140 



THE ZOOLOGIST. 



sportsman's head like Lapwings." This locality is near Boston. 

 The last eggs of this species were taken on an island at the 

 mouth of the Kiver Trent about the year 1837. 



" Laudator temporis act'i" thinks the impatient reader ; so 

 enough for the present of the birds which have gone. But it is 

 hard for the naturalist, when writing of the present, to avoid a 

 digression into the glories of the past. The fens, indeed, have 

 vanished, and with them many an interesting species, but there 

 are still boggy heaths and waste sandy warrens in the north- 

 west corner of Lincolnshire, where flourish such plants as the 

 marsh-gentian, sundew, bog-asphodel, butterwort, grass of Par- 

 nassus, and bog-myrtle, and where Lapwing, Snipe, Kedshank, 

 Coot, Moorhen, Wild Duck, Shoveler, Teal, Sheld-Duck, Pochard, 

 Little Grebe, and Black-headed Gull may be found nesting in 

 varying numbers. 



The Black-headed Gull has probably from time immemorial 

 nested in Lincolnshire. Montagu, writing from report in 1802, 

 says : " The Black-headed Gull is said to breed in Lincolnshire 

 on the fens"; and, writing from personal knowledge in 1813, he 

 adds : " In some of the fens of Lincolnshire they are plentiful in 

 the breeding season, inhabiting the most swampy parts along 

 with Snipes, Kedshanks, and Buffs, w r hose nests are intermixed 

 amongst the high tufts of bog-grass." Gough, in the work 

 already mentioned, writing of birds which inhabit the fens, says : 

 "Peewit Gulls, and Black Tern abound." A gullery formerly 

 existed on Thorne Waste, near Crowle, just over the north-west 

 Lincolnshire border. It appears from records that this settle- 

 ment was on the decline in 1844, and ceased to exist about 1895, 

 the birds probably migrating to swell the numbers in the north- 

 west Lincolnshire gulleries, some few miles away. 



At the present time three main colonies of the Black-headed 

 Gull exist in Lincolnshire, all in the north-west of the county. 

 These are situated at Twigmoor, Crosby Warren, and Scotton 

 Common. 



(1) The Twigmoor gullery, on the estate of R. N. Sutton- 

 Nelthorpe, Esq., of Scawby Hall, is perhaps the largest in 

 England, and the founders of the colony seem to have migrated 

 to the spot about the year 1843 from a gullery which then 

 existed on Manton Common, two or three miles distant, which 



