BIRDS OF DUMFRIESSHIRE 315 
five seeds, "Three of which were those of rye grass 
(Lolium perenne), one of tufted hair grass {Aira ccespitosa) 
and one of broom (Cytisus scoparius):'* He also identified 
some seedling plants, raised in pots from seeds, which 
William Hastings had taken from a Sand-Grouse he had 
skinned in 1888. The majority were wild mustard and fescue 
grass, while the rest were Vicia cracca, Ranunculus sp., and 
a few clover. 
The late Frederick McConnell confidently informed Mr. R. 
Service that he saw four or five Sand-Grouse in a garden 
at Blackyett, Ecclefechan, in mid-January, 1898 ; but this 
date is not contemporaneous with any other recorded 
occurrence of this species in Great Britain. In 1908 Sand- 
Grouse appeared in the west of Europe and were reported 
from various parts of Englandf ; but I should not care to 
vouch for the authenticity of what I firmly beheve to have 
been a flock of twenty to twenty-five of these birds, seen 
by myself on June 18th, near Tynron, about three hundred 
feet up, flying very swiftly WNW. 
THE CAPERCAILLIE. Tetrcw urogallus, Linnseus. 
A rare straggler to the county from an introduced stock. 
At the end of the eighteenth century the Capercaillie, once 
a denizen of the Scottish Highlands, had become extinct. 
As to whether in stiU earher days it had once inhabited this 
county there is no evidence, though such evidence may 
possibly yet be forthcoming if, as is suggested by the late 
H. A. Macpherson, "it is by no means unhkely that bones 
of this species may yet be discovered among the animal 
remains which He hidden in the fissures of the hmestone 
rocks of Westmorland.''^ " In 1837," Howard Saunders 
* Ihia, 1890, p. 213. 
t British Birds (Mag.), Vol. IL, pp. 98, 134, 167, 208, 245, 309, 
X Fauna of Lakeland, 1892, p. xci. 
