A Scottish Lament
Have our immigrant summer birds ceased to nest as far north as they used to nest ? A Scottish farmer, who is also a naturalist, tells me that they grow scarcer and scarcer in his neighbourhood of Lesmahagow. " Sixty years ago, white- throats were so plentiful in my father's orchard that I was sent round with a gun to shoot them. They were in flocks like sparrows. Willow, sedge and garden warblers and black- caps were also very numerous ; but the numbers of all these have steadily declined for many years. . . . Usually there are three or four nests of the common flycatcher within a hundred yards of my house. This year there is only one. I have heard only one whitethroat sing this year and not one of the other warblers. Even the shilfa (chaffinch), the commonest bird I think in the country, is hardly to be seen."
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