June, 191 7. The Irish Naturalist. 89 



AN EXTERMINATING WINTER : ITS EFFECTS ON 

 BIRD-LIFE IN CO. WEXFORD. 



BY C. B. MOFFAT, B.A., M.R.I. A. 



The great snow-storm of January 26th, 1917, brought 

 unprecedented havoc on the bird-Hfe of the area over 

 which it swept. In this neighbourhood — by which I 

 mean that part of the Co. Wexford lying between the 

 rivers Urrin and Boro, two tributaries of the Slaney that 

 have their sources some six miles apart on the eastern 

 slope of the Blackstairs range — five resident species were 

 exterminated, while another was reduced to little more 

 than a twentieth part of its former number. 



Taken as a whole, the winter of 1916-17 was the most 

 severe experienced in this part of Co. Wexford, and 

 probably in Ireland generally, for at least fifty years ; 

 but in spite of the hard frost that characterised nearly the 

 whole of December and also the greater part of January, 

 no species of bird underwent more than a partial thinning 

 of its numbers up to the time when the memorable 

 snow-storm began, on the night of January 25th. 



Happily, this snow-storm did not cover the whole of 

 Ireland. Its range might form the subject of an interest- 

 ing distributional map, and it is hard to say how many 

 branches of our fauna may prove to have been affected by 

 it. From the accounts given in Dublin newspapers, it 

 appears to have fallen most heavily over a region com- 

 prising the counties or county-divisions of East Mayo, 

 Roscommon, King's County, Kildare (southern half), 

 Wicklow, Car low, W^exford, Kilkenny, South Tipperary, 

 Waterford, and East Cork : a sort of broad diagonal belt 

 crossing Ireland from N.W. to S.E., in the form known in 

 heraldry as a " bend." The rest of Ireland was at the 

 time severely frost-bound ; but still there was a large 

 area on either side of the snow-belt offering an improved 

 chance of survival to such birds as made a timely retreat. 

 The increased competition for food thus brought about in 

 those parts of the country that were spared the heavy 

 snowfall would, however, operate even more fatally against 



