BIRDS 



The striking geographical position of Cornwall gives a peculiar interest 

 to the study of its bird life. It naturally emphasizes many phenomena of 

 distribution, and causes the omissions from the seasonal bird population of 

 the county to become in many cases as interesting as the inclusions. It makes 

 the county the theatre of complicated migratory movements, and conse- 

 quently the recipient of many waifs and strays. It has caused it to become a 

 gathering ground for many migratory species in the autumn where they may 

 linger for days, or even weeks, before moving to their winter quarters 

 in the south. 



It confers on the county a remarkably mild and genial climate, that by 

 its influence on food supply, particularly during autumn and winter, naturally 

 attracts the more nomadic species, and adds to the charm of everyday field 

 work the joy and excitement of the unexpected. As the first and last land 

 in England Cornwall offers the first shelter to autumn migrants that after 

 getting beyond the mouth of the Channel are driven back by storms and 

 contrary winds ; and the last asylum to birds that during the winter are 

 driven south or west by the severity of the weather, and are either unwilling 

 or unable to make the passage to the Continent. 



A cursory examination of the physical features of the county shows that 

 in its diversity of soil and covering, and its happy admixture of land and 

 water, Cornwall is pre-eminently adapted for a most varied ornis. Its 250 

 miles of coast, its projecting headlands, its rocky islets, and its famous western 

 archipelago, its long sea-walls of seamed and fissured cliff broken by delight- 

 fully sheltered combes, its well-watered, well-wooded valleys running down to 

 the sea, its wide and varied beaches, its open bays, its branching estuaries and 

 tidal rivers, its long reaches of sandy dunes, its breezy downs and stretches of 

 heath-land, its magnificent furze-brakes, its wild moorland, its wealth of 

 upland valleys and shady wooded streams, its lofty tors and granite cairns, its 

 high-lying bogland and desolate marshes, its brackish and freshwater pools, 

 its low-lying reed-beds and swamps, its orchards, gardens, woods, its many 

 grades of cultivated land all these together offer a congenial habitat for every 

 type of British bird. As might be expected, therefore, Cornwall is rich in 

 resident species, and most of the sections are well represented. On account 

 of its position in the extreme south-west, however, there are several note- 

 worthy absentees from its list of breeding birds. Not only does it lie outside 

 the breeding area of such species as the pied flycatcher, lesser redpoll, wry- 

 neck, long and short-eared owls, merlin, golden plover, black-headed gull, and 

 stone curlew, but it is too far west for the nesting of the lesser whitethroat, 

 the nightingale, and the hawfinch, and yet the three breed regularly in the 

 sister county, Devon. The yellow wagtail probably only occasionally ventures 

 across the Tamar to nest, and in the county itself we come across the western 

 breeding limit of the redstart, garden warbler, wood-wren, and tree-pipit, all 

 of which are practically confined to the woods of the Tamar valley. Up till 



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