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Notes

01 August 1990 Comments Notes Oystercatchers incubating on closely adjacent nests. In early spring 1987, in a quiet corner of Blackpool Airport, Lancashire, soil, sand and chippings were dumped and then levelled. Later, the area became partly covered by vegetation and up to five Oy...

Mystery photographs

01 August 1990 Comments Main paper Perched conspicuously on a prominent vantage point, this mystery bird shows a fairly substantial bill, relatively long tail and black mask, a combination which quickly shows it to be one of the shrikes Lanius. The blackness of the wings and '...

Seventy-five years ago

01 August 1990 Comments Other 'LAND-RAILS IN STAFFORDSHIRE. I am pleased to report that the Land-Rail (Crex crex) turned up this year in quite average numbers in the district of Cheadle, Staffordshire . . . This very dry season is bringing on a very early hay harvest, and this...

Seasonal reports: winter 1989/90

01 August 1990 Comments Main paper The weather during this winter period was milder and wetter than average everywhere, with temperatures 2.5ºC above normal in much of southern and eastern England Unsettled westerly weather in early November changed to warm anticyclonic southeasterlies...

Plumage variation and identification of the 'Yelkouan Shearwater'

01 August 1990 Comments Main paper The classification of the European breeding shearwaters related to the Manx Shearwater Puffinus puffinus, and the identification of the Mediterranean forms yelkouan and mauretanicus, colloquially known as the 'Levantine Shearwater' and the 'Balearic Sh...

Irish seabird islands

01 February 1980 Comments Main paper Although Ireland is not large in area, the mainland and associated islands have a coastline of over 4,000 km. There are just over 1,000 islands of a significant size (i.e. large enough to appear on the standard 1:126,720 Ordnance Survey maps in us...

Ireland's winter visitors and passage migrants

01 February 1980 Comments Main paper As a result of the small size of the country, its position on the western fringe of the European land-mass, its relatively uniform climate and the scarcity of deciduous woodland, Ireland's breeding avifauna is comparatively impoverished. A glance at Th...

Irish bird sites

01 February 1980 Comments Main paper This list of 51 Irish ornithological sites is intended to give an indication of the types of habitat and species encountered at areas chosen for their variety and geographical distribution; it is not an attempt to catalogue the localities most imp...

Topography and habitats of Ireland

01 February 1980 Comments Main paper Ireland lies on the European continental shelf, directly north of Portugal and west of the Netherlands. It was separated from Britain in the early Postglacial period and today the channel between the two islands is 22 km wide in the north and 76 km in ...

Editorial

01 February 1980 Comments Editorials Periodically, we shall be devoting the major part of an entire issue to the birds and ornithology of a single geographical region. This number of British Birds is the first, and we felt it appropriate to start by featuring the closest neighbour to Brit...

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