192 THE BIRDS OF SHERWOOD FOREST. 



My notices of the next six or seven birds are very 

 meagre, for they are mostly stragglers in our dis- 

 trict, and some indeed but occasional visitors to our 

 shores. 



I have notes of the Bittern (Ardea stellaris) occurring 

 on four occasions ; one in 1846, shot in a willow holt on 

 the banks of the Trent, near Nottingham, a second in 

 the next garden but one to my own in 1853, a third on 

 the water at Carburton in 1863, and a fourth in a boggy 

 place on the margin of a small stream in Welbeck Park 

 in 1866. We have few, if any, haunts suitable for the 

 permanent residence of this handsome bird, and indeed, 

 throughout the country there are comparatively few 

 spots where now can be heard what Scott graphically 



calls 



" The bittern's sounding drum, 

 Booming from the sedgy shallow," 



and they are yearly becoming scarcer. The bird I have 

 mentioned as killed near my garden was shot in mid- 

 winter, during a long and hard frost, and was little more 

 than skin and bone. It had fared badly indeed, and 

 had lost its fear of man, for it made no attempt to 

 escape when perceived by the person who shot it. . 



A few specimens of the Curlew (Numenius arquata) 

 are occasionally seen on Inkersal Forest during the time 

 of their vernal migration, but I am not aware of their 

 breeding there ; I have also seen a solitary one on the 

 edge of the lake at Thoresby. Every spring small par- 

 ties may be seen in the daytime passing high over head 

 on their way to their breeding places on the Yorkshire 

 moors ; oftener at night I have heard their well-known 

 clear shrill whistle, uttered by one of a party when it 

 has been too dark to see them, and in a few seconds the 



