Abstract
Accepted records of North American landbirds in Britain from 1958 to 2012 were analysed to discover seasonal, temporal and regional occurrence trends, and then to discuss possible arrival routes. Records in Britain are compared with those from the Azores and Iceland. The only species to occur in the top five most frequent American landbirds in each of these three areas was the Red-eyed Vireo. Over 80% of all British records during the review period were in autumn, the peak arrival centred on 9th-10th October. In southwest England, 95% of arrivals were in autumn; in contrast, in the Northern Isles, spring accounted for 31% of all American landbird records. A lack of vigorous transatlantic weather systems in spring suggests that a higher proportion of records at this season are ship-assisted birds, especially given the numbers of North American sparrows involved.