KTWm 



Report on the Immigrations of Summer Residents i7i the Spring 

 of 1909 ; also Notes on the Migratory Movements and 

 Records received from Lighthouses and Light-vessels during 

 the Autumn of 1908. By the Committee appointed by 

 the Britisli Ornithologists' Club. (Forming Vol. XXVI., 

 Bull. B.O.C. Edited by W. R. Ogilvie-Grant.) 25 Maps. 

 Witherby & Co. 6s. 



This, the Fifth Report of the B.O.C. Migration Committee, 

 will be welcomed by all students of migration. It is in the 

 same form as the previous volume, but is considerably more 

 bulky, chiefly by reason of a great increase in the records for 

 the autumn of 1908, and in the separate chronological accounts 

 of the movements at the Lights in the sj^ring of 1909 and 

 in the autumn of 1908. There seems to us little benefit 

 to be derived from these separate accounts of the movements 

 at the Lights, since all the information is contained in other 

 parts of the reports, and pages 191-221 and 279-331 might, 

 perhaps, have been omitted. We are glad to see in this report 

 that the Committee have widened the scope of the inquiry 

 to include records published in current literature. It is 

 unfortunate that the Scottish sj^ring-records are not 

 available for the purposes of these B.O.C. Reports. In the 

 spring of 1909, for example, single Redstarts {R. phoenicurus) 

 were seen at extraordinarily early dates in Scotland, 

 at Fair Isle on March 22nd, and at Lerwick (Shetland) 

 on March 28th, while the first mainland Scottish record 

 came from Carmichael on April 19th {Ann. S.N.H., 1909, 

 p. 195) ; but in the Migration Report now under review 

 the bird is first recorded on April 4th (Hants), and in 

 the extreme north of England not until April 21st, two days 

 after the Scottish mainland record. On the other hand, the 

 Garden- Warbler {8. hortensis) is first recorded from Scotland 

 on May 10th {Ann. S.N.H., 1910, p. 196), although it had 

 reached Westmorland on April 27th. The Tree- Pipit {A. 

 trivialis) was noted on Fair Isle on April 6th, a few days after 

 its first appearance in the south of England, The House- 

 Martin (C. urhica) was seen in Scotland before it was noted 

 in the north of England, and it is evident that a careful com- 

 parison of the two sets of records would well repay the labour 

 involved, could some arrangement be made by the Migration 

 Committee to have access to the Scottish reports in time. 



