Page:The Zoologist, 3rd series, vol 1 (1877).djvu/358

332 I should say in the first year's plumage—thrown up on the Moyview shore, the tide having brought it in from the open bay. it was in such good condition that I sent it to my friend Dr. Harvey, of Cork, for his fine collection of native birds. For some days previously to the 24th October, 1862, there was a succession of south and south-westerly gales, but on the night of the 23rd the wind changed to the north and blew very heavily. This induced me to visit Enniscrone on the 24th, to look out for any stormdriven birds that might have come ashore. In the course of my search I found several dead Puffins (both adults and young of the year), and picked up one alive, but so exhausted that it died shortly afterwards. While engaged in examining the Puffin, my attention was attracted by a Great Black-backed Gull dragging and trying to tear something that was lying partly in the water and had just been washed ashore by the surf. On reaching the spot, I picked up an adult Fulmar, in a most wretched condition, completely water-soaked and so utterly worn out as to be unable to stand. It died shortly after I put it into my bag. A few hundred yards further off I shortly afterwards saw the same gull, at the edge of the water, watching something he apparently feared to attack. I at once hastened to the spot, and found a second Fulmar just come ashore, and in as miserable a state as the first, except that it was not quite so weak, being able to walk a little and to use its powerful beak in self-defence against the attacks of the gull. On November 3rd, 1865, I found another specimen, quite fresh, on the sands of Enniscrone, but unfortunately the gulls had got at it before me and rendered it quite useless as a specimen. On the 3rd October, 1867, I also found a Fulmar cast upon the same part of the shore, and so fresh and uninjured that I sent it to the Dublin Society's Museum; and on the 21st October, 1868, I got another at the same place, which I sent to the Belfast Museum. In 1870, on the 4th March, I found the remains of one destroyed by gulls on the Bartragh sands; and sometime during the winter of 1872 or 1873, I got a fine bird on the Enniscrone sands, which I have now set up for myself. I have no doubt that specimens of the Fulmar would be found every year on the Enniscrone shore, and also of other migratory sea-birds, if a careful search was made during the months of October and November, and up to the middle of December, especially after heavy gales.