192 
SCOLOPACIDiE. 
whence the eggs were, several years, brought to Mr. E. Davis, 
jun., of Clonmel ; it lays there about the 20tli of April. A nest 
containing young birds was observed on a mountain about twelve 
miles from Tralee, in or before 1837.* Mr. E. Chute (writing 
in March 1846) reported three nests to have been discovered one 
day in a small retired bog at Caragh Lake, in the same county ; 
and that he had often seen the birds in summer, on the boggy 
mountains of Kerry, though he had never found their nests. 
Although the curlew thus breeds in various parts of the coun- 
try — and in many more places than those named it must do so — 
the native-bred birds, in my opinion, form a very small portion of 
the multitudes which frequent our shores. The only notes before 
me, which bear upon the species congregating for departure north- 
ward, relate to the unusual circumstance, that on the 9th of May, 
1832, an immense flock was seen in a field adjoining the southern 
shore of Belfast Bay ; and that, on the 19th of the same month, 
a flock of about a hundred was observed in a wheat-field on the 
opposite shore. At this period, our native birds are chiefly in their 
breeding haunts. 
To some sporting friends, curlews have been known, for the 
last twenty years, to breed annually in numbers on the mountains 
above Ballantrae, in Ayrshire. On the 12th of August, 1839, I 
myself saw a number of young birds about their breeding haunts 
there ; but did not hear, from either young or old, the alarm-cry 
or whaap, though both were calling a good deal in their other 
note — courlieu, which, on the wild moor, is sweetly pleasing to 
the ear. Curlews breed in quantity in the mountain tracts, ten 
to fifteen miles farther inland, though these cannot be called 
retired.’’^ Here their eggs are much sought after, and carried off ; 
and the young frequently fall victims; their height rendering 
them such conspicuous objects, that they can with little difficulty 
be discovered. An ornithologist, under whose notice they came, 
at the end of April 1844, on the hills above BaUochmorrie, where 
they were breeding, remarked to me how very different were their 
* Mr. T. F. Neligan. 
