120 CHARADRIID^E. 



small flocks being seen on one day, from which a few birds were 

 killed by himself and his companion. Many might have been 

 obtained had the flocks been followed, as they were very tame 

 when sprung, and alighted again within thirty or forty yards. Oh 

 the 12th Feb. 1849, a flock of seven or eight birds was observed 

 there. The turnstone is a visitant to the Kerry coast;' 55 ' and at 

 Miltown Malbay, county Clare, numbers were observed in Sep- 

 tember 1837, in little parties of two or three together, which 

 admitted of a close approach, occasionally within ten or twelve 

 paces, t 



I am disposed to believe that the turnstone may breed in Ire- 

 land, though no proof can be offered. On June 25, 1836, my 

 friend Mr. Richard K. Sinclaire saw four of these birds (of which 

 one was adult, and the others young) shot from a flock of six, on 

 one of the islets of Strangford lough. It can hardly be supposed 

 that birds bred in a higher latitude would have migrated hither so 

 early as midsummer. Mr. J. V. Stewart, in a letter written in 

 Feb. 1837, stated, that although he had neither found the nest nor 

 eggs in the north-west of Donegal, he had most frequently killed 

 the turnstone there in the breeding season. Four have been 

 already mentioned as seen on the retired island of Lambay on the 

 22nd of May. On the the 11th of that month, in another year, 

 one was seen on the strand near Dublin. Other single individuals 

 have already been noticed as obtained in May and June ; but their 

 occurrence hardly affects the question. Mr. T. F. Neligan was 

 of opinion that this bird breeds in Kerry, from the circumstauce 

 of one which he shot at the end of May or beginning of June, 

 1837, containing on dissection an egg just ready for exclusion. 



Iu the present year, 1849, a correspondent remarked, on the 

 20th of May, in reference to the coast at Drogheda : — " Turn- 

 stones are still here. I shot two, in the most beautiful plumage 

 I ever saw, on the 16th." J At Strangford lough on the 3rd of 

 June, Mr. J. R. Garrett noted that " On the small island called 

 Gabbogh, lying between Kirkcubbin and Greyabbey, I had the 



* Mr. T. F. Neligan. f Rev. T. Knox. j Mr. R. J. Montgomery. 



