Here are recommendations for the 12 days of christmas (for social scientists!)

On the first day of Christmas, My true love sent to me A partridge in a pear tree. Here are some resources for orchards and pear trees.

• Natural England has a paper on the economic value of orchards orchards uk   see more on their website.
• Defra has a section on orchards. with statistics on land use Eurostat has data on agriculture scroll down the page for the orchards survey. For maps of historic land use and orchards see a Vision of Britain
• The FAO has international data on pears 

2.  Turtle Doves – here are some data and mapping resources relating to birds!

• Cornell Lab of Ornithology  has data on bird numbers and distribution (mainly for North American species).
• The RSPB has annual statistical reports on the state of the Uk’s birds.
• Birdlife has data on endangered bird species from the IUCN red data list . It also has reports on the economic benefits of migratory birds.
• The Institute for Bird Populations also has links to mappings of data.
• Finally a Fact sheet from Birdlife on the European Turtle dove.  where does it live? is it endangered?

3. French hens – hens and eggs data

• Compassion in world faming fact sheet on laying hens
• DEFRA data on UK egg industry.
• The international Egg Corporation has international business news 
• FAO also has world trade data
• World Poultrynet has information on broilers and other hen markets

4. Calling birds – resources on bird songs!

•  BBC Radio 4 has a collection of bird songs from common Uk birds which you can download.
• The British Library sound archive has an entry on the language of birds which discusses the purpose of their songs and gives examples.
• Xeno-Canto is a free website dedicated to sharing bird songs and sounds from around the world.
• Macaulay Library Sound & Video catalog The Macaulay Library is the world’s largest archive of animal sounds. It contains more than 160,000 recordings of 67 percent of the world’s birds, and it is rapidly increasing its holdings of insects, fish, frogs, and mammals.Search the database for animal sounds and behavior. Visualize sounds using a spectrogram. Speed up or slow down sounds. Create spectrograms from your own sounds. Spectrograms can be customized with a clickable world map or by using an advance or simple Boolean search. Windows 2000 or newer is needed to use the spectrograms.

5. Gold rings–

• The world Bank blog regularly updates on commodity prices.
• Trade body the World Gold Council provides some free access to issues of its Gold Market trends from 1996 onwards.
•  Kitco has some free price and commodity news.

6. Geese a laying

• See some images of  geese from the Europeana website. It has treasures from Europe’s libraries.
• Arkive multimedia archive of animal species from charity widescreen also has photographs
• The French National library  website has historic photographs and manuscripts from its collections.
• See the christmas geese from 1912: http://gallica.bnf.fr/ark:/12148/btv1b69214055.r=oie+noel.langEN

7.   Swans a swimming

• Swans as culinary fare! – From the Institute of Historical research. See the recipe for swan offal:
  • Chawdoun for swannes. Take ðe lyuer and ðe offal of the swannes, & do it to see ð in gode broth; take it vp. Pyke out ðe bonys; take & hewe the flessh smale. Make a lyour of crustes of brede & of ðe blode of ðe swan ysoden, & do ðerto powdour of gynger, of clowes, & of piper, & a litul wyne & salt, & see ð it, & cast ðe flessh ðerto iheweed; & messe it forth with ðe swan irostede. – Hieatt, Constance B. & Butler, Sharon (eds.)  (1985), p. 131. tasty recipe for swan offal and liver. swan pie from the food history blog.
• Google books also has some interestingpies.
• Finally a cheesy Christmas swan song from youtube – Gooseneck hill waterfowl sanctuary.

8. Eight maids a-milking,

• Look for some details about maids  from the Connected histories database 1500-1900. They include some prints from the British Museum collection. See them in May Day 1839.
• See a report from the Old Bailey on theft by maids from employers.  British History Online has numerous primary source documents including historic state papers.
• Find out about the employment of maids by Queen Anne. How many did she have what did they earn?

9. Ladies Dancing

• Here are some images of historic dance and tune books from the Vaughan Williams Memorial library. These focus upon English folk. There are also some online diaries from Cecil Sharpe.
• The Internet archive has a sound archive of international folk dances.

10. Lords a leaping

• Follow activity from the House of Lords on their twitter and youtube channels.
• Look at the main parliamentary website for copies of hansard debates and select committee reports.
• See the interests of peers and payments register. What payments do member sof the House of Lords get ? see their details.

11. Pipers Piping.

• Get information on the hiostory and current state of bagpiping from the Bagpipe Society.
• British Pathe news has historic news footage see the 1938 entertainment at a children’s new year party
• The Scottish screen archive has a film on how to make bagpipes.
• And the National Library of Scotland digital colections. a broadside ballad which highlights the use of bagpopes as an instrument of torture.

12. Drums drumming.

• The British museum collections catalogue has 100s of images of ethnographic drums.
• The V&A collections catalogue has images of prints, drawings and photographs. These include photographs from rock and pop from the 1950s.
• Finally search the royalty free Getty Images site to find pictures of drumming snowmen.