IO 
INTRODUCTION. 
One or two are rarely seen, such are the quail and the oriole; but the first of these 
possesses a special interest, and the other introduces the student to a large family 
of tropical and American birds. Three of the great orders into which birds are 
divided—the Passeres, Scansores, and Gallinae, are thus illustrated. Of the remaining 
orders, the Accipitres (birds of prey and owls) are now become very scarce, two 
causes mainly causing their extinction—preservation of game and increase of popu¬ 
lation. The birds which belong to the Grallatores and Natatores are for the most 
part birds of the coast and its estuaries, and water-fowl which visit us in winter to 
compensate for the absence of the migratory warblers. If the thirteen birds and 
groups of birds which are here described are typical specimens of summer birds, 
many more remain for observation, some of them more or less rare, and many of 
the others but little known as far as regards their minor characteristics. Thus 
Yarrell, in his third edition (1856), gives the numbers of British birds as— 
Resident all the year 
Summer visitors 
Winter do. 
Occasional do. 
140 
63 
48 
103 
354 
Johns (in 1862), by the addition of a few more occasional visitors, brings the total 
up to 361. After a still more rigorous examination, and by including all the new 
species (forty-seven) which had been observed in Great Britain and Ireland since 
the third edition of Yarrell, Mr Harting (eliminating four birds of Yarrell’s list, of 
which one is a domesticated species, two mere varieties, and one, the Great Auk, 
now extinct), brings up the numbers to 395.* This then may be taken as the present 
state of the British avi-fauna, and of these, in round numbers, 130 species are 
residents, 100 periodical migrants, and 30 annual visitants, the remainder being rare 
and accidental visitants. 
Nor is the writer without hope that what he has written with much love and 
enthusiasm for creatures so beautiful and mostly so inoffensive to man as birds may 
contribute, if it be slightly, to teach kindness and humanity to the lower orders of 
creation. Bird-nesting, for instance, when followed by boys as a means of acquainting 
themselves with the wonderful instincts which prompt birds to build their different 
kinds of nest, and when only an egg or two is taken to form a collection, he 
sympathises with and would encourage. When it results in nests being ruthlessly 
torn down which have cost the poor bird (as here described in a few cases) so 
* “A Hand-book of British Birds,” by J. E. Harting, F.L.S., Introduction, p. v. 
