Mr. W. Thompson on the Birds of Ireland. 415 



merits. Those uhich come within the hours already men- 

 tioned very rarely alight ; but when a flock arrives during the 

 day it occasionally does so, apparently as if it had flown from 

 a gi'eater distance than the earlier comers^ and required rest 

 and food before proceeding further. The number of birds that 

 come in this course is not very great. The average of five or 

 six flocks seen in a morning may consist of about 250 indivi- 

 duals ; the greatest number ever seen in one day may have 

 amounted to 1500; and those altogether seen throughout the 

 migratory period may be estimated at about 15,000. Of my 

 three informants, two live in the district over which the star- 

 lings fly, and consequently have had daily opportunities of 

 seeing them in their season (one indeed has done so for the 

 last half-century), and the other was in the habit of going to 

 the place every morning in the hope that the flocks would 

 pass over within shot, which they often did. In only one in- 

 stance did any of these persons see starlings return this way 

 in spring, namely, on the 13th of March, when a flock ap- 

 peared passing north-eastward, in the direction whence they 

 come in autumn* : — on the 23rd of that month, a flock con- 

 sisting of sixty was once observed by myself returning in 

 this course. 



These birds very rarely stop anywhere in the vicinity of 

 Belfast on their southward migration ; but a low lying tract of 

 marshy meadows, when flooded by excessive rain, has occa- 

 sionally tempted the latest comers to remain a few days, and 

 till the end of December 1S33, a flock of about 200 frequented 

 a disti-ict at the base of the mountains three miles from the 

 town. The only instance in which one of the shore-shooters 

 before mentioned met with these birds about the bay in winter, 

 was some years ago during heavy snow after Christmas, when 

 they appeared in immense flocks. So numerous Mere they, 

 that some of the little grassy patches rising above the ooze 

 near the shore could not contain them, and a portion of the 

 flock kept hovering above their more fortunate brethren who 

 had found a resting-place. On such petty islets of green- 

 sward or on heaps of" sleech-grass" {Zostera marina) only did 



* The autumnal flights of these birds can be traced as coming from Scot- 

 land. Capt. Fayrer, K.N., in a letter dated Portpatrick, Oct. 2.3, 1831, and 

 published in the Proceedings of the Zoological Society of London, remarks, 

 that " very large flocks of starlings have arrived within tlie last few days. 

 'J'hey start before sunrise and steer to the southward." I have had circum- 

 stantial evidence of this fact myself, as some years ago, when shooting at the 

 latter end of October about Ballantrae, in Ayrshire, flocks of these birds 

 were numerous, where subsequently, from the 12th of August to the middle 

 of September, a very few individuals 011I3, wliich had their nestling-places in 

 the neighbourhood, were to be met with. 



