88 Lincolnshire Notes & Queries. 



enormous number of wild foul frequenting the fens by the 

 facts as related by Pennant,* that in one year from only ten 

 decoys near Wainfleet 31,200 ducks were sent to London. In 

 these times a flock of wild duck has been observed passing 

 along from the north and north-east into the east fen in a 

 continuous stream for eight hours together, f 



With the drainage of the fens the bird-life disappeared. 

 Gone now as habitual residents are the harriers and short-eared 

 owls, the grey geese and ducks, cormorants, grebes, and divers, 

 the bitterns, cranes, spoonbills, and storks ; gone also are the 

 smaller fowl the black-tailed god wit, the avosets, ruffs and 

 reeves, gulls and terns. J Vanished too has many a fen plant, 

 as the great fen ragwort, the giant cineraria and marsh sow- 

 thistle, whilst others like the fragrant bog-myrtle, water 

 germander, and the marsh and royal ferns manage just to retain 

 a precarious footing, and are probably sooner or later doomed 

 to extinction ; and with the lost plants and mainly perhaps 

 from that cause have disappeared many beautiful insects. 

 The great copper and swallow-tailed butterflies, the red 

 wainscot, rosy-marsh, red-leopard, and Whittlesea ermine 

 moths, and many another insect treasure too numerous to 

 mention; gone too are the myriad frogs, the 'Lincolnshire 

 nightingales,' whose night croakings well nigh drowned all 

 other sounds of fen-life. 



Scarcely second to the fens in interest were the vast swamps 

 and wastes of the Isle of Axholme, which as late as the 

 commencement of the present century still swarmed with 

 various fowl. Mr. Stonehouse has left some interesting notes 

 in connection with the avifauna of this little known district, 

 having reference to the nesting of the marsh harrier, the 

 nesting habits of the bittern, and the taking of ruffs ; he also 

 says c the gyr-falcon is sometimes seen sailing over this and the 

 adjacent wastes ; it boldly attacks the largest of the feathered 

 race ; the stork, the heron, and the crane are easy vicitims ; 



* British Zoology, Ed. 1768, p. 486. 



fin one of the only two existing decoys worked in Lincolnshire, that of Ashby 

 near the Trent, an average of 2,741 ducks, teal, and widgeon, with some others, 

 were captured between the years 1874 and 18675 and since this 6,351 have been 

 taken in a single season, and of these 2,300 in thirty-one days, but in late years the 

 annual take appears to have somewhat fallen off. 



J It is satisfactory to know that for the last four or five years the black tern has 

 nested in Lincolnshire. 



The History and Topography of the Isle of Axholme, by the Rev. W. B. Stonehouse, 

 M.A., 1839. 



