68 
ANATIDtE. 
observes : — “ I have remarked the same instinct in the female 
shelldrakes when sitting on their eggs. Although several feet 
underground, they know to a moment when the tide has suffi- 
ciently ebbed ; and then, and only then, do they leave their nest 
to snatch a hasty meal on the cockles, &c., which they find on 
the sands.”* 
Belfast Bay . — So soon as the young are able to accompany 
their parents in their flight, shelldrakes are seen here. According 
to ten years* observation by a wild-fowl shooter, reported to me 
in September 1838, they appear regularly in August. In that 
year, one was seen at the end of the third week ; about the last 
day of the month, ten ; and two or three days afterwards three 
more joined the party : they frequented one part of the Antrim 
shore, about a mile from the town, for about a week, and a 
limited portion of the opposite coast for a similar period ; — al- 
though very wild, several of them were killed. On the 12th of 
August, 1844, two young birds of the year were shot. Shell- 
drakes habitually approach very near the beach. They are 
observed throughout the winter months, and occasionally until 
March. An old shooter has often remarked them in the bay in 
spring, when the other Anatidm were chiefly gone. A small 
flock of five, of which two or three were adult males, was seen so 
late as the 1st of May, in 1849. They very rarely appear here in 
large numbers ; but after severe frost and snow, about the end of 
February 1838, a flock consisting of not less than from seventy to 
eighty birds appeared ; and afterwards, in similar weather, that 
same season, not less than 200 were remarked together. At the 
beginning of February 1842, a flock of fully one hundred was 
seen within a mile and half of the town : on this occasion, as 
well as for some time before and afterwards, the weather was mild. 
All such flocks are, I consider, on migration to their breeding 
quarters in more northern latitudes. Such, too, is Mr. Selby’s 
opinion with regard to still larger flocks which visit the Northum- 
brian coast in early spring.f 
* ‘ Tour in Sutherland,’ vol. ii. p. 53. 
f Yol. ii. p. 290. 
