BIRDS OF DUMFRIESSHIRE 307 
does not mention this record; and it is impossible at 
this late date to verify the statement. H. A. Macpherson 
writes in 1892 : " The Stock-Dove appears to have been 
always a winter visitant, if not an actual resident in 
Lakeland, but there can be no doubt that it is only within a 
comparatively recent period that it has bred pretty generaUy 
m this region"; and he goes on to describe a nest found 
SIX miles to the west of Carhsle on April 28th, 1861 * If 
the Stock-Dove in 1861, as above stated, nested'in Cumber- 
land withm ten miles of our boundary, it is possible that 
trom lack of observation this species may have passed 
unnoticed in Dumfriesshire. At any rate, in view of the 
opinion of H. A. Macpherson that the Stock-Dove was 
always a winter visitant, if not an actual resident in 
Lakeland," coupled with the discovery of the nest near 
Carhsle withm three years of the alleged occurrence of the 
species at Ecclefechan, the truth of this aUegation would 
seem not impossible, but probable. 
A. G. More, in his paper pubhshed in 1865 on the Distri- 
bution of Birds in Great Britain during the Nesting Season,"t 
does not mention Dumfriesshire as a vernal habitat of the 
Stock-Dove ; but a " Wood-Pigeon's nest . . . built upon 
the ground m a hiU side,"J is chronicled by Mr. Kirkpatrick 
m 1871 ; and this makes one wonder if by an error in 
identification Dumfriesshire has been deprived of the first 
record of the Stock-Dove nesting in Scotland; although 
It IS true that the Wood-Pigeon has been known to nest 
occasionally on the ground. Robert Gray only mentions 
the btock-Dove in his Birds of the West of Scotland in 1871 
as a very rare species in Caithness, and as having occurred 
once m Orkney in 1861,§ but must this be taken as negative 
evidence of its previous occurrence in our county ? Mr 
J. A. Harvie-Brown in 1883 states that in Dumfriesshire 
* Fauna of Lakeland, 1892, p. 314. 
t Ibis, 1865, p. 141. 
; Minutes of D. and G. Nat. Hist. Soc, February 7th, 1871. 
§ Birds of West Scotland, 1871, pp. 219, 220. 
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