Nov.. 1892. 
GLACIAL GRAVELS OF THE GLOBPA. 
247 
down a tree. Creepers and wood-peckers always begin at 
the bottom and climb up. From personal observation this 
spring I have learnt that the female creeper is never 
fed by the male, at the time of sitting, when on the nest, 
but at a little distance from the nest. Another bird, sup¬ 
posed to be rarer than it is in this district, is the fern owl or 
nightjar. It visits the little mosses about Ellesmere every 
spring for breeding purposes. One such moss lies just below 
my terrace walk. If anyone were on that walk late in the 
evening in summer he might perhaps hear on a sudden 
a strange jarring or churring sound from the upper branches 
of a spruce fir. If he looked up he would catch a glimpse of 
a large bird, sitting, not across a branch like other birds, 
but lengthwise along it ; and he would wake up to the fact 
that from this bird proceeded the singular noise, not unlike 
the sound of a hay-cutting machine, to which he was 
listening. The nightjar makes no nest, but lays two beautiful 
eggs on the ground amidst the fern. Perhaps the rarest bird 
I have ever met with is the snow bunting. I have seen 
snow buntings twice on a high hill near Llansilin, once 
when alone, and once when I was with a keeper, who told 
me he had seen the birds before, on the Berwyn. These birds 
never desert the snow. They may indeed be not so rare as 
is thought ; the rare thing is for men who really care for 
birds, or know anything about them, to be out on Welsh hill 
tops when covered with snow. 
ON HIGH LEVEL GLACIAL GRAVELS OF THE 
GLOPPA, NEAR OSWESTRY.* 
BY A. C. NICHOLSON, F.G.S. 
The Gloppa deposit consists largely of sand, gravel, and 
beds of loam, with numerous boulders of various sizes, some 
of two or three cwts. in weight. The gravels show the usual 
eroded surface, and also an abruptly truncated face to the north 
and north-east, that is, facing the low country, and which 
face also is the steepest slope. This truncation may be due 
to subterranean erosion of the neighbouring ground by water, 
thereby causing slips. The first feature that strikes one in 
examining this deposit is its total dissimilarity to the drift to 
the westward and southward, and also to some extent to the 
easterly drift, both as regards the recent molluscan fauna 
* Read at the conversazione of the Midland Union of Natural 
History Societies, held at The Quinta, near Oswestry, August 23rd, 
1892. 
