204 ^'^^ Irish Naturalist. [August, 



full, the Quail called incessantly from midnight till twenty 

 minutes before sunrise, at which time, following the Fern-owl's 

 example, he ceased ; though the Grasshopper- warbler, who had 

 been similarly vociferous through the night, still reeled on 

 unwearied. This was in July, and it seems to me more than 

 probable that there was then a nest in the vicinity. 



A few months later a number of letters in the Field drew 

 attention to the fact that 1892 had been decidedly a Quail-year 

 in England ; but it was not till the next year, when a con- 

 siderably larger incursion took place, that the return of the 

 birds was at all generally noticed in Ireland. However, in 

 reading the communications on this subject forwarded by 

 different observers to the Irish Naturalist in 1893, I was 

 struck by the fact that several of them incidentally mentioned 

 reports of the Quail's having also been heard the year before : 

 so that the Quail-wave of 1892, if not a heavy one, would still 

 appear to have been widely distributed over the British 

 Islands. 



At Ballyhyland I found, as might have been expected, plenty 

 of Quails in the summer of 1893 ; but as far as I could ascer- 

 tain, they were strictly confined to the immediate vicinity of 

 the ground on which I had heard them in 1892. The Quails 

 were sometimes in grass-fields, sometimes in barley, and some- 

 times in potatoes ; one night a pasture -field in which I stood 

 seemed thick with Quails, emulously whistling all around me 

 in the faint light ; in the day-time also a few were sometimes 

 audible at the same spot ; but no other ground than that 

 occupied in 1892 appeared to contain a Quail. This I think 

 tends to show that our '93 visitation was merely a return in 

 increased force of the wave of '92. 



It is to the same ground, again, after a two-summers' absence, 

 that the Quail has returned in June, 1896. In fact it was in 

 crossing the very field (half pasture and half furze-knock) 

 where I first heard its note four years ago, that, as if again in 

 response to the song of my old friend the Nightjar, who was 

 strumming in the heath on one side, I heard in the grass on 

 the other a gentle ** quick- whip -it." It was an hour past sun- 

 down, and the bird was of course quite invisible on the ground. 

 I walked up to it, however, when it rose and skimmed for a 

 short distance, to drop again in the dry, dewless grass. This 



