THE ZOOLOGIST 

No. 803.—May, 1908. 
FIELD-NOTES ON THE BIRDS OF THE RAVEN- 
GLASS GULLERY. 
By CuHarues OupHam, F.Z.8., M.B.O.U. 
THe little village of Ravenglass on the Cumberland coast was 
in Roman and medieval times a port of considerable importance, 
but the silting up of the bar long ago made it impracticable for 
shipping, and its traffic is now limited to a single fishing-boat. 
Its great, shallow, land-locked harbour, formed by the con- 
junction of the estuaries of three rivers, the Esk, Mite, and Irt, 
is to-day at low tide a waste of sand and mud, the haunt during 
the winter months of innumerable wildfowl, and in spring and 
summer a favourite spot for studying the habits of the birds 
which breed on the extensive stretch of sand-dunes that shelters 
the harbour on its seaward side. To most people Ravenglass is 
known merely as the junction on the Furness Railway for the 
primitive toy line which affords access to the beauties of Eskdale 
and some of the most romantic scenery of the western fells of 
the Lake District; but the village is the Mecca of many an 
ornithological pilgrimage, for the sandhills are the breeding-place 
of, among other species, the Black-headed Gull (Larus ridi- 
bundus), the Common Tern (Sterna fluviatilis), and, more especi- 
ally, of the Sandwich Tern (Sterna cantiaca), which nests there 
in greater numbers than in any other of its very few English 
stations. During the summer of 1906 I was at Ravenglass from 
June 21st to July 13th, and, as 1 was on the sandhills nearly 
Zool, 4th ser. vol. XII., May, 1908. ) 
