8i 
NOTES AND COMMENTS. 
EGG-RAIDING AT THE FARNE ISLANDS. 
In Country Life for February 4th, Mr. Riley Fortune has 
an illustrated article on the above subject. In the old days, 
the difficulty in reaching the islands by the rowing boats 
limited the number of visitors, and gave the birds a chance. 
‘ Now a number of fishermen have acquired large motor boats 
with which they carry over a considerable number of passengers 
at a time ; they also make more than one journey a day, and 
are there quite early in the morning, and bring parties over 
in the evening, a state of things previously unknown. On 
one day this year 200 people landed on the Brownsman, only 
a tiny island, and on one Sunday morning I counted foity-five 
people wandering haphazard all over the Tern colony, a very 
congested area, where Sandwich, Common, Arctic and Roseate 
Terns were breeding. The watchers (unfortunately, the 
Fame Islands Association have lost their experienced men, and 
since the war have had to do their best with men, estimable 
enough, whose knowledge of the birds and their ways is 
of the slightest) seemed to have the idea that they are there 
to act as showmen, and, instead of restraining visitors, 
accompanied them among the eggs and young birds, picking 
one up here and there for exhibition. One boy I saw pocket 
several eggs, but as they were addled, I did not interfere. 
This island was strewn with addled eggs, as a result brought 
about by the continued excessive disturbance of the birds. 
EAST EUROPEAN BUZZARD. 
As a sample of the work contained in H. Kirke Swann's 
‘ Synopsis of the Accipitres,’ referred to on another page, we 
give the following footnote in reference to Buzzards : — ' Con- 
fusion has long existed regarding the East European Buzzards, 
and three years of hard work on the group brings me to the 
conclusion that the only way to overcome this confusion is 
to regard B. vulpinus as a species and “ zimmermannae " 
[= intermedins Menzb. — this name claiming priority] as a 
form of this species and not of B. buteo. There is no doubt 
that B . v. intermedins is intermediate between B. vulpinus and 
B. buteo, but there is also no doubt that intermedins is the 
representative form in E. Europe and breeds there along with 
typical B. buteo buteo. Witherby admits this difficulty 
(Pract. Handbook Br. Birds, ii . , p. 145, note) but follows 
Hartert in making vulpinus a form of B. buteo, and even goes 
further in doubting if il zimmermannae " is separ^^;' '.,CJpf r . . C - 
Meiklejohn tells me also that the typical B. B'.' v. ’ ' 
intermedins nest together in Esthonia and do ^Q^mterbreed . 
The inference is obvious that they must be different .speck, ^ 
and as I have always been convinced that vu(p^u$im\k mffdtuZl 
\ r 
F 
1922 Mar. 1 
I'Oy 
