DISAPPEARANCE OF CERTAIN BIRDS. 197 



that of other birds. When disturbed it escapes 

 by a flight precipitate and awkward, hides itself 

 from our sight, and, were not its haunts and 

 habits known,, we should never conjecture that this 

 bustling fugitive was our long forgotten spring 

 visitant the wryneck. The winter or spring of 

 1818 was, from some unknown cause, singularly 

 unfavourable for this bird. It generally arrives 

 before the middle of April ; and its vernal note, so 

 unlike that of any of its companions, announces its 

 presence throughout all the mild mornings of this 

 month, and part of the following ; but during the 

 spring of that year it was perfectly silent, or absent 

 from us. The season, it is true, was unusually 

 cheerless and ungenial. 



Some of our birds are annually diminishing in 

 numbers ; others have been entirely destroyed, or 

 no longer visit the shores of Britain. The increase 

 of our population, enclosure, and clearage of rude 

 and open places, and the drainage of marshy lands, 

 added to the noise of our fire-arms, have driven 

 them away, or rendered their former breeding and 

 feeding stations no longer eligible to many, especially 

 to the waders and aquatic birds. The great Swan 

 Pool, near the city of Lincoln, on which I have 

 seen at one time forty of these majestic creatures 

 sailing in all their dignity, is, I am told, no longer 

 a pool ; the extensive marshes of Glastonbury, 

 which have afforded me the finest snipe shooting, 



