Birds within Cities

Abstract

SINCE Gilbert White's recording of the house-martins nesting in Fleet Street and the Strand, ornithologists have never failed to interest themselves in birds about cities. A day-to-day census of the birds of the Liverpool Cathedral Wild Birds' Sanctuary, established in 1927 in an old quarry, now a cemetery, in the heart of Liverpool slums and five miles from the nearest trace of open country, has recently been completed by Mr. Eric Hardy. Thirty species are recorded: house-sparrow, starling, robin, blue tit, hedge-sparrow, song thrush, blackbird, wren, greenfinch, domestic pigeon, great tit, missel-thrush, chaffinch, rook, linnet, redwing, herring-gull, common gull, kestrel, jackdaw, cole-tit, yellow-hammer, gold-crest, chiffchaff, willow-wren and whitethroat, the first twelve of which nest. The goldcrest is now a regular spring passage migrant since the establishment of food tables, etc., though the first specimen was recorded in March, 1931 (Proc. Liverpool Nat. Field Club, 1931, p. 41), while the willow-warbler soon established itself as a regular passage migrant, spring and autumn (Liverpool Review, Annual Report, February, 1933).