Abstract
AN important step towards the better organisation of field studies of bird liffc has been taken by the recent initiation of a British Trust for Ornithology. There is probably no country that has so many competent field ornithologists as Great Britain, but so far there has been no centre to give scientific direction to their efforts, to co-ordinate their observations, and to arrange for participation in international investigations. There is, moreover, no permanent Government support for economic ornithology, despite the practical value of its study, and therefore nothing corresponding to the Biological Survey in the United States, or to the official Institute of Ornithology in Hungary: nor have we any Vogelwarte, such as those which the Germans maintain at Rossitten and on Heligoland. Notable success has indeed attended several co-operative schemes in Great Britain, both for the marking of migrant birds and for observational work over a wide area, recent census studies of the heron and of the great crested grebe being cases in point: but on each such occasion the machinery has to be created laboriously afresh. As the promoters of the new scheme justly say, “the demands of contemporary research have in this field outstripped the training and organisation available for meeting them”.
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The British Trust for Ornithology. Nature 132, 996 (1933). https://doi.org/10.1038/132996a0
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1038/132996a0