88 
ANATIDjE. 
known to me were a couple shot on the 2nd of that month, in 
1842. Adult as well as young birds are killed at this season; 
and of the former there seems, relatively to the immature, a larger 
proportion than in any other species of the Anatidce. Prom the 
circumstance of pintails being chiefly shot in the latter half of 
the month of September, and early in October, I have been dis- 
posed to consider them on migration, in little families ; five, six, 
or seven birds being the most that are usually seen together. 
On the 7th October, 1844, six of them and a wild duck were 
killed at a shot from a swivel-gun ; — the wdiole flock annihilated 
at one fell swoop. After this time, chiefly single birds, and these 
rarely, are killed ; — generally in company with wigeon. The 
name commonly applied to them by the wild-fowl shooters 
is pintail wigeon. Severe weather seems to have no effect in 
increasing their numbers. The latest period at which I have 
known them here was the 3rd of April (1848). The food con- 
tained in the stomachs of three individuals from this locality, 
killed in January and February of different years, was : — In the 
first, portions of Zostera marina ; in the second and third, the 
remains of soft vegetable matter, with the addition, in one, of 
a few of the small univalve shell, Iiissoa ulvcv ; in both were frag- 
gments of stone, and, in the third, sand. Seeds and other 
vegetable food were found in a bird killed on fresh water, at 
Lough Neagh. The pintail is considered a very good bird for 
the table. 
Audubon remarks, that the pintail is “ scarcely nocturnal/'’ 
I once knew it to be shot on wing at the evening “ flying-time” 
of wild-fowl, at “the bog-meadows,” Belfast. A couple were 
killed by Sir Wm. Jardine, feeding at dusk in some wet stubble 
in company with mallard and teal. 
The pintail is pretty generally — though very sparingly in 
numbers — distributed over the fresh-water lakes, large and small, 
of this island. Prom Lough Neagh, and its little adjunct, Lough 
Beg, it has been brought to me. About Tandragee (Armagh) it 
has been shot. A few were taken every winter in the decoy at 
Mountainstown, county Meath, the residence of the late Arthur 
