THE WATER OUZEL. 
119 
selected for nidification, in the neighbourhood of Belfast, three 
were in the fissures of rocks close to the finest cascades of onr 
mountain streams. One (in 1832) was at the side of the Cave- 
hill waterfall, the highest in the extensive parish in which the 
town just named is situated; the brood duly appeared; and 
five or six birds, old and young, were often, through the autumn, 
seen in company about the place. Another was tastefully built 
on a niche near the summit of a waterfall of 30 feet in the Crow 
glen, the rock directly above rising to such an elevation as to 
render it inaccessible. Here the nest was very large, formed of 
moss, and of the regular domed structure, upon which the spray 
from the cascade seldom ceased to beat, the water flowing over 
the rock being only about two feet distant. This circumstance, 
however, apparently caused the desertion of the nest, as it was aban- 
doned before the production of a brood ; it was not completed 
until the 20th of April, upon which day one of the birds was for 
some time observed pulling the growing moss off the moist rocks 
to add to the structure, while the other remained idle at the base 
of the cascade. During a flood, the water would have fallen in 
a sheet over the nest, and left it uninjured. On the 27th of 
April, in a subsequent year, a nest containing young was ob- 
served at the side of a rock bordering a mountain stream, above 
the surface of which it was elevated only a foot ; the lining con- 
sisted of the dried stalks of grasses, and a few leaves of trees. In 
the hole of a wall beside an artificial fall of the river Lagan, 
another was placed. Throughout the breeding season of 1832, a 
pair of these birds frequented a dark shed erected over a large 
mill-wheel of nearly forty feet diameter, at Wolf-hill, where it was 
presumed they had a nest. Their appearance, perching on the 
arms of the wheel, and again emerging from this gloomy abode, 
often caused surprise, more especially when they sallied forth 
from between the arms of the gigantic wheel in motion, a 
state in which it was almost constantly. 
The last nest of this species which came under my notice, was 
observed, at the end of May, 1842, near a cascade of Carnlough 
river (county of Antrim), above the great fall. It was very large. 
