Savi's Warbler-Bearded Titmouse-Short-eared Owl 70 



onwards specimens were procured in Norfolk, in Hunting- 

 donshire, and in this county, especially in the parish of 

 Milton, where certain curious old nests, entirely composed of 

 the broad leaves of Glyceria aquatica, had been the cause 

 of frequent astonishment to the sedge-cutters 1 . These men 

 finally discovered in 1845 a fresh nest with eggs, which were 

 purchased by Mr Bond and by him distributed to various 

 ornithologists. That gentleman obtained in all two sets of 

 eggs and six birds. Many other nests were afterwards found 

 in the three counties already named, but the reclamation of 

 the Fens seems to have banished the bird from Cambridgeshire 

 by 1849, and the last specimen known to have been obtained 

 in Britain was shot at Surlingham, in Norfolk, in 1856. 



2. Panurus biarmicus (Linn.). Bearded Titmouse. 



This beautiful little bird, known to the Norfolk marshmen 

 as the 'Reed Pheasant,' and still maintaining itself, though 

 in diminished numbers, on the 'Broads,' was formerly in the 

 habit of resorting to certain places in the Fens, usually after 

 the breeding season was past 2 ; but there is no certain evidence 

 that its nest, delicately woven with sedges and the like and 

 lined with the flowering tops of reeds, was ever actually found 

 within our boundaries. It was, however, a resident in con- 

 siderable numbers at Whittlesey and Ramsey Meres in Hunt- 

 ingdonshire, where the reed-beds were sufficiently large to suit 

 its requirements, while Soham Mere of old would have been 

 the most likely locality in Cambridgeshire. 



3. Asio accipitrinus (Pallas). Short-eared Owl. 



This species is one of the very few rare British birds which 

 still visit Cambridgeshire for the purpose of reproduction. It 



1 One specimen of the bird killed about this time is in the University 

 Museum of Zoology, as are also one or two nests. 



2 Mr J. H. Gurney (Trans. Norfolk and Norw. Nat. Soc. vi. p. 437) 

 mentions the bird as seen at Eoswell Pits, near Ely, in 1897 and 1898. 



