NOTES ON THE BIRDS OF ANGLE SEA. 413 



the Reed-Bunting, though rare elsewhere, swarmed in these 

 marshes ; and here also we saw one or two Whinchats. 



At one place on the marshes — near the site of some old 

 colliery workings — are two or three fair-sized shallow pools, 

 fringed with extensive beds of rushes and a few patches of reed. 

 A Cormorant was fishing in the open water, a Heron in the 

 shallows, and on an old spoil-bank, by the margin of the pools, 

 a solitary Whimbrel was feeding. Swifts and Sand -Martins 

 were hawking above the water, whose surface was dotted with 

 Coots and Moorhens. Many of the Coots were attended by 

 young, and one nest, in a patch of rushes, contained a young 

 bird and some unhatched eggs. The little creature, which was 

 actively scrambling about in the nest, constantly uttered a 

 querulous wheezing pipe. Its whitish beak, brilliant scarlet 

 forehead, shading into orange on the sides of the head, and vivid 

 blue crown, together with its hairy black down, rendered it 

 strikingly different from an adult bird. A female Mallard with 

 downy young took refuge in the reeds as we approached, and a 

 pair of Teal rose from the water ; on another pool we saw a 

 second Teal drake. On the marsh contiguous to the pools 

 about a hundred Mallards, mostly drakes, were resting; some 

 standing, others lying on the short turf. With them was a pair 

 of Shovelers, the white on the neck and back and the chestnut 

 breast of the drake making it conspicuous amongst the darker- 

 plumaged Mallards. When the birds rose, the Shovelers flew 

 apart, their low " tuk tuk" sounding very different from the 

 noisy "quack" of the commoner species as they passed over. 



Newborough Warren, a desolate waste of blown sand, whose 

 unstable dunes are but partially held in place by the roots of 

 maram-grass and dwarf willow-scrub, provides, in its innumer- 

 able Rabbit-burrows, nesting-holes for Wheatears, Stock-Doves, 

 Starlings, and Sheld-Ducks. In the hollows between the dunes, 

 where after heavy rain the water lodges and where butterwort 

 and other marsh-plants abound, the Snipe and Lapwing were 

 nesting. On the edge of the Warren, a little llyn, pink at one 

 end with the flowers of buckbean, was inhabited by several pairs 

 of Coots and Moorhens; and on its sandy margin we saw a pair 

 of Sandpipers. We only observed this bird elsewhere, on the 

 Cefni, in Malldraeth Marsh, and on the shore of the Straits near 



