EDITORIAL NOTE 



THE following Supplementary Chapters complete the British Bird Book, which, begun in 1907, 

 has taken six years to produce. 



The primary object of the work is, as stated in the Preface, to bring together from every 

 source, British and foreign, the whole available information relating to the habits of all our 

 species except those so rare that they cannot be said to have, as British birds, any habits worth 

 describing. While showing what information we do possess, the book at the same time reveals 

 what is lacking ; it will help, therefore, to direct future research in the required directions, and 

 will save a waste of energy that is not uncommon that of rediscovering the known. 



That the labour involved in producing the work, such as it is, has not been inconsiderable 

 may to some extent be realised by glancing at the " List of Works Consulted " (page 621). It will 

 be realised more concretely when it is mentioned that it was necessary to turn over the pages 

 of every volume of the Zoologist and other important periodicals, British and foreign, in order 

 to find out what articles, notes, or letters they contained worth entering in the bibliography 

 of the various species ; that the same applied to dozens of county faunal works, and a mass of 

 general literature, also both British and foreign. It is only right to add that some of this work 

 could not have been done but for the generosity of the publishers. They made it, for example, 

 possible to have a special index made of all the entries in the Field (from 1853) relating to the 

 habits of British Birds, a task that took many days to complete. 



Let us add, in passing, that it would be unjust to our contributors if, from what has been 

 said above, the impression arose that they had been merely content to compile the observa- 

 tions of others. There is much information in the book that is the result of direct personal 

 observation, and much again of this information could hare been supplied only by the con- 

 tributors and by no one else. 



The result as a whole shows a considerable increase in our knowledge over what is to be 

 found in previous works of the same kind. This increase is especially marked in the case of 

 sex-displays a subject about which little or nothing is to be found in previous works, notwith- 

 standing the prominence given to it by Darwin in his Descent of Man. Progress is also well 

 marked in the case of migration and nesting habits. On the other hand, it must be confessed 

 that our knowledge of the habits of many species including familiar species still remains 

 lamentably inadequate. The task that lies before the field-naturalist is enormous if the next 

 attempt to collect and summarise the facts recorded is to place the study of Bird Behaviour 

 upon a satisfactory footing. 



It may with some confidence be asserted that those who attempt the next garnering 

 will not suffer, at least to the same extent, from two serious difficulties that faced those 

 responsible for the present work. The first of these difficulties was that, though there are 

 many excellent observers who know something well worth knowing about a large number 

 of species, there are very few who have made it their business to concentrate their attention 

 upon a few given species and work out their life-history in detail. In more than one case con- 

 tributors to this book have found themselves in the very unsatisfactory position of having to 

 write about species of which they had little personal knowledge. Now, though it is unquestion- 

 able that the specialist himself cannot afford to ignore the experience of others in his own field, 

 and must to some extent be a compiler, if he is to be thorough, it is obvious that he has a great 



VOL. iv. SN 



