76 



Bird Notes and News 



Art Guild resulted, and under the foster- 

 ing hand of Mrs. Watts, has for twenty 

 years maintained the traditions of the 

 art-craftsmen of old. Among the works 

 unhappily destroyed was a statuette of 

 St. Francis, intended for South Africa. 



* * * 



One of the difficulties in regard to 

 all Bird Protection Acts will no doubt 

 be the need for giving in county posters 

 and advertisements the local names of 

 birds which are, or are not, to receive 

 special protection. The ordinary man 

 hardly recognises one species from 

 another by any name at present, as was 

 made evident at Aberdeen the other 

 day, when controversy arose in a bird- 

 catching case as to whether the bird 

 caught was a Linnet or a Greenfinch. 

 In country places the familiar soubriquet 

 is as likely as not to be something 

 different from the " book " name. 

 Norfolk, for instance, persists in dubbing 

 the Wren a Tomtit, and the Missel- 

 thrush a "Felt" (or Fieldfare). An 

 interesting effort has been made lately 

 by the Fnnt-Groiver to identify the 

 " Gally-bird " reported by a Kent 

 correspondent as a " rare bird " useful 

 in the orchard. It appears that in Sussex, 

 the Isle of Wight, and elsewhere, this is 



the old name for the Green Woodpecker. 

 Perhaps some reader of Bird Notes 

 AND News can suggest the derivation. 



Still greater are the troubles of County 

 Councils when Welsh counties have to 

 be dealt with. Here there are two 

 languages to complicate matters, as well 

 as different Welsh names in different 

 districts. Glamorgan, for instance, has 

 issued notices giving English and Welsh 

 names for each bird, but, according to 

 the Cambrian Daily Leader, this does 

 not say that the Welsh name is the 

 Glamorgan name. You may call a 

 Woodpecker a Gally-bird in one county 

 and the Goldfinch a Proud Tailor in 

 another ; and if you wish to be under- 

 standed of the people in South Wales 

 you must consider whether the dialect 

 is North Walian or Morganwg or 

 Gwentian or Devetian, and must name 

 the Woodpecker Coblyn - y - Coed or 

 Taradr-y-coed, and the Goldfinch Teilwr- 

 llunden or Penewryn accordingly. If 

 the day ever comes when one schedule 

 serves the whole of Britain, it will still 

 need half a hundred translations for 

 local use, since local names are almost 

 as bewildering as scientific nomenclature. 



There is a variety of short papers dealing 

 with birds in the issue of Natureland which 

 starts the second volume of Dr. Graham 

 Renshaw's quarterly (Bridge House, Sale, 

 Manchester) . Perhaps the two most interesting 

 to bird-lovers are those which begin only in 

 this issue, the Rev. J. G. Tuck's on Nesting- 

 boxes, and Mr. A. H. Patterson's on Starlings. 

 Mr. Patterson describes the great Starling 

 flocks wheeling over the Norfolk marshlands as a 

 much rarer sight now than in the past. It 

 would appear, therefore, that there is at least 

 one district where the species is less and 

 not more common than it was thirty years 

 ago. 



Charles Macintosh, the Perthshire postman- 

 naturalist, whose life, by Mr. Henry Coates, 

 has just been published, attempted to take a 

 census of the birds of the Bran river valley in 



the breeding-time, and while finding Sparrows 

 and Starlings " innumerable," declares the 

 most common bird at that time to be the 

 Willow- Warbler. This is, of course, a purely 

 local estimate in an exceptional district, where 

 Curlews and Redshanks were almost as many as 

 Thrushes ; but it accentuates the strangeness 

 of the fact that not one person in a hundred 

 knows the Willow- Warbler or its song. Macin- 

 tosh was one of the observant and non-collecting 

 naturalists. His biographer writes : — 



The only weapons he carried on liis ornithological 

 excursions were his field-glasses and his note-book, yet 

 with these he was often able to gather information 

 which he could not have got had he scared off the 

 birds with a gun. The birds, indeed, seemed to 

 know that they had nothing to fear from hira, and 

 would often answer his skilful imitations of their 

 calls. As we have already seen, his musical ear 

 assisted him greatly in identifying the songs of the 

 different siwcies, and the varying notes they produced 

 at different seasons." 



