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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Monthly marathon

01 December 1992 Comments Other It was a Ring-billed Gull, photographed in Lancashire in February 1991 by Malcolm Rains. Once again, all the leading competitors got the answer right, so Graham Catley, Roy Hargreaves, Hannu Jännes, Peter Lansdown, Pekka J. Nikander and Dave Nurney al...
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Reviews

01 December 1992 Comments Reviews An Atlas o f the Breeding Birds of Shropshire. Edited by Peter Deans, Jack Sankey, Leo Smith, John Tucker, Chris Whittles & Colin Wright. Shropshire Ornithological Society, Shrewsbury, 1992. 204 pages; 142 line-drawings; 140 maps. Paperback £...
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Mystery photographs

01 December 1992 Comments Main paper It is October in southwest Britain and anything can turn up. You are being bombarded by vagrants from all points of the compass when you come upon this unfamiliar bird in some poplars Populus (plate 267, repeated here in black-and-white). You real...
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Seasonal reports Spring 1992

01 December 1992 Comments News and comment A mild and changeable March, with little sunshine, was followed by a rather cloudy April, but with temperatures mostly 1°C above average. Northern Britain again had rainfall on or above par, but it was rather dry in eastern England. In contrast, May w...
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