THE POCHARD. 183 



numerous on this lake, at tlie same time with quantities of wigeon, 

 tealj and wild ducks. On the 8th of December, 1837, 1 saw eight 

 pochards, which, with three more, had been killed at a shot on some 

 water near Hillsborough, county Down. Seven of these were 

 adult males, the other was a female ; of ten shot in Belfast Bay on 

 the 3rd of January that year, nearly all were likewise old male birds, 

 1 have remarked that a singularly large proportion of the pochards 

 visiting this quarter are so; and a wild- fowl shooter, who has 

 killed a great number of them at all periods of the winter in 

 many years, considers that there were at least four males, old and 

 young, to one female. 



At Clay Lake, a small sheet of fresh-water, distant about a mile 

 from Strangford Lough, I am credibly informed that a pair of 

 pochards bred in the summer of 1849, as a pair had also done 

 about two summers previously. The species has occasionally 

 been known for many years past to breed in Norfolk, as a few do 

 annually in Holland. 



The pochard visits the sea- coast on each side of the island 

 and, also, the inland w^aters pretty generally. My correspond- 

 ents residing near the localities about to be named, consider it as 

 follows : — rare in the north-west of Donegal, common in Dublin 

 Bay, and not uncommon in Wexford and Waterford harbours. 

 In Cork harbour it is not rare, but is so in Kerry, where it 

 has been seen on Lough Beg, near the shores of Brandon Bay.''^ 

 It has been killed on the coast of the island of Achil.t The 

 species appears every winter on the rivers and fresh-water lakes of 

 Connaught rather plentifully, but in detached flocks, consisting of 

 from three or four to ten or a dozen birds. J "Pochards, tufted 

 ducks, and golden-eyes, as well as mallards, wigeon, and teal, are 

 in flocks on the Shannon all the winter.''' || 



Mr. Selby remarks of the pochard, that " in the northern parts 

 of England and in Scotland it is comparatively of rare occurrence, 

 either from the deficiency of some particular aquatic plants and 



* Mr. K. Cliute ; — tlie late jNIr. T. 1*\ Ncligan markt'd it witli doubt as a 

 visitant to Kerry. 



t Lieut. Reynolds, R.N., 18:34. t ^^^- G- Jaekson. || Kev. T. Knox. 



