344 LARID^. 



cumstances as to weather, &c., as in the former years, only two 

 or three kittiwakes were seen during the day. An ornithological 

 friendj who spent part of that summer at Ardglass, on the Down 

 coast, remarked kittiwakes to be common there. They were abun- 

 dant around the Mew Island on the 9th of August, 1849.* 



This gull is occasionally obtained in winter in the north of 

 Ireland.f One, killed on the coast at Donagliadee, on the 27th 

 of November, 1834, and another found dead in a bog, ten miles 

 distant from the sea, on the 20th of January, 1837, came under 

 my inspection : both were young birds in the singular and hand- 

 some plumage so well represented by Bewick. I have seen an 

 adult bird shot in the river Lagan, above the bridge at Bel- 

 fast, on the 29th of January, 1845, J and another killed in the 

 bay in the middle of February 1846 : — the winter plumage of 

 the adult, like that of the immature bird, is peculiar, and has no 

 counterpart in our other British gulls. 



Isolated instances only of its occurrence in winter, as just 

 indicated, were known to me until 1849, when within the last 

 ten days of January, one old and two young birds w^ere shot in 

 Belfast Bay, and another old bird was found dead; — they were mere 

 skeletons, as kittiwakes procured at this season here have gene- 

 rally been. Only one contained in its stomach any food, which 

 consisted of the remains of several of the crustaceous genus 

 Idotea. Between the 20th of Tebruary and 5th of March that 

 year, ten birds, all adult, came under my notice ; three shot in 

 Belfast Bay ; three found dead on the beach near Holywood, and 

 with them a herring-gull ; all seeming to have died a natural death ; 

 two were procured at different inland places (one shot and the 

 other found dead), five miles in a direct line from the sea, or, if 

 they followed the windings of the river Lagan, nearly double 

 that distance ; — the two others were obtained near Ivirkcubbin, 



* Mr. J. R. Garrett. 



t Dr. Harvey remarksj in the ' Fauna of Cork,' that he has sometimes met with 

 it there in winter. 



X The ring rovmd the eye in this bird was blackish, instead of oiange-rcd, as iu 

 suniiner. 



