126 
CHAEADRIID^. 
highway, though in passing the same place daily, during two 
summers, not one ever appeared within a furlong of the spot. In 
feeding by night also, they commonly (as proved by the cry) fre- 
quent localities of this kind, where they are never known by day. 
Wlien a flock of Oyster-catchers have been on wing for a 
short time, they utter a peculiar brief note, so frequently 
repeated, that it gives the idea of a general conversation, inter- 
rupted occasionally by a whistle of longer duration. 
Montagu remarks, that in winter they assemble in small 
flocks an observation commonly repeated by subsequent authors ; 
but in Belfast bay, they are associated for three-fourths of the 
year ; indeed at all times : even to some extent, in the breeding 
season — after that period they muster again at the beginning of 
August.t A favourite haunt in the bay is a very extensive 
mussel-bank, near Garmoyle, from being commonly seen feeding 
on which, these birds have received the name of mussel-peckers, 
which, here at least, is much more appropriate than oyster-caicheY ; 
as the Ostrea inhabits too deep water to be ever accessible to them. 
The contents of the stomach or gizzards (which latter are as fully 
developed as in graminivorous birds) of eight sea-pies, shot in 
various parts of the bay in spring, autumn, and winter, proved, 
on examination, to be as follows : — Bive contained only the 
opercula and portions of the animal of the whelk (Littorina com- 
munis), with which some of them were whoUy filled ; — one ex- 
hibited merely the opercula — about forty in number — of Furpura 
lapillus, and of all sizes, from the smallest to the full grown : 
another (shot on Nov. 13) presented a good deal of vegetable 
matter, consisting of tender roots and green leaves ; also small 
white worm -like larvse; a few opercula of the whelk, and an 
operculum of the buckie [Buccinum undatum) — in the crop and 
stomach of the last, which was remarkably fat, were found fifty 
* Mr. J. R. Garrett. 
t I did not see any of these birds about the island of Islay during the month of 
January 1849, and was told that they always leave it and the neighbouring islets in 
autumn. They return early in the year, and breed in numbers on the shores. Many 
of their eggs were found on the Rabbit Island off Ardimersy, from the middle to the 
end of May 1848. 
