30 Among the Birds in Northern Shires. 



after summer after a prolonged absence of seven 

 months and a double journey of thousands of miles, 

 are not the least attractive portions of its economy. 

 For more summers than we can now recall, the 

 streams and reservoirs at Hollow Meadows and 

 Red Mires within an hour or so's walk of Sheffield 

 were visited by many pairs of Summer Snipes, 

 and their nests came under our observation with 

 unfailing certainty. Two pairs of these birds were 

 remarkably conservative in their nesting grounds, 

 and used to return each summer to one spot of 

 ground no larger than our writing-table, and there 

 make their nests one pair on the steep banks of a 

 conduit between the reservoirs, the other on a few 

 square yards of gravelly ground beside Wyming 

 brook. We could always depend upon finding the 

 nests of other pairs within a hundred yards of the 

 stream banks on certain lengths of the water. We 

 would hazard the conjecture that descendants of 

 these birds continue to do so to the present day. 

 During summer the Sandpiper was quite as familiar 

 an object along these northern streams as the Dipper 

 or the Gray Wagtail. Many a time have we seen 

 the three species by the water-side together. Farther 

 north, in Scotland, this Sandpiper becomes even more 

 numerous, and in some parts of the Highlands is, or 

 used to be, most unaccountably mixed up with the 

 Dipper. The latter term included both species, the 



