6 75 
1921.] Birds of Alcudia , Majorca. 
them. They have little knowledge of the birds or of the 
natural history of their district, and are not interested as a 
rule in natural objects ; even the shepherd boys, who spend 
the whole day in the country with their flocks, take very 
little notice of the birds around them : little reliance can, 
therefore, be placed on their statements. 
The weather from October 1920 until May 1921 was so 
abnormally bad and unsettled that the movements of 
birds, and especially their times of nesting, were most 
irregular. 
There is a small collection of mounted birds in the Instituto 
Balear in Palma, but this—like that at Mahon in Minorca—- 
is of little value owing to absence of data. 
Cultivation in Majorca has of late years so extended, and 
the character of the island so altered, particularly by the 
drainage of some of the marshes, that many of the notes of 
earlier observers are not now applicable. As an instance, 
a large marsh called El Prat, siluated a short distance to 
the south-east of Palma, has entirely disappeared, and others 
have been much curtailed by the advance of cultivation 
around their margins. 
A. von Homeyer visited the Balearic Isles in 1861 from 
the middle of April until the middle of May, and his 
observations appeared in the ‘Journal fur Ornithologie ’ in 
1862 and 1864 ; many of his statements, however, could 
only have been from hearsay. 
Barcelo wrote in 1866 ; many of his notes were not from 
his own observations, and are questionable. 
Howard Saunders published in 4 The Ibis’ of 1871 
(pp. 54-68, 205-225, 384-402), in a list of the Birds of 
Southern Spain, a number of notes of his observations on 
the Birds of Majorca. 
The Archduke Ludwig Salvador published various volumes 
between 1869 and 1891 on the Natural History, etc., of 
Majorca. 
The most complete list hitherto published is that by 
Dr. A. von Jordans in 4 Falco ’ of 1 August, 1914. He 
spent March, April, and May, 1913, in the islands, and 
