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ST. KILDA AND ITS BIRDS. 

 By J. Wiglesworth, M.D., F.R.C.P., 



Member of the British Ornithologists' Union. 

 (Read December 12th, 1902.) 



There is probably no corner of the British Islands 

 which, ornithologically speaking, presents so much 

 interest as the island group of St. Kilda. With the 

 exception of the modified form of the common Wren, of 

 which I shall have to speak later, there is, indeed, no 

 species of bird peculiar to the place ; for the recent spread 

 of the Fulmar to Shetland, of which I gave a short 

 account to this Society last session, has robbed St. Kilda 

 of the pre-eminence in this respect which it formerly 

 enjoyed, so far as the British Islands are concerned. 

 St. Kilda is, however, the great headquarters of this bird 

 in the British Isles, where alone it can be studied to full 

 advantage; and it is besides the stronghold of another 

 very interesting species of this order of birds, Leach's 

 fork-tailed petrel, which though breeding sparingly in 

 some of the islands of the Outer Hebrides, as well as in 

 some of those of the west of Ireland, can nowhere else 

 be regarded as in any way plentiful. 



Moreover, the extreme abundance there of many of 

 the common sea-birds which frequent our coasts furnishes 

 in itself an ornithological feast not readily to be forgotten. 



There is besides a certain romance and glamour about 

 the place itself which adds to its fascination. The 

 loneliness of its situation, perched right out in the bosom 

 of the Atlantic some fifty miles from the nearest point 

 of land; its magnificent ranges of precipices hardly to 

 be matched anywhere else in the British Islands, which 



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