166 
ANATIDiE. 
where “ it is the first of the Anaticla to appear in autumn, and the 
last to depart in spring ; — being sometimes seen before the end of 
August, and so late as the middle of May.”* Mr. E. Ball, 
writing from Dublin on January the 16tli, 1837, mentioned his 
having procured three mergansers that day, the stomach of one of 
which was enormous. The bird was gorged to the mouth with 
sand-eels ( Ammodytes lancea ), twenty-four of which were found 
in it.J* This species is considered rare at Wexford, where it is 
called land harlan ; a bird which came under examination here 
was filled to the oesophagus with Crustacea. J In Waterford har- 
bour, and at Dungarvan,§ on the coast of the same county, this 
merganser has been obtained, but is considered rare, as it was also 
in Cork harbour until the last few winters : during them, however, 
Mr. E. Warren, jun., has observed flocks there regularly. On the 
23rd of January, 1849, he shot a very fine old male as the bird was 
fishing among some rocks at the opposite side of this harbour from 
Cove; on being skinned, a young hake and a pipe-fish were found 
in its oesophagus. Mergansers were more numerous than usual in 
the winter of 1 849-50. On the 1 1th of J anuary, in particular, be- 
tween one and two hundred were seen on the water and on wing 
at the back of Cove Island. They were very wild, and would not 
admit of a boat approaching them within gun-shot. To Bantry 
Bay, and the bays and harbours on the coast of Kerry, they are 
regular winter visitants : || — several have been killed in the first- 
named locality by my informant.^" Inland, they ar.e common on 
the lakes of Galway in winter, and about Lough Conn, in the ad- 
joining county of Mayo, they were often seen on sale by Mr. Bent 
Ball in autumn, having been killed as “ flappers” (before well 
able to fly), in the neighbourhood of their birth-places. 
* Mr. R. J. Montgomery. 
f Audubon remarks : — “ Gluttonous in the extreme, it frequently gorges itself so 
as to be unable to rise. I have several times seen one of them obliged to eject a 
great part of the contents of its stomach and gullet before it could fly off,- and some 
which I have kept a day or two in confinement have died in consequence of swal- 
lowing too many fishes” (vol. v. p. 98). 
% Mr. Poole. 
§ “Whence an adult male was sent me, February 11, 1838.” — R. Davis, jun. 
|1 Mr. R. Chute. ^ Mr. G. Jackson. 
