March, 1916. 
The Irish Naturalist. 
33 
ROBERT WARREN. 
In Robert Warren, who passed away at Ardnaree, his 
Co. Cork residence, on the 26th of November, 1915, we have 
lost the last survivor of the group of distinguished ornitholo- 
gists to whose long-continued collaboration this country is 
indebted for nearly all the progress made in the study of 
Irish birds in the sixty -four years that have elapsed since 
William Thompson's death. 
Born in Cork on the 22nd of March, 1829, he was the 
eldest son of Robert Warren, of Castle Warren, Co. Cork, 
and of his wife, Matilda, youngest daughter of Edward H. 
Hopper, a Cork merchant. Besides Robert, three other 
children, a brother and two sisters, were reared. Whqn the 
eldest boy was a few years old his parents took up their 
residence at Castle Warren, where they lived until 1851, 
his education being at first carried on under a tutor, after 
which he went to a school in Cork. 
The surroundings of Castle Warren conduced strongly to 
fostering young Warren's love of birds — a love that was 
inherited from his father, and was shared in an almost 
equal degree by his brother Edward. In early boyhood he 
formed an aviary, rearing many young birds from the 
nestling stage, and easily winning the affection of all his 
pets, which included several gulls and a Heron. But the 
great delight of both the brothers was to accompany their 
father on long boating excursions to the breeding haunts 
of sea-birds on the coast outside Cork harbour. A favourite 
goal of these excursions was the Sovereign Islands, and 
throughout his life he retained a vivid memory of these 
delightful trips — sometimes made in a yacht, but more often 
in a whale-boat — with the glorious pictures they afforded 
of the Peregrine Falcons wheeling about their eyrie, the 
Shags and Rock Pigeons at their nesting haunts in the caves, 
the Black Guillemots swimming about in pairs, and that 
bold robber, the Raven, seizing every opportunity to carry 
off on his bill an egg of one of the hatching Cormorants. 
In these expeditions were laid the foundations of a store 
of knowledge that was almost incessantly added to in later 
years. 
