15 JANUARY 1927, Page 24

BIRDS OF THE BRITISH ISLES AND THEIR EGGS. VOL. III.

(Frederick Warne. 10s. 6d.)—Mr. T. A. Coward has given us a welcome addition to his two previous volumes. He opens with a most illuminating chapter on migration, by the light of which we can see how vast is the darkness that surrounds the manner of these journeyings. It will be a reve- lation to many that even blackbirds and starlings,.thoSe per- manent denizens of English gardens, are travellers oversea, and that though resident as a species they habitually migrate. More marvellous is it that gold-crest wrens, those minute and short-winged birds, arc capable of a flight of four hundred miles from Scandinavia to our East coasts. Valuable, too, are Mr. Coward's notes on the domestic habits of birds, especially those of the rarer species. ' Two additions may safely be made to these--namely, that ruffs and reeves certainly bred at Cley three years ago, and that the avocet reappeared there in the autumn at one of its former breeding-haunts. Coloured illustrations by Mr. Thorburn and others adorn the book with more intimate photographs taken at short range.