Birds. 2819 



when running through Staunton Pool Tail, the Marquis of Hastings' 

 fox-hounds once disturbed one of these birds so late as the 14th 

 of April. The Rev. Charles Bury, of the Isle of Wight, has pointed 

 out in the ' Zoologist ' the fondness of birds for particular localities, 

 although others, apparently, more suitable to their habits exist in the 

 neighbourhood. In Gorstey Leys, a fine wood, on the borders of this 

 parish, the woodcock is almost sure to be found ; and why these birds 

 should prefer a patch of high level ground, covered with brushwood, 

 to the vicinity of spiings and oozy parts, as in other woods, I am at a 

 loss to find out. Beat over the five hundred acres of cover, and not 

 a woodcock will rise, but come to that particular spot, as unfit for 

 woodcock as ever haunt could be, and if one is to be met with it will 

 be flushed there. Go to certain pieces of sedge, and not a snipe will 

 ever be found in them, but beat over others precisely the same, to all 

 appearance, and one will certainly get up. 



Great Snipe (Scolopax major). An occasional visitant in the au- 

 tumn, but I have never known it seen here in any months except Sep- 

 tember and October. A pair was observed in the marshy parts near 

 Anchor Church, bordering on the Trent, in September, 1846, by 

 a person who has shot them occasionally. They prefer reed-beds and 

 the most lonely and retired parts. 



Common Snipe {Scolopax gallinago). Snipes are met with in the 

 greatest abundance hereabouts after floods (which occasionally occur 

 on the Trent) are gone down, for the sides of the small creeks 

 and streams communicating with it, after having been flushed with 

 water, are soft and muddy, and offer a great inducement for these 

 birds to visit them. They probe in the soft mud and oozy parts, in 

 order to find out small insects and occasionally worms, and leave holes 

 like those bored with a gimlet. Before the upper end of Melbourne 

 Pool was drained, snipes were found there in abundance, and I have 

 been told that, on one occasion, twenty brace were killed there in one 

 day. In average seasons, the earliest snipes come down to us some- 

 where between the last week in September and the second week 

 in October, and keep coming and going, according to the state of the 

 weather and other circumstances throughout the winter. In the re- 

 markably mild winter of 1846 very few snipes visited us. In the sum- 

 mer of 1 845, 1 took particular notice that the common snipe frequented 

 the river Trent (and more especially during the months of July and 

 August), which has frequently been the case in former summers. 

 This circumstance I consider extraordinary, as in no instance that I 

 am aware of has either a nest, eggs, or young birds been found. It 



