COUNTRY LIFE

New Year Bloonis

It seems to be a growing habit among gardeners to make a census of plants flowering in the first week of the New Year. Here are two little lists, the first froth a Hertford, the second fromfroma Cambridgeshire garden:

• Daphne Mezeretim • Viola. •

Lithospermum Prostratum Christmas Roses Geum. . Acetate - Lonipera Fragrantissiina Iris Stylosa

Sternbeigia. Saxifrage (yelloW)

Jessamine - Marigold Passion Flower - Laurustinus Chrysanthemums Winter Heliotrope - Roses . Heathers Aubretia Dresden China Daisy Polyanthus Virgin Mary's Cowslip Violets Pyrus Japonica Besides these' a cyclamen and. a blue Hepatica are on the edge of flowering. The Cambridge gardener picked on New Year's Day : Primroses (yellow, blue, pink and Juliae), Polyantha roses (4 varieties), Etoile d'Hollande, an un- named pink climbing tea, and white Dorothy Perkins, and the old pink " China " or monthly roses, Violets, Scabious, outdoor Chrysanthemum, large white Daisy, Wallflowers, Hellebore (2 varieties), Calendula, Anchusa, white and red Nettle, 'Rosemary, Lycesteria, blue Violas and Feverfew. In the same garden an apple' tree was flowering freely in October. * * *

A British 'Heligoland The satisfaetOry sum of £115 was contributed to the Skok- hohn. bird observatory as the result of an aPpeal in The Spectato.r: A great cage-trap of the Heligoland pattern has been erected (and has already yielded important results) and tnariy other objects have been secured : rings, books have been bOught, accommodation provided for more workers and observers acid a dormitory for students. There still remains the rieettfor a library and observation but near the cage. The Royal Society for the proteetion of Birds has made a gen- erous promise of a yearly sum equal to the lease-rent of the island sn Tong as it remains a sanctuary. Skokholm, already famous wherever birds are studied, is likely to rival Heligo- land 'itself, though the chief birds on the two islands are of very different sorts. •

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The Most PoPnlous Sanctuary The amazing bird population of the island, apart from the variety of birds of passage that rest there, is brought out in the .annual report. A census of birds is taken so far as this is at all possible ; and the following are some of the figures: Guillemots numbered 220 pairs ; pairs of Puffins were estimated at 20,000, Manx Shearwaters at 10,000, Herring Gull 300, Lesser black-backed and Greater 50, Razor- bills 1,000 and Storm Petrels 800. As may be realised from such immense figures, the cliff edges where the shearwater and putHn. chiefly rest fairly, quake as you walk over the peaty turfs. No rabbit warren hoasts quite so many holes. A great number of curious observations were made in the course of the year. One of the most startling concerns the one pair of little owls that nested on the island. The Character of the bird has been freely whitewashed of late ; and in a recent debate its friends got rather the better of its enemies. We "mustinfer that it degenerates when oppor- tunity for crime is too lavishly offered. " One pair succeeded in hitching a family. The nest was found to contain two fledged young, two addled eggs and the corpses of 200 Storm Petrels,, thus repeating a similar discovery in 1934. A further -larder of 25 corpses was found near the lighthouse." It is a grim tale. The storm petrel, a bird of singular charm, -riests in holes in the grotmd, many in a field wall, a relic of the daYS' when the island was farmed. The little owl is a born burroWer, and finds this little and most romantic bird a too easy victim.

Migrant Robins

. An oddity of migration, as it seems to me,- though it is not emphasised in the report, is the appearance on the island of a number -of -robins. arriving. from August 10th onwards. It * was a nine days' wonder when large companies of continental robins appeared one cold winter day on the coast of Norfolk : but the bird, in spite of its stay-at-home reputation, must be more migratory than an older school of naturalists believed. The bird _breeds freely, is more thoroughly protected by sentiment than any bird in the list and the pairs are very jealous of their " territory " in nesting time. So it seems natural enough to suppose that the pressure of population should drive them to some degree of migration, though they have a cat's fondness for their particular, house and garden. The bird population of Skokholm is fantastic but it would probably be a great deal bigger if it were not beset by the two great enemies of the West country, the rabbit and the bracken. It was indeed at one time suggested that the island should he used as a trial ground for methods of eliminating both plagues. Incidentally, several enquirers wish to know whether the Yorkshire bracken eradicator, of which private demonstrations were made last year. is procurable.

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Altruistic Animals

A correspondent in South Africa gives me a canary for my raven. I gave an account of a caged raven (in North Devon) which was first fed by wild birds and later returned the com- pliment by pushing out tit-bits through the bars of its cage for the wild birds to gather. A pet canary in Scottsville, South Africa, plays a similarly altruistic part. It flicks seeds out of Its cage for the sparrows to pick up, and these persistent birds come to demand the largess if it is not provided without solicitation. One of the most highly valued birds in the same garden is the black-headed oriole, which has the flutiness of the golden oriole (whose song reminds me of the blackbird's) ; and entirely refutes the common but mistaken idea that birds in South Africa pay for their brightness of plumage by the absence of music. The country is a paradise for birds in one regard : food is so plentiful that a bird table is a superfluity even in the worst season : there are no " hungry months."

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Grey Leaves

That ingenious poet, Manley Hopkins, praised the value of " dappled things." The gardener in winter will be as fond of grey things, though grey is almost a constant epithet for gloom. It is as bright on the floor of the winter garden as it is sad in the skies. There are, of course, degrees of greyness. &wed° Maritima may be almost white, and the favourite Lamb's Lug gives a sense of whiteness, like the reverse of a white poplar leaf. Lavender is a true and delicious grey- green. Greener than any of these, but still essentially grey, is Senedo Grayii ; and its value is much beyond its precious- ness. It grows like a weed and takes readily from any cutting ; yet many gardeners who seek for winter greys neglect it----to their loss. It is perhaps the most useful of its class for certain places. The maritime groundsel goes back on you : it both reverts and dies, and Lamb's Lug is rather shapeless while the shape and quaint leaf of Grayii please the eye for their form as well as their colour. It is a common thing that, like common sense, is not so common as it might be.

A Lake Experience

The vexed question whether public access to a sanctuary is a practical ideal is delightfully answered by one experiment in the Lakes, described in the Bird Notes of the R.S.P.B. On a notice at the edge of its beautiful property the Victoria Golf Hotel, Buttermerc, has substituted the 'word " Invita- tion " for " Trespassers will be prosecuted." The subscript legend asks visitors not to leave litter, pluck flowers or disturb nests ; and the experience is that the public has obeyed the request to the letter. It is found that neighbours to a sanc- tuary acquire the spirit of the place. Dwellers near Hickling Broad, for example, do not permit rare birds to be shot ; and it is the experience of the ardent rural preservers in Leicestershire that a wood sanctuary is quite consonant with a public park. The effect of notices both more salient and more tactful ought to be tested on commons nearer London now grossly defaced by week-end litter.