THE CHOUGH. 
299 
Donegal, I saw many choughs and jackdaws in the month of June, 
1832, and was told by the gamekeeper of the district, that they 
never bred in company, or associated together there ; the nest of 
the chough was stated by him to be placed so far within the clefts 
of rocks, as to be difficult of access. In August, 1845, Mr. 
Hyndman remarked that they were numerous about the rocks of 
Tory Island. The nearest place to Belfast tenanted at present, or 
within the last few years, by a pair or two of these birds, is a 
range of marine cliffs, called the Gobbins, just outside the northern 
entrance to the bay. Here on the 28th of May, some years ago, 
a nest of young birds, which made known their proximity to 
the summit of the rocks by their calls for food, was doomed to 
perish, by a visitor to the place wantonly shooting both their 
parents. In 1847, two pair bred there. When at Strangford 
Lough, in June, 1846, I was credibly assured that the chough 
breeds in Skatrick castle, and in an old castle on island Mahee. 
There are no cliffs in that quarter. One of these birds, shot on 
an island in Strangford Lough, in February, 1843, came under 
my notice. That choughs will sometimes wander far from their 
usual haunts, to a place in no respect suited to them, was 
evinced on the 5th of March, 1836, when a pair appeared at Dun- 
bar’s Dock, Belfast, and one of them, in beautiful adult plumage, 
was shot. That day and the preceding were very stormy : the 
wind southerly. The stomach of the specimen procured was filled 
with insect larvae. In that from Strangford were the remains of 
such Crustacea, as are met with occasionally, “ high and dry,” upon 
marine rocks, as Ligia oceanic a (small), Aselli, &c. ; there was 
also some vegetable matter. 
with brown. The chough is of a restless, active disposition, hopping or flying about 
from place to place ; it is also very shy, and can with difficulty be approached. 
Temminck says, that the legs of this bird, before the moult, are of a dark colour ; 
while Montagu affirms, that they are orange-coloured from the first. The young 
which I examined, were about six w r eeks old, and in them the bills were of a brownish 
orange ; not of that brilliant colour which marks the adult bird, but certainly exhi- 
biting enough of the orange to lead us to conjecture, that they would become completely 
of that colour after the moult. The legs could not be called ‘ orange- coloured,’ for 
although there was a tinge of that colour, yet the brown predominated. I should, 
therefore, agree with Temminck, in stating the legs and feet to be ‘ dark-coloured ’ in 
the young birds.” 
