THE DUNLIN OR PURItE. 293 



When an opportunity presents itself, a little difference may, how- 

 ever, be observed in their haunts. While the banks are covered 

 at high water, the ring-dotterels occupy a higher stratum than the 

 other, preferring the dry gravel, and the dunlins keep near the 

 water's edge : as the banks become exposed by the ebb, the latter 

 are busily engaged feeding, while the ring-dotterels, motionless as 

 statues, still maintain their " high position." 



Until the beginning of April, dunlins continue in multitudes in 

 the bay, but then commence taking their departure northward to 

 breed ; at the end of that month or the beginning of May, they 

 again appear in great numbers, consisting, as I believe, of birds 

 which, having spent the winter farther to the south, come hither 

 on migration northwards. They occasionally remain congregated 

 when the season is far advanced — even until the end of May, 

 which the whimbrels also do. After the great body has departed, 

 the shores of the bay may sometimes be traversed in vain for even 

 a solitary bird, or at most some poor " pensioner," who has lost a 

 leg, or been otherwise wounded, may be seen. 



The dunlin keeps generally to the sea-side in the north-east of 

 Ireland, where on the oozy banks left bare by the tide (in Larue, 

 Belfast, and Strangford Loughs) food is at all times abundant.* 

 It is a regular night-feeding bird, in darkness, as well as by 

 moonlight. It occasionally frequents the river Lagan so far as 

 the tide flows. When at Toome and Maghery, on the borders 

 of Lough Neagh, at the end of September, I have observed 

 small flocks, and have no doubt the species is constantly about 

 this lake, except in the breeding-season. Birds believed to be 

 dunlins have been seen by the Rev. T. Knox in summer on the 

 shores of Lough Derg (an expansion of the Shannon) ; — in the 

 neighbourhood of which they had not improbably been bred. 



* The contents of a few stomachs of birds killed at various times were minute 

 univalve Mollusca — the small Littorhnce, Rissoce, $~c. Having remarked that a 

 particular species of larva constitutes a great portion of the food of the dunlin and 

 others of the smaller Grallatores which feed on the Zosteru-hauks of Belfast Bay, 

 I submitted some obtained in July to the examination of A. H. Haliday, Esq., who 

 pronounced them to be "the larvae of a Chironomus, perhaps C. plumosus." 



