CUTT^K 

 LUfJDY ISL/^D. 



BIRD NOTES 

 ™d NEWS. 



©tmtlar Setter issued ^motocallij b|j tlje 

 j^orietrj for tlje ^rntertiott of giros. 



CONTENTS. 



Three Islands. 



The St. Kilda Act. 



Bird Protection in Central 



Africa. 

 "Nature Study" in Schools. 

 Canon Rawnsley on Eural Life. 



Mr. 0-. F. Watts, E.A. 



Elizabeth, Duchess of 



Wellington. 



School Leagues in France 

 and Switzerland. 



Work in Japan. 



Nature Study. 



The Magistrates and Bird 

 Catchers. 

 Plumes and Plume-Birds. 

 The Plume Sales. 

 In the Courts. 

 Bird Protection in Winter. 

 Lecture Season, 1904-5. 

 County Council Orders. 

 The Decrease of Swallows. 



No. 7.] 



London, 3, Hanover Square, W. 



[OCTOBER, 1904. 



THREE ISLANDS. 



HREE remarkably interesting little 

 islands, each associated with a 

 special and characteristic bird, have 

 recently engaged the attention of 

 the Society for the Protection of 

 Birds — St. Kilda, the one habitat of the 

 St. Kilda Wren ; Foula, the most im- 

 portant of the two or three breeding stations of 

 the Great Skua ; and Lundy, the only English 

 home of the Gannet or Solan Goose. 



Something has been said about St. Kilda in 

 earlier numbers of this paper. The outermost 

 of the Hebrides, fifty miles from the mainland, 

 it was in former times almost cut off from 

 communication with the outer world, and 

 entirely so through the long winter ; its few in- 

 habitants (some twenty families) lived a hard, 

 rough life, dependent for existence mainly on 

 the eggs and flesh of sea-birds. The coming of 

 the unwonted stranger meant an outbreak of 

 measles or influenza among the susceptible 

 islanders ; and a visit to its shores was an ex- 



perience to afford material for a book. Now- 

 a-days, conditions have somewhat improved ; 

 life is a shade less dour, farming as an industry 

 is added to fishing and fowling, and steamboats 

 touch the coast. As a set-off to the benefits of 

 communication, the trading collector has come 

 with his eye on the rare birds, chief among 

 which are the St. Kilda Wren and the Fork-tailed 

 Petrel ; and it is to check the undesirable atten- 

 tions of this visitor that the new Bird Pro- 

 tection Act has, thanks to the Macleod of 

 Macleod and to Sir Herbert Maxwell, been 

 placed on the Statute Book. 



Almost equally out of the world are the rocky 

 islets to the far north of Scotland, forming part 

 of the Shetland group, where that curious 

 pirate among birds, the Great Skua, lays its 

 brown eggs. Foula, eighteen miles from its 

 nearest neighbour, is indeed less isolated as 

 regards actual distance from other land than St. 

 Kilda, but it is scarcely more accessible, as not 

 only is its own coast precipitous and difficult of 

 approach, but it is surrounded by dangerous 

 rocks. Barely 2000 acres in extent, it is the 



