36 
ANATIDiE. 
Wild geese are not seen about Belfast flying northward to- 
wards their breeding haunts in spring, as they are southward, in 
autumn and winter, toward their quarters for the latter season. 
Their line of flight, like that of most other migratory birds appearing 
in the north of Ireland, is quite different according as they proceed 
north or south. 
The bean goose frequents annually, in winter, the bogs about 
Dromedaragh and Clough, county of Antrim, from ten to twenty 
birds usually keeping together in flocks. Their appearing much 
on wing is considered to foretell an approaching storm long before 
it is denoted by any other means. Over the wilder and more humid 
parts of the northern counties generally, the species is found during 
winter. 
From an old man, one of the aborigines of the wild moun- 
tainous district of Monterlony, county of Tyrone, I have heard 
of various sporting and poaching exploits of the peasantry there, 
one of which was the practice of going out to the bogs in foggy, 
or, still better, snowy winter nights, to catch wild geese. The 
parties carried with them blazing torches of bog-fir, and the geese, 
attracted by the light, flew directly to it and were captured. 
A few years previous to 1842 (when the fact was communicated 
to me), a flock of from two to three dozen wild geese, believed to 
be of this species, on a snowy winter evening, about seven o'clock, 
flew towards a gas-lamp in Cecil-street, Limerick, around which a 
few of them were knocked down and captured.* In foggy nights I 
have heard godwits and other grallatorial birds flying through the 
glare of gas-light above Belfast for hours, apparently not knowing 
whither to go, and uttering their loudest cries all the time. 
It is well known that migratory and other birds often fly 
towards the lanterns of lighthouses, and are killed by striking 
against them. A newspaper paragraph, headed. Birds taken at a 
lighthouse in hazy weather , informs us that — “ It is very common 
for birds to flock about sea-lights at night, in certain states of the 
weather ; but we have not met with an occurrence to the same ex- 
tent as the following : — The Pentland Skerries lighthouse (Orkney 
Mr. R. Davis, juu. 
