THE CHOUGH. 299 



Donegal, I saw many choughs and jackdaws in the month of June, 

 1832, and was told by the gamekeeper of the district, that they 

 never bred in company, or associated together there ; the nest of 

 the chough was stated by him to be placed so far within the clefts 

 of rocks, as to be difficult of access. In August, 1845, Mr. 

 Hyndman remarked that they were numerous about the rocks of 

 Tory Island. The nearest place to Belfast tenanted at present, or 

 within the last few years, by a pair or two of these birds, is a 

 range of marine cliffs, called the Gobbins, just outside the northern 

 entrance to the bay. Here on the 28th of May, some years ago, 

 a nest of young birds, which made known their proximity to 

 the summit of the rocks by their calls for food, was doomed to 

 perish, by a visitor to the place wantonly shooting both their 

 parents. In 1847, two pair bred there. When at Strangford 

 Lough, in June, 1846, I was credibly assured that the chough 

 breeds in Skatrick castle, and in an old castle on island Mahee. 

 There are no cliffs in that quarter. One of these birds, shot on 

 an island in Strangford Lough, in February, 1843, came under 

 my notice. That choughs will sometimes wander far from their 

 usual haunts, to a place in no respect suited to them, was 

 evinced on the 5th of March, 1836, when a pair appeared at Dun- 

 bar's Dock, Belfast, and one of them, in beautiful adult plumage, 

 was shot. That day and the preceding were very stormy : the 

 wind southerly. The stomach of the specimen procured was filled 

 with insect larvse. In that from Strangford were the remains of 

 such Crustacea, as are met with occasionally, " high and dry," upon 

 marine rocks, as Ligia oeeanica (small), Asetti, &c. ; there was 

 also some vegetable matter. 



with brown. The chough is of a restless, active dispositioa, hopping or flying about 

 from place to place ; it is also very shy, and can with difficulty be approached. 

 Temminck says, that the legs of this bird, before the moult, are of a dark colour ; 

 while Montagu affirms, that they are orange-coloured from the first. The young 

 which I examined, were ahout sis weeks old, and in them the bills were of a brownish 

 orange ; not of that brilliant colour which marks the adult bird, but certainly exhi- 

 biting enough of the orange to lead us to conjecture, that they would become completely 

 of that colour after the moult. The legs could uot be called ' orange-coloured,' for 

 although there was a tinge of that colour, yet the brown predominated. I should, 

 therefore, agree with Temminck, in stating the legs aud feet to be ' dark-coloured ' in 

 the young birds." 



