Mr. Lockley's latest list of birds that came voluntarily , to
the great and most ingenious aviary on .his exposed island- is wholly surprising. I doubt whether the most highly at:coin- plished student in the world could have made the very roughest approximation to the numerical relation of the species that he caught up, at any rate among the Smaller birds. The two speCies that especially interested me were the white wagtails (which must be commoner in Britain than is usually thought) and the blackbirds. The blackbirdS, presumably migrating somewhere, were strangely numerous ; and it is my belief that they are both increasing, and with the increase altering in some measure their habits. No textbboic of birds that I have consulted sufficiently recognizes their migrancy—if the word is allowable—or the astonishing increase of numbers (or so it seems) in Southern England in the winter. One would like to know the sex of these. black- birds." Certainly on occasion they migrate in bachelor flocks ; and some 'observers think according to age as well as sex:'
* s * *
Previous page
