248 The Irish Naturalist. October, 



and on the water, and I was hoping that they would have 

 been successfully reared, but out of the fourteen birds only 

 three reached maturity, the others, before they were fledged, 

 being shot by Sunday shooting parties coming down the river 

 and estuar}^ from Ballina ; and although shooters on Sundays 

 incur a penalty of ;^5, yet no notice is taken of them by the 

 proper authorities in this part of the country. 



The Common Gull has also extended its breeding range 

 very much since 1855. The only breeding station then known 

 to me was I^ough Talt, a small lough in the Ox Mountains, in 

 the Co. Sligo, about twelve miles from Ballina. Visiting the 

 lough in May of that year, I met three pairs that had nests 

 on a little rocky islet. I found three from which the young 

 had flown — one with an addled q.%% — and saw several young 

 gulls flying about. However, a year or two after, the gulls 

 deserted the lough, in consequence of boats being placed on 

 it for the convenience of trout-fishers. This was all I knew 

 of the Common Gull's breeding haunts for many years after, 

 until I was told of their breeding on a bog lough at Glenmore, 

 near Crossmolina, Co. Mayo, but had no opportunity of verify- 

 ing the statement until the 17th of May, 1882, when in the 

 companj' of my friends. Dr. S. Darling and his brother, we 

 visited the bog and found the gulls breeding. Odd pairs had 

 nests on clumps, or rather islands of turf on small loughs, 

 while the chief haunt was a small lough studded over with 

 the stumps of trees, just over the surface of the water, on 

 which eight pairs of gulls had nests. Since then the gulls 

 have spread to I^oughs Conn and Cullen (where none were to 

 be seen fifteen years ago). Solitary pairs have nests on the 

 stony points of many of the islands, and a colony of ten or 

 fifteen pairs have nests on a small bushy island on I^ough 

 Cullen. 



The Arctic Tern some years ago was almost unknown in 

 Killala Bay, and I often, when visiting the Terns' breeding 

 haunt on the Inch, a little gravelly islet near Killala, shot 

 Terns, thinking they were the Atctic, but in every instance 

 the specimens proved to be the Common Tern {S. fluviatilis), 

 and it was not until Ma}^ 1877, that I got specimens of the 

 Arctic Terns. I visited the breeding haunt on the Inch, near 

 Killala, on 14th of June, 1895, and saw the Arctic in large 



