REPUTED BRITISH BIRDS. 



Were all the birds which, from time to time, have been 

 recorded as British tabulated, the list would be a long one, but 

 it would be a mass of errors. Immense numbers of foreign 

 cage-birds have been imported and many have succeeded in 

 breaking prison ; others have been released by those who 

 wished to introduce new species, a risky business and one 

 which tends to complicate the study of geographical distribu- 

 tion. Others, again, have been erroneously identified, and not 

 a few imported specimens have been palmed off as British-killed 

 by unscrupulous dealers. Cold-storage has assisted fraud ; it 

 needs an experienced eye to say if a bird in the flesh has been 

 recently killed. 



There are, however, a number of birds that have been 

 captured or killed in our islands whose claim to rank as British, 

 though slender, is as good as that of a few which have been 

 accepted. A bird is counted as British if it has reached us 

 unaided, either as a migrant out of its course or a lost wanderer, 

 but if it has alighted on a ship, and thus relieved the strain of 

 continuous flight, it is, by many ornithologists, rejected. The 

 weakness of this argument is that we do not know which birds 

 have taken advantage of passing vessels ; it is no uncommon 

 thing for normal British migrants to rest on vessels off our 

 southern shores or in the Mediterranean, but no one refuses a 

 Swallow as British because it may have in this way saved its hfe. 

 Yet the ship argument is used against any American species. 



