422 Mr. W. Thompson on the Birds of Ireland. 



5th of March 1836, when a pair appeared, and one of them (in 

 beautiful adult plumage) was shot at Dunbar's Dock, Belfast. That 

 day and the preceding were very stormy, and the wind southerly : 

 their haunts to the southward are all far distant. The stomach of 

 the specimen was filled with insect larvae. 



When on a tour with Mr. R. Ball in the summer of 1834 to the 

 west and south of Ireland, choughs occurred to us at Achil Head, and 

 the largest of the South Islands of Arran, &c, in the west ; and in the 

 south, were heard about the Lower Lake of Killarney ; and were seen 

 at Cable Island, near Youghal. Colonel Sabine has noticed that they 

 breed in the rocks at Ballybunian, on the coast of Kerry ; and the 

 late Mr. T. F. Neligan of Tralee, in mentioning to me some years 

 ago that they were very common about the marine cliffs of that 

 county, stated, that numbers build in the rocks of inland mountains, 

 four and five miles distant from the sea. The choice of such places 

 is not rare in Ireland. Some of the latest writers on British orni- 

 thology appear to think that the chough never leaves the vicinity of 

 the sea, and in one work it is inadvertently stated that the species is 

 ■' never observed inland," although Crow Castle is noticed by Mon- 

 tagu as one of its haunts. This is situated in the beautiful vale of 

 Llangollen in North Wales, where the Lombardy poplar spiring 

 above the other rich foliage around the picturesque village of the 

 same name, imparts, in addition to other accompaniments, quite an 

 Italian character to the scene. But to particularise further in Ire- 

 land : the Rev. G. M. Black observed a pair of these birds through- 

 out the breeding-season about a ruin between Newtown-Crommelin 

 and Cushendall in the county of Antrim, and three miles distant 

 from the sea : at Salagh Braes, a semicircular range of basaltic rocks 

 in the same county, and nearly twice that distance from the coast, 

 the chough nestles. The gamekeeper at Tollymore Park, county of 

 Down, informed me in 1836, that he had shot these birds in the 

 mountains of Mourne, which are regularly frequented by them, and 

 where they build in the inland rocks. Here for some years pre- 

 viously, he annually discovered two or three of their nests, whence 

 he has taken the young with the intention of rearing them, but in 

 this he was unsuccessful. This intelligent gamekeeper assured me, 

 that once in the mountains here, he came upon seven choughs at- 

 tendant on a poor sheep, which was in a particularly weak state when 

 lambing. About half of the young animal was protruded, and had been 

 nearly consumed by three of these birds, which were busily engaged 

 preying upon it*. He had not a gun with him at the time, but was 

 so wroth at witnessing this cruelty of the chough, that in the latter 

 part of the day, when armed, he sacrificed three of these birds ; all 

 which came within his range. He believes that choughs would even 

 destroy a weakly animal. They are seen by him commonly fre- 

 quenting the entrance to foxes' earths, for the purpose, he conceives, 



* Mr. Hogg contributes to Macgillivray's 1 British Birds ' (vol. i.) a si- 

 milar account of the carrion-crow, with horrible details of what to human 

 sympathy would seem its cold-blooded cruelty to sheep, when in the act of 

 parturition. 



