THE SHOVELLER. 
71 
though the males — like those mentioned by Montagu — were bold 
and gallant in spring, and manifested every disposition to do so. 
The manners of the species on such occasions are well described by 
Mr. Selby, who gives a full and excellent account of the bird 
generally. Mr. Yarrell offers a good hint to persons wishing to 
breed them, mentioning the method successfully adopted at the 
Zoological Garden, Regent's Park, London (p. 143). Colonel 
Hawker, too, in his f Instructions to Young Sportsmen/ supplies 
some information on this bird, which he calls burrough duck, and 
tells the way to keep the young.* 
One pair of shell-ducks out of several lately kept by Mr. Trum- 
bull of Beechwood, Malahide, bred three years successively. The 
first year there were eight young, all of which were brought to 
maturity ; the next, the whole brood was carried off the night 
after being hatched ; the third, they were brought to as successful 
an issue as in the first year. The owner of these birds, observing 
the old ones apparently looking about for a breeding-place in a 
yard, made a burrow there, like that of a rabbit, and in it the nest 
was formed each year.t 
I was told in Islay (January 1849), that the shelldrake is com- 
mon and breeds there ; but leaves the island (or part known to 
my informant) in autumn, and returns again about the last week 
of December. The oystercatcher is -said to do the same. 
THE SHOVELLER. 
Blue-winged Shoveller. 
Sjoathulea clypeata , Linn, (sp.) 
Anas ,, „ 
Is a regular winter visitant to some parts of Ireland. 
My notes bear witness to its presence in different localities on 
the Down coast, in three successive winters — 1835-36-37 — and 
again in 1839. Birds of all ages occur in fair proportion. Two, 
which I obtained, were killed in Belfast Bay in the winter of 
* The matter is all copied into Yarrell’s work. f Mr. T. W. Warren. 
