Report on the Migration of Birds in the Spring and Autumn of 1880. [Second Report]

JOHN A. HARVIE BROWN, F.R.S.E., F.Z.S., JOHN CORDEAUX, and P. M. C. KERMODE.
LONDON: SONNENSCHEIN & ALLEN, 15, PATERNOSTER SQUARE. 1881.
Price Two Shillings.
Transcriber Note: Table of Contents was added for assistance to the reader.
The following Report contains a Summary of the investigations of a Committee appointed by the British Association for the Advancement of Science at Swansea in 1880, an Abstract of which will be presented to the Association at its next Meeting.
The Returns relating to Scotland have been arranged by Mr. Harvie-Brown; those for the East Coast of England, by Mr. Cordeaux; and the West Coast of England, by Mr. Philip Kermode.
I am fixing correspondents in every corner of these northern regions, like so many pickets and outposts; so that scarcely a Wren or a Tit shall be able to pass from York to Canada but I shall get intelligence of it. —Alexander Wilson, in 1808. ( Vide Constable's Edition, 1831, p. xlix.)
Printed schedules, letters of instructions, and additional remarks were forwarded to twenty-six stations on the East Coast of Scotland and the Shetland and Orkney Islands, making, with the Iceland and Faroe stations, thirty-nine in all for 1880. With Fair Isle for 1881 we shall have forty stations.
Eight stations on the East Scottish coasts returned filled-in schedules, against thirteen last year, out of a total of twenty-six. This shows a falling off from last year. The reasons for this I have endeavoured to explain in my general remarks further on, under both East and West Coast. Scarcity of birds is reported from several stations.
The stations from which co-operation was asked are the following, commencing with the most northerly. Those from which returns have been received are marked with a ; those which sent returns both last year and this year have two ; those which sent none last year but have done so this year have a † prefixed; those which sent returns last year but none this year are printed in italics . In future Reports we will prefix to each station the years in which these stations make returns. A marked improvement appears, however, in the returns which we have received, these being fuller than in 1879.