BIRD ADVENTURERS 209 



a bird that can never have been overlooked 

 anywhere ; and yet up to the time of the 

 Stuarts people who went to Ireland were aston- 

 ished at finding no magpies there, though now 

 they are commoner in Ireland than they are 

 in Great Britain. 



It was about 1676 when the first colonists 

 arrived, and they were supposed to have been 

 blown over from Wales. There were only a 

 few pairs, and it was lucky for them that there 

 were no people about at the time who collected 

 any bird which was new to a place, or all the 

 emigrants would have fallen victims. As it was 

 they increased and multiplied, and have shown 

 plainly how a bird nation, like a human one, 

 can spread and colonize when it has the chance. 



The magpie is a strong cunning bird, and 

 can look after himself well, but a much bigger 

 deed in colonizing has been done at the 

 opposite end of the world by a weak and tiny 

 creature, the silver-eye or blight-bird of New 

 Zealand. This is a delicate little greenish 

 bird much like our willow-wren, but dis- 

 tinguished by white rings round its eyes ; it 

 had long been known as an Australian bird, 

 but in 1856 it began to appear in New Zealand, 



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