318 THE ZOOLOGIST. 
The Birds of Lancashire. By F.S.Mircuenn. Post 8vo, pp. 224. 
London: Van Voorst. 1885. 
Ir has been for some time known to ornithologists that 
Mr. F. S. Mitchell has long had in preparation a volume on the 
birds of the county in which he resides; and it has just been 
published. Considering the vast increase of population in 
Lancashire, and the scientific farming which drains every 
marsh, and substitutes for every bosky nook a rigid bank and 
paling, it is astonishing how many different species of birds 
Mr. Mitchell has been able to enumerate as still resident in the 
county or occasionally visiting it. 
He tells us that the present avifauna comprises 256 species, 
of which eighty-five are residents, thirty-one summer visitors, 
sixty-five winter visitors, and seventy-five occasional visitors. 
The residents are all annual breeders within the county limits, 
except the Lesser Black-backed and Herring Gulls, but as these 
nest within a very short distance of the border they may be 
fairly included in the class. The Peregrine Falcon, Common 
Buzzard, Hen Harrier, Nuthatch, Goldfinch, Raven, Rock Dove, 
Water Rail, and Spotted Crake, probably all still breed in 
Lancashire, though in much diminished numbers. The summer 
visitors also all breed annually, although the Pied Flycatcher, 
always local, is now considered rare. 
“Among the winter visitors,” says Mr. Mitchell, in his 
Introduction, ‘‘ is placed the Crossbill, which once bred regularly 
in the county, and possibly still does so occasionally, as also 
are those species like the Dotterel, Greenshank, and Turnstone, 
which appear on migration in spring and autumn, and those 
like the Guillemot, which occur the summer through, but never 
remain to breed.” Upon this paragraph we have to remark 
that when treating of the Crossbill further on (p. 69), Mr. 
Mitchell has omitted to furnish any evidence of its having 
“once bred regularly”’ in the county; nor do his remarks 
concerning the Dotterel, Greenshank, Turnstone, contain any 
allusion to their occurrence in winter. On the contrary, he 
shows that in Lancashire, as elsewhere in England, they are 
all of them spring and autumn migrants, going northward to 
breed in the spring, and returning southward with their young 
