78 The Birds of Cambridgeshire 



majority of the Warblers among which the Nightingale is 

 extraordinarily plentiful with other woodland birds, and 

 Woodpeckers to the westward, are perhaps the most notice- 

 able ; on the high chalk lands the Mistletoe Thrush, our 

 winter guest the Brambling, and the Long-eared Owl, have 

 their head-quarters, while the Stone-Curlew is still known to 

 occur in a few places in the breeding season. Ducks, Waders, 

 and Sea-birds are for the most part conspicuous by their absence 

 in summer. 



II. SOME BIRDS WHICH HAVE BEEN EXTERMINATED FROM 



THE COUNTY, OR ARE NOW EXTREMELY RARE. 



1. Locustella luscinio'ides (Savi). Savi's Warbler 1 . 



The history of the discovery of this summer visitor to 

 England is of exceptional interest. Unnoticed by ornitholo- 

 gists until about the year 1819, and only recognized as distinct 

 from its nearest allies by Savi in 1824 from specimens ob- 

 tained in Tuscany, there can be little doubt that it had long 

 been known though probably mainly by its note to many 

 of the marshmen, under the name of 'Brown-/ 'Red-,' or 

 ' Night-Heeler ' as a different bird from the Grasshopper 

 Warbler, or ' Heeler ' proper. The first example brought to 

 the notice of naturalists was shot in the month of May at 

 Limpenhoe in Norfolk, by Mr James Brown of Norwich, early 

 in last century, and was submitted to Temminck, who happened 

 to be in London in 1819. Unfortunately he mistook it for 

 a variety of the Reed Warbler, and, subsequently as it seems, 

 for Cetti's Warbler, so that when Mr G. R. Gray in 1840 

 received two specimens from Mr Baker, of Melbourn in Cam- 

 bridgeshire said, but perhaps wrongly, to have been procured 

 near Duxford he simply referred them to Savi's new species, 

 in ignorance of the previous discovery. From that time 



1 The classification and nomenclature adopted are those of Mr Howard 

 Saunders' Manual of British Birds, 2nd ed. 



