AND IRELAND OF THE RED-BACKED SHRIKE. 
309 
1833, seems, however, to have been the first to publish the fact of 
the occurrence of this species in the northern kingdom ; since 
which time Mr. Sinclair, Professor Duns, Dr. Gordon, Lord 
Haddington, and Mr. Harvie Brown have recorded similar 
observations, shewing that, during the season of its migration, it 
is an occasional visitor to the eastern parts of Scotland, while in 
a few instances it has been seen in pairs, and may possibly have 
bred there” (vol. i. p. 211). 
In the ‘ Report on the Ornithology of the East of Scotland,’ by 
Colonel II. M. Drummond Hay, C.M.Z.S. (for a copy of which 
I am indebted to the kindness of the author), the following 
occurrences are noted : “ A specimen was shot at Charlton, near 
Montrose, about 18G4 or l8Gf> (Jbie J. A. II. B.). Mr. Gray (‘Birds 
of Scotland,’ p. G7) alludes to one having been got near Peterhead 
about the year 1883 ; and states that he has one in his own 
collection which was killed near Cupar-Fife in the autumn of 18G1 
(p. G). In the ‘ Migration Report’ for 1885, the occurrence of one 
on the Isle of May, on the 5th May, is recorded. Mr. A. Nicol 
Simpson, of Arbroath, writes me word of one, a female of the 
second year probably, which was shot on the 19th August, 1890, 
at Ethie, about five miles east of Arbroath, Forfarshire, and a mile 
or two inland from the headland known as Redhead. Others were 
said to bo about Ethie at the time” (in lit.). 
Messrs. Harvie Brown and Buckley mention that there is 
a young bird in the collection of the Duke of Portland at Welbeck 
Abbey. No particulars are known about it beyond the statement 
that “ all the birds in the collection were shot on the Duke’s 
property in Caithness” (‘Vert. Fauna of Caithness and Sunderland,’ 
p. 120). 
In the Shetlands, Saxby says he shot a young male on the 
5th October, 18GG, and that on the 9th June, 1870, he saw 
a. female followed by three young birds, one of which remained 
about a garden for two or three weeks. There is no occasion to 
doubt this latter observation on account of the extraordinarily early 
date. Saxby was far too keen and careful an observer to give us 
an utterly false statement, and the explanation probably is that 
June was a misprint for July ; his book was published after his 
death. 
Mr. R. Service kindly informs me that this bird is mentioned in 
