CHOUGH 91 
A young bird taken from a nest on the Calf was brought 
up by the late Mr. Keene, of Castle Rushen, and proved 
a tame, amusing, and high-spirited pet, until it met the 
common fate of such favourites, by drowning itself in a 
water-barrel. Another from the same nest found its home 
for twelve years in a fisherman’s family. It was allowed 
complete liberty, always returning to the house at evening, 
and meeting its master with a great show of pleasure. 
This bird also was accidentally drowned. 
In the Migration Report for 1887 Mr. Clyne notes 
(7th October) at Langness, ‘Two or three Choughs passing 
west at twelve noon.’ 
The Chough is a resident in a number of isolated colonies 
on the mountains of the paleearctic region and the Atlantic 
sea-board of Europe (also Palma, in the Canaries). During 
the last hundred years it has disappeared from many British 
localities. It is still found in Wales, for instance on the 
Lleyn peninsula and the island of Bardsey (Aplin, Zool., 
1902, pp. 17, 108), but in England Sandwith and Whitbarrow 
are now deserted. Mr. Service thinks that one or two 
pairs survive in Wigtownshire. It still inhabits, even 
numerously, some of the Scottish islands, and is not, as 
was once supposed, entirely extinct in the Outer Hebrides. 
In Ireland it exists at Rathlin and some spots on the 
Antrim coast, but Mr. Ussher was not able to ascertain if 
it still, as in Thompson’s time, breeds in the Mourne 
Mountains. Round Donegal and western Ireland it is 
general, and is still found on the coast of Waterford. From 
Co. Dublin it has disappeared since 1852. 
The writer will much regret if his notice of the species 
as more frequent in Man than is perhaps generally sup- 
posed should have any effect towards its destruction. Its 
extinction is, it may be, inevitable before long in the course 
of natural law, but he would earnestly ask all professing 
