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Letters

01 May 1963 Comments Letters S I R S , -- I n t h e article on Incubation, b y Mr, Erie B. Dunlop (antea, p. 109), t h e writer s a y s : " Another bird which rears few young compared to t h e number of eggs it lays is t h e Great-erested Grebe. Four or five eggs are very frequently ...

Notes

01 May 1963 Comments Notes FOE some years now I have been paying particular attention to the nestlings of common birds. It is of course now known to all ornithologists that the parents keep the nest clean (as a general rule) by carrying away the excrement, and often by swallowing ...

The Sequence of Plumages of the Rook, With Special Reference to the Moult of the " Face."

01 May 1963 Comments Main paper I T has always been a disputed point as to whether the Rook (Oorvus f. frugihgus) gets its bare " face " by means of abrasion of the feathers or by a moult. Most ornithologists have favoured the moult theory or have regarded it as a " natural peculiarity....

Notes

01 March 1962 Comments Notes Peregrine incubating Kestrel's eggs.--On 13 th May 1961, I was prospecting some crags in the Great Glen, Inverness-shire, in the hope of rinding a pair of nesting Peregrines (Falco peregrinus). As I approached the most likely-looking face from below, a fe...

Studies of less familiar birds 117. Scarlet Grosbeak

01 March 1962 Comments Main paper Asiatic bird whose range extends into eastern Europe. It is a rare visitor to Britain, apart from Shetland (notably Fair Isle) where it is of annual occurrence in the autumn. It is a species which is in the process of expanding quite vigorously north and ...

How do Black-headed Gulls distinguish between eggs and egg-shells

01 March 1962 Comments Main paper {Lams ridibundus) remove the empty eggshell shortly after the hatching of the chick. An investigation into the survival value of this response and of the stimuli eliciting it (Tinbergen et al. 1962a) yielded the following results. An empty egg-shell at a ...

Foot-paddling in Gulls

01 March 1962 Comments Main paper I S H O U L D L I K E to supplement the interesting comments recently made by Sparks (1961) on the functions of foot-paddling in gulls, since more is known about it than is apparent from his article. In my book The Herring Gull's World (1953), where I ref...

Development of Paddling and other movements in young Black-headed Gulls

01 March 1962 Comments Main paper R E C E N T L Y , in an interesting paper in this journal, Sparks (1961) discussed the relationship between foot-movements and feeding in shore birds. In view of his conclusions, it seems worth recording the age at which paddling and other movements were ...

Mass mortality among European Common Terns in South Africa in April-May 1961

01 March 1962 Comments Main paper In 1961, an unknown but apparently substantial proportion of the migrant population lingered long after the usual departure date and during April many became ill and died. High mortalities were observed at several localities from Port Elizabeth in the ea...

Weights from five hundred birds found dead on Skomer Island in January 1962

01 March 1962 Comments Main paper Department of Zoology, University College of Swansea S K O M E R , 722 A C R E S , is the largest of the islands off the Pembrokeshire coast and one of the most westerly points in Wales. A visit was made there from 2nd to 5 th January 1962, during one of ...

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Letters

Notes

The Sequence of Plumages of the Rook, With Special Reference to the Moult of the " Face."

Notes

Studies of less familiar birds 117. Scarlet Grosbeak

How do Black-headed Gulls distinguish between eggs and egg-shells

Foot-paddling in Gulls

Development of Paddling and other movements in young Black-headed Gulls

Mass mortality among European Common Terns in South Africa in April-May 1961

Weights from five hundred birds found dead on Skomer Island in January 1962

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