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 NOTICES OF NEW BOOKS, Etc, 



British Birds. Vol. IX, Nos. 2-12. London : Witherby & Co. 

 Is. monthly. 

 The May number of ' British Birds ' concludes the volume of 

 which we noticed the opening number last year. In the July number 

 Miss A. C. Jackson has a paper on " The Moults and Sequences of 

 Plumage in the British Ducks," in which she records a spring moult 

 in the females, involving not only a change of the body-feathers, but 

 a new growth of " nesting-down " beneath them. Mr. G. T. Atchison 

 describes and illustrates with photographs nests of the Lapwing 

 containing five eggs. In the August number Mr. J. H. Gurney and 

 Miss E. L. Turner describe the nesting of a Long-eared Owl in 

 Norfolk on the ground, with particularly fine photographs con- 

 tributed by this lady. Miss Haviland records photographically the 

 half- diving of a Black-headed Gull when feeding, an act many of us 

 must have witnessed both with this species and the Herring Gull ; 

 and on the next page there is a photograph of a nest of the Common 

 Tern, taken on Gardiner's Island, off Long Island, U.S.A., with no 

 less than ten eggs. Another with six is recorded, so that in this 

 large colony of about 1000 pairs the birds show some slight inclina- 

 tion to " pool" their eggs like common Fowls. The note is by Mr. 

 H. Massey. Miss Haviland opens the September number with a 

 paper on the nesting of the Asiatic Golden Plover, illustrated by 

 photographs ; the young of this species she finds much brighter in 

 colour than those of the western. A most interesting record is that 

 of Mr. A. H. Mathew of a flight of about a hundred Alpine Swifts 

 seen in Kent on July 15th, 1915 ; small numbers were also seen on 

 the 22nd and on August 3rd. A curious thing is that in two cases it 

 appeared probable that these birds settled on the ground. Mr. C. E. 

 Milburn records the killing of some nestling Meadow-Pipits by a 

 Cuckoo. A most regrettable record is the killing of a pair of the 

 magnificent Caspian Tern at Jury's Gap in Kent; people who cannot 

 recognise and spare conspicuous birds like this ought not to be 

 allowed out with a gun. In the October part we find a record, 

 illustrated by a good drawing, of a rare bird seen and not killed, an 

 Eastern Black-eared Wheatear, observed and sketched in Yorkshire 

 by Mr. W. S. Medlicott. Mr. W. J. Williams records the breeding 

 of the Black-necked Grebe on one of the western lakes in Ireland, as 

 evidenced by the capture of a young one in the " flapper " stage, 



