BIRDS OF SOUTH CAMBRIDGESHIRE. 341 



" Pink-footed Geese, more than one species of Wild Duck, Snipe, 

 and a Plover or two" in severe winters. I quote from a 

 manuscript " Notes on the Birds of Downing College Grounds, 

 made in the early Sixties." In a profession such as ours we 

 often had to be out very early in the morning. Then was the 

 time to see or hear the birds. Just as it was getting light on a 

 March morning the migrants which had been resting during the 

 hours of darkness were to be distinguished perching on the trees 

 or wall, and preparing to take flight. 



The most interesting notes on the Waders and Waterfowl of 

 South Cambridgeshire are to be found in an unpublished manu- 

 script which I wrote in my schoolboy days, and called " Random 

 Notes on the Fauna of a Broadland of the Past." This ancient 

 land of broad and marsh stretched right away from the base of 

 the Gog Magog chalk hills to the sea. Beginning at the south, 

 there was an ancient broad remembered in the name Fowlmere, 

 a village near Triplow. Dernford Fen, up the stream which joins 

 the Granta at Grantchester, is another. Then comes Lingay 

 Fen, a favourite egg-collecting or nest-observing locality of mine, 

 where Lapwings and Plovers bred along with the Meadow-Pipits, 

 which made their nests in the numerous tufts of soft rush. 

 Then came the fenny tract which, under the various names of 

 Sheep's Green, Coo Fen, and Empty Common, stretched from 

 Newnham to the end of the footpath by the side of Hobson's 

 stream, which runs past the Botanic Gardens on Trumpington 

 Pioad. It was a splendid place for observing marsh-loving birds. 



Sheep's Green consisted then of a series of little meres and 

 ponds connected by rushy ditches, in which Sagittaria grew pro- 

 fusely. In summer-time the bird-life was best studied by climb- 

 ing the trees. In these I found nesting Tree-Creepers, Great 

 Tits, Marsh-Tit, and Blue Tit. Once I found the nest and eggs 

 of the White Wagtail (Motacilla alba), and I record having one 

 day seen a pair in which the male bird was a Pied and the hen a 

 White Wagtail. The commonest Wagtail on Sheep's Green is 

 M. lughbris. I record "a rarer Yellow Wagtail which I have 

 seen once or twice on Sheep's Green. This has a blue head, and 

 is named Motacilla flat a in the ' Systema Naturae' of Linnaeus. 

 They seem merely casual visitors, and I have not seen them 

 attempt nesting. On the contrary, they vanished almost as 



