Abstract
As suggested earlier in the War, the armies in North Africa have stimulated much useful war-time observation of fauna and flora in otherwise difficult regions, and-o the current issue of Countryside (12, No. 5) contains original papers by members serving abroad. These include notes on the birds of the British list wintering in West Africa by A. C. Allnutt, who noticed that while whinchats wintered in the coastal region for the whole of the six winter months, the willow-warblers arrived in waves of migration and remained only a few days. Blue-headed and grey-headed wagtails were there from December until February but no nuptial songs were heard. Their feeding habits were no different from those observed in Europe. Waders seen regularly included the marsh-sandpiper, ringed plover, greenshank, bar-tailed godwit, black-winged stilt ; those seen mainly on passage were the sandpiper, curlew-sandpiper, grey plover, redshank, spotted redshank, little stint, turnstone and sanderling. Migrating sandwich terns remained for several weeks, and the arctic skua and black tern were noted. Previous numbers of this volume of Countryside have contained notes on the birds of Tobruk. In the current issue Col. W. R. Roberts has notes on the flora of the Egyptian wadis near Cairo.
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North African Natural History. Nature 151, 20 (1943). https://doi.org/10.1038/151020a0
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1038/151020a0