203 
THE RED-THROATED DIVER. 
Speckled, Eirst Speckled, and Second Speckled Diver. 
Col/ymbus septentrionalis , Linn. 
Is a regular winter visitant to tbe coast, where it remains 
from five to six months. 
Its earliest appearance for the season in Belfast Bay, that I have 
noted, is the 16th of October (1843), when two with red throats 
were seen. On October the 26th, 1831, an adult bird was killed 
there. About the middle of October 1849, a flock of five or six of 
these birds appeared on wing high in the air above Larne Lough, 
and, by their well-known and peculiar wild cry, attracted the atten- 
tion of my informant, who was fishing. As their flight was south- 
ward when first perceived, they were imagined to be on migration, 
but they turned and flew back in the opposite direction. Erom that 
period until the end of the month when the opportunity for ob- 
servation ceased, other little flocks, like the one described, were 
frequently seen there on wing.* Mr. R. Chute, when writing to 
me on the 23rd of October, 1848, remarked— “ there are now 
several red-throated divers in Tralee Bay.” They, however, doubt- 
less arrive occasionally in the north at an earlier period, as in 
the southern harbour of Wexford a bird in full adult summer 
plumage, shot on the 18th of September, 1846, was kindly sent 
to me by Major W alker,f and in Cork harbour, two individuals 
(of which one was adult) were seen on the same day of that 
* Mr. Darragh. 
t It is preserved in the Belfast Museum ; — this is mentioned on account of the 
season of the year at which the fine red throat was displayed. See Yarrell, ‘ British 
Birds/ vol. iii. p. 448, 2nd edit. 
Mr. It. Ball, writing on the 29th of October, 1844, remarked that he had re- 
ceived, about a week previously, a living red-throated diver in pen feathers. “ Al- 
though so young that the quills were just budding, it had a little red on the neck.” 
This bird was placed on a pond in the Zoological Garden, Phoenix Park, Dublin, 
where it was at once attacked by a cormorant, and, as was supposed, eventually killed 
by him. 
