THE WATER-ltAIL. 323 



28th of September.* Late in the month of July 1831, a 

 brace of these birds were shot on their rising from a drain 

 contiguous to Ballydrain Lake, near Belfast, where the poor 

 victims had probably a nest. The gamekeeper at Tollymore 

 Park (Down) informed me that he saw the species in his neigh- 

 bourhoood during May 1 846, and believed it to be breeding, though 

 he could not find the nest. At Ballitore (Kildare) and Rox- 

 borough (Cork) Mr. R. Ball has met with the nests of the water- 

 rail; and the bird itself has been observed at the end of May 

 near Lough Conn t (Mayo) . The species is not uncommon about 

 Clonmel, where it breeds in deep wet bogs, and lays its eggs 

 about the beginning of May. J It is common and resident in the 

 county of Wexford, and called there the little waterhen.|| The 

 Rev. T. Knox considers this bird as abundant in the county of 

 Westmeath (but does not mention at what season), and has seen 

 it about Killaloe, on the river Shannon. 



Mr. Yarrell imagines there are more water-rails in Great 

 Britain in summer than in winter, and remarks that the bird 

 " has been killed three times in winter in Scotland, and several 

 times in Sussex, Kent, and Oxfordshire." With respect to 

 Ireland, I have occasionally been disposed to believe that there 

 must be an increase by migration to the number of water-rails 

 bred in the country ; that they arrive in autumn, remain 

 during winter, and depart northward in spring. The numbers 

 shot around Belfast in autumn and winter are not, I feel certain, 

 all bred in the district, though it is possible they may have 



* It differs from an old bird killed at the same place, two days afterwards, and 

 from the many adults which I have seen, hy having the entire under surface from the 

 lower part of the throat to the vent of a dull buffish colour, with irregular transverse 

 bands and markings of black. Some three or four plumes only on the flanks at each 

 side exhibit the white transverse bands on the black feathers, which, being numerous 

 in the adult bird, constitute its chief beauty. The spurs on the winglet of this young 

 bird (whose sex was not noted) are sharper than those of the very few adidt males 

 and females which I have examined. The smallest was on the handsomest male that 

 has come under my notice (killed March 15th), having the throat of a pure white, 

 and the irides of a hue between coral and orange-red. 



f Mr. Bent Ball; — who, when a boy, frequently found it in snares which he had 

 set for snipes in the neighbourhood of Youghal. 



+ Mr. R. Davis, Jim. || Mr. J. Poole. 



Y 2 



