Recent reports

01 May 1999 Comments News and comment This summary of unchecked reports covers 8th March to 4th April 1999. The text and photographs relate to unchecked reports, not authenticated records. Pied-billed Grebe Podilymbus podiceps Walton Reservoir (Surrey), 16th March; Stowbridge Pit (Norfolk)...
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Monthly marathon

01 May 1999 Comments Other The species in the photograph (plate 32, repeated here as plate 74) is clearly a wader, and its general shape and coloration shows that it is either a Calidris or a Tringa sandpiper. The lack of patterning and its dull colour tells us that it is in win...
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News and Comment

01 May 1999 Comments News and comment We have previously drawn attention (Brit. Birds 91: 206) to the dramatic decline in breeding-bird populations on the North Staffordshire Moors, no doubt largely linked to agricultural changes that have included overgrazing and drainage. It had been hop...
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Reviews

01 May 1999 Comments Reviews Global warming might destroy tundra worldwide within the next century. There are many pleasing illustrations by the first author; diagrams, however, are frequently so complex and printed so small that they fail to make their points clearly, and typogra...
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Letters

01 May 1999 Comments Letters THE COMMERCIALISATION OF ORNITHOLOGY It seems strange that a seven-line suggestion by Ian Moorhouse (Brit. Birds 91: 330) that an increase in the average age of observers might help to explain a decline in the numbers of some common birds should be con...
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Notes

01 May 1999 Comments Notes THREE PIED FLYCATCHERS AND A COMMON REDSTART DEAD IN SAME NESTBOX On 24th May 1995, while checking nestboxes at Bailey Einon wood, near Llandrindod Wells, Radnorshire, I discovered that one box contained three male Pied Flycatchers Ficedula hypoleuca a...
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Notes

01 March 1985 Comments Notes Aberrant Slavonian Grebe. A thick-billed and unfamiliarly plumaged Slavonian Grebe Podiceps auritus appeared on the open marine bathing-pool at Penzance, Cornwall, on 28th December 1981. It was distinctly odd-looking: rather bulky, with a relatively th...
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Mystery photographs

01 March 1985 Comments Main paper The combination of comparatively large head, large eye, slender legs and short bill clearly shows last month's mystery bird (plates 50 & 56) to be a plover. Furthermore, the single breast band (albeit broken in the middle) coupled with otherwi...
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Seventy-five years ago

01 March 1985 Comments Other 'A Bittern (Botaurus stellaris) was shot at Newhythe, near Aylesford, Kent, on November 25th, 1909. I am pleased to say that a police prosecution followed, but the defendant, who pleaded ignorance of the identity of the bird, was let off with the payme...
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