The Hastings Rarities affair is a case of statistically demonstrated ornithological fraud that misled the bird world for decades in the 20th century. The discovery of the long-running hoax shocked ornithologists. The Hastings Rarities were a series of records of rare birds added to the British list on the basis of hundreds of reports, supported by preserved specimens, from George Bristow (1863–1947), a taxidermist and gunsmith of St Leonards-on-Sea, a town on the south coast of England. His reports were made between 1892 and 1930.