Abstract
THE work of the British Trust for Ornithology (91 Banbury Road, Oxford) is described in the fourteenth annual report which has recently been issued. Much useful information has been collected from the hatching and fledging inquiry and will be included in the new edition of the "Handbook of British Birds". A sample census of heronries showed that large decreases were recorded in every considerable area and in the majority of individual heronries ; this was almost certainly due to the extreme severity of the winter. The black redstart inquiry showed that, up to the end of the year, sixteen pairs were reported to have lived in the south of England. Other inquiries have been made into the behaviour of tits with milk-bottles and the nocturnal activities of redwings ; but probably the most popular was the watch for swifts on May 11, 1947. Five hundred observers made reports on the movements of about five thousand birds, three out of every four of whom were headed north. Above a line drawn from the Wash to the Severn this northward surge was especially marked, and in south-west Devon several parties of swifts were seen to come in from the sea and to proceed inland.
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British Trust for Ornithology. Nature 161, 841 (1948). https://doi.org/10.1038/161841d0
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1038/161841d0