Abstract
THE twenty-second report of the Lancashire and Cheshire Fauna Committee, just issued, which covers 1935, is probably the most useful publication of the Committee apart from its Check List. It deals chiefly with vertebrates, and in addition to the records of the occurrence of rare species, includes detailed tables of the distribution of the woodcock, grey squirrel and great crested grebe in Cheshire, and the pochard, great spotted woodpecker and redstart in both counties. The committee which announces it is also to include the recording of the marine fauna within the three mile-limit in its work, makes an addition of 101 species new to both counties and 25 new to one county, the former consisting of 28 Coleoptera, 20 Diptera, 20 Hymenoptera, 12 sawflies, 8 Acari, 5 Hemiptera, 2 Mallophaga and Neuroptera and 1 each of Mollusca, Lepidoptera, Anoplura and Siphonaptera. The more interesting specific records are: a new colony of Natterjack toads at Storeton, Cheshire; a November golden oriole at Macclesfield; numerous reports of the invasion of crossbills; a meadow-pipit at Heywood, Lancashire, with an abnormal clutch of five sky blue eggs spotted with red, and a magpie that has developed the habit of nesting on the ledge of a steep moorland cliff there; a chiffchaff wintering there, although it does not nest in the district; a December immigration of blackbirds; an investigation of swallow broods showing that 35 broods in Lancashire averaged 4-05 young and 97 broods in Cheshire averaged 4 young; a kestrel taken in Manchester and found to have its plumage and its nostrils so heavily laden with soot that none of the usual parasites inhabited it.
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Lancashire and Cheshire Fauna. Nature 139, 708 (1937). https://doi.org/10.1038/139708c0
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1038/139708c0