THE TURTLE DOVE. 17 



Mr. R. Chute, writing to me in Feb. 1846, remarked that he 

 knew of five turtle doves having been killed in the county of Kerry. 

 He had not seen any for the preceding two or three years, but 

 had shot one late in the month of November, as it was feeding in 

 company with a flock of sparrows in the village of Blennerville. 

 A second was obtained about Christmas in a garden at Dingle. 

 The others occurred in summer ; a pair bred at Derraquin in that 

 county. Turtle doves (as remarked by Mr. Poole in 1847) seem 

 nearly entitled to be termed regular summer migrants to the 

 south of the county of Wexford. This observation is interesting, 

 as from the circumstance of the species being most common in 

 the south-eastern counties of England, where it appears every 

 summer, we should expect that in Ireland, Wexford would be 

 more frequently visited than the more western parts. 



At the period of publication of Mr. Macgillivray's first volume 

 of British Birds, in 1839, he was not aware of the occurrence 

 of the turtle dove in Scotland; but in Sir William Jardine's 

 third volume on the same subject, which appeared in 1842, 

 instances are mentioned of single individuals having been obtained 

 in Aberdeen, Perth, and Dumfries-shires. We are subsequently 

 informed of its being " sometimes, but only rarely met with as 

 far north as Moray-shire,"* and that it has once been shot in 

 Sanday, one of the Orkney Islands. t 



During a tour through Holland and Switzerland, in the sum- 

 mer of 1826, the turtle dove often came under my notice, and in 

 the former country was very tame. When I was proceeding in 

 H.M.S. Beacon from Malta to the Morea in April 1841, one 

 of these birds flew on board on the 24th, and another on the 25th ; 

 — they each rested for a short time on the rigging, and then con- 

 tinued their flight northwards. On the 26th, four came from 

 the south, two of them singly, the others in company; one 

 only alighted on the ship : it was caught in the evening when 

 asleep. Throughout the 27th many were observed coming from 



* St. John's Tour in Sutherland vol. ii. 159. 



f Hist. Nat. Orcadensis, p. 55. (1848). 

 VOL. II. C 



