1 BIRDS OF CHESHIRE. 
Wheatear rear their young in the numerous rabbit 
burrows. 
Between the present narrow artificial channel of the 
Dee and the old coastline, which runs from Burton to 
Blacon Point, there les a tract of cultivated country, 
known as Sealand, which has been gradually reclaimed 
from the sandbanks and saltings of the estuary during 
the last hundred and fifty years. Sealand, once the 
haunt of innumerable wildfowl, is now intersected by 
roads and dotted with farmsteads. Less than fifty years 
ago the tide flowed to within a few yards of Shotwick 
Church, and old residents well remember Bernicle 
Geese feeding within gunshot of the churchyard. The 
rapid silting up of the estuary, consequent upon the 
alteration in the channel, which has ruined the once 
important packet-station and seaside resort of Parkgate, 
and the pushing back of the sea by successive embank- 
ments, have curtailed the haunts of the wildfowl. The 
outer fringe of saltings, however, in the neighbourhood 
of Burton and Denhall, and the miles of sandbank 
exposed at low water, still attract numbers of Geese and 
flocks of Curlews, Oyster-catchers, and other Waders 
in the winter. Dunlins, which formerly bred upon the 
marshes, and Ringed Plovers resort in thousands to the 
saltings at the periods of migration. 
Politically, Sealand and the marshes near Burton 
belong to the county of Flint, but for faunal purposes 
it is impossible, even if it were advisable, to discriminate 
between the land north of the Dee channel and the 
adjoiing parts of Cheshire, and we have therefore con- 
sidered this district as part of the county. As one 
cannot refer birds observed on the estuaries to any 
particular county, we have also included in our purview 
the whole of the tidal waters of the Dee and Mersey. 
