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A VISIT TO RAINWORTH LODGE. 



OLIVER V. APLIN, M.B.O.U., 

 Bloxknnr, tiear Banbury, Oxon. 



To many readers of the Naturalist the name of Rainworth will be 

 familiar as the head breeding-quarters of certain species of ducks in 

 the northern counties of England, and as the repository of many a 

 rare and historical specimen stored up in the collection at the Lodge. 

 To some, as to the writer, it will call up recollections of pleasant 

 days spent among the beauties of a truly wild and extremely 

 interesting country, in the haunts of rare birds, and in the company 

 of the genial naturalist host, who spared no trouble to show them 

 every object of interest to be seen in the neighbourhood — and they 

 are manifold— and whose knowledge of the habits of birds, gained in 

 the field during a constant residence in the county he has known 

 from boyhood, gave an additional charm to many a long ramble 

 'over the forest' or 'round the ponds.' To describe Rainworth 

 thoroughly would require a whole number of the Naturalist. I pro- 

 pose, therefore, to give a short account of a few days spent there in 

 April 1886, supplemented -with some notes made during a former 

 visit in August 1883. 



And first a few remarks upon the nature of the country, and of 

 the Lodge itself, which may be not inaptly termed the Selborne of 

 the northern counties. Rainworth is situated on the outskirts of 

 Mansfield Forest — a division of the great Sherwood — some four miles 

 from Mansfield town, and two from Blid worth, the nearest village. 

 The house (dating from the time of Doomsday Book) is built in a 

 little hollow, and is thus sheltered from the cutting, east wind, which 

 blows over the forest in no gentle manner. In front of the house is 

 the pond, some 300 yards long, and forty wide at the broadest part, 

 with an island reached by a rustic bridge just in front of the hall 

 windows ; at the date of my visit a Swan was sitting on her bulky 

 nest among the rhododendron bushes, and a Wild Duck had eggs a 

 few yards from her. The lower end of the pond is sheltered from the 

 road by a line of bushes and pollard trees, on the opposite side of 

 the water is a thick bank of shrubbery and rhododendrons, and 

 beyond that is a small water-meadow, and then the ground rises to 

 the arable fields above. If you follow up the pond to the end you 

 will debouch on to the trout stream which feeds it, and on to the 

 water meadows above, but here we leave the grounds proper, and 

 must retrace our steps. Immediately on our left before turning is the 

 ' Warbler Wood,' a rising plantation of young fir and larch, with thick 



July 1887. o 



