1917- Moffat — Exterminating W inter : Effects on Bird-life. 97 



ground, seldom sufficient to accommodate more than one 

 pair during the jealous period of the nesting season ; and 

 over these patches, to which they return constantly year 

 after year, the male birds disport themselves on line 

 evenings with a regularity that makes it easy to keep 

 accurate census of the number of breeding pairs. This 

 year I found that all the nesting grounds known to me 

 were occupied as usual, either by the end of February 

 or quite early in March — showing that the numbers of the 

 Common Snipe, as a breeding species, were certainly not 

 reduced.^ 



Now it is remarkable that the Woodcock, Snipe, and 

 Sky-lark are all included by Mr. W. Eagle Clarke (Digest 

 of British Association Migration Reports, 1896, p. 15) in 

 a list that he gives of " the species which appear to be 

 specially susceptible to cold." Oddly enough, this list 

 does not contain the name of a single one among the five 

 species that I have had to enumerate as totally killed off 

 in this district by the cold of the early months of 1917 ; 

 and 3'et it contains as many as three of those that would 

 seem to have been least affected by that catastrophe, 

 since they turned up in their full normal strength at their 

 accustomed breeding haunts immediately after the retreat 

 of the snow. 



I do not contend that Mr. Eagle Clarke's conclusions 

 are invalidated as to the delicacy of the above-named 

 three birds. Indeed, it is almost inconceivable that birds 

 like the Sky-lark, \\'oodcock, and Snipe, whose food is 

 obtained solely on the ground, could have lived through 

 the three wrecks from January 25th to February 14th in 

 a district where nearly all the ground was under frozen 

 snow averaging more than a foot in depth ; and still less 

 credible is it that, having survived such conditions, they 

 should have emerged from the ordeal in splendid form 

 and high animal spirits, taking prompt possession of their 



1 The Snipe has evidently been less fortunate in other parts of Ireland, 

 as I see that Mr. Robert F. Ruttledge, in a letter to the Irish Times of 

 May loth, remarks on its complete disappearance from its spring haunts 

 in the Hollymount district of Co. Mayo. This increases the need for some 

 explanation of the survival in undiminished numbers of our breeding 

 birds in the south-east. 



