9^ CLARKE AND NELSON": THE )5IRDS OF YOkKSHlkE. 



ber, ornithology was not the popular study it now is, and Avhen 

 too there did not exist the numerous natural history journals 

 wherein to record observations and hand down to us much 

 information which would now be invaluable, and enable us to 

 make more just comparisons between our present knowledge 

 and that of the past. 



Within the area of its regular summer range in the county, 

 the Nightingale usually occurs in limited numbers only. Indeed 

 it is only in the neighbourhood of Doncaster and on the southern 

 fringe of the county bordering above Nottinghamshire it can he 

 described as being fairly abundant. To certain secluded but 

 more or less smoke-begrimed woodlands of the Yorkshire Coal- 

 field, in some instances scarcely beyond the hum and 'racket' 

 of the pit-bank, as in the neighbourhood of Barnsley, Wakefield, 

 and Ackworth, this bird is an annual visitant; as also to pleasanter 

 habitats in the neighbourhood of the picturesque Abbey of 

 Roche. In the central plain it is regularly noted in the districts 

 of Selby, Goole, York, Harrogate and Boroughbridge; and in 

 Holderness in localities between Patrington on the Humber 

 northwards and eastwards to Beverley. 



Thus a line passing north by Rotherham and Barnsley, and 



east of Wakefield, Leeds, and Harrogate to near Boroughbridge; 



and then east through Skelton (five miles north of York), and 



sweeping round the southern spur of the Wolds up to Beverley 



and finally reaching the North Sea about Hornsea, circumscribes 



the portion of the county within which the Nightingale is an 



annual summer visitor, while an outer line from Sheffield, by 



Huddersfield, Bradford, Otley, and Ripon to Thirsk; thence 



east to Scarborough, includes all the localities for which there is 



satisfactory evidence of the bird's ever having bred or occurred;* 



and moreover accurately defines according to our present 



knowledge the extreme northern and north-western boundary of 



its distribution in the British Isles. 



* See, however, the reference to a Nightingale nesting in Cleveland, 

 p. 102.— T.H.N. 



Trans. Y.N.U., 1898 (pub. 1901). Series 1! 



