142 ANATID.E. 



were few wild clucks or teal ; coots were as usual busied diving, 

 but no grebes were visible, though looked for particularly all 

 round the edges of the lake and islands. On the 15th January, 

 1837, I observed a large flock of diving ducks here, about fifteen 

 of which were ¥. cristafa, in adult male plumage, and about the 

 same number old male pochards. It need hardly be remarked, 

 that a pocket telescope was in requisition on such occasions. 



The greater proportion of males th»n females of the tufted 

 duck, pochard, and scaup, in Belfast Bay, has been particularly 

 noticed by wild-fowl shooters, according to whom, the number of 

 male tufted ducks to females has been fully as four to one ; of 

 pochards, four or five to one ; and of scaups, nearly two males to 

 one female. Male wigeon, too, exceed the females in number, 

 but not as two to one. 



Tufted ducks are much less plentiful in this bay than scaups 

 and pochards, and in one season only were known to be as nume- 

 rous as golden-eyes. They are chiefly in little flocks of from 

 five to ten birds, so many as thirty or forty being very rarely asso- 

 ciated, and when so, generally mixed with other species ; on one 

 occasion so many as 200 were seen in company. At twilight they 

 fly, usually in little troops of from two to four, to feed on the sea- 

 banks left exposed by the tide. At high water, they, with the other 

 three species just named, occasionally approach the shore so near 

 as to be killed from it. When crossing the Long Bridge at Bel- 

 fast, on a frosty day at the end of January 1827, on my return 

 from shooting along the shore of the bay, a flock of seven or 

 eight ducks appeared on the river within shot of May's embank- 

 ment. By hastening to the place I succeeded in killing a couple, 

 which proved to be young birds of this species, with white feathers 

 bordering the bill, as in the scaup, but to a much less extent.* 

 This circumstance is mentioned on account of the alarm occa- 

 sioned by it, and which proved a useful lesson. I had no dog 

 with me, and, annoyed at seeing the dead birds floating down 

 the stream, offered a reward to any boy of a party playing 



* Old females, too, frequently exhibit white around the bill. ]\Ir. Yarrell men- 

 tions his having seen a little white on one old female. 



