Inquiries and Reports It is not possible to give here
much more than a summary of the Trust's field investigations over the past few years ; but among the most interesting I find the inquiry into the distribution of the corn- crake (everywhere rapidly decreasing), the census of heronries (a slight decrease, but to per cent, higher than 1928), the inquiry into song-periods of various species, such as missel thrush, song-thrush blackbird, chaffinch, yellow-hammer and skylark (less complete than it might have been because less than a quarter of the observers lived in the country), inquiries into the distribution of the woodcock, the fulmar, the bridled guillemot, the lapwing, the black-headed gull, the redshank, into woodland birds, the hatching and fledging period, and the local distribution and habitat of various species. An associated scheme for bird-ringing (headquarters, the Bird Room of the British Museum ; also needing field workers) reported some interesting recoveries of ringed birds—notably a robin from South-Western France, a redstart and a winchet from Portugal, and a great skua from Spain. Finally, it must be remarked that the Trust does ON necessarily need scientific experts as members. "This is not the case. Any 'fit and proper person' of good behaviour who is interested in bird life is welcomed as a member regardless of the extent of his or her knowledge "—which means, I think, the readers of this page
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