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Recent reports

13 March 2014 Comments News and comment These are largely unchecked reports, not authenticated records This deals with January 1972, to which all dates refer unless otherwise stated. The only really significant weather feature in a fairly mild, wet month was a short spell of freezing north-east...

News and comment

13 March 2014 Comments News and comment Golden Jubilee The International Council for Bird Preservation was formed in 1922, mainly through the foresight of an American, T. Gilbert Pearson, then president of what is now the National Audubon Society; the inaugural meeting was held in London on 20...

Letters

13 March 2014 Comments Letters Woodcock and thrushes breeding in open and Snipe a m o n g trees In view of recent notes on Woodcock Scolopax rusticola nesting away from trees (Brit. Birds, 64: 76; 65: 30-31), it may be worth recording that at dusk on 5 th July 1971, when I walked ac...

Reviews

13 March 2014 Comments Reviews African Birds of Prey. By Leslie Brown. Collins, London, 1971. 320 p a g e s ; 12 black-and-white plates. £2.25. This well-produced, smallish book covers the 89 diurnal raptors and 31 owls which inhabit Africa. The author is, of course, a well-known...

Notes

13 March 2014 Comments Notes Shags laying two clutches Shags Phalacrocorax aristotelis have long been considered capable of producing two broods in one breeding season, but direct evidence of this is lacking (see The Handbook, vol 4; D. A. Bannerman, 1959, The Birds of the British Is...

Obituary - James Maurice Harrison, DSC, MRCS, LRCP (1892-1971)

13 March 2014 Comments Obituaries James Harrison was born in the reign of Queen Victoria in the year of Gladstone's fourth ministry. He died nearly eighty years later, having lived through a period of great scientific and industrial developments, two major world wars and extensive social ...

Irish seabird islands

01 February 1980 Comments Main paper Although Ireland is not large in area, the mainland and associated islands have a coastline of over 4,000 km. There are just over 1,000 islands of a significant size (i.e. large enough to appear on the standard 1:126,720 Ordnance Survey maps in us...

Ireland's winter visitors and passage migrants

01 February 1980 Comments Main paper As a result of the small size of the country, its position on the western fringe of the European land-mass, its relatively uniform climate and the scarcity of deciduous woodland, Ireland's breeding avifauna is comparatively impoverished. A glance at Th...

Irish bird sites

01 February 1980 Comments Main paper This list of 51 Irish ornithological sites is intended to give an indication of the types of habitat and species encountered at areas chosen for their variety and geographical distribution; it is not an attempt to catalogue the localities most imp...

Topography and habitats of Ireland

01 February 1980 Comments Main paper Ireland lies on the European continental shelf, directly north of Portugal and west of the Netherlands. It was separated from Britain in the early Postglacial period and today the channel between the two islands is 22 km wide in the north and 76 km in ...

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