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goes on, and let us take 200 million of mouths as our figure. It 

 is almost impossible to grasp such figures, yet I believe them to 

 be under the mark, for many birds rear more than one brood in 

 the season. The taking of birds' eggs in Ireland is not nearly 

 so common as in England, and we know that there are many 

 non-breeding birds to be found. This may be taken roughly as 

 the summer land-bird population of Ireland, without counting at 

 all on the numberless hoards of sea-colonies, which take their food 

 from the sea alone. 



Many of these summer inhabitants leave us in the autumn, 

 but if they do, their place is taken by immense numbers of winter 

 birds, which live with us for the other six months of the year. 

 Unless one is a close student of migration, one has little idea of 

 the enormous stream of birds that comes to us every autumn and 

 winter — for if the weather in England and Scotland is very severe, 

 we receive large numbers of their starving birds in December and 

 January — perhaps this is another injustice to Ireland. I wonder 

 could I give you any idea of the huge numbers that we always 

 get in autumn, but which only sometimes come before us by 

 means of the Migration Reports. It is well known that Mr. R. 

 M. Barrington has devoted years of study to this subject, and has 

 received many thousands of reports from the lightkeepers on the 

 lightships and lighthouses round the Irish coast (58 in number). 

 These he published in 1900 in a most valuable volume. Let me 

 give you a few extracts. The light seems to exercise a fatal 

 attraction for birds, which kill themselves by dashing against the 

 glass of the lantern. 



"In October, 1897, the lightkeepers at the Tuskar Rock (off 

 Wexford) report from 500 to 600 Blackbirds and Thrushes killed 

 each night from the 20th to the 23rd, and this represents only a 

 small proportion of the great wave of Thrush migration then in 

 progress." 



" Hook Tower, Wexford, October 18th, 1893 ; large flocks of 

 Starlings near Station, the flocks being 70 or 80 yards long." 



