344 
LARLDiE. 
cumstances as to weather, &c., as in the former years, only two 
or three kittiwakes were seen during the day. An ornithological 
friend, who spent part of that summer at Ardglass, on the Down 
coast, remarked kittiwakes to be common there. They were abun- 
dant around the Mew Island on the 9th of August, 1849.' x ' 
This gull is occasionally obtained in winter in the north of 
Ireland.! One, killed on the coast at Donaghadee, on the 27th 
of November, 1834, and another found dead in a bog, ten miles 
distant from the sea, on the 20tli of January, 1837, came under 
my inspection : both were young birds in the singular and hand- 
some plumage so well represented by Bewick. I have seen an 
adult bird shot in the river Lagan, above the bridge at Bel- 
fast, on the 29th of January, 1845,J and another killed in the 
bay in the middle of February 1846 : — the winter plumage of 
the adult, like that of the immature bird, is peculiar, and has no 
counterpart in our other British gulls. 
Isolated instances only of its occurrence in winter, as just 
indicated, were known to me until 1849, when within the last 
ten days of January, one old and two young birds were shot in 
Belfast Bay, and another old bird was found dead; — they were mere 
skeletons, as kittiwakes procured at this season here have gene- 
rally been. Only one contained in its stomach any food, which 
consisted of the remains of several of the crustaceous genus 
Idotea. Between the 20th of February and 5th of March that 
year, ten birds, all adult, came under my notice ; three shot in 
Belfast Bay ; three found dead on the beach near Holywood, and 
with them a herring-gull ; all seeming to have died a natural death ; 
two were procured at different inland places (one shot and the 
other found dead), five miles in a direct line from the sea, or, if 
they followed the windings of the river Lagan, nearly double 
that distance the two others were obtained near Kirkcubbin, 
* Mr. J. R. Garrett. 
f Dr. Harvey remarks, in the ‘ Fauna of Cork,’ that he has sometimes met with 
it there in winter. 
X The ring round the eye in this bird was blackish, instead of orange-red, as in 
summer. 
