THE GOLDEN PLOVER. 
91 
our vehicle on the road; and, though we stopped for some 
minutes to admire him, he, nothing daunted, retained his 
ground, and continued uttering the call from the same spot, so 
long as we were within sight and hearing. Great numbers nidify 
in the wilder parts of the county Antrim. During a tour towards 
the end of this month, in the wilds of Connaught, we saw many of 
these birds on the wild low-lying bog near Polraney, and in the 
low tracts of the island of Achil, as well as near the summit of 
the lofty mountain of Nephin (2,640 feet in height). On the 
top of Lughnaquilla, the highest of the Wicklow mountains 
(above 3,000 feet), one was observed by a scientific friend on the 
7th of July, 1836. Mr. Davis observes, that golden plover 
build on the bare, exposed sides or tops of the mountains of 
Tipperary. Although he obtained the eggs fresh from two 
nests on the 1st of May, 1841), he remarks, that they are 
extremely difficult to be discovered. The bird itself is noticed 
as easily approached at this season. Mr. Poole has met with 
them in some numbers during summer amid the large tracts of 
peat moss on the summits of the lofty Comeragh mountains 
(Waterford), but was unable to find one of their nests. They 
breed commonly in the county of Kerry Yery soon after the 
breeding season our native birds gather into flocks (on the 12th 
of August I have seen forty together), and delight us when ad- 
mitting of our near approach, as they then do, on the green 
pastoral hills, or on the verdurous spots among the heath, to 
which they are so partial. 
The mournful note of the golden plover, during the anxious 
period of the breeding season, has been alluded to ; but at other 
times there is a wild life in its cry which is quite inspiriting : 
“ And in the plover’s shrilly strain 
The signal whistle’s heard again.f ” 
* Mr. T. F. Neligan. 
t Lady of the Lake, Canto V. Stanza XI. This couplet, applicable to the 
present bird, is misappropriated to the great plover, in an extract copied into Yar- 
I’ell’s work (vol. ii. p. 488, 2nd edit.) The species being unknown in Scotland 
canuot, of course, be alluded to in a poem so correctly and admirably descriptive of 
Highland scenery and its adjuncts as Scott’s Lady of the Lake. 
