Birds of Warwickshire, Worcestershire South
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THE BIRMINGHAM & WEST MIDLAND BIRD CLUB. (Formerly Birmingham Bird Club, founded 1929). FOURTEENTH ANNUAL REPORT ON THE BIRDS OF WARWICKSHIRE, WORCESTERSHIRE AND SOUTH STAFFORDSHIRE, 1947. Three Shillings and Sixpence. CONTENTS OFFICERS AND COMMITTEE 1 SECRETARY AND EDITOR'S REPORT 1 THE YEAR'S WEATHER 4 THE EFFECT OF WEATHER ON DUCK .... 5 MOVEMENT AT ROTTON PARK 5 ROTTON PARK IN 1947 6 BARTLEY RESERVOIR, 1947 6 CLASSIFIED NOTES 7 MIGRANTS, 1947 - 42 ADDITIONS AND CORRECTIONS TO EARLIER REPORTS - 41 LIST OF MEMBERS AND CONTRIBUTORS TO THE REPORT 47 FINANCIAL STATEMENT COVEK THE CLUB'S MAP COVER FOURTEENTH REPORT ON THE BIRDS OF WARWICKSHIRE, WORCESTERSHIRE AND SOUTH STAFFORDSHIRE, 1947. OFFICERS & COMMITTEE, 1948. President : H. G. ALEXANDER, M.B.O.U., 144 Oak Tree Lane, Selly Oak. Vice-President and Treasurer : W. E. GROVES, 4 Lyttelton Road, Edgbaston. Chairman : W. E. KENRICK, Metchley Abbey, Harborne. Secretary and Editor : C. A. NORRIS, M.B.O.U., 10 Warwick Road, Stratford-on-Avon. Assistant Secretary : I. LINDSAY FORSTER, 14a Rotton Park Road, Edgbaston. Committee : Mrs. E. Butler, H. Kenrick, G. C. Lambourne, G. W. Rayner, L. Salmon, A. A. K. Whitehouse. SECRETARY AND EDITOR'S REPORT. Membership. Perhaps the most notable feature of the year has been the continued rapid growth of our Club. At the start of the year we had 144 adult members and 31 juniors ; at the end this had risen to 219 adult members and 39 juniors. At the date of going to press we are over three hundred strong. This steady increase in our ranks is satisfactory and a welcome sign of the general increase in interest in wild birds and the country generally, but as a Club we must face the fact that we still cover our area most inadequately, and that there are large areas in which we have few or no members at all. We very much hope that existing members will do all they can to remedy this state of affairs. Indoor Meetings. During the twelve months there have been ten meetings as follows :— Jan. 1st. Mr. J. D. Wood. " The Finer Points of Bird Watching." I Feb. 5th. The Annual Meeting followed by Mr. A. T. Wallis. " Domestic Life in Bird Land." March 5th. Mr. James Fisher. Cancelled owing to weather conditions. March 14th. Joint Meeting with The Royal Society for the Protection of Birds. Short talks by Mr. H. Kenrick and Mr. C. A. Norris. March 15th. Joint Meeting with R.S.P.B. for Junior Members. Talk by Mr. -W. Kenneth Richmond. April 2nd. Mr. R. S. R. Fitter. " The Birds of Built-up Areas." May 7th. Mr. H. R. Munro. ." Bird Friends and Foes of the Forester in England and Scotland." Oct. 7th. Mr Peter Scott. " Wild Geese." Nov. 6th. Mr. James Fisher. " Gannets, their Numbers and Breeding Stations." Dec. 2nd. Joint Meeting with the R.S.P.B. and the British Trust for Ornithology. Mr. B. W. Tucker. " A Visit to a Swedish Bird Station." The average attendance, including the joint meetings, has been a fraction over eighty, which compares with 38 in 1946 and 27 in 1945. Your Committee fear that it may be hard to maintain so high a standard of speaker in the future but we have some first-class lecturers booked for the coming season. The Report. It is a great pity that it has proved impossible to get the 1947 Report out until now and I am sorry that it has taken such an appalling time. The fact is that 63 members have sent in a total of nearly 7,500 records, and it is from these that the Report has been constructed. It will be admitted that the task of collating so large a mass of data is a formidable one, particularly for any editor who has to earn a living at the same time. We only hope that members will feel that the Report has been worth waiting for, and that those who have sent in large numbers of records will not be disappointed if they are not all incorporated. It has been found necessary to omit a great deal of material (the original M.S. would have made nearly sixty pages) but at the same time we have tried to maintain some sort of balance between woodland and aquatic species, although the records of the latter outnumber the former by at least four to one. As in previous years a small Records Committee has been of assistance in considering the more difficult records and in deciding on their acceptability or otherwise. The greatest care has been taken in vetting the records we have received and as many members will be aware, full details have been called for and examined in the case of unusual occurances. We regret that through sheer 175. lack of space it has frequently been found impossible to include much in the way of supporting data, details of plumage, etc., which it is customary to include with records of rare species. Birds in 1947. The year has been an interesting one with a number of the less usual species for those whose joy it is to search out the rare vagrant. This Report deals with 152 species, compared with 131 in 1946, and in all 164 species and races have been seen during the year compared with 159 in 1946. During the year Warwickshire has claimed two new records with Sanderling at Baginton, and then again at Bartley Reservoir, and in October there were four Velvet Scoter at Bartley. The breeding of Garganey at Baginton also constitutes a new and interesting county record. Of the many rarities one might mention in particular the Water-Pipits at Bartley, Little Auk near Stratford and another in Evesham, Spotted Crake at Westminster Pool and at Baginton and Hoopoe near Redditch and near Evesham. It appears that the Hoopoe records are the first that have not also been obituary notices for the unfortunate birds concerned. In this connection the records of the Buzzard are the reverse of satisfactory. These fine birds nest freely not far from our area and a single pair has in fact nested in Worcestershire in 1948, but there can be no doubt that if only they were left in peace they would nest throughout the well-wooded parts of our area. A number of rabbits would be a small price to pay for so rich an addition to our avifauna, but it seems that a large bird of prey is still an irresistible target for the fool with firearms. Acknowledgments. Miss M. Hawkes has shouldered the major task of transferring to index cards the data on which the Report is based and our most sincere thanks go to her, for this is perhaps the most tedious, and essential, part of the preparation of the Classified Notes. In the actual drafting of these notes A. A. K. Whitehouse, G. W. Rayner, and L. Salmon have dealt with large groups of birds and been of the greatest help. G. W. Rayner has prepared the Migrant Table in which has been incorporated the average arrival and departure dates worked out by I. Lindsay Forster. Other notes and papers have been contributed by I. Lindsay Forster, M. Larkin, A. R. Mead-Briggs, G. W. Rayner and L. Salmon. To all these and to the 64 members who have sent in general notes we tender our thanks. With a large number of really excellent reports it would be invidious to pick out individuals for special mention. A number of correspondents have sent in notes on over a hundred species and at least three members have sent in twenty pages or more of M.S., a formidable achievement. All those who have sent in notes for this Report are marked in the List of Members which appears 175. at the end. It remains only to thank I. Lindsay Forster who has assisted in checking the M.S. and proofs. C.A.N. " Notes on the Birds of Warwickshire." Mr. Norris's excellent " Notes on the Birds of Warwickshire " (Cornish Brothers Ltd., 8s. 6d.) will come as a welcome addition to the library of anyone who takes his or her bird watching at all seriously. It should be noted that the book (the writing of which has come in addition to his normal work and his exertions on behalf of the Club) is the forerunner of a more detailed work and we look forward with eagerness (and offers of much midnight oil) to the publication of the more complete history which is, some day, to follow. I.L.F. THE YEAR'S WEATHER. Nineteen Forty-seven has been well termed a record year for records — of cold, heat, rain and drought. January started cold, with frost and snow. A few days of warm, spring-like weather followed, when all traces of snow dis- appeared. The cold weather returned on the 19th and on the 22nd the ground was again covered with snow which remained until March 16th, a record period of 53 days. A rapid thaw was followed by strong southerly winds and heavy rain which caused serious flooding in many parts of the country. Rough, unsettled weather continued until the middle of April, when spring-like weather set in again, although snow was still lying in drifts on higher and more exposed levels. May provided a heat record for the month and temperatures increased until, on June 2nd, the shade temperature reached nearly 90°. Hot weather continued throughout June, with temperatures well above average. A slight break came in July, with thunder and heavy rainfall, but in August the hot, dry weather was again with us, making it the hottest August for sixty years.