150 
MERULIDiE. 
some paces in advance, it was amusing to see two ring-ouzels pur- 
suing him, and approaching so near as to strike the air violently 
within a few inches of his head ; their loudest cries being at the 
same time uttered. Many an earnest and expressive look the dog 
gave towards me, as if desirous of advice in his extremity, but 
finding it in vain, he at length ran up to me, when the birds, 
nothing daunted, followed, and gave myself as well as two friends 
who were with me, the same salute, flying so near that we could 
almost have struck them with our hands. At the beginning of 
the onset, a female bird appeared, as if inciting the males forward, 
and continued until they attained the highest pitch of violence, 
when like another heroine, she retired to a commanding eminence 
to be “ spectatress of the fight.” Had these birds been a pair 
protecting their young, or assuming similar artifice to the lapwing 
in withdrawing attention from its nest, (in which the ring-ouzel 
is said to be an adept,) the circumstance would be unworthy of 
notice, but the assailants were both male birds in adult plumage. 
The chase of the dog was continued a considerable way down the 
glen, and for about fifteen or twenty minutes. There were two 
or three pair there in that season, and one of their nests containing 
four eggs was discovered ; it was artfully placed beneath an over- 
hanging bank, whose mosses, growing naturally, concealed those 
of which the nest was composed from ordinary view. The usual 
building site is on the ground, and generally on the side either of 
the shelving or precipitous banks of our mountain-streams. 
Throughout Ireland in similar localities to those already 
noticed, we have met with the ring-ouzel from April to October, 
as in “ The Glens ,' ” Glenariff, &c., about Cushendall in Antrim ; 
about Bosheen mountain, and Lough Salt in Donegal ; at the 
head of the ravine between Sleive Donard, — the loftiest of the 
mountains of Mourne in Down, rising nearly three thousand 
feet above the sea, which washes its base, — and the mountains 
to its north-west ; on the heights of Carlingford mountain 
in Louth, where the beautiful flowers of the rare Rhodiola 
rosea at the same time met the eye ; about Achil Head, one 
of the most westerly points of Mayo ; and on the high rocky hills 
