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Mystery photographs

01 March 1991 Comments Main paper The weak bill, small head, short neck, plump body, long tail and (presumably) short legs of last month's mystery bird (plate 64, repeated here) instantly identify it as a pigeon or dove. Most readers will have progressed farther immediately, by noticin...

History of the Pochard breeding in Britain

01 March 1991 Comments Main paper The Pochard Aythya ferina is essentially a breeding bird of freshwater habitats of the steppes, where it may nest even in very temporary saline, brackish or soda waters (Cramp & Simmons 1977). In the last 150 years, however, it has expanded its sum...

Landbirds over the North Atlantic: unpublished records 1961-65 and thoughts a decade later

01 October 1972 Comments Main paper In October 1962, while travelling from New York to Southampton in R.M.S. Mauretania, I was fortunate to witness a fall of over 130 American landbirds of 34 species (Durand 1963). This was the highlight of five years of voyaging across the North Atlantic i...

Green Heron in Cornwall in 1889

01 October 1972 Comments Main paper Until the early i95o's, leading British and Irish ornithologists were notoriously reluctant to admit the possibility of natural transatlantic crossings by landbirds. This was the attitude of Howard Saunders, one of the most influential ornithologists of t...

Flight identification of European raptors

01 October 1972 Comments Main paper ...

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