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XVIII. 



NOTES ON BIRDS OBSERVED IN HERTFORDSHIRE IN THE 



YEAR 1906. 



By William Bickerton, F.Z.S., M.B.O.U. 



Read at Watford, 2Srd April, 1907. 



At the end of 1905 the list of birds recorded for Hertfordshire 

 included 224 species, and to this list only one new-comer has to 

 be added for 1906. This is the Black G-rouse (Tetrao tetrix), 

 the female of which is known as the grey-hen, and it is a female 

 specimen or grey-hen that has been taken near Watford. 



The occurrence was reported in ' The Field ' of 8th December, 

 1906, by Mr. W. Hui'st Flint, who stated that: "While 

 pheasant- shooting in the Grullet Wood, about a mile distant 

 from Watford, on December 1st, one of the guns killed a fine 

 specimen of the grey-hen. Such an occurrence prompts me to 

 ask whether anyone can explain the presence of so unusual 

 a visitor." Perhaps as some sort of response to Mr. Hurst 

 FKnt's enquiry, the following paragraph appeared in ' Country 

 Life,' on 5th January, 1907 : — " The land-rail is so scarce a bird 

 at all times in East Anglia that the recent kilhng of one of the 

 species in that part of England in November is really a very 

 curious occurrence. It is not, indeed, the most extraordinary 

 appearance of an unexpected bird which has been recorded 

 lately. The palm in that respect has certainly to be awarded to 

 the grey-hen lately killed at Watford. 



" Many suggestions of more or less futility have been made to 

 accovmt for the presence of the bird in this curious locahty ; the 

 most plausible, perhaps, is that which is also the most prosaic, 

 that it came down by the London and North-Western Railway 

 from the North. Possibly it may have stunned itself in flight 

 against telegraph-wires, have fallen into a truck of a passing 

 train, and only come to its senses and to its power of flight again 

 when it arrived at Watford. If that is a correct solution — but 

 this is a puzzle for which imagination may suggest many 

 answers — it might just as well have made its appearance in 

 Euston Station, where it would have been still more of 

 a surprise." 



I hardly like to attempt an explanation of the occurrence. 

 It is rarely safe to speculate on the causes of such chance 

 happenings in the bird-world, and speculation is all that the 

 circiunstances of the case allow. Doubtless the bird was 

 changing its quarters from one part of the country to another, 

 and by some strange chance or mischance it came to earth in 

 Grullet Wood, and that is all one can safely say. Consider these 

 facts for a moment. There are in the British list of birds three 

 distinct species bearing the name grouse. These are Pallas's 

 sand-grouse (Syrrhaptes paradoxus), the black grouse (Tetrao 



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