2^4 The Irish Naturalist. November, 



that any of these have ever settled in Ireland in a wild state. Other 

 species do not breed in Ireland, being either rare occasional visitants or 

 scarce migrants. There are eight birds whose breeding range in Ireland 

 is restricted — Whinchat, Redstart, Garden Warbler, Wood Wren, Yellow 

 Wagtail, Tree Sparrow, Jay, and Stock Dove. Among the occasional 

 visitants the British list contains a large number that have never been 

 recorded from Ireland. The result is that the Irish list of birds contains 

 much fewer species than that of Great Britain — a fact which holds good 

 in other classes of animals — this is paralleled in other groups of islands, 

 the outer members of which have a poorer fauna than the islands 

 nearer to the adjacent continents. In the case of certain birds, as the 

 Common Buzzard, the Bittern, and the Capercaillie, which formerly 

 bred here, species have been exterminated by man's agency, and this 

 has already been almost effected in the cases of the Woodlark, the Raven, 

 the Eagles, and the Harriers. The absence of certain warblers, how- 

 ever, results from no such cause, but is of a piece with the circumscribed 

 ranges of that family elsewhere ; and, together with the absence of other 

 birds, seems due to the fact that they have never established a footing in 

 Ireland at all. 



The list of cliff-breeding birds indicates considerable similarit}' 

 between the bird fauna of the Irish and Scottish coasts, and the 

 abundance of the Hooded Crow in both countries (to the almost total 

 exclusion of the Carrion Crow), as well as the frequency of the Siskin 

 and Twite, are other points of resemblance. Ireland also affords the 

 most southern breeding resorts in Europe of the Common Gull and of 

 the Red-breasted Merganser, both of which localities are in County 

 Kerry. This leads to the consideration of the northern affinities of our 

 avifauna, which are limited, as neither the Eider Duck nor several of 

 the North British waders, the Skuas nor the Fulmar, breed in Ireland. 

 Many birds have, however, visited Ireland from the high north, and 

 several of these are from Arctic America or Greenland. The following 

 North American species have visited Ireland, the figures representing 

 the number of their occurrences : — American Robin (2), Purple Martin 

 (1), Belted Kingfisher (2), Yellow-billed Cuckoo (2), Black-billed Cuckoo 

 (i), American Goshawk (i), American Bittern (13), Snow-Goose (4;, Surf 

 Scoter (6), Hooded Merganser (4 or 5), Passenger Pigeon (i), Lesser 

 Golden Plover (i), Pectoral Sandpiper (3), Bartram's Sandpiper (2), 

 Bonaparte's Sandpiper (i), BufF-breasted Sandpiper (2), Spotted Sand- 

 piper (i), Red-breasted Snipe (2), Eskimo Curlew (i), Bonaparte's Gull 



(1). 



Six Antarctic and oceanic species have been recorded from the Irish 



coasts:— Yellow-billed Sheath-bill, Noddy Tern, Wilson's Petrel, Little 



Dusky Shearwater, Great Shearwater, Dusky Shearwater. The two last 



have been found by Mr, H. Becher to occur some years in considerable 



numbers off the Cork and Kerry coasts in the later part of summer. 



Immigrant birds arrive on the coasts of Ireland in two main directions. 



The summer migrants and most of the passerine winter migrants laud 



on the south and east shores, the County of Wexford receiving the 



