178 
ARDEIDiE. 
for its site. Such, is the confidence these birds have learned to 
place in the Mahomedan part of the population,, that it is not 
uncommon to see every house in a Turkish village crowned with 
their nests. They shun Christian habitations, for the Greeks 
neither encourage nor permit them to build so near.^^ (Yol. i. 
13. 282.) 
The Black Stork {Ciconia nigra, is unknown as a visitant 
to the island. Dr. Scouler included it in a ‘ Notice of Animals which 
have disappeared from Ireland,’^ on the authority of the following 
words from Giraldus : — “ Ciconim vero per totam insulam rarissimi 
sunt illse nigrm.” (Top. Hib. 707.) 
Four only of these birds have been recorded as obtained in Englandf 
(none in Scotland) ; the first in May 1814. Although they migrate 
so far northward in summer as Sweden, their line of flight is still 
more easterly than that of the white stork : even Holland being very 
rarely visited by them. 
THE SPOONBILL. 
White Spoonbill. 
Platalea leueorodia, Linn. 
Is a rare visitant. 
The earliest note of the occurrence of this bird in Ireland, known 
to me, is that of Templeton, who mentions one as having been 
shot at Bally drain Lake (county of Antrim), near Belfast : the 
date is not mentioned in his published paper ; but, according to an 
entry made in his journal on the 17th January, 1808, it was killed 
a few years before that period. Mr. E. BaU — as noticed in the 
Proceedings of the Zoological Society for 1834 (p. 30) — informed 
me, that in the autumn of 1829 three spoonbills were seen 
in company near Youghal (Cork), and one of them shot : it was 
preserved by Dr. Green of that town, and was then in his pos- 
* Journ. Geolog. Soc. of Dublin, vol. i. p. 227. t Yarr. B. B, 2nd ed. 1845. 
