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Recent reports and News

01 September 1959 Comments News and comment The items here are largely unchecked reports, and must not be regarded as authenticated records. They are selected, on the present writers' judgment alone, from sources generally found to be reliable. Observers' names are usually omitted for reasons of sp...

Notes

01 September 1959 Comments Notes Petrels (Oceanodroma leucorrhoa) have been known to breed on the Flannan Isles, some 20 miles west of Lewis in the Outer Hebrides, since 1904 ( W . Eagle Clarke, Annals Scot. Nat. Hist., 1905, pp. 8-19 and 80-86). However, apart from the discovery of colo...

Obituaries: Gustav Kramer (1910-1959), James Parsons Burkitt (1870-1959), John Hugh Owen (1877-1959)

01 September 1959 Comments Obituaries personal friend to many of us but also a serious blow to ornithology and to international science. To many ornithologists he was mainly known through his pioneer studies in bird navigation--which were both original and penetrating--but he did equally outs...

Photographic studies of some less familiar birds: C. Ruff

01 September 1959 Comments Main paper IN OUR AVIFAUNA the Ruff (Philomachus pugnax) is the most extreme example of a " l e k " b i r d ; a species which, like the Blackcock (Lyrurus tetrix) and many other gallinaceous birds, birds of paradise (Paradiseidae), Gould's Manakin (Manacus manacus) ...

Text of an automatic nest-recorder

01 September 1959 Comments Main paper By TOMOO ROYAMA of Forest-Zoology, Faculty of Agriculture, University of Tokyo, Japan) VARIOUS DEVICES have been described by various authors for the purpose of registering visiting frequencies by birds to their nests (see Kendeigh, 1952 ; Gibb, 1956). An...

Variation in a population of Yellow Wagtails

01 September 1959 Comments Main paper DURING 1957 and 1958 several greyish-headed yellow wagtails, which appeared to be identical in appearance with Sykes's W a g tail (Motacilla flava beema) of western Siberia, bred at Beddington sewage farm, Hackbridge, Surrey. Since the discovery by Arnold...

The use of mobile observers in the study of Patterns of migration

01 May 1951 Comments Main paper of the observation work on the migration of the Swift (Apus apus) dor e in the years 1947-50 has been carried out at fixed vantage points. In general, this method has resulted in the acquisition of useful statistical data, but inherent in it are several p...

The movements of Swifts in summer

01 May 1951 Comments Main paper 1950 was a good year for studying the movements of Swifts (Apus apus). Well over 20,000 were reported during the special watch held under the auspices of the British Trust for Ornithology. This covered the arrival period prior to May 15th, 1950. Another 2...

Editorial

01 May 1951 Comments Editorials As announced in British Birds for March a new editorial board, whose members are named on the title-page, becomes responsible for the conduct of the magazine beginning with this issue. It is intended to maintain broadly the existing traditions, standards...

Letters

01 May 1951 Comments Letters SIRS,--A serious error has crept into t h e obituary notice of m y old friend Bernard Tucker. To quote : " The memorable Oxford University Expedition to Spitsbergen " took place in 1921 n o t 1922, and Tucker was n o t one of t h e members. I n 1922 F . C...

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