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Bewick's Swans in the British Isles in the winters of 1954-55 and 1955-56

01 December 1959 Comments Main paper results of the periods of severe frost in the winters of 1954-55 and 1955-56 were the unprecedented numbers of Bewick's Swans (Cygnus columbianus bewickii) which occurred in Great Britain. The influx in early 1956 was particularly spectacular, and the bir...

Recent reports and News

01 December 1959 Comments News and comment By I. J. FERGUSON-LEES and KENNETH WILLIAMSON T h e i t e m s here are largely unchecked reports, and m u s t not be regarded a s authenticated records. T h e y are selected, on the present w r i t e r s ' j u d g m e n t alone, f r o m s o u r c e s gene...

Notes

01 December 1959 Comments Notes Birds drinking the sap of a birch tree.--On 13th April 1958 I was watching a Marsh Tit (Parus falusiris) feeding at the edge of a deciduous wood at Minsmere in Suffolk when I noticed it return several times to the same place on a tree. At first I thought ...

Pollen contamination of birds

01 December 1959 Comments Main paper of 1957 and 1959 an unidentified substance was found adhering to the bills of four migrant species trapped at Portland Bird Observatory, Dorset. This has now proved to be an accumulation of Citrus pollen, and the following birds have been recorded carryin...

Photographic studies of some less familiar birds: CI. Ross's Gull

01 December 1959 Comments Main paper Photographs and text by J. KlST (Plates 66-69) Ross's GULL (Rhodostethia rosea) is indeed, as Fisher and Lockley (1954) put it, "one of the most mysterious birds of the world". It is also still true that very few ornithologists have seen it alive and so w...

Song Sparrow at Fair Isle

01 December 1959 Comments Open Access By PETER DAVIS and ROY H. DENNIS ON THE EVENING of 27th April 1959, R.H.D. found an unfamiliar small bird--"like a cross between a Hedge Sparrow and a bunting"-- skulking in a tangle of rusty barbed-wire near the derelict radarstation on Ward Hill, Fai...

Obituary: Arnold Whitworth Boyd (1885-1959)

01 December 1959 Comments Obituaries IN A NOTE in the third volume of British Birds, the late T. A. Coward mentioned some ducks seen at Marbury Mere in Cheshire on 10th April 1910 by one A. W. Boyd, and during the space of nearly 50 years which has passed since then only three volumes--two i...

Recent Reports

01 June 1955 Comments News and comment Normally April and May provide us with quite a scattering of vagrants from southern and south-eastern Europe, but this year such wanderers seem to have been rather few. There were two reports of a Little Egret (Egretta gar^etta) on St. Mary's (Isles of Sc...

News and Comments

01 June 1955 Comments News and comment N e w Dictionary of Birds.--Work has been going on in earnest for over five years on a New Dictionary of Birds, a centenary enterprise of the British Ornithologists' Union. The formidable task of organising and editing has been undertaken by Sit Landsboro...

Requests for information

01 June 1955 Comments Editorials Effects of the severe winter of 1962-63.--The severe weather of last winter has probably had a considerable effect on the numbers of some species of birds, and an analysis of this is being undertaken by British Birds as for previous hard winters (e.g. 193...

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