TRANSPLANTATION OF BIVALVES. 59 



observed instances, of which I am tempted to give 

 notes, are perhaps suggestive ; but birds thus entrapped 

 — whether by marine or fresh-water bivalves — must 

 often be unable to carry away the molluscs to any 

 considerable distance, especially when the creatures 

 happen to close upon their bills. A dunlin with a 

 small cockle about the size of a hazel-nut clinging to 

 its bill was once found, near the estuary of the Moy, by 

 Mr. Robert Warren. It was seen to be making frantic 

 efforts to get rid of the shell, rising two or three yards 

 into the air and falling again, and after shaking its head 

 until exhausted, it lay with outstretched wings panting 

 on the sands.^ A bird of the same kind with a cockle 

 similarly attached, which had been picked up dead on 

 the Yorkshire coast, was forwarded to the offices of the 

 Field, in 1884, by Sir R. Payne-Gallwey.' Another 

 dunlin with a cockle upon its bill^ which got up from 

 the observer's feet and flew heavily away, was shot in 

 1891.^ A tern with a cockle fixed on the upper 

 mandible was once shot, on the sands at Morecambe 

 Bay, by Mr. Hancock, who has given an account, also, 

 of the capture, on Fenham Flats, of a peewit in a similar 

 plight, having a cockle firmly grasping its bill.* A 



caught by the tongue, " Daily News," October 5, 1892 ; racoons and 

 other animals are also said to have been entrapped by shell-fish. 



^ R. Warren, "Field," Ixiii. (1884), 447- 



^ •' Field," Ixiii. (1884), 385. 



' " Scottish Naturahst," 1891, p. 94. 



^ Hancock's "Catalogue of the Birds of Northumberland and 

 Durham," " Nat. Hist. Trans, of Northumberland and Durham," 

 vi. (1874), 142. 



