96 The Irish Naturalist. September, 



would over-run the breeding-place of the Sandwich Terns, and I fear 

 this has surely been the case. There were no Terns on an island a little 

 distance from Mutton Island, and I did not come across any eggs of the 

 Sandwich Terns on Mutton Island. I fear, therefore, that the colony 

 has ceased to exist, at any rate temporarily. 



Hollymount, Co. Mayo. Robert F. Ruttledge. 



An Ornithological Chestnut. , 



A northern newspaper contains the delightful announcement that 

 " a Cuckoo hatching her own eggs is to be seen on the Round Hill, near 

 Florencecourt, County Fermanagh, and many people have gone to see 

 what is so rare." The paragraph having been brought under the notice 

 of Mr. J. P. Burkitt, that gentleman lost no time in ascertaining that the 

 supposed Cuckoo was, as might be expected, a Nightjar. We trust that 

 her train of visitors have not embarrassed the poor bird. There is an 

 old-world quaintness in the revival of this oft-repeated confusion between 

 the Nightjar and Cuckoo. It was in the summer of 1770 that Gilbert 

 White (as he tells Daines Barrington in his letter of October 8th) was 

 taken to see " a young Fern -Owl in the nest of a small bird on the ground," 

 and, of course, found it to be a young Cuckoo. And now, in 1924, an 

 old " Fern-Owl " passes muster with quite a throng of visitors for a 

 Cuckoo hatching her own eggs ! Mr Burkitt, however, draws an orni- 

 thological inference of some interest from the mistake about the Fer- 

 managh bird. He says " it corroborates my idea that the Nightjar is 

 steadily increasing here, as evidently none of these people had seen one 

 before, and they are cutting turf on this bog for ages." 



The Cirl Bunting as an Irish Bird. 



When reviewing in this Journal {supra, p. 56) Mr. Witherby's lately 

 issued " Check-List of British Birds," I drew attention to the fact that 

 here and in the " Practical Handbook " the Cirl Bunting {Emheriza cirlus) 

 is credited with having occurred in Ireland on the strength of a record 

 [Zool. 1902, p. 353), that had not been regarded by the late R. J. Ussher 

 as sufficient warrant for admitting this species in 1908 into his " List 

 of Irish Birds." Mr. Ussher was seldom unduly cautious, though it is 

 possible that he may have been so in this solitary instance ; and I did 

 not mean in my short notice to convey a definite opinion one way or the 

 other, but merely desired to call attention to the fact that a question on 

 which two such high authorities as R. J. Ussher and H. F. Witherby 

 havQ taken different views remains to confront the next reviser of the 

 Irish Bird List. I find, however, that I have been understood in some 

 quarters as objecting to Mr. Witherby's acceptance of the Cirl Bunting 

 record. I therefore wish to say that there is^ — in the absence of any speci- 

 men- — at least the strongest possible presumptive evidence that the record 

 is correct, standing as it does in the name of so distinguished an English 

 ornithologist as H. Eliot Howard, whose work on the " British Warblers " 

 — to say nothing of his more recent " Territory in Bird-Life "■ — could 



