Recent Ornithological Works

Abstract

THE future student of British birds ought to have little difficulty in working out the distribution of species within the shores of Great Britain, so much excellent work having been done in the way of local lists during the last few years, and certainly one of the most useful will be the little work on “The Birds of Cumberland and Westmoreland,” just issued by the Rev. H. A. Macpher-son and Mr. W. Duckworth.¹ The situation of these two counties is interesting, especially to the student of migration, and the notes on the passage of water-birds and sea-birds are particularly good. The completeness of the information, and the concise and simple form in which it is conveyed, render this small book a model of what a faunistic work should be, and it forms a worthy accompaniment to the many excellent county lists of birds which have appeared in England during the last twenty years. It would be well if every expiring species in Great Britain had had its death-song as well sung as is the case with the Dotterell, by Mr. F. Nicholson, in the present work. While Protection Acts are spreading their aggis over many birds in the breeding season, so that the numbers are visibly increasing, and the enlightened care of a few landed proprietors aids the work of bird-preservation, there are still a certain number of species whose nesting days in this country are numbered, and which, like the Great Bustard and the Bittern, are doomed by the inexorable advance of civilisation to seek less over-crowded countries in which to breed. The (too probably final) breeding of the Dotterel! in Cumberland is therefore appropriately described by Mr. Nicholson, who has himself taken the eggs in the county. An excellent account is likewise given of the breeding of the Pied Flycatchers.