332 BRITISH BIRDS. [vol. vii. 



One of the nests I found had four eggs. Of course 

 I did not find all of the twelve nests, the ground 

 being boggy and difficult, but no doubt they were 

 there. This may seem almost incredible, but in 

 Stevenson's Birds of Norfolk, Vol. II., p. 306, 

 Professor Newton described a small but singularly 

 productive breeding-ground of this species that 

 formerly existed at Barnham near Thetford, on the 

 property of the Duke of Grafton, where in one oasis 

 not much larger than a good-sized garden, in the 

 breeding-season, there may have been from a dozen to 

 a score of pairs. As the Burwash and Etchingham 

 Snipes' nests are well preserved from trespassers 

 intent on egg-stealing, one might imagine that their 

 contents should all be safely hatched, but the head 

 keeper informs me that they have an enemy in the 

 Rooks, which, especially in dry weather, hunt the 

 "brooks" and destroy a considerable number of eggs 

 of Snipe and Lapwings. The first Snipe's egg I saw 

 this spring was on April 6th. It seems to me that 

 the re-establishment of the Snipe as a fairly common 

 breeding species in the parishes of Etchingham and 

 Burwash is an interesting and pleasing fact. 



Under this system of protection Redshanks have 

 taken up nesting- quarters in Burwash and Etchingham 

 parishes in the same areas where the Snipe breed : 

 a few years ago they were absent from these parts. 

 It appears to me that the presence of Redshanks is 

 not so much an extension of their breeding-range 

 into a narrow wood-girt vale of the Sussex Weald, 

 but rather a return to ancient breeding-grounds. The 

 valley of the Rother from Etchingham to its mouth 

 is overspread with recent alluvium — at no very 

 distant geological period it must have been estuarine. 



