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THE ZOOLOGIST. 



pairs of Pochard and Sheld-Duck may be seen on the ponds in 

 spring and summer among the Gulls. I have seen the two 

 latter species followed by their newly-hatched broods, the 

 Pochards bringing off their young about the middle of May, the 

 Sheld-Duck early in June. All these are perfectly wild birds. 



(2) The gullery near Crosby, some five miles further north, is 

 in all probability an offshoot of the Twigmoor colony, and ap- 

 pears to have been founded somewhere about the year 1865. It 

 is situated on the estate of Sir Berkeley Sheffield, Bart., M.P., 

 who in response to inquiry has kindly written to me (March, 

 1909) about this colony, stating that the birds " have been there 

 now for a considerable number of years, with an interval of some 

 seven years, which took place about fifteen years ago, when 

 some of them were wantonly shot by some poaching gentleman. 

 They are now decreasing in number, owing to the fact that the 

 mining going on round about them has been a means of tapping 

 the springs which supplied the ponds with water." A visitor to 

 this colony in 1905 writes that the number of nests in that year 

 was enormous, and that the boggy and willow-covered tract was 

 an ideal spot for a gullery, with its ponds and peaty tufts of 

 grass and sedge rising above and about the water. It is to be 

 feared that the days of this colony are numbered, owing to the 

 steady encroachment of the workings for iron ore. This district 

 was once a famous one for rare birds, and in 1869 the Stone 

 Curlew, though decreasing in numbers, was still quite common 

 on the sandy warrens in the neighbourhood (cf. Zool. 1869, 

 p. 1738). This species is now probably extinct in Lincolnshire 

 so far as breeding is concerned. 



(3) A third colony of Black-headed Gulls exists on Scotton 

 Common, about six miles south-west of Twigmoor, the birds 

 breeding on the pools and " flashes " of water scattered over a 

 swampy heath not far from the Biver Trent. By far the greater 

 number congregate on one of the pools near the middle of the 

 common, and the colony in all consists of perhaps one thousand 

 pairs of birds. This settlement is also almost certainly an 

 overflow colony from Twigmoor, as I am told on good authority 

 that there were no Gulls on the common in 1860, a few pairs 

 arriving as founders of the present colony about the year 1870 

 or a little later. I have known this gullery for the last nine 



