XX YORKSHIRE— PHYSICAL ASPECT. 



badger, and at Hornby Castle near Catterick is to be found the 

 only decoy now existing in the county. There is no lack of 

 woodland, especially towards the south, where at Edlington Wood 

 one of the last Yorkshire nests of the kite was taken, while that 

 of the hobby has been found at Rossington and in the woods at 

 Cawood, and in the latter, which were the largest in the county, 

 the raven and buzzard reared their young till within compara- 

 tively recent times. 



In the extreme south the flat marsh-lands which lie between 

 the present and the old channels of the riv^r Don, including the 

 carrs near Doncaster, and the famed levels of Hatfield Chase and 

 Thorne Waste, once ornithologically rich, even now present an 

 avifauna of considerable interest. Formerly the three harriers, 

 the black-tailed godwit, and the ruff were among the species 

 breeding annually, and an island at the mouth of the Trent 

 afforded the last British nest and eggs of the avocet. On Thorne 

 Waste was also the site of a small decoy fairly productive of 

 mallard, wigeon and teal, especially the latter. This decoy, of 

 which no record is to be found, possessed three tubes, according 

 to Mr. H. W. T. Ellis, of Crowle, who has seen it in operation, 

 and states that it ceased to exist about 'forty years ago. At the 

 present time Thorne Waste, which is about 6,000 acres in extent, 

 is the breeding haunt of the mallard, teal, redshank, black- 

 headed gull, and occasionally of the short eared owl and the 

 curlew. On the intersecting drains the reed-warbler smd species 

 of minor interest nest abundantly. 



The Cleveland Hills, occupying the north-eastern portion 

 of the county, though inferior to the North-Western Fells in 

 extent and in elevation — reaching only to 1485 feet at Burton 

 Head — are no less picturesque and interesting. Like them also 

 it is a region of high moorlands — frequented by red grouse and 

 twite, and in the spring and early summer by curlew and golden 

 plover, with, occasionally, a pair of stone-curlews, which here 

 find the northern limit of their breeding range in Britain — and 

 intersected by the ramified, well-wooded, and beautiful dales 

 drained by the Esk and by numerous branches of the Derwent. 



