The Zoologist— May, 1868. 1187 



Effects of Frost and Snotv upon the Common Birds of the County 

 Dublin during the Month of January, 1867. By Harry 

 Blake-Knox, Esq. 



Before entering on the subject a slight description of the localities 

 so much frequented by our birds during snow will be necessary. 

 Latterly journal-writing has become so very fashionable, indeed regal, 

 that I shall make no excuse for the following short extract from my 

 journal as descriptive of these localities. 



The soil along many parts of our coast, particularly where it is rocky, 

 is either loo poor or too shallow to repay the labour of the husband- 

 man ; besides the easterly gales of winter and spring drench it with 

 salt water, burning up even the natural wild grasses and sea-shore 

 plants that luxuriate in summer, in all the freedom of Nature and in 

 defiance of man. * * * These fields or wilds teem with minute 

 snails of various kinds; the ghost and allied-feeding moths have their 

 strongholds in the soil, in the evening gladdening the eye, as the gaudy 

 burnet moth and lovely cinnabar {Euchelia Jacobaece) did in the day. 



* * * Most abundant the tall yellow ragwort, the food of the 

 cinnabar, now in all its beauty, oppressing the air with its heavy per- 

 fume, but soon to be covered with its crop of yellow and black cater- 

 pillars. Soon, like some skeleton form dry and withered, will come 

 the winter breezes to sigh and chafe against its sapless stem, while in 

 the ground and various crevices sleep the spoilers of its life. The old 

 "bum " or dor beetle assiduously buries the droppings of the few poor 

 sheep and bullocks that feed upon the scanty herbage around, adding 

 nourishment but hidden death to their roots, for in each ball of dung 

 so assiduously buried she has laid the germs of a dreadful grub. 



* * * Tipulae in ceaseless clouds rise as you go along; they, too, 

 are impregnating the soil with horrid pests. Worms and insects seem 

 to reign here undisturbed, the plough and the spade never being 

 known to have broken into their places of abode. But they have 

 natural enemies quite as relentless, and far more effective than man — 

 in the winter the scalding salt from the sea, the searching frost, and 

 many hungry birds. When snow falls, the frost must be very hard 

 indeed that permits it to lie on these fields, for obvious reasons — their 

 proximity to the sea and the consequent humidity of the air, and their 

 being so impregnated with salt. So when the country is snow and ice- 

 bound, the birds have some chance here. The first night of frost and 

 snow literally paves these fields with dead and frozen insects, worms, 



