338 PHALAROPIDjE. 



were obtained about ten days afterwards : on these being shown 

 to a " shore- shooter," he remarked, that he had seen a flock 

 of similar birds in the bay, but from their being so small he did 

 not think them worth firing at. It was probably about this time 

 that a phalarope in the collection of John V. Stewart, Esq., of 

 Rockhill, Letterkenny, was procured in the north-west of Donegal. 

 A letter from that gentleman written in February 1837, men- 

 tioned that his specimen was shot on the sandy beach near 

 Dunfanaghy, late in the autumn a few years previously, after very 

 rough weather. A pair appeared, but they were so very shy, that 

 only the one could be approached within gun-shot. In the pos- 

 session of Wm. Massey, Esq., of the Pigeon-house Fort, Dublin 

 Bay, I saw two phalaropes which were shot there by that gentle- 

 man, on different occasions in the autumn of 1831 : about the 

 same time, three others were seen together in the bay, and one 

 of them killed.* It was perhaps at this period, also, that 

 Mr. T. W. Warren (as he informed me a few years afterwards) 

 shot a phalarope from Kingstown pier, Dublin Bay. Its beauty, 

 together with the animation and gracefulness of its motions, 

 attracted his admiration and desire to possess it, and he killed 

 the bird with a rifle loaded with single ball. 



At the time that Ireland was visited by so many phalaropes, 

 there was a similar migration of them to England. From Mr. 

 Heysham, of Carlisle, we learn that : — " On the 31st of October 

 [1831], a grey phalarope was killed about three miles from the 

 Solway Firth. * * * Three other specimens have occurred in this 

 part of the county during the same month, namely, two on the 

 coast not far from Allonby ; the other in the vicinity of Bowness."t 

 One was stated in the ' Taunton Courier ' to have been shot in 

 that neighbourhood in December 1831. 



Early in the morning of the 2nd of September, 1833, Dr. J. 

 D. Marshall saw from the road, on which he was driving at the 

 time, at the Glynn, near Lame (co. Antrim), what he believed to 



* Rev. T. Knox. f 'Philosophical Magazine,' 1832, p. 85, 



