the Rev. John 
Fountaine, have multiplied and attracted others of their 
kind to this locality where the Gadwall now nests, as well 
as in a few places in the midland counties of England. 
Elsewhere in Great Britain the species can only be con- 
sidered a comparatively rare visitor, though its breeding- 
range is known to be extending, and it nested in Peeblesshire 
in 1906, and in south-east Scotland in 1909. 
THE SHOVELER. Spatula clypeata (Linnaeus). 
Local name — Harvest-Teal. 
A very local and scarce autumn and winter- visitor, but has probably bred 
very occasionally. 
Sir WiUiam Jardine wrote of this species in 1843 : "In 
Scotland we have never ourselves met with it Hving, but 
have generally seen one or two specimens, during the winter 
