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Britain receives a number of vagrants from Asia and North America. Some American gulls, ducks and waders are regular enough not to be considered rare, including the ring-billed gull, surf scoter and pectoral sandpiper. There is one endemic bird species found in Great Britain: the Scottish crossbill.
This is a list of the bird species recorded in England.The avifauna of England include a total of 625 species, of which 14 have been introduced by humans.. This list's taxonomic treatment (designation and sequence of orders, families and species) and nomenclature (common and scientific names) follow the conventions of British Ornithologists' Union (BOU).
The list below comprises all those bird species which have occurred in a wild state in Great Britain. Escaped birds of certain species, e.g. ruddy shelduck, can cause confusion amongst birdwatchers as they occasionally occur in Britain as wild birds. The following species have established colonies in the UK at some point in time.
The mild winters mean that many species that cannot cope with harsher conditions can winter in Britain, and also that there is a large influx of wintering birds from the continent or beyond and even as far as South Africa. There are about 250 species regularly recorded in England, and another 300 that occur with varying degrees of rarity.
Like many temperate areas, Great Britain has few snake species: the European adder is the only venomous snake to be found there. The other notable snakes found in Great Britain are the barred grass snake and the smooth snake. Great Britain has three native species of lizard: slowworms, sand lizards and viviparous lizards.
Vagrancy also occurs in spring, and some species (e.g. white-throated sparrow and dark-eyed junco) do in fact have more records at this time than in autumn. Weather systems are thought to be the primary reason for the occurrence of birds in autumn; some birds seen in spring may simply be overshoots, although ship-assistance may also play a part.
O'Shea, Brian (2000) In Search of Birds in Wales, Skylark Books, Aberystwyth. Perrins, Christopher, ed. (2004) The New Encyclopedia of Birds, Oxford University Press, Oxford. Prater & Thorpe (2006) Welsh Species List. Accessed 22 April 2008. Pugh, Elfyn (2005) The Red Kite Archived 2010-01-30 at the Wayback Machine, Birds of Britain. Accessed ...
The British Birds Rarities Committee (BBRC), established in 1959, is the national bird rarities committee for Britain. It assesses claimed sightings of bird species that are rarely seen in Britain, based on descriptions, photographs and video recordings submitted by observers. Its findings are published in an annual report in the journal ...