88 ANATlDiE. 



known to nie were a couple shot on the 2nd of that month, in 

 1842, Adult as well as young bhds are killed at this season; 

 and of the former there seems, relatively to the immature, a larger 

 proportion than in any other species of the Anatidce. Prom the 

 circumstance of pintails being cliiefly shot in the latter half of 

 the month of September, and early in October, I have been dis- 

 |)Osed to consider them on migration, in Kttle families ; five, six, 

 or seven birds being the most that are usually seen together. 

 On the 7th October, 1844, six of them and a wild duck were 

 killed at a shot from a swivel-gun ; — the whole flock annihilated 

 at one fell swoop. After this time, chiefly single birds, and these 

 rarely, are killed ; — generally in company with wigeon. The 

 name commonly applied to them by the wild-fowl shooters 

 is pintail wigeon. Severe weather seems to have no efl'ect in 

 increasing their numbers. The latest period at which I have 

 known them here was the 3rd of April (1848). The food con- 

 tained in the stomachs of tlu-ee individuals from this locality, 

 killed in January and February of diflerent years, was : — In the 

 first, portions of Zostera marina ; in the second and third, the 

 remains of soft vegetable matter, with the addition, in one, of 

 a few of the small univalve shell, Rissoa ulv<x ; in both were frag- 

 gments of stone, and, in the third, sand. Seeds and other 

 vegetable food were found in a bird killed on fresh water, at 

 Lough Neagh. The pintail is considered a very good bird for 

 the table. 



Audubon remarks, that the pintail is "scarcely nocturnal.'' 

 I once knew it to be shot on wing at the evening " flying-time'' 

 of wild-fowl, at " the bog-meadows," Belfast. A couple were 

 killed by Sir Wm. Jardine, feeding at dusk in some wet stubble 

 in company with mallard and teal. 



The pintail is pretty generally — though very sparingly in 

 numbers — distributed over the fresh-water lakes, large and small, 

 of this island. From Lough Neagh, and its little adjunct, Lough 

 Beg, it has been brought to me. About Tandragee (Armagli) it 

 has been shot. A few were taken every winter in the decoy at 

 l\Iountainstown, county Meath, the residence of the late Arthur 



