180 ARDEID^E. 



county of Wicklow, at a little lake or pond a quarter of a mile 

 from the sea-shore. A common heron was beside it ; but as the 

 fowler approached in a boat, this bird made its escape, and 

 the spoonbill remaining behind was killed. Another was shot 

 on the 12th of November of the same year, at Killag, on the 

 lake of Bally teigue, county Wexford. On August 25, 1845, I 

 was informed of a spoonbill having been " shot recently at 

 Youghal;" but no further particulars were supplied. On the 

 8th of October the same year one was killed very near that 

 town, and, like the specimen obtained in November 1843, was 

 received in a fresh state, by Mr. S. Moss, of Youghal, who 

 preserved them both : he considered them to be " immature from 

 having no yellow on the breast." Two spoonbills were seen near 

 the village of Castlegregory (Kerry), in November 1846, and 

 one of them wounded. It came into the possession of Mr. R. 

 Chute, who informed me of the circumstance, and added that it is 

 a young bird. 



The preceding notes inform us of the occurrence of the spoon- 

 bill in Ireland in eleven years within the present century ; and with 

 reference to the birds killed at Dromana no period is named. In 

 the successive years of 1840 and 1841, and of 1843, 1844, and 

 1845, the species appeared in this island. It is singular, that 

 winter should be the chief season of its visits. 



Major Thomas Walker (of Belmont, Wexford), who has met 

 with flocks of these birds when on shooting expeditions in 

 Hungary, remarked, in a letter to me, written in June 1846, 

 that — " The motions of the spoonbill are singular when a 

 number are standing in a line on the edge of a stream. They 

 keep streaking the bill sideways through the water, and the 

 movement is simultaneous; all the bills being directed up the 

 stream at once, and all down it at the same time." 



The spoonbill has been noticed as breeding annually in England 

 at an early period ; but for the last century, at least, it has been 

 only an occasional visitant to that country. The facts brought 

 forward here indicate its occurrence, perhaps as often as in 

 England, and much more frequently than in Scotland. Sir Wil- 



