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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...

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...

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...

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...

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...

Obituary - James Maurice Harrison, DSC, MRCS, LRCP (1892-1971)

13 March 2014 Comments Obituaries James Harrison was born in the reign of Queen Victoria in the year of Gladstone's fourth ministry. He died nearly eighty years later, having lived through a period of great scientific and industrial developments, two major world wars and extensive social ...

Recent Records Of Nearctic Landbirds In Britain And Ireland

01 February 1999 Comments Main paper ABSTRACT: Records of Nearctic vagrant landbirds in Britain and Ireland during the decade 1987-96 are summarised and discussed, and also compared with those in previous decades. Their association with autumnal atmospheric conditions across the North Atl...

Looking back

01 February 1999 Comments Other `We had here, in the winter of 1845, immense numbers of the gray phalarope (Phalaropus platyrhynchus). Every winter we have a few, but on this occasion they came in such flocks as had never been before noticed. They appeared to have had a long flight a...

European News

01 February 1999 Comments Main paper This six-monthly compilation, inaugurated 22 years ago (Brit. Birds 70: 218), provides the only reliable continent-wide summary of important occurrences, ranging from changes in breeding or wintering distributions to irruptions, nationally rare birds a...

Editorial: Britain & Ireland

01 February 1999 Comments Main paper Should Britain and Ireland be regarded as one coherent unit or two, for the purposes of biological recording? Ireland is quite distinct from Britain. It is an island (with many associated smaller islands and islets), so is easily defined. Quite rightly...

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