Country–Side

Abstract

THE first number of the war–time issue of Country–Side, the quarterly journal of the British Empire Naturalists' Association, has appeared to start the twelfth volume of this well–known journal. It is edited by Mr. Leslie Beckett, the honorary organizing secretary, and comprises a twenty–page octavo issue containing five original papers, a number of smaller notes and lists of regional field records on birds, insects and fungi. There is a list of twenty–one local branches of the British Empire Naturalists' Association (including anew one at Bath) which are remaining active during war–time. Mr. J. W. Bradley has a short article on the birds of Burma, Mr. E. L. Swann describes the formation of a Norfolk salt marsh and its subsequent flora, and Mr. M. B. B. Heath some recent observations of Mars. Among smaller notes there is an account of sotto voce song in the hen blackbird, the timing of the reeling song of the grasshopper–warbler to vary from 20 to 65 seconds with stops of 4–20 seconds between; Captain T. Dannreuther describes the immigration of clouded yellow butterflies to Great Britain in 1941. Mr. A. H. Wolley–Dod correlates the rarity of autumn bird song with the dry season, and there, is a note on the abundance of privet hawk moth larvæ, even in London, this autumn. Field records include the wood–sandpiper, ruff, shelduck and gadwall at Cambridge sewage farm, the autumn passage of white wagtails in Lancashire, and October song of the blackbird in Wiltshire, where the speckled wood and comma butterflies were very numerous all the season.