i57 



BIRD-NOTES FROM LEA, NEAR GAINSBOROUGH: 



JANUARY TO JUNE 1899. 



Miss MARGARET L ANDERSON, 

 Lea Hall, Gainsborough. 



The country about Lea, though it is all flat enough, falls 

 naturally into two strongly-marked divisions, viz., the low land 

 lying next the river Trent on the extreme western border of the 

 county, and the country of arable land and woodlands, sloping 

 gradually from thence up to the line of villages of which Stow 

 is the chief, and still further eastward to what, I believe, is 

 called ' the cliff' by Lincolnshire folk. From Knaith, which 

 is a picturesque village on the river bank about two miles to the 

 south of Lea, the Trent takes an abrupt curve outwards and in 

 again to Gainsborough, enclosing a great sweep of flat meadow 

 land intersected with dykes, which is known as Lea Great 

 Marsh. This tract of country, which is often entirely flooded 

 in winter or at the spring tides, has an ornithology of its own, 

 and I shall often have to refer to it. 



The three woods on the higher ground to which I shall have 

 occasion most frequently to refer, are Lea Wood, a big oak 

 wood where a Woodcock may generally be found in winter ; 

 the Amadam or Hermit dam, a dyke-surrounded wood, part fir 

 plantation and oak, part blackthorn scrub — in which portion 

 a pair of Nightingales is to be found every May — and part 

 rough, rushy, brambly ground, with small ditches cut across it, 

 and an occasional tiny larch or fir, where, on 30th April, 1895, 

 I heard and watched a Grasshopper Warbler for some time, the 

 only occasion where I have seen or heard of it in this part of 

 the country. 



The third wood is Norbury Hill, planted by the late Sir 

 Charles Anderson on ground, which in those days was Lea 

 Common, as one tiny bit of ground tufted with heather in the 

 middle of the wood attests. The lower part of this wood being 

 on peaty, boggy soil, rhododendrons grow and flower there in 

 masses among the birches and alders. The rest of the wood is 

 chiefly oak, with in the highest part a thick plantation of large 

 firs, where certainly in 1898, and probably in [899, a pair of 

 Herons nested in a big larch. Two or more of" these splendid 

 birds habitually roost in these thick firs, and are commonl} to 

 be put out of their tops, from whence they must be able to dis- 

 tinguish the river and the marsh meadows, where they max 

 often be seen fishing in the dykes and shallow Rood pools. 



u*x> May 1. 



