159 



THE SMEW. 



White Nun. 



Red-headed Smew and Lough Diver (females and young males). 



Mergus albellus, Linn. 



Is a very rare winter visitant to the north ; but an an- 

 nual one to some of the central parts of the island. 



A SIMILAR difference prevails, not only between Scotland and 

 England comparatively, but between the northern and southern 

 parts of the latter country. Sir WilHam Jardine remarks : — "■ Li 

 Scotland it can only stand as an occasional straggler,"^ and Mr. 

 Selby observes : — " In severe winters the smew is not uncommon 

 in the eastern and southern parts of England : "^ * "^ in the north- 

 ern counties it is always of rare occurrence."t Montagu, in the 

 Supplement to his work, says of the smew : — '' This is by far the 

 most plentiful species of merganser that frequents our coasts and 

 fresh-waters in the winter •" — it will be remembered that he wrote 

 from Devonshire. 



In the north of Ireland, this bird is instead " by far the rarest" 

 of the three species of Mergus. To Mr. Templeton it was 

 altogether unknown as a visitant to the island ; nor was it 

 recorded as such until I noticed it in the ' Proceedings of the 

 Zoological Society of London' in 1834. The first specimen 

 which came under my inspection was a beautiful adult male, shot 

 about the Long Strand, Belfast Bay, in the winter of 1829-30. 

 About the last day of Eebruary, 1832, two were seen on a river 

 called the Six-mile Water, near Doagh, county of Antrim, and 

 one (an old male) killed. In August 1836, the gamekeeper at 

 ToUymore Park (Down), described a bird to me which he had 

 shot on the river there in winter about five years previously, that 

 must have been a female smew in adult plumage. A specimen 

 obtained about this period was said to have been killed in the 



* ' Brit. Birds,' vol. iv. p. 175. t Vol. ii. p. 386. 



