166 ANATIDiE. 



where " it is the tirst of the Anatidce to appear in autumn, and the 

 last to depart in spring ; — being sometimes seen before the end of 

 August, and so late as the middle of May/^'^ Mr. R. Ball, 

 writing from Dublin on January the 16th, 1837, mentioned his 

 having procured three mergansers that day, the stomach of one of 

 which was enormous. The bird was gorged to the mouth with 

 sand-eels [Ammod^tes lancea), twenty-four of which were found 

 in it.t This species is considered rare at Wexford, where it is 

 called land harlan : a bird which came under examhiation here 

 was filled to the oesophagus with Crustacea. J In Waterford har- 

 bour, and at Dungarvan,§ on the coast of the same county, this 

 merganser has been obtained, but is considered rare, as it w-as also 

 in Cork harbour until the last few winters : during them, however, 

 Mr. R. Warren, jun., has observed flocks there regularly. On the 

 23rd of January, 1849, he shot a very fine old male as the bird was 

 fishing among some rocks at the opposite side of this harbour from 

 Cove; on being skinned, a young hake and a pipe-fish were found 

 in its cesophagus. Mergansers were more numerous than usual in 

 the winter of 1 849-50. On the 1 1th of January, in particular, be- 

 tween one and two hundred were seen on the water and on wing 

 at the back of Cove Island. They were very wild, and would not 

 admit of a boat approaching them within gun-shot. To Bantry 

 Bay, and the bays and harbours on the coast of Kerry, they are 

 regular winter visitants : || — several have been killed in the first- 

 named locality by my informant.^ Inland, they are common on 

 the lakes of Galway in winter, and about Lough Conn, in the ad- 

 joining county of Mayo, they were often seen on sale by Mr. Bent 

 Ball in autumn, having been killed as " flappers " (before well 

 able to fly), in the neighbourhood of their birth-places. 



* Mr. 11. J. Montgomery. 



t Audubou remarks : — " Gluttonous in the extreme, it frequently gorges itself so 

 ,is to be miable to rise. I have several times seen one of them obliged to eject a 

 great part of the contents of its stomach and gnllet before it eould tly off, and some 

 which I have kept a day or two in confinement have died in consequence of swal- 

 lowing too many fishes" (vol. v. p. 93). 



X Mr. Poole. 



§ "Whence an adult male was sent me, February 11, 1838." — R. Davis, jun. 



II Mr. R. Chute. ^ Mr. G. Jackson. 



