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01 March 1986 Comments Editorials Atlas of bird distribution in Sri Lanka Any observations of birds during the last 15 years in Sri Lanka will be welcomed for possible inclusion in a project to map the current distribution of all Sri Lankan birds. Records, which will be acknowledged, s...

Announcements

01 March 1986 Comments Editorials Christmas Whisky Puzzle: the solution. There were 52 species in the letter block set as a puzzle on page in the December issue. The unused letters spelt out JANUARY COVER, so the answers to the questions 'How many species are there here? And what...

Letters

01 March 1986 Comments Letters 'Pishing' technique. For many years, I have been delighting and often surprising overseas birders visiting North America by enticing numbers of passerines and other landbirds out of dense cover and into view by 'pishing'. Although the technique varies ...

Notes

01 March 1986 Comments Notes Little Stints feeding by hovering. The note on Little Stints Calidris minuta feeding in flight in Saudi Arabia (Brit. Birds 11: 156) prompts me to record similar behaviour by this species in Bahrain. My observations were made in fine weather with ...

Identification, habits and status of Great Knot

01 March 1986 Comments Main paper Among Arctic waders, the Great Knot Calidris tenuirostris is surely one of the least known and most obscure. It is very surprising that this can be said of a member of the well-studied and popular genus Calidris, especially one of conspicuously large s...

PhotoSpot. 19. Hooded Wheatear

01 March 1986 Comments Main paper The Hooded Wheatear Oenanthe monacha is one of the rarest and least-known species breeding in the western Palearctic. It haunts the most desolate and silent of desert places--ravines and rocky wadis--but, contrary to thestatement by Meinertzhagen (1930...

Mystery photographs

01 March 1986 Comments Main paper The combination of small size (evident from the relative proportions of the eye, head and bill), blackish cap and ear-spot, and small, all-dark bill on the left-hand gull in last month's photograph (plate 50, repeated here) should have pointe...

Personalities. 33 John R. Mather

01 March 1986 Comments Main paper Johnnie Mather (he has never lost the familiar title) was showing an interest in birds by the age of nine, building up a childhood collection which no longer exists. The 'magpie instinct' has not declined, and now he is an avid collector of bird a...

Woodlarks in Britain, 1968-83

01 March 1986 Comments Main paper The breeding population of the Woodlark Lullula arborea in Britain has fluctuated widely, both in numbers and distribution, over the past 100 years. The reasons have not always been clear. In the past, the Woodlark has been regarded as a sedentary spec...

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