THE DUNLIN OR PURRE. 295 



had uests. Twice, they rose at the same moment with golden 

 plover, and alighted with them .* About thirty pair, it is said, 

 might be seen in a summer day in the bogs about Lough Conn, 

 and on the banks of the river Moy, county of Mayo.f The dun- 

 lin breeds at Portlough, county of Donegal. Of its nesting at 

 the sea- side in this country as it does in Scotland I have no posi- 

 tive evidence ; but when at Strangford Lough on the 21st June, 

 1832, our boatmen stated that although the species did not breed 

 on as many of the islands as formerly, they believed it still to do 

 so on Ogilby and Black Islets, from their having seen numbers 

 about them on the second day of that month. To both islets 

 we went, but no dunlins appeared. One of the boatmen — whose 

 word there was no reason to doubt — assured us that in the sum- 

 mer of 1830 their nests were very numerous on Ogilby islet ; 

 their eggs (he remarked) were laid on the gravel like those of the 

 ring dotterel, and though large for a bird of its size, were smaller 

 than those of the latter species. This boatman had, many years 

 before, seen a few dunlins' nests on Island Mahee in this lough, 

 a locality long since deserted by them. We found on this occa- 

 sion single nests of the ring dotterel, oyster-catcher, and little 

 tern, the eggs in all of which were laid on the bare gravel : several 

 nests of the common and Arctic terns were also discovered, but 

 they were composed either of Fuci or Zostera, according to the 

 islets on winch they were situated. 



Mr. J. Poole has made the following good observations on this 

 species : — " Dunlins are by no means shy at night, when one may 

 nearly walk up to them without their being alarmed. When 

 scattered along the shore by the tide edge, they are constantly 

 forming themselves into little knots of three or four in their 



* It is remarked by Mr. Macgillivray, that " about the middle of April the purres 

 betake themselves to the moors in the northern parts of Scotland, and in the larger 

 Hebrides, where they may be found scattered in the haunts selected by the golden 

 plovers, -with which they are so frequently found in company that they have obtained 

 the name of plovers' pages." — Audubou's Ornit. Biog., vol. iii. p. 581. Macgillivray 

 gives in that work an interesting account of the species in Scotland, as Audubon does 

 in America. 



t Mr. B. Ball. 



