294 SCOLOPACIDiE. 



At mid-winter the dunlin has been shot at a small pond in the 

 county of Wexford, several miles inland from the sea.* Birds 

 of various species wounded at the sea-side often fly inland. 



Breeding -haunts.^ — A few pairs were annually seen by a veteran 

 sportsman when hunting late in the season about the Brown 

 Moss, seven or eight miles from Belfast, but drainage and other 

 agricultural improvements have long since driven them from the 

 district. At Dromedaragh, on the Six-mile Water, a relative shot 

 one of these birds on the 14th of May, 1832, when the game- 

 keeper who accompanied him stated that he knew the species well 

 as one of the two kinds of " sand lavrock " which come to the 

 river at that season ; the other alluded to being the Totanus liypo- 

 leucos, of which two specimens were procured the same day. When 

 I visited the great deer-park, Glenarm, on the 10 th of June, 1834, 

 the circumstance of a bird of the latter species having flown from 

 the river, suggested inquiry from the gamekeeper respecting the 

 dunlin. He said that "a smaller kind" breeds in the adjacent 

 bogs, adding, that it is the same species which frequents the 

 sea- shore in flocks during winter. In the month of August that 

 year a flock of about thirty was seen by an ornithological friend 

 a few miles to the northward of the last-named place, on the 

 mountain above Glenariff, two miles from the sea : they were in 

 company with golden plover, and most probably were all indige- 

 nous birds bred in that quarter. A young bird, in the down, shot 

 on the banks of the river Maine, has come under my notice. 

 These localities are all in the county of Antrim. 



At the end of June 1834, I met with several dunlins, and shot 

 one of them in the breeding-haunts of the golden plover, in the 

 island of Achil, off the western coast, where they also doubtless 



* Mr. J. Poole. 



t Mr. J. R. Garrett favoured me with the following note: — 



" May 22nd, 1845. The dunlins are, I think, pairing. I saw two pair - this evening 

 at the Kinnegar (bordering Belfast Bay) about sunset, rising, each pair together, 

 from the ground high into the air almost perpendicularly, and then descending by 

 rapid sweeps. Some of them 'occasionally uttered a peculiar and continuous note 

 which reminded me of the bleating cry of the snipe, although much less distinct." For 

 some time after that date these birds were similarly noticed. There is no breeding- 

 haunt near to where they were thus observed. 



