Birds of Leicestershire 119 



woodcock, great or solitary snipe (rare) common snipe 

 and the diminutive jack snipe, the redshank (a pair of 

 which I found in a marshy meadow through which the 

 brook runs at Aston Flamville, in the early spring of 

 1914), the common sandpiper sparingly, and the green 

 sandpiper, the latter, however, very rare. This family 

 includes many waders, of which some species doubtless 

 fly over this district at night when moving from one part 

 of the country to another, and the celebrated forty 

 whistlers, so much dreaded by the colliers as foretelling 

 some disaster, no doubt are of one of those species. 



"The Laridce,' the gull family, are naturally but 

 sparsely represented with us, and only by some storm- 

 driven birds passing over — generally, I think, herring 

 gulls, but they are not often near enough to identify 

 with any certainty. Of the ' Procellariidce,' a specimen 

 of the Manx shearwater (a straggler, of course), was 

 found by some boys in a field near Barwell Rectory in 

 1891, and was brought to me by Mr. Charles Titley, who 

 kept it alive for a few days, and on the 31st January last 

 I saw in a case of stuffed birds in Mr. Thomas Bates's 

 house at Burbage, a specimen of the very rare Fork-tailed 

 Petrel, which he told me he had picked up in an ex- 

 hausted condition at Sketchley about 40 years ago — 

 this is a record for the county. The ' Podicipidce ' 

 family includes the great crested grebe, which breeds 

 on the ' big river ' in Bosworth Park, and is a very striking 

 and interesting bird, and the little grebe or dabchick. 

 This concludes the list of the birds of this district so far as 

 I know, but there is no doubt that with a sufficient number 

 of enthusiastic and competent observers, several species 

 might be added to it." 



