Reviews

The Status of Birds in Britain and Ireland. Prepared by the British Ornithologists' Union. Blackwell Scientific Publications, Oxford, 1971. 333 pages; 69 line-drawings. £3.00. A Species List of British and Irish Birds. Edited by Robert Hudson. B.T.O. Guide 13. British Trust for Ornithology, Tring, 1971. 2op. As long ago as October 1962, the British Ornithologists' Union decided that its Check-list of the Birds of Great Britain and Ireland, published in 1952, should be replaced. Now, some nine years later, the devoted labours of many people have borne fruit in this remarkably useful and handsome volume. The welcome decision to extend the scope of the 1952 list, and in particular to amplify greatly the comments on status and distribution in Britain and Ireland, inevitably meant some delay. A special enquiry was launched in autumn 1964, which drew on the experience of local ornithological bodies, but, after this and other material had been digested, difficulties arose over the questions of sequence and nomenclature. The ensuing controversy need not be detailed here. It ranged widely for some years with many different solutions being proposed. Finally, it was decided to use the sequence in J. L. Peters's Check-list of Birds of the World and the nomenclature in C. Vaurie's The Birds of the Palearctic Fauna, both modified slightly in the light of more recent work. This inevitably has failed to satisfy many of the protagonists. In particular, the editors of local bird reports had long opposed any changes in the 1952 order until one