3546 The Zoologist — June, 1873. 



particular]}' partial to such localities, and of course fall a prey to 

 the industrious turustone. 



In 1628 cranes occurred in large flocks in Lincolnshire and Cam- 

 bridgeshire, as we are informed by Ray : the only modern record 

 of a crane in Lincolnshire was recorded by Mr. J. H. Gurney, jun., 

 at p. 1842 of the 'Zoologist' for 1869: it was killed at Hickliug 

 Moor, near Lincoln, by Mr. Shuttleworth, on the 20th of July. 

 I cannot resist the temptation to lament once more the slaughter 

 of these noble birds; can any sight be more magnificent than the 

 stately cranes in full possession of life and liberty ? even to see 

 them in their paddocks in the Zoo is a treat rarely to be equalled. 

 It is interesting to learn that an attempt was made to avert the total 

 extirpation of British cranes in 1780. Among the Fen laws passed 

 at the court view of free pledges and court-leet of the East, West 

 and North Fens, on the 19th of October of that year, it was decreed 

 that no person shall bring up or take any swan's eggs or trane's 

 eggs or young birds of that kind, on pain of forfeiting for every 

 offence three shillings and fourpence. It appears that cranes nested 

 in the Lincolnshire fens so lately as the eighteenth century. 



The curlew is common throughout the great part of the year on 

 the Huraber shores, leaving in the spring and returning early in 

 August and occasionally in July ; the first returning after the 

 breeding-season are usually very large light-coloured birds, which 

 resort to the grass-land in the marshes. It is usual for these birds 

 to leave the coast at daybreak, and feed inland throughout the day 

 in the sheep-walks in company with sea-gulls. In the dry autumn 

 of 1870 a flock numbering about two hundred passed every morning 

 at sunrise over Great Cotes, retiring by the same line, but in small 

 parties and detachments, between four and five o'clock in the 

 afternoon, to the mud-flals, or at high-water to land immediately 

 contiguous to the coast. 



With regard to the whimbrel, I must quote the entire passage : 

 it is too valuable to omit, and too terse to condense. 



" A common spring aud autumn visitant ; in the former season visiting 

 the neighbom'hood of the Humber during the first week in May with great 

 regularity, and often in very large flocks, numbering occasionally as high as 

 two hundred birds. They leave again for their northern breeding-stations 

 in the third or fourth week in that mouth, a few as late as the first week in 

 June; and as I have seen them off the coast again in July, they may be 

 said never to be entirely absent in any mouth. Whimbrels chiefly resort 



