Last September I got a bird which I knew to belong to the grebe family, but I could not be sure of its proper name, and I sent it to Mr. Harvie Brown for identification. He informed me it was a Sclavonian grebe, a bird not very common in this part of the country. In November 1897 I found a dead specimen of the little auk. [Illustration: _Solan goose._] Though not a Sule Skerry bird, the solan goose deserves notice in this paper. The Stack, distant four and a half miles, has been their chief breeding place in Orkney for ages, and every year it is tenanted by immense numbers. The rock is 140 feet high, rising perpendicularly on the west, but sloping gradually from the water to the summit on the east side. It is on this slope that the solans congregate, and no other bird is allowed to trespass on their preserves. In May, June, July, and August their numbers are so vast that any one seeing the rock at a distance would imagine it was painted white or composed of chalk. Sule Skerry, however, is too far distant to allow of one forming any idea of their numbers, but looking at them with the glass one sees the rock simply covered, and apparently as many flying about as resting. Lewis men visit the place annually in August, and carry away a boatload of young birds. Last year they came up to the rock, but there was too much surf for a landing, and as the weather was threatening they headed for the Sutherlandshire coast. That night the wind blew half a gale, and fears were entertained that it would prove too much for them, for their boat was small and hardly powerful enough to be so far from home; but a few days later they again approached the rock. They again failed to negotiate it, and after waiting for about an hour they made sail for home, and did not return. The weather certainly favoured the solans on these occasions. I have never seen a solan resting on Sule Skerry; they even carefully avoid flying across the island, though they fish in immense numbers all round, and sometimes within forty or fifty yards of the shore. They usually begin to arrive in the vicinity about the end of January, and their numbers continue to increase until the end of April, when they take possession of the rock, and from then until the end of August their name is legion. When the young are fledged, they gradually disappear, and from the first of December till the last days of January they are not to be seen. Thus they go on year after year, a fraction of that great feathered multitude which has come and gone since the earliest ages, and will probably continue to come and go as long as the world lasts, some arriving and departing in silence, others heralding their coming and going with the wildest clamour. On this subject, and speaking of the northern isles, Thomson the poet says:—