220 
SCOLOPACIDtE. 
but think it probable, the season being then so far advanced, 
that they might breed there. 
Mr. Macgillivray has contributed to the third volume of 
Audubon^s ^ Ornithological Biography ^ an interesting account 
of the greenshank, as observed by liim in the Hebrides.* Mr. 
Selby (^Edinb. Philos. JournaP) and Sir Wm. Jardine (^Brit. 
Birds/ vol. hi.) have treated pleasingly of it as seen by them in 
its breeding-haunts in Sutherlandshire, 
THE AYOCET. 
Recufvifostra avocetta, Linn. 
Is an extremely rare visitant. 
The earliest notice of its occurrence, of which I am aware, ap- 
peared in Butty’s ^Natural History of the county of DubliiP 
(vol. i. p. 341), where it is remarked — A.H. 1767, in winter, 
was shot in the Lots, near the T^orth Wall, by Bobert Bevin, 
sexton of Christ Church, a bird very rarely found here, being 
properly an Italian bird, called Avosetta and Beccostorto, from its 
biU, generally three inches and a half long, and often turned up 
near half its length. It is the Uecurvirostra albo nigroqiie varia, 
Willugliby, Omithologia, Tab. 60,^^ &c. The following brief note 
was communicated by me to the ^ Annals of Natural History,^ in 
1840 : ^‘^The late B. S. BaU, Esq., of Youghal, informed me, some 
time since, when looking over continental specimens of this bird 
with him, that, many years ago, he shot an individual of the same 
species near that town.’’^ Mr. Wm. Warriner, of Bannow, on 
the southern coast of Wexford, states, that he once saw an avocet 
scooping in ^a marsh near his residence ; and remarks, that it 
patted the ground with the convexity of its biU.’H 
Major Walker once observed two avocets on the marsh of 
* As may be expected, it visits the island of Islay. I have seen specimens 
Avliich were shot there. The species is noticed as an autumnal visitant to Orkney. 
t Mr. S. Poole; — communicated in 1843. 
