180 
ARDETD/E. 
county of Wicklow, at a little lake or pond a quarter of a mile 
from the sea-shore. A common heron was beside it ; but as the 
fowler approached in a boat, this bird made its escape, and 
the spoonbill remaining behind was killed. Another was shot 
on the 12th of November of the same year, at Killag, on the 
lake of Ballyteigue, county Wexford. On August 25, 1845, I 
was informed of a spoonbill having been shot recently at 
Youghal ” but no further particulars were supplied. On the 
8th of October the same year one was killed very near that 
town, and, like the specimen obtained in November 1843, was 
received in a fresh state, by Mr. S. Moss, of Youghal, who 
preserved them both : he considered them to be immature from 
having no yellow on the breast.” Two spoonbills were seen near 
the village of Castlegregory (Kerry), in November 1846, and 
one of them wounded. It came into the possession of Mr. K. 
Chute, who informed me of the circumstance, and added that it is 
a young bird. 
The preceding notes inform us of the occurrence of the spoon- 
bill in Ireland in eleven years within the present century \ and with 
reference to the birds killed at Dromana no period is named. In 
the successive years of 1840 and 1841, and of 1843, 1844, and 
1845, the species appeared in this island. It is singular, that 
vdnter should be the chief season of its visits. 
Major Thomas Walker (of Belmont, Wexford), who has met 
with flocks of these birds when on shooting expeditions in 
Hungary, remarked, in a letter to me, written in June 1846, 
that — The motions of the spoonbill are singular when a 
number are standing in a line on the edge of a stream. They 
keep streaking the bill sideways through the water, and the 
movement is simultaneous; all the biUs being directed up the 
stream at once, and all down it at the same time.” 
The spoonbill has been noticed as breeding annually in England 
at an early period ; but for the last century, at least, it has been 
only an occasional visitant to that country. The facts brought 
forward here indicate its occurrence, perhaps as often as in 
England, and much more frequently than in Scotland. Sir Wil- 
