300 CORYIDM. 



When on a tour with Mr. R. Ball in the summer of 1834 to the 

 west and south of Ireland, choughs were observed by us at Acini 

 Head, and the largest of the South Islands of Arran, &c, in the 

 west:* in the south, they were heard about the Lower .Lake 

 of Killarney, and seen at Cable Island, near Youghal. Other 

 parts of the coast of Cork are frequented by them. About the 

 cliffs at Ardmore, county of Waterford, they are said by Mr. R. 

 Ball to be numerous, and to congregate in the evening like jack- 

 daws before going to roost. Requiring two or three specimens for 

 friends, he one evening in July or August offered a man a shil- 

 ling each, for all that he would bring to him on the following 

 morning, when, at an early hour, the man duly appeared with 

 fourteen, and seriously apologised for the smallness of the number. 

 Col. Sabine has remarked, that they breed in the rocks at Bally- 

 bunian, on the coast of Kerry ; and the late Mr. T. I 1 . Neligan of 

 Tralee, in mentioning to me some years ago, that they were very 

 common about the marine cliffs of that county, stated, that 

 numbers built in the rocks of inland mountains, four or five miles 

 distant from the sea. The choice of such places is not rare in 

 Ireland. Some of the latest writers on British ornithology ap- 

 pear to think, that the chough never leaves the vicinity of the sea, 

 and in one work, it is stated, that the species is " never observed 

 inland," although Crow Castle has been noticed by Montagu as 

 one of its haunts ; this is situated in the beautiful vale of Llan- 

 gollen in North Wales, where the Lombardy poplar, spiring 

 above the other rich foliage around the picturesque village of the 

 same name, imparts, in addition to other accompaniments, quite 

 an Italian character to the scene. A pair of these birds were some 

 years since observed throughout the breeding-season, about a ruin 

 between Newtown-Crommelin and Cushendall, county of Antrim, 

 three miles distant from the sea : at Salagh Braes, a semicircular 

 range of basaltic rocks in the same county, and nearly twice that 

 distance from the coast, the chough builds. The gamekeeper at 

 Tollymore Park, county of Down, informed me in 1S36, that he 



* "Cornish choughs with red bills and legs," are noticed in O'Flaherty's ' H-Iar 

 Connaught," written in 1684, as frequenting Arranmorc, &c, p. 67. 



