JANUARY 21, 1904] 
NADLORE 
273 
Wild Wales is still, happily, a stronghold of the 
buzzard and the raven, both of which are still fairly 
common there (the author seems to have had the luck 
to see no less than three buzzards’ nests with eggs in 
one day), and enjoy a certain amount of protection 
or at least toleration, while the sight of a fork-tailed 
kite even may still gladden the eye of the bird lover, 
and we read of six seen in the air together! The 
management of the attempt to protect the kite in 
Wales, in support of which some members of the 
British Ornithologists’ Union (which should not be 
called the ‘‘ British Ornithological Society ’’) have sub- 
scribed liberally, was in 1903 placed in the author’s 
hands. Accordingly, a valuable chapter gives us an 
account of a nesting haunt of the kite in that year. 
But the birds seem to have had bad luck, despite the 
watchful care of the author. In the nest he found the 
kite addled one egg and cracked the other acci- 
dentally. A visit to Tenby in the breeding season 
Fic. 1.—Merlin’s Eggs in Crow’s Old Nest. 
Wales.”’) 
(From “ Bird Life in Wild 
supplies material for an account of the ordinary sea- 
fowl to be found breeding just then. The little wader 
which remained unidentified was probably an immature 
turnstone, for many non-breeding individuals of this 
species pass the summer on the coast of Wales. The 
explanation of the light coloured shag seen on May 
27 is, perhaps, that these birds do not attain adult 
dress in their first year, and this was immature. 
Other chapters deal with the birds to be seen “in 
the hills’? and along the river, with well-known 
feathered outlaws and some of the rarer birds of Wales. 
But the buzzard and the raven are the favourites of 
the author (who, indeed, devotes a whole chapter to 
the latter), and his personal observations on the breed- 
ing habits of these two species would alone make this | 
pleasant book a valuable addition to the literature of 
the subject. The fact of the peregrine breeding in 
Breconshire is here recorded for the first time, and the 
NO. 1786, VOL. 69] 
author was lucky enough to find a merlin’s nest, the 
second only recorded in that district. Additional . 
interest attaches to this nest from the fact that the 
birds had taken possession of an old crow’s nest in a 
tree, a most unusual thing in this country, where the 
merlin usually deposits its eggs on the ground or on a 
ledge of rock. About half the volume is occupied by 
an account of the author’s bird-nesting and general 
ornithological observations on the birds of his own 
neighbourhood (in the form of a diary) from March 
to July, 1902. From these interesting pages we can 
gain a very good idea of the avifauna of the district, 
in which, by the way, the very local woodlark is to 
be found breeding. 
The author includes-a chapter of rough notes on 
climbing, collecting, &c., with an appeal to landowners 
to preserve our rarer birds. May we venture to supple- 
ment this with a hope that he will set no more traps 
for marten-cats? For the marten is every bit as 
interesting a member of our native fauna as the 
buzzard or the peregrine, and it is getting very, very 
rare. The author, when writing about egg collecting, 
states that the dealer is the worst offender in this re- 
spect, ‘‘ for he stops at nothing, and will take as many 
clutches of a good thing as he can find.’’ This, we 
fear, is quite as true of some collectors, and we must 
protest against the inference that the collector in 
general is one bit less to blame than the dealer. The 
collector stands in the place of ‘‘ receiver,’’ and 
| whether or not it is true that the thief would not exist 
| without the receiver, it is certainly true that the dealer 
would not exist without the collector. 
As to the unsafety of ‘‘ generalising ’’ in observ- 
ations all will agree. It is, perhaps, unsafe to 
generalise on such a subject as whether or no the 
curlew ‘‘ seldom, if ever,’’ lays less than four eggs. 
| For in the case of ground-building birds, especially, 
the question whether a crow has visited the nest always. 
comes in; but we have twice found three incubated 
eggs in a curlew’s nest. If the missel thrush has 
usually ceased to sing in South Wales by April 15, its 
habit is very different in some other parts of Wales, 
where it may be heard well on into May. In Oxford- 
shire we have heard it in June. It may be pointed out 
with reference to the distribution of the garden warbler 
(p 211) that it is common in Merionethshire, and not 
| uncommon in parts of Carnarvonshire. 
| out that ‘‘ moor 
These charming pages are all the more refreshing 
reading because the author is evidently more accus- 
tomed to scaling crags and climbing “ stiff’? trees 
than to the making of books. All the same, a little 
more method in the arrangement would have 
husbanded space by avoiding repetition. For instance, 
the events of some March days detailed in the third 
chapter are repeated, with slight verbal variations, in 
the fifth, and in another place we notice that a note 
descriptive of bird-life recurs. The author thinks 
waterhen a better name than moorhen, ‘‘as one 
would no more expect to find one on a moor 
than a grouse in the river.’’? But it may be pointed 
” is an old English name for a wet 
moorish ’’ place is a wet place, so 
“cc 
meadow, and a 
| that moorhen was an appropriate English name for the 
bird long before English people had so much as heard 
| of grouse moors. 
The work is profusely illustrated with photographs 
of nests and bird haunts by Mr. O. G. Pile, the excel- 
lence of whose work is too well known to need further 
comment here. But we may direct attention especially 
to the clearness of the details of the sparrow-hawk’s 
nest, the wool in the lining of the raven’s nest, and 
the beautiful roundness of the pheasant’s eggs. We 
d5 not remember to have seen a photograph of a wood- 
lark’s nest previously. O. V. APLIN. 
