WOODRUFFE-PEACOCK : LINCOLNSHIRE NATURALISTS. 357 
Redshank and wheepling of the restless Whaups were sounds which, 
subdued by distance, eminently fitted in with the unique character 
of Lincolnshire coast scenery. ‘The commonest small bird was the 
Meadow Pipit. I was told by Mr. Brogden, of Spalding, that if we 
wanted to see birds we should have’ followed the south side of 
Fossdike Wash, a locality which they seem much to prefer. The 
Common Sandpiper, now on its southern migration, was flitting 
across an inland creek; Dunlin also were both heard and seen. 
The two most interesting species were a Green Sandpiper and 
half-a-dozen Curlew Sandpipers, new arrivals, in immature plumage; 
these latter on a little mud bank in an old creek. Strikingly tame, 
their acquaintance with man and his ways not having commenced, 
they probably mistook the deeply interested group of naturalists 
for a herd of reindeer. Here were young birds of the year, on 
August 26th, on our coast, yet the place of their nesting is unknown 
to science, so very far off is it and inaccessible, somewhere, we have 
reason to think, in the bleak, treeless tundra lands of eastern Arctic 
Asia) The Green Sandpiper has undoubtedly nested in England, 
although proofs of the actual finding of the nest are yet wanting. 
The eggs, it is now known, are deposited in the old nest of some 
other bird in a tree. It is not an uncommon bird on our coast 
fittie lands in the latter part of July and August. Ornithologically 
this district is second to none in Great Britain, and its possibilities 
are practically unlimited in the summer of rare visitors from other 
lar o 
which have already been obtained on the coast at Tetney Haven 
and at the Spurn. It is the absence of houses, and its loneliness 
and natural features which mark it as one specially attractive to me 
ornithologist, as well as its geographical position as regards the lines 
of immigration followed by birds in the autumn. 
Miles and miles and miles of desolation, 
Time forgotten—yea, since T: ime’s creation 
Seem these borders where the sea-birds range. 
Turning inland when we reach the Witham the view is very striking, 
_ the broad river wandering through the level which itself has helped 
to lay down in the course of ages. There on the outwa oft 
Plain stands the glorious historic tower of St. Botolph, dominating 
the fenland. ‘The landscape strikes us as being very suggestive of 
the approach to Antwerp from the sea. 
nee 
tas 1897. 
