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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News and comment

01 September 1974 Comments News and comment Dockland bird reserveThe Royal Society for the Protection of Birds has revealed that it has acquired, on a 21-year lease, 200 hectares of marsh to the east of Goole, Yorkshire, known as Blacktoft Sands; this land is owned by the British Transpor...
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Requests for information

01 September 1974 Comments Editorials Colour-ringed Great Black-backed GullsA three-year study of the feeding ecology of the Great Black-backed Gull Larus marinus during 1974-76 includes the colour-ringing of some 3,600 nestlings at breeding colonies in Orkney with a two-colour comb...
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Letters

01 September 1974 Comments Letters Melanism in shearwaters and auksSince Bryan L. Sage (Brit. Birds, 65: 527) comments on the supposed rarity of melanism in Manx Shearwaters Puffinus puffinus and indeed the Procellariiformes in general, it may be worth pointing out that a dark sp...
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