m/fW5 



Birds of Northumberland and the Eastern Borders. By George 

 Bolam. xvii + 726 pp., with 27 Plates. Alnwick : 

 H. H. Blair, 1912. 20s. net. 



To state that Mr. Bolam's volume is the result of some forty 

 years of keen observation and methodical recording, is 

 enough to show that it is a work which no ornithologist 

 can affoixl to pass over. Judged only as an avifauna it is 

 somewhat unsatisfactory, since the area is not exactly defined. 

 It trenches upon most of the ground covered by several other 

 books, viz. Mr. Abel Chapman's Bird-Life of the Borders, 

 Mr. A. H. Evans's recently published Fauna of the Tweed 

 Area, besides Muirhead's Birds of Berwickshire and Han- 

 cock's Birds of Northumberland and Durham, and it goes 

 even further afield including, for example, many records 

 from the Forth " area." To discover what fresh information 

 Mr. Bolam has to give, or what omissions he may have made 

 regarding the distribution of the birds of these joarts, is thus 

 a very difficult task. Had Mr. Bolam restricted his ai'ea and 

 been less discursive in his narratives, we think that his book 

 Avould have been even more welcome, but, as we have already 

 indicated, its great value lies in its mass of personal obser- 

 vation by a keen observer who has spent much of his life in 

 the field. 



Throughout the book there are many valuable notes on 

 nesting-habits, and we may draw particular attention to 

 that of a number of Swallows nesting in 1877 " in near 

 proximity to the Martins, on ledges of the cliffs between 

 Berwick and Marshall Meadows." 



Among breeding-records of particular interest from a 

 distributional point of view, we may mention the following : 

 Young Crossbills being fed by their parents in Kyloe Wood 

 (Northumberland) on June 1st, 1889 (the date of the 

 " Cheviot " nest should be 1898, not 1908) ; a number of 

 breeding-records of the Hawfinch, some of which are new ; 

 the note that the Lesser Whitethroat was heard singing at 

 Fallodon by Sir Edward Grey in May, 1897, and in June, 

 1900, though no nest was actually found ; breeding of the 

 Green Woodpecker near Morpeth, in 1890 ; some records of 

 the nesting of the Water-Rail in Northumberland, and 

 especially of a number of pairs in Canno Mill Bog near Kirk- 

 newton. We may here mention that the Honey -Buzzard's 



