235 



NESTING OF THE SHOVELLER IN CUMBERLAND. 



Rev. H. A. MACPHERSON, M.A., and WM. DUCKWORTH, 

 A itthors of 1 The Birds of Cumberland. ' 



When drawing up his standard paper on the Distribution of Birds 

 in Great Britain during the nesting season (Ibis. 1865), Mr. A. G. 

 More recorded the Shoveller {Spatula dypeata) as having nested in 

 seven English counties — viz., Dorset, Kent, Staffs., Norfolk, Yorks.,, 

 Durham, and Northumberland. In his recently published History 

 of British Birds, Mr. Seebohm states (vol. iii, p. 554), that the 

 Shoveller now nests in Herts., Cambs., and Huntingdonshire, as 

 also in the counties enumerated by Mr. More. Mr. H. Saunders, 

 in his text of Yarrell (4th ed.), refers to two more counties, Lincoln- 

 shire and Notts, on the respective authority of Mr. J. Cordeaux and 

 Mr. J. Whitaker. In Messrs. Sterland and Whitaker's descriptive 

 list of the Birds of Notts. (1879), the authors record that a pair of 

 Shovellers bred at Rainworth in 1874; Mr. Whitaker and Mr. Aplirn 

 inform the writers that, on a recent occasion, they observed no less than 

 fourteen pairs of breeding Shovellers in the same locality. Neither 

 Mr. Saunders nor Mr. Seebohm record the Shoveller as nesting 

 in Suffolk, but Mr. Rope attests to its breeding at Leiston (Z00L 

 1883, p. 496) ; it nests also in the neighbourhood of Aldeburgh. 



The thirteen counties thus recorded as holding breeding 

 Shovellers vary widely in character, the localities favoured being 

 in some cases the meres of inland counties, in others semi-tidal 

 waters, such as the ' fleets ' of Romney Marsh. They include most 

 of the maritime counties on the south and east of England, but bear 

 no reference to the north-ow/ portion of ' Southern Britain.' In 

 ? The Birds of Lancashire,' Mr. Mitchell states that Shovellers of both 

 sexes have been shot in Lancashire in the breeding season (p. 146) ; 

 and the present writers point to the Shoveller probably nesting in 

 Cumberland on similar grounds (their views being tersely stated at 

 p. 105 of 'The Birds of Cumberland'). 



Thanks to the observations of one of those working-men naturalists 

 who have done so much to investigate the zoology of the northern 

 counties, all doubt as to the Shoveller nesting in Cumberland has 

 now been dispelled. 



On May 8th, 1886, a Shoveller's nest, containing nine eggs, was 

 found in a tussock of rushes upon one of the salt marshes of the 

 Solway, on the English side of the estuary. Mr. Smith, the finder, 

 forwarded to the writers a portion of the down, which Mr. Seebohm 

 kindly pronounced to be identical with the down of the Shoveller. 



Aug. 1886. 



