402 HIRTJNDINHLE. 



pitous banks, which, in the wildest and most secluded localities, 

 rise in picturesque beauty above the river or the lake, as to the 

 stratum of sand which overlies the quarry, or to the sand-pit, 

 where the respective operations [of quarrying for stone or exca- 

 vating for sand are daily in progress. 



A colony of these birds annually resorts to the banks of a 

 spacious sand-pit within a mile of Belfast, and close to the old 

 Malone road. In consequence of the sand being in such request 

 here for building purposes, they have the labour of making entirely 

 new burrows for their nests at least once, and occasionally twice, 

 in the season. So much is this sand required for building, that, 

 although the perforation made by the bird, will, where the material 

 is soft, sometimes extend five feet inward, I have known the bank 

 colonized by it, required for use before the first brood had escaped; 

 when the labour of forming a second burrow in the same season 

 was commenced. The following details respecting this locality 

 may be given : — 



On the 29th of April, 1832, a friend remarked, that the sand-martins had made 

 thirty-two hurrows in this place, and that about three days afterwards, two more ap- 

 peared : he observed the birds employed in carrying hay and feathers into them. 

 When visiting this place on the 18th of September of the same year, I reckoned 

 seventy of their perforations. 



May 18, 1833. — On the south side of the Malone sand-pit, the sand-martins 

 have, since their arrival this season, made above eighty holes towards the top of the 

 bank, some of them not more than two inches apart, although there is abundance of 

 room ; so much indeed, that the colony does not occupy more than one-fiftieth part of 

 the banks suitable for their nests. In this locality, where the birds have a choice of 

 banks from thirty to forty feet in height, and the sand is of a similar nature through- 

 out, they always select situations most out of the reach of enemies of all kinds. It 

 cannot therefore be said that " they exercise their propensity [for boring] without 

 reflection." — Macgillivray's Brit. Birds, vol. iii. p. 599. Where they have not 

 thus had a choice of locality, I have frequently seen their burrows subject to be 

 destroyed. 



This sand-pit, their chief haunt in the neighbourhood of Belfast, was entirely de- 

 serted by them in the summer of 1836 ; and from the progress of the excavation, 

 not a burrow of the preceding season remained to denote that the species had ever 

 been there. In 1837, I omitted to look after them, but in 1838, they were in num- 

 bers as usual. On visiting the locality on the evening of the 11th of May, I saw 

 not less than sixty flying about, and so many were giving utterance to their feeble 



