Abstract
IN a lecture to the Blackburn Naturalists' Field Club on November 26, Mr. Eric Hardy mentioned that oyster-catchers, curlew, woodcock, redshank, tawny owls and spotted woodpeckers, are all increasing their nesting range in Lancashire and Cheshire, but the terns are becoming fewer at the well-known Ainsdale sea-bird sanctuary. His subject of "On My Rounds: Notes From a Naturalist's Notebook"described his field studies in Knowsley Park, where great crested grebes, sandpipers, kingfishers and goldcrests are all common nesters and winter wildfowl visiting the great lake are more numerous and varied than at any other Lancashire water; he also showed a series of Dufay natural colour photographs taken at London Zoo this year and some scenes from Whipsnade Zoo, while the small herd of Chartley wild cattle there was compared with photographs of the original herd at Chartley Park, Staffordshire, now extinct, but of which Mr. Hardy has two valuable photographs taken by a Liverpool naturalist in 1891 when the historic herd totalled 52 and tuberculosis had not then broken out. At the Liverpool Cathedral Wild Birds' Sanctuary, said Mr. Hardy, there is a resident population of a few blackbirds, greenfinches, song thrushes and wrens, but in winter chaffinches, great tits, cole tits and goldcrests visit it and during migration willow-warblers are frequently heard, despite the sanctuary being in an old cemetery in the midst of city slums. From this position inside the city, valuable migration and other observations have been made, as a refuting of the old belief of great migrations of city sparrows to distant harvest fields, but owing to the position of a new masons' shed directly a.bove the sanctuary, it has not been possible to attract many birds this year although the sanctuary is to be reconditioned and improved.
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Wild-Life of North-West England. Nature 142, 990 (1938). https://doi.org/10.1038/142990a0
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1038/142990a0