Page:The Natural History of Ireland vol1.djvu/74

 doubt on my mind of the hobby having occurred in this county. On a late visit to my friend Mr. Richard Parker, I saw, for the first time, amongst his beautiful paintings, a hawk, winch I could not for a moment hesitate in recognising as a hobby; the history of it is tins : — A brother of his shot on the garden wall of Car- rigrohan, the family mansion, in the summer of 1822 (?), a hawk which presented so unusual an appearance, that he made a colour- ed drawing of it. The size he describes as having been between that of a merlin and a kestrel. The painting is an exact copy of the coloured drawing in all respects but size, and it certainly answers critically the description of the hobby. The dark spots on the lower parts are longitudinally disposed.

Carrigrohan is wooded and inland — three or four miles up the river from Cork."

The Hobby is called a rare summer visitant to England, but very little information is given respecting it as such; it seems not to have been met with in the north of that country, nor in Scotland.

Falco rufipes, Besecke.

vespertinus, Gmel.

occurrence in Ireland was first noticed, in a communication which I made to the Zoological Society of London (in June, 1835), respecting an immature specimen obtained in the county of Wick- low, in the summer of 1832. This bird was preserved for the collection of T. W. Warren, Esq. of Dublin, by whose kindness it was exhibited on that occasion. The specimen was given to Mr. Warren by a gentleman who shot it in his yard, just as it had pounced at a pigeon of at least its own size, which, with the hawk, fell dead at the one discharge. In March, 1833, Mr. W. S. Wall, bird preserver, mentioned to me, that he had in October, 1830, received a hobby in a fresh state, from Ballyveolan,