hands of the local bird-stuffers certainly for a good many years, for
Mr. Jago's mother who about twenty or thirty years ago, when she was
Miss Cumber, had been for some considerable time the only bird-stuffer
in the Island, told me she did not know the bird, and had never had one
through her hands. It seemed to me rather odd that a bird which occurs
almost every year in the British Islands, occasionally even as far west
as Ireland, as a straggler, and which is generally distributed over the
continent of Europe in the summer, should be totally unknown in the
Channel Islands. Consequently writing to the 'Star' about another
Guernsey bird--a Hoopoe--which had been recorded in that paper, I asked
for information as to the occurrence of the Golden Oriole in the
Islands, and shortly after the following letter signed "Tereus"[8]
appeared in the 'Star':--"Concerning the occurrence of the Golden Oriole
I cannot speak from my own personal knowledge, but I believe there can
be no doubt that the bird has been occasionally seen here. Its presence,
however, must be much more rare than that of the Hoopoe, for a bird of
such plumage as the Oriole would be more likely to attract even more
attention than the comparatively sober-coloured Hoopoe, and if half so
common as the latter would be sure to fall before the gun of the fowler.
There was a specimen of the female bird in the Museum of the Mechanics'
Institution, but I am not sure about its history, and I have some reason
to suppose it was shot in Jersey. Our venerable national poet, Mr.
George Métivier, has many allusions to the Oriole in his early
effusions, whether written in English, French, or our vernacular
dialect. It seems to have been an occasional visitor at St. George's;
but in Mr. Métivier's early days the island was far more wooded than it
is at present, and it is possible that the wholesale destruction of
hedgerow elms and the grubbing-up of so many orchards in order to employ
the ground more profitably in the culture of early potatoes and brocoli,
by which the island has lost much of its picturesque beauty, may have