68 



ANATID3:. 



observes : — " I have remarked the same instinct in the female 

 shelldrakes when sitting on their eggs. Although several feet 

 underground, they know to a moment when the tide has suffi- 

 ciently ebbed ; and then, and only then, do they leave their nest 

 to snatch a hasty meal on the cockles, &c., which they find on 

 the sands/'* 



Belfast Bay. — So soon as the young are able to accompany 

 their parents in their flight, shelldrakes are seen here. According 

 to ten years' observation by a wild-fowl shooter, reported to me 

 in September 1838, they appear regularly in August. In that 

 y{;ar, one was seen at the end of the third week ; about the last 

 day of the month, ten ; and two or three days afterwards three 

 more joined the party : they frequented one part of the Antrim 

 shore, about a mile from the town, for about a week, and a 

 limited portion of the opposite coast for a similar period ; — al- 

 though very wild, several of them were killed. On the 12th of 

 August, 1844, two young birds of the year were shot. Shell- 

 drakes habitually approach very near the beach. They are 

 observed throughout the winter months, and occasionally until 

 March. An old shooter has often remarked them in the bay in 

 spring, when the other Anat'ulce were chiefly gone. A small 

 flock of five, of which two or three were adult males, was seen so 

 late as the 1st of May, in 1849. They very rarely appear here in 

 large numbers ; but after severe frost and snow, about the end of 

 I'ebruary 1888, a flock consisting of not less than from seventy to 

 eighty birds appeared ; and afterwards, in similar weather, that 

 same season, not less than 200 were remarked together. At the 

 beginning of February 1842, a flock of fully one hundred was 

 seen within a mile and half of the town : on this occasion, as 

 well as for some time before and afterwards, the weather was mild. 

 All such flocks are, I consider, on migration to their breeding 

 quarters in more northern latitudes. Such, too, is Mr. Selby's 

 opinion with regard to still larger flocks which visit the Northum- 

 brian coast in early spring.f 



* 'Tour ill Sutherland/ vol. ii. p. 53. f Vol. ii. p. 290. 



