66 TRANSACTIONS—PERTHSHIRE SOCIETY OF NATURAL SCIENCE. 
occasionally in larger flocks. The Widgeon also is started, but it is 
not now nearly so commonly seen as formerly. We also come on 
some Golden-Eyes feeding in one of the said water courses, but more 
of these hereafter. The Shoveller is also noticed—rather a rare duck, 
but commoner than formerly, and which is now ascertained to breed 
in several places higher up. 
Passing downwards, the mouth of the Earn is reached. Here 
rather a rare bird, the Green Sand-Piper, is noticed. This is more 
commonly found about inland waters, than near the sea, and it is an 
autumn and spring visitant only. At this point, crossing over to the 
opposite shore or left bank, we see a largish-looking Sand-Piper 
with shining white breast on a mud spit. This is the Greenshank, 
once not by any means uncommon at this season, but now exceed¬ 
ingly rare in its old autumn haunts; it breeds on the higher hills, 
coming down to the lower Tay and coast on its way south. We land, 
and at the side of the marsh another bird of the Sand-Piper race, of 
about the same size, but darker in colour, shows itself— the Ruff, or 
Reeve, by which name the female is known. Though rare with us^ 
it is not unusual on the Tay during the autumn passage. The Ruff 
was a well-known bird in the old Lincolnshire Fen days, when many 
of these birds, the males only, were trapped and netted for the Lon¬ 
don market in the spring, the poulterers’ shops being then full of them. 
The Ruff is so called from the extraordinary elongation during the 
breeding season of the neck feathers, which form a ruff of every 
shade of colour in different individuals, but which they soon lose ; 
this stage of plumage is unknown with us. As the bird is polygamous 
this great destruction of the males at that season did not perceptibly 
aid in its decrease, but the drainage of the Fens eventually drove 
them out of the country as a breeding bird. Another of the rarer 
Sand-Pipers we meet with on the same ground is the Curlew Sand- 
Piper, or Pigmy Curlew, as it is often called, from the length and 
curve of the bill, but it is only to be seen with us either in the winter 
or grey plumage, or just on the change from the reddish plumage of 
summer, assumed during the breeding season. 
Keeping down the river, we find the reed beds teeming with Blue- 
Tits, and most interesting it is to watch the way they ascend and 
descend the reed stalks, peering and prying into every leaf joint in 
busy hunt for insects ; while others again cling to the pendant seed 
tufts in search of the grain therein contained. It may be worthy of 
remark that the Blue-Tit is the only one of the tribe we have ever 
noticed visiting the reeds, and this we find they do regularly on the 
Tay every season during the autumn months. 
Here also we find the Reed Bunting or Reed Sparrow in small 
groups, clinging in the same way to the pensile tufts of the tallest 
