when disturbed it invariably made for a large bed of reeds. On the first occasion of his seeing it, it ran some distance and then took flight across two fields into this bed of reeds, which is in reality a portion of the deserted channel of the River Winster. On the day on which it was shot it rose very wild from the reeds (some fifty yards off), and was brought down by a single pellet .through the head. I may add that the locus in quo is close to the shore of Morecambe Bay. The bird was most minutely examined both by the birdstuffer and Allan, and they both tell me it presented no signs whatever of confinement, the feathers being sound and glossy and the legs perfectly free from any mark. When I saw the bird it was already stuffed and mounted, so that I could form no opinion of my own on the point.—Edward T. Baldwin (Woodcroft, Ulverston).
Birds observed in Glen Spean.—The Golden Eagle breeds on Ben Aonoch More, the next mountain east of Ben Nevis, and but 400 feet lower. From Ben e Bhean (pronounced "Vahn"), a few feet lower and still more east, I have watched the magnificent flight of this king of birds, and have seen it wheel round over my head so near that I could distinguish its eye, then glide away in a straight line till lost to sight, without apparently moving a feather, but seeming to go at will on outstretched pinions in any direction it chose. On the latter mountain I have seen several pairs of Snow Buntings, Plectrophanes nivalis, in July, and listened to their song whilst smoking a pipe, in company with Mr. Howard Birchall, at the foot of the cairn on the summit, near which is a vast heap of quartz-stones of all sizes and shapes, and bad to walk on, which—but for the impossibility of the thing—have the appearance of having been dropped from carts over some acres of nearly level table-land. Amongst these stones, no doubt, these pretty birds breed, but I did not succeed in finding their nests. At the foot of this mountain, near the River Spean, the Woodcock breeds. Ptarmigan frequent the stony parts on all these mountains, and Red Grouse abound in the moors. Below Roy Bridge Black Grouse are plentiful on the south side of the river. In the low, wooded and cultivated parts of the valley the Blackbird, Song Thrush, Cuckoo, Chaffinch, Yellow Bunting, House Martin, Sky Lark, Titlark (Anthus pratensis). Rock Pipit, and Redstart are to be met with. On the banks of the streams that feed the Spean numbers of Common Sandpipers breed. On the marshy ground near the river the Redshank and Snipe, and on the banks of the river many pairs of Oystercatchers also breed; and last year, on a gravel-bed in the middle of the river, twenty-three miles from the sea, I took a nest containing three eggs of the Herring Gull, Larus argentatus. I ascertained with certainty that there was no mistake about this, by the aid of a telescope, as the pair of birds stood on the sand at the side of the river, a few hundred yards from the nest. On islands in Loch Laggan, as well as sometimes on the shore of the Loch, the Common Gull breeds. I took about a score of eggs and
