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...
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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...
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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...
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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...
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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...
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Recent reports

01 March 1993 Comments News and comment This summary cover s the period 18th January to 14th February 1993 These are unchecked reports, not authenticated records.   American Wigeon Anas americana Male, Whitegate (Co. Cork), January to at least 8th February. American Black D...
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Monthly marathon

01 March 1993 Comments Other The grey-and-black-and-white bird in December's puzzle picture (Brit. Birds 85: plate 322) was named by entrants as: Caspian Tern Sterna caspia (42%) Gull-billed Tern Gelochelidon nilotica (40%) Laughing Gull Larus atricilla (6%) Whiskered Tern Ch...
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News and Comment

01 March 1993 Comments News and comment LAST CENTURY, Ailsa Craig in the Firth of Clyde supported a quarter of a million pairs of Puffins Fratercula arctica, then common rats Rattus norwegicus got ashore. Slowly but surely, Puffins-- and other seabirds as well as vegetation--were devastated ...
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Twenty-five years ago...

01 March 1993 Comments Other 'The nesting of a pair of Snowy Owls Nyctea scandiaca on Fetlar, Shetland, in 1967 was the first substantiated record in the wild in the British Isles. Publicity was inevitable and so the Royal Society for the Protection of Birds organised a round...
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