British bird life in 1898

The Carrion Crow is infrequent in the south, more common to the north;  Magpies are infrequent in the south and fearful of persecution, the Green-Finch is our commonest finch. A female Rook will help incubate another's eggs. The Wood-Owl, sometimes called "tawny". Gold-Crests often migrate by night, as is seen at lighthouses. The White-tailed Sea Eagle still nests. Barred Warbler: 27th of August, 1897, when the Rev. H. H. Slater shot an adult female of this Warbler on the coast of Norfolk. The Isabelline Wheatear has a longer tarsus; the under surface is light isabelline-rufous, becoming sandy-white on the throat and abdomen. The Dipper is accused of devouring trout-ova. The Herring-Gull is beautiful.The Little Grebe is familiar to everyone under the name of the 'Dab-chick'. In the country the Wood-Pigeon is one of the shyest of birds. The Passenger Pigeon, which is found over the greater portion of North America, has been said to have occurred in Britain on five occasions. Baillon's Crake is believed to nest occasionally in England. The Little Egret is one of our rarest visitors. Gallinules: Two species of these brilliantly coloured birds have been recorded as having been shot in England...a specimen of a Darter was shot near Poole, in Dorsetshire, in June, 1851, by a young man named Cripps. The game-birds: This Order of Birds is too familiar to every one of my readers to need an elaborate description.

Scraps from R. Bowdler Sharpe's Sketch Book of British Birds, 1898. (He was the Assistant Keeper of department Vertebrata at the British Museum.)

 [Little Egret] ... the dorsal train consists of a dense mass of filamentous plumes. The bill is black both in winter and summer, but the dorsal train is lost in the winter season. It is this train of beautiful feathers which is the 'Osprey' of commerce, and every spray worn by English women in their hats and bonnets represents the murder of a pair of these elegant little birds at the nest, and the subsequent starvation of the young birds.

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Isabelline -- a pale colour, greyish-yellow or fawn or parchment. As "Isabella colour" the term  appears to go back to the 16th century; there's no convincing theory about its origin. "Isabelline" was coined in 1859.  Used in describing bird plumage (especially prominent in birds of desert regions), also of e.g. pale palomino horses.

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"Pallas's", in the name of many bird species:

Peter Simon Pallas (1741 - 1811), Prussian zoologist and botanist who worked in Russia (where most of the so-named birds come from).