222 The Irish Naturalist. [September, 



about twenty pairs of old birds flying about the island, but 

 the}^ had apparently all hatched out their young, which 

 had either fled out on the lake with the j^oung Blackheaded 

 Gulls, or concealed themselves among the weeds growing in 

 dense thickets about the island. I found onl}^ one 3^oung bird 

 a day or two old, two fresh eggs, and three addled ones. The 

 3'oung bird being required to finish a nest-case in the Dublin 

 Museum, I killed it, and to ni}' surprise when dying it dis- 

 gorged parts of a sand-eel, the vivid green of the back and 

 the silvery white colour of the under parts showing that it was 

 unmistakably a sand-eel brought from the sea, a distance of at 

 least fifteen miles, a long way for any bird to bring food for 

 its 3^oung. 



No doubt the Sandwich Terns may, like the common species, 

 feed their young with fish from the lake, but I never saw any 

 of them make the least attempt to fish while I was on the 

 lake, although there were numbers of Common Terns fishing 

 all round at the time. Among the breeding birds of the lake 

 the Blackheaded Gulls appear to be the most numerous ; there 

 is a colony of Lesser Blackbacked Gulls on an island far 

 down the lough, while the Common Terns breed on various 

 islands. 



The Tufted Duck is one of the commonest ducks breeding 

 on the islands. We found two nests amidst the long reeds' 

 on the tern island ; on one the duck was hatching five eggs, 

 but the other was a deserted nest, containing three dead birds 

 and five eggs. On another small island, frequented by 

 Common Terns, we found a third duck's nest with four newly- 

 hatched 3'oung, and five eggs chipped ; one 3'oung bird was 

 so strong that it scrambled out of the nest and swam out on 

 the lake like an old bird ; afourthnest we found on another tern 

 island, the female sitting so close on seven eggs that I almost 

 trod on her before she rose from the nest. These nests 

 all found without an3' special search being made show how 

 common the Tufted Duck is on the lake, and when returning 

 up the lake to Knniskillen we passed several broods swimming 

 after their mothers, one with ten or twelve, another w4th seven, 

 and a third with four little birds, all apparently the same size, 

 and onl3' two or three days old, which shows what late breeders 

 these ducks are, even later than the Mergansers. 



