THE DUBLIN Oil PUllRE. 
293 
When an opportunity presents itself a little difference may^ how- 
ever, be observed in their haunts. While the banks are covered 
at high water, the ring- dotterels occupy a higher stratum than the 
other, preferring the dry gravel, and the dunlins keep near the 
water^s edge : as the banks become exposed by the ebb, the latter 
are busily engaged feeding, while the ring- dotterels, motionless as 
statues, still maintain their high position.'’^ 
Until the beginning of April, dunlins continue in multitudes in 
the bay, but then commence taking their departure northward to 
breed ; at the end of that month or the beginning of May, they 
again appear in great numbers, consisting, as I believe, of birds 
which, having spent the winter farther to the south, come hither 
on migration northwards. They occasionally remain congregated 
when the season is far advanced — even until the end of May, 
which the whimbrels also do. After the great body has departed, 
the shores of the bay may sometimes be traversed in vain for even 
a solitary bird, or at most some poor pensioner,^^ who has lost a 
leg, or been otherwise wounded, may be seen. 
The dunlin keeps generally to the sea-side in the north-east of 
Ireland, where on the oozy banks left bare by the tide (in Larne, 
Belfast, and Strangford Loughs) food is at all times abundant.* 
It is a regular night-feeding bird, in darkness, as well as by 
moordight. It occasionally frequents the river Lagan so far as 
the tide flows. When at Toome and Maghery, on the borders 
of Lough Neagh, at the end of September, I have observed 
small flocks, and have no doubt the species is constantly about 
tliis lake, except in the breeding-season. Birds believed to be 
dunlins have been seen by the Rev. T. Knox in summer on the 
shores of Lough Derg (an expansion of the Shannon) ; — in the 
neighbourhood of which they had not improbably been bred. 
* The contents of a few stomachs of birds killed at various times were minute 
univalve Mollusca — the small Littorince, Rissocs, ^c. Having remarked that a 
particular species of larva constitutes a great portion of the food of the dunlin and 
others of the smaller Grallatores which feed on the Zostera-hmik% of Belfast Bay, 
I submitted some obtained in July to the examination of A. H. Holiday, Esq., who 
pronounced them to be “the larvse of a ChironomuSy perhaps C. plumosusR 
