192 SCOLOPACID.E. 



whence the eggs were, several years, brought to Mr. E. Davis, 

 jun., of Clonmel ; it lays there about the 20th of April. A nest 

 containing young birds was observed on a mountain about twelve 

 miles from Tralee, in or before 1837.* Mr. E. Chute (writing 

 in March 1846) reported three nests to have been discovered one 

 day in a small retired bog at Caragh Lake, in the same county ; 

 and that he had often seen the birds in summer, on the boggy 

 mountains of Kerry, though he had never found their nests. 



Although the curlew thus breeds in various parts of the coun- 

 try — and in many more places than those named it must do "so — 

 the native-bred birds, in my opinion, form a very small portion of 

 the multitudes which frequent our shores. The only notes before 

 me, which bear upon the species congregating for departure north- 

 ward, relate to the unusual circumstance, that on the 9th of May, 

 1832, an immense flock was seen in a field adjoining the southern 

 shore of Belfast Bay; and that, on the 19th of the same month, 

 a flock of about a hundred was observed in a wheat-field on the 

 opposite shore. At this period, our native birds are chiefly in their 

 breeding haunts. 



To some sporting friends, curlews have been known, for the 

 last twenty years, to breed annually in numbers on the mountains 

 above Ballantrae, in Ayrshire. On the 12th of August, 1839, I 

 myself saw a number of young birds about their breeding haunts 

 there ; but did not hear, from either young or old, the alarm-cry 

 or whaap, though both were calling a good deal in their other 

 note — courlieu, which, on the wild moor, is sweetly pleasing to 

 the ear. Curlews breed in quantity in the mountain tracts, ten 

 to fifteen miles farther inland, though these cannot be called 

 " retired." Here their eggs are much sought after, and carried off; 

 and the young frequently fall victims; their height rendering 

 them such conspicuous objects, that they can with little difficulty 

 be discovered. An ornithologist, under whose notice they came, 

 at the end of April 1844, on the hills above Ballochmorrie, where 

 they were breeding, remarked to me how very different were their 



* Mr. T. F. Neligan. 



