Volume 9 - Electric Scotland

122 ANNALS OF SCOTTISH NATURAL HISTORY
ference for cooked food to anything else, unless perhaps a dead
mouse, which they take with avidity. I have not heard before of
Herons so tame, but perhaps some of your readers may have had a
like experience. The Common Moor or Water Hens (Gallimtla
chloropits) have also been very tame this winter, mixing and feeding
with the poultry, and taking kindly to oats, which perhaps may be
an acquired taste. A. ELLIOT, Caverton, Roxburgh.
Bitterns in Stirlingshire. During the severe weather towards
the end of December last, several Bitterns (Botaunts stellaris) were
seen, and one shot, on the Carron near Denny. J. A. HARVIE-BROWN.
The Bittern in Ayrshire. Although Messrs. Gray and Anderson
stated that the Bittern (Botaunts stellaris) was " of very rare and
uncertain occurrence " in Ayrshire (" Proc. Nat. Hist. Soc. Glasgow,"
i.
p. 303), during the past decade I have learned of the occurrence
of seven examples in that county,
all so far unrecorded in scientific
journals, I believe. Two were shot in 1890 at Dalmellington, and
one at Doonfoot in 1891, as I was informed some years ago by
Mr. W. C. S. Fergusson, Ayr. Another, which had been killed at
Doonfoot " recently," was exhibited to the Andersonian Naturalists'
Society on ist November 1893. Mr. Charles Berry has one in his
collection, which he shot near Lendalfoot in January 1890 or 1891,
I think. Mr. Matthew Barr has kindly sent me word of a pair ( ?
and (?), shot near Ayr early in January this year, which had been
sent for exhibition by a taxidermist in Kilmarnock to the meeting
of the Glenfield Ramblers' Society, Kilmarnock, on 23rd January.-
JOHN PATERSON, Glasgow.
Bittern in Nairn. A Bittern was seen on loth January 1900,
about four miles above the mouth of the river Nairn, by Mr. H. E.
Pope. It was standing in the river bed, which at that point is
rather broad, among some dead branches and rubbish. T. E.
BUCKLEY, Inverness.
Gray Geese on the Solway Firth. The Gray Lag and W hitefronted
Geese (Anser ferns and A. albifrons) are comparatively rare
visitors to the salt marshes of the Solway Firth but
; only experts
can be expected to identify young specimens of our Gray Geese. A
specimen of Anser albifrons, which, being immature, was first reported
to me as a Gray Lag, was shot on one of the marshes on 3oth
January 1898. I do not think that I have recorded it
previously.
But on 22nd December 1899 two undoubted Gray Lag Geese,
young birds, were shot near Silloth, out of a gaggle of five birds.
They had the following soft parts upper mandible, pinky fleshcolour
; unguis, white tinged with dusky ; legs and toes, orange
:
yellow, with white claws. I had one of them mounted for the
Carlisle Museum, which previously possessed only one specimen,
and that a fine adult. H. A. MACPHERSON, Pitlochry.