MARCH CUCKOOS.
[To TEl EDITOR Or TEl "SPECTATOR."] Sin,—Since you sometimes like to print letters on natural history, I may perhaps be allowed to mention the appearance of the Bulletin of the British Ornithologists' Club, Vol. %%IL, containing the third annual Report on the migration of birds during the spring of 1907. It is published by Witherby and Co., and contains maps and a vast number of facts which cannot fail to be of extraordinary interest to every serious observer of British birds. My letter is, however, now only concerned with the cuckoo, whose arrival is always noted and chronicled by the unlearned with greater interest than that of the more obscure migrants. Cuckoos in March are con- stantly reported by excited writers to the local newspapers, but the evidence has always been open to doubt ; and the natural history editor of the Field, in particular, has never ceased to pour a stream of incredulous ridicule upon all who announced the cuckoo before April. In March, 1907, however, the weather was very summerlike over Western Europe and the British Islands, and there is no doubt now that a few straggling cuckoos reached our shores before the end of the month. The schedules of the British Ornithologists' Club are filled up by fairly competent ornithologists, and we find that the cuckoo was observed on March 26th in Gloucester- shire, 29th in Hereford, 30th in Wilts, 31st in Dorset, Hants, and Gloucestershire, and on April 1st in Devon, Sussex, and Gloucestershire. This is much earlier than usual, but the possibility of a March cuckoo seems now to be established. The real influx of cuckoos did not begin until April 14th.—
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