The Irish Naturalist 



Juiie, 



The Lesser Redpoll was found nesting near Lough Key, 

 and though its breeding-range in Ireland is a wide one, I 

 notice it here as a species that easily escapes observation. 



The ducks which make these lakes their breeding-haunts 

 are numerous. Besides Mallards in abundance, we were 

 entertained by a female Shoveler, which disported herself near 

 our boat with agonized antics to allure us from her brood, in 

 a reedy bay of Lough Key ; elsewhere males ot this beautiful 

 species were seen on the same lake, having evidently with- 

 drawn from matrimonial cares, as they do when the females 

 are hatching. 



The Tufted Duck is the species most in evidence on these 

 lakes, and its increase within recent memory has been 

 marked. New as it is among the breeding birds of Ireland, 

 it had become so numerous on Lough Key in 1896, that at 

 least ten of these ducks might be counted on any part of its 

 waters. The nests are to be found in June on all the islands, 

 and on Lough Arrow we found them in dense clumps of 

 rushes on a grassy peninsula, with cattle grazing between 

 them. The completed clutch was generally covered with a 

 veil of dusky down that concealed the eggs. I visited a similar 

 breeding-ground of the Tufted Duck on an island in Lough 

 Gara in 1901. 



Mergansers add conspicuously to this bird-population, and so 

 do the Cormorants, notwithstanding efforts to reduce them 

 in the interests of fishing. I saw thirty of these birds 

 together on a stony island in Lough Key in 1896. They 

 probably represented broods that had quitted neighbouring 

 nests with their parents. On an island in this lake a colony 

 of Cormorants have long bred, in ash trees from 30 to 40 feet 

 high. Their nests here, as on Lough Tawnyard, Co. Mayo, 

 are more compact than the wide, basket-like structure of 

 Herons. We find the four species of Limicola^ nesting on 

 the lake-islands — the Ringed Plover, Common Sandpiper, 

 Redshank, and Dunlin — the last chiefly on Lough Gara, 

 where I saw numbers in June inhabiting a long, little- 

 frequented point. I also saw the eggs taken on Inch Island 

 in short herbage near the vSliore. Redshanks make a lively 

 outcry as they flit round over the intruder, or descend like 

 parachutes to divert attention from their nests. 



