164 
ANATIDiE. 
this species, containing two eggs, on the 6th of June. It was 
situated under a closely-matted briar \_Rubus] or rather mass of 
briars, on the sloping side of a hill, about thirty yards from high- 
water mark, and was very carelessly constructed, the materials 
being merely fragments of the decayed briar and withered herbage, 
with a few downy feathers. The eggs were almost wholly con- 
cealed by these substances. The pair of mergansers were flying 
about the island when we landed. We saw another pair on the 
Lythe Bock, but searched in vain for their nest/ - ’ 
A friend, boating on Lough Neagh, near Toome, about twenty 
years ago, saw one of these birds fly closely past him several 
times, and, on his landing upon a small island, he discovered its 
nest, containing many eggs. When I was at Shanes Castle, on 
the banks of this lake, on the 28th of July, 1833, a female 
merganser “ pushed out" from the shore with her six young, 
which were about the - size of three-weeks-old ducklings. The 
parent kept considerably ahead of her progeny, no doubt to 
induce them to follow with celerity, which they did for only a 
short way from the beach, and then collected into a close little 
group, displaying by their gestures the greatest affection towards 
each other : all this time the old bird continued to retreat. 
On the 29th of May, 1836, I again saw at Lough Neagh, but at 
the opposite side, three old birds. In these breeding localities 
I believe that the species remains permanently, and that the 
individuals seen upon the coasts, except in weather so severe as 
to drive them from inland waters to the sea, are migratory birds. 
They seem to frequent Belfast Bay chiefly when migrating south- 
ward in early winter and northward in early spring — thus to be 
of “ double passage — they are considered to be more common 
at these periods than in mid-winter. 
My notes on them here are : — March 1831, two killed. April 9, 
1838 ; two beautiful specimens shot in the bay, both in the plumage of 
Bewick’s red-breasted merganser, with two black stripes across the white 
on the wing ; a third was in company with them.* September 20, 1837 ; 
* Major T. Walker remarked in a letter to me respecting Bewick’s figure, that it 
does not represent the crest as this usually appears. In birds which he had living, 
