194 OLIVER V. APLIN: A VISIT TO RAINWORTH LODGE. 



undergrowth : it resounded witli the silvery song of innumerable 

 Willow Wrens, and later in the season would be filled with the 

 melody of many a member of the Sylviidce. Behind the house, the 

 ground rises sharply to the gardens, where stands the Starling tower, 

 a kind of pigeon-house on a pole, which can accommodate twenty- 

 two pairs of Sturnus v u /gari's, Sind is usually 'quite full in the season.' 

 We then come to a long plantation in which birds breed in hundreds, 

 among others the Nightingale, which has nested for three seasons. 

 OKI tins, boxes, draining-pipes, and various other receptacles are 

 hung upon the trees, and form nest-sites for Tits, Hedge Sparrows, 

 Robins, Flycatchers, etc. Here, then, we have every want of bird 

 life fully supplied, and well they take advantage of it, and of the 

 protection afforded them. We are indeed in the home of birds ; 

 probably in few houses in England can you sit at dinner with the 

 windows open and hear the Snipe ' drumming,' while the Nightjar 

 flits by under the rose-arches within five yards of the table. From 

 my window, about midnight, I could hear the Coots clanking noisily, 

 and now and then a Duck would quack — pitch-dark as it was ; and 

 I awoke in the morning to hear the Chiffchaff hard at work not many 

 yards from my head, while Moorhens were feeding about the grounds 

 like so many barn door fowls. On the pond are some semi- 

 domesticated Wild Ducks, belying their name in the extreme 

 tameness they exhibit — some even taking bread from my hand a 

 few minutes after I arrived. Coots, too — perhaps the wildest of all 

 wild fowl — will take bread thrown to them, ^^'riting to me during 

 the severe weather of January last (1887), Mr. Whitaker says: — 'The 

 Coots are so tame that when I feed the tame Wild Ducks three or 

 four rush out of the water and fight with the ducks for Indian corn 

 within three yards of my feet, six or seven Moorhens keeping on the 

 outside of the drove.' Moorhens are, of course, abundant, and the 

 Tufted Duck breeds on the island almost every year ; when there in 

 August I examined a nest from which a brood had been hatched out 

 shortly before. As we stood upon the rustic bridge one August 

 evening, about eight o'clock, watching the Trout rising all over the 

 water, and listening to the night-cries of the Pewits from the sur- 

 rounding fields, a sudden rush of wings overhead announced that 

 flight time had arrived, and nine Shovellers passed over. The ducks 

 flight down these ponds at nightfall, coming from the waters at New- 

 stead, etc., and afford grand sport in winter to a gun posted here — a 

 luxurious mode of wild-fowling which will commend itself to the 

 imagination of those who when following this diversion are con- 

 strained to stand by the hour in a swampy posidon in the middle of 

 some bleak water-meadows, with the prospect of stumbling home 



Naturalist, 



