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THE BIRDS OF BRECONSHIRE. 
By E. Campripcr PHILutes, 
Member of the Woolhope Naturalists’ Field Club. 
BreEcONSHIRE is not a large county, and is so well known 
that it needs but a slight description. It embraces among its 
general features, in a marked degree, mountain and moor, valley 
and hill; it has one large lake, Llangorse, with numerous moun- 
tain tarns, and is drained by the Usk and partly by the Wye and 
their tributaries. Yet with all these advantages of Nature the 
Ornithology of the county is not so varied as might be supposed. 
Our grand old Beacons are singularly destitute of bird-life; on 
the other hand, the moors, which extend over a great part of the 
county, are fairly well stocked. On them, as of yore, the Red 
Grouse and Blackcock, the Wild Duck, Teal, Snipe, Curlew, and 
Plover still breed, though in much diminished numbers. Llan- 
gorse Lake unfortunately is so constantly shot over that what 
should be a “home for water-birds” now shelters only a few 
Ducks, Coots, Grebes, and Rails. Our rivers are, without 
exception, fast flowing, and water-birds, unless pressed by hard 
weather, avoid if possible (with the exception of the Water Ouzel 
or Dipper) these kind of streams. The absence also of a sea- 
coast still further reduces the number. Notwithstanding these 
drawbacks, Breconshire, as the following notes will show, can 
boast of a fair average list of birds. The rarer species are getting 
rarer still; in these days of cheap guns any but the most ordinary 
bird is at once shot down, and it is this continued diminution 
that has determined me to compile the following notes, which in 
nearly every instance have been the result of actual and careful 
observation. I purpose taking first the land and then the water- 
birds. 
Gotpen Eacix, Aquila chrysaétus.— Although there are 
numerous localities that are exactly suitable to its habits, I can 
only record one instance in which the Golden Eagle has been 
met with in Breconshire. About twenty-three years ago one was 
killed at Penpont, near Brecon, by a keeper of Mr. Williams, the 
owner, and through his kindness I was permitted to inspect the 
bird. It was stuffed very fairly by a private of the 23rd Regiment, 
then stationed at Brecon, but had not been cased. It showed no 
