302 
CORVIM. 
and feed on it, and have observed them feeding like rooks in a 
ploughed field.” I have myself observed these birds on the short 
pasture of the marine cliffs. It is further stated by my corres- 
pondent, that “ great numbers of choughs breed in the precipices 
over the lake in the Commeragh mountains, county of Waterford, 
about seven Irish miles from the sea, where they are very rarely 
molested, on account of building in almost inaccessible spots. 
Here the young were ready to fly on the 6th and 7 th of August, 
1836 : on the 28th of April, 1841, four of their eggs were pro- 
cured from this locality.” At the Saltee Islands, off the Wexford 
coast, and about Howth, near Dublin, they are often met with.* 
I have seen examples of the chough, which were killed at 
Portpatrick, Wigtonshire, and along the Ayrshire coast ; and have 
heard the cry of the species, in the evening, about the ruined 
castle at Ballantrae, in the latter county. In July, 1826, when 
in the valley of glaciers, on the south side of Mont Blanc, I was 
attracted by the well-known, though somewhat distant call of the 
chough, and on looking up, saw an immense flock wending its 
way towards the pinnacles or aiguilles of that “ monarch of 
mountains.” 
The call of the closely allied Pyrrhocorax pyrrhoeorax, Temm., 
likewise an inhabitant of the Alps, is unknown to me, but in the 
present instance, my attention was arrested by the similarity of the 
note to that of our native bird. This, to my ear, is very lively and 
pleasing, and cannot be mistaken for that of the jackdaw. The 
flight of the chough too is peculiar, though as in others of the 
Corvidce , the quills are much expanded, and give a deeply fringed 
appearance to the wing, as the bird flies overhead. A friend re- 
marks upon the flight as “ singularly waving ; they flap their 
wings, then sail forty or fifty yards, and so on gradually, until they 
alight.” 
Borlase, in his Natural History of Cornwall (p. 243, &c.), pub- 
lished in 1758, gives, in a quaint and attractive manner, a full and 
interesting account of this bird, which has often the prefix of 
Cornish to its name. 
Major T. Walker. 
