2 THE BIRDS OF NORTHAMPTONSHIRE 



were plain statements of fact, and bore the impress 

 of accuracy, but there were also many more or less 

 vague, and requiring strict investigation and verifica- 

 tion, and it is just this investigation and verifica- 

 tion, which I have been unable, from ill-health and 

 consequent long absences from home, to carry out as 

 I had hoped in more favourable circumstances to 

 have done. The same causes have prevented the 

 possibility of a methodical series of observations of 

 my own on the arrival and departure of our migratory 

 species, the nesting-habits of such as breed with us, 

 and many other points of interest, and must be my 

 excuse for the many imperfections which will no 

 doubt be discovered in these pages. But if any 

 reader should by them be induced to devote more 

 attention than he has hitherto done to the accurate 

 observation of our birds, and especially to the record 

 of such observations, I shall consider that they have 

 not been written quite in vain. 



I have more than once heard it said that British 

 ornithology is worked out, and that there remains no 

 more to be done therein, but this I emphatically deny, 

 and maintain that we have yet much to learn on the 

 subject, and that accurate personal observation is and 

 always will be of infinite value. For a comparatively 

 inland county I think that our list of birds will com- 

 pare favourably in point of number of species with any 

 other, but recorded observations are lamentably few, 

 and with the exception of the list given in Morton's 

 'Natural History of Northamptonshire' (1712), and 

 a few scattered notices of birds in the 'Zoologist,' the 

 ' Field,' and the county newspapers, I am not ac- 

 quainted with anything in print on the subject. I 

 may mention that I was fortunate in having for a 



