Page:The Zoologist, 4th series, vol 2 (1898).djvu/467

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— (Newport House, near Exeter).

Dr. Saxby and the Breeding of the Turnstone.—The locus standi of the Turnstone (Strepsilas interpres), in relation to the question as to whether the species has ever been known to breed in the British Islands, has long perplexed me. No authenticated nests and eggs have ever been found, write, in effect, most of the more modern authorities in the ornithological world. And yet Saxby's account of the discovery of a nest and eggs in Shetland is so circumstantial as to make one wonder whether there is anything "behind the scenes" which causes such almost universal scepticism on the point. That indefatigable and intelligent ornithologist observed a female Turnstone on the evening of June 16th "behaving very suspiciously"; he ultimately, after a search extending over two hours, stumbled on the eggs, three in number, which were lying "in a hollow among the stones," the same hollow being "scantily lined with dry grass."

That the eggs were fresh is to be inferred from the context at the top of p. 172 in ' The Birds of Shetland,' a copy of which work I have before me. Further, Saxby writes that he "had not the smallest doubt that the eggs were Turnstone's—indeed, they could have been nothing else." On the following morning a man arrived with the two eggs which Saxby had left in the nest overnight to claim the reward offered by the latter—an incident which tends to prove that the Shetlander had no misgivings as to the correct identity of the species. While yet again, after having specifically referred to the fact that he had for years seen Turnstones in pairs about the shores of Unst during the breeding season, Saxby writes:—"Two of the eggs were a good deal like the figure in Mr. Hewitson's work." Now it seems to me that for writers with almost one accord to declare that it is highly probable that the Turnstone breeds in Shetland and on some of the northern islands, and then summarily to reject Saxby's positive and very explicit account of the discovery of a nest and eggs in Shetland with the remark, "There is no authentic instance of the breeding of the Turnstone in Great Britain" (vol. iii. p. 178, 'British Birds,' Bowdler Sharpe), is a capricious, not to say arbitrary and illogical way of treating the matter. I have nowhere seen it stated that Saxby was not competent to identify a