igij. Moffat — Exterminating Winter : Effects on Bird-life. 93 



rather late dates, compared with the early dates at which 

 it was usual to find the resident (joldcrests nesting, it may 

 well be doubted whether the immigrants really contributed 

 any quota of consequence to the ranks of our breeding 

 birds. It would, however, be of great interest to observe 

 what use they would make of their opportunities of easy 

 possession, should they return this spring to find the 

 country a " clean slate." The period of their normal 

 immigi'ation has, unhappily, elapsed, and the Goldcrest 

 is still missing. 



The Grey Wagtail has always been much more thinly 

 distributed than any of the other species on my list of 

 missing birds ; but it yields to none in the regularity with 

 which it returns yearly to the same nesting resorts, and 

 it is, therefore, an easy bird (though not very much of 

 a songster) to keep count of in a local census. The males 

 frequently repair to their breeding quarters so early as 

 the beginning of March, and wait there patiently for the 

 arrival of their mates, which may take place before the 

 middle of the month, but does not always occur until 

 early in April. In the latter event it may generally be 

 assumed that the hen-bird is an immigrant. The light- 

 house records of this w-agtail's spring migration are scanty. 

 The Barrington Collection, now in the National Museum, 

 contains, as Mr. Nichols kindly informs me, only tw^o spring- 

 killed specimens (both received subsequent to the publica- 

 tion of Mr. Barrington's book) — one disabled at the lantern 

 of Blackw^ater Bank lightship, Co. Wexford, on March i8th, 

 1901, and the other shot, probably on migration, at Rock- 

 island, Cork, on April 2nd, 1912. But I have in- 

 variably found all the nesting resorts in this neighbourhood, 

 and also those on the Dublin streams, occupied by the 

 breeding birds in pairs, at latest, before the close of the 

 first week of April. Any immigration of birds that come 

 to breed must therefore take place before that time, 

 unless in a very abnormal year. This year we have 

 reached the end of the fourth week of April without my 

 seeing more than one nesting locality occupied by this 

 beautiful species, though I have kept ten such stations 

 under observation. The only pair I have seen — at a long- 



