BIRDS OF DUMFRIESSHIRE 
to specimens obtained in August ; there is one record of a 
female Shoveler identified by two competent authorities as a 
bird of the year ; and the reported discovery of a nest on the 
Cairn in 1899 or 1900 is made by a man well acquainted 
with the species ; all this points to a justifiable presump- 
tion that the Shoveler has occasionally bred in this locahty. 
This presumption is, moreover, strengthened by the fact 
that the species has been recorded as nesting in Kirkcud- 
brightshire, Roxburghshire, and in Cumberland in the 
neighbourhood of the Solway. 
The range covered by the Shoveler in its summer- and 
winter-quarters is hardly exceeded by that of any other duck, 
and for all practical purposes it may be called cosmopoHfcan. 
As regards Great Britain, its breeding-range is beUeved to 
be extending, and it nests locally in Scotland, Ireland, and 
England, but principally in the eastern counties of the 
latter. In autumn and winter the continental immigrants, 
which appear on the eastern coasts of Great Britain, may 
occasionally wander as far as our county. 
THE PINTAIL. Dafila acuta (Linnaeus). 
An irregular winter-visitant to the Solway in small numbers. 
Writing in 1832 of the birds of the parish of Applegarth 
and Sibbaldbie, Sir WiUiam Jardine states that the Pintail 
is found there but seldom.* Some eleven years later, he 
writes : "In the south of Scotland a few specimens have 
occurred to us every winter, and we once shot a pair in 
immature dress in the month of September feeding at dusk 
on some wet stubble, in company with the MaUard and 
common Teal."t In a letter dated March 10th, 1842, from 
Drumlanrig, John Shaw wrote to Sir WilHam Jardine 
* New Stat. Acct. Scot., Vol. IV., p. 181. 
t Nat. Lib., 1843, Vol. XIV., p. 120. 
