286 



Review — The Birds of Cheshire. 



The western portion of the county having been previously 

 treated of by Brockholes in 1874, an< ^ Dobie in 1893, in 'The 

 Proceeding's of the Chester Society of Natural Science,' Parts I. 

 and IV. , which the authors quote from freely, we have examined 

 with special interest the records from the eastern part, with 

 regard to which no systematic list has hitherto been published. 

 Here in the plain are most of the large meres ' pre-eminently 

 the home of the Great Crested Grebe, the Coot, and Reed 

 Warbler.' The notice of the first of these is one of the most 

 interesting in the book ; we are delighted to learn that on many 

 of these waters from one to half-a-dozen or even more pairs 

 nest every year, and that this handsome species is found in 

 greater numbers in Cheshire than in perhaps any other county 

 of England. Here, too, lie the 'Highlands' of Cheshire, con- 

 sisting of an outlying portion of the Peak country, the home of 

 the Red Grouse, and the breeding ground of the Snipe, Curlew, 

 Golden Plover, and Ring Ousel ; here the Merlin and Twite still 

 nest, and ' small trips of Dotterel are seen almost every year in 

 May and June,' while in the upper valleys of the Dane and Goyt 

 the Woodcock breeds. Here we note also the Lesser White- 

 throat is absent, though fairly common in the west. 



Turning to the county generally, we learn that the Lesser 

 Redpoll is fairly common, the Nuthatch rare and very local, the 

 Pied Flycatcher a rare passing migrant ; the Goldfinch and 

 Linnet are decreasing, while the Hawfinch and Turtle Dove are 

 becoming more common ; the Siskin is a scarce winter visitor; 

 the Wryneck and Woodlark are very rare. Amongst species 

 which have occurred once we note the Blue-headed Wagtail, 

 Nutcracker, Scops Owl, Purple Heron and Night Heron, while 

 the Little Bittern and Spoonbill have each been met with twice 

 and the Osprey three times. Many reported occurrences are 

 regarded as 'not proven,' notably the Noddy Tern, and all, we 

 think, on good grounds, but surely Sabine's Gull, a single speci- 

 men of which ' was obtained on the Welsh side of the Dee 

 estuary,' is hardly entitled to a place among the birds of 

 Cheshire. 



An interesting and critical account is given of a duck-decoy 

 worked in the seventeenth century by Sir William Brereton at 

 Dodleston, and an attempt made to identify the spot with a farm 

 on the road between Dodleston and Chester still known as the 

 'Decoy Farm.' 



A study of the volume suggests to us that further observa- 

 tions would be valuable on such points as the distribution of the 



Naturalist, 



