1^2 1. J 0)t the Birds of Alderney. 415 



XXIII. — Notes on the Birds of Alderney. 

 By Major W. R. Thompson, R.A., M.B.O.U. 



For much of the infonnation contained in the following 

 notes I am indebted to my friend, that good sportsman, 

 Major L. J. A. Lanolois, of the Royal Alderney Artillery 

 and Engineers. Without his aid they would have been 

 far less full, and more especially are my thanks due to him 

 for that valuable table giving the date of arrival on the 

 island of the first Woodcock. 



Langlois has lived and shot, or I should rather say, shot and 

 lived — he himself would put the shooting first — in Alderney 

 since 1885, and has at his house, "Holmwood," a small but 

 well set up collection of many of the rarer visitors — birds, 

 not human beings — to the island. I make further acknow- 

 ledgement of his assistance in the text, where, since his 

 name would perforce appear so frequently, I have denoted 

 him by his initial " L."" 



My own observations of the avifauna of the island com- 

 menced on the date of my first joining the station in 

 November 1912, and continued, with intervals, until the 

 1st of August, 1914, when, owing to the imminence of war, 

 the Garrison Company in which I was then serving left the 

 island. I was again posted to Alderney in 1918, and landed 

 on the 8th of November, since when my observations have 

 continued to the present time, July 1920^ with the all impor- 

 tant exception of a period of six weeks during the autumn 

 migration of 1919, when I had the misfortune to be away 

 on duty. 



The Island of Alderney will be found fully described in 

 the guide books, but a few remarks from an ornithological 

 view-point are perhaps called for. The island, then, is situated 

 in latitude 49° 43' North and longitude 2° 12' West. It is 

 the most northerly of the Channel Islands, and lies about 

 nine miles in a westerly direction from the nearest point 

 on the coast of France, Cap de la Hague, on the Cotentin 

 Peninsula. From the point of view of migration it is the 



