Page:VCH Worcestershire 1.djvu/180

A HISTORY OF WORCESTERSHIRE The classification of the species as well as the nomenclature used in this article has been taken from Saunders' Manual of British Birds, 2nd edit., 1899. Bearing in mind what has already been said of the nature of the county boundary and of the number of streams which pass in or out of it, which streams it should be remembered are the highways of many birds, it has been decided to introduce into the present list certain species which, though not actually killed in the county, have been so at places so near to it as to leave no reasonable doubt of their connection with it. Such species are bracketed thus [ ], and their exact locality particularized, to distinguish them from those which are strictly Worcestershire birds. A few words on what has already been done to enumerate the birds of Worcestershire are desirable. The earlier published lists of Worcestershire birds are extremely incomplete and not very accurate. One of the first is the Illustrations of the Natural History of Worcestershire, by Dr. (afterwards Sir) Charles Hastings, which appeared in 1834. It does not profess to give anything more than a selection of the most remarkable animals, but having been prepared under the auspices of a great authority on ornithology, H. E. Strickland, and contributed to by Mrs. Perrot, who at one time gathered material for a history of British birds, it is worthy of very careful consideration. It includes not only birds, but also mammals, reptiles and fish. In Stanley's Worcester Guide, published about 1855, there is a list of the birds occurring round the city. It is believed it was prepared by Mr. Martin Curtler of Worcester, a gentleman whose name appears in the following pages, and who has a good collection of Worcestershire birds. A Hst of the birds in the Malvern district by Edwin Lees appeared in the Transactions of the Malvern Naturalists' Field Club for 1870, but the record is not very satisfactory. After mentioning the goosander and the red-breasted merganser, the author speaks of the dun-diver as a dis- tinct species in the following words : ' Dun-diver {M. castor, Linn.) killed on the Teme, February, 1870.' The last-named bird is however either the female goosander or the pochard [Fuligula ferina), which is locally called the ' dun-bird.' Again the ' yellow-legged gull {Larus fus- cus)' is mentioned as being occasionally found on the Avon and Teme. But L. fuscus, although yellow-legged, is the well-known lesser black- backed gull, and appears under that name in every work on British ornithology ; while the real yellow-legged herring gull (L. cachinnans) has only been once met with in Great Britain. Of the Anatidce Mr. Lees gives a medley of sixteen species, all of which are said to appear in the autumn and winter, but he includes the garganey or summer teal, which only appears in the spring and during the summer. In 1889, a list of Worcestershire birds appeared in Hardwicke' s Science Gossip, by F. G. S. A., under the title of 'Notes on Worcestershire Birds.' It enumerates 118 species. In 1 89 1 Mr. Willis Bund printed a tabular and systematic list of the birds which had been met with in the counties of Worcester, Here-