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I now proceed to speak of some of the birds of the locality. And again it may be said, as in the case of the wild flowers, that, from the variety of soils, there is a corresponding abundance in the species frequenting the neighbourhood of Woodhall. Unfortunately another remark made of the flowers also applies to the birds. “Ichabod” may be written in large characters over the records of several. In the writer’s youth, an old couple lived close to the Tower on the Moor, about a mile from the Spa, in a cabin of their own construction, made chiefly of sods, then locally called “bages.” [33] Old Dawson, or “Tabshag,” the soubriquet by which he was more commonly known, lived with his wife the rather wild existence of a squatter, on the waste, under sufferance from the owner. He kept a pig, and was wont to boast that he possessed the highest pigsty and the lowest barn in the country, because the sty was a structure of his own erection, in the old brick tower, above the level of the surrounding ground; while his straw was stored in an excavation (still existing) several feet below. At that time between the Tower and Bracken Wood there was a stretch of waste land, several acres in extent, consisting of bog, interspersed with tussocks of coarse grass, and straggling alders and birches, still known by the name of “The Bog’s Nook,” or corner. [34a] On this ground the common green plover—Vanellus cristatus—then commonly called the “Pyewipe,” [34b] bred in large numbers; the eggs were, as they are still, regarded as a delicacy, and old “Tabshag” used to make a considerable sum of money every year by sending hampers of these eggs by coach up to London for sale. So familiar he was said to be with the habits of the bird that he could tell by its cry how many eggs were in the nest. [34c] This land is now under cultivation, and the plaintive cry of the plover is heard no more, or only seldom. The plover, indeed, is still with us, but in numbers lessening every year. There are probably not now as many plovers’ nests in the whole parish as there formerly were in a single ploughed field. The writer, as a boy, was somewhat of an expert in finding these nests. He has watched the birds making them, which they do by turning round and round, with the breast or belly on the ground, thus forming a saucer-shaped hollow, in which they sometimes place two or three fibres of twitch as a lining. One bird makes three or four of such nests, and finally selects the one which, presumably, she deems most unnoticeable.

Sixty years ago black game were found on the moorland called now “The Ostler Plantations,” [34d] but though one still heard of them “in the forties,” they were then either extinct or a rapidly vanishing quantity. At the same time also the “boom” of the bittern might still be heard in the marshy parts of the same ground, but they are also now among the has been’s.

No more shall bittern boom,

No more shall blackcock crow:

For both have met their doom,

The sport of human foe.

From the character of the Ostler ground, formerly a very secluded tract of mixed wood, moor, and morass, it has been frequented by a great variety of birds. [35] The heron bred there within the last twenty years, a solitary nest remaining in a clump of trees in the south-west corner next to Tattershall, until it was blown down by a gale, and, the particular tree being shortly afterwards felled, the bird never returned. Drainage and the destruction of trees by the woodman’s axe, or by accidental fires, have so dried the ground as to reduce greatly the numbers of certain birds of aquatic or semi-aquatic habits. The coot “clanking” in the sedgy pools is no more heard. The moor-hen with those little, black, fluffy balls which formed her brood scuttling over the water to hide in the reeds, is rarely seen. The wild duck has, indeed, in one or two instances nested near a still-surviving pool within the last ten years; a nest was once found by the writer among the branches of a pollard willow, overhanging a pool, some five or six feet from the ground. He has also shot teal on odd occasions lying in the open; but both these birds are now rarely seen, and the same may be said of the snipe, “jack” and “full.” The latter were once plentiful, so that it was a common occurrence to put up a “whisp” of them, whereas now one seldom sees more than three or four in a whole season. A delicate little bird, very palatable on the table, was the waterrail, now almost extinct. The writer used to have permission to shoot along the “ballast ponds” beside the railway, and he has frequently shot them there. The woodcock is still with us. The poet painter, Dante Rosetti, kept one as a favourite pet; we of Woodhall are more prosaic, and like to see the bird rise out of the bracken before us, and fall to our shot, eventually to appear nicely cooked on a toast before us at table. But of late years drainage has reduced their numbers. Although we could, of course, never at Woodhall, compete with the shooter on the Irish bogs, where as many as 100 or 200 are sometimes shot in a day; yet I could at one time almost always get a brace when I wanted them by trying certain spots which were their regular resort, and among my notes I find this: “Nov. 16, 1872, shot Bracken wood, got five woodcock, making 20 in three days.” [N.B.—Bracken wood, as the visitor may not know, is within one field of the Bath-house at Woodhall Spa.] Some years ago certain sportsmen (?) in this neighbourhood used to go to the sea coast every year, in October, at the time of the arrival of the first flight of woodcock (the second flight is in November), and shot them in considerable numbers, when they were resting, exhausted by their flight; hardly a creditable practice, and unworthy of a true lover of nature. A wood in Kirkstead, named “Bird-Hag Wood,” was formerly a favourite haunt of the woodcock, and I have shot many in it; but it was cleared away in the seventies. [36a] Woodcock occasionally breed on the moor, and a nest was found some years ago within 80 yards of the road to Horncastle, opposite the Tower on the Moor. Among my notes I find this: “Dec. 5, 1872, we saw about a dozen woodcock in Bird-Hag Wood, but only three were shot.”

I have just mentioned Bird-Hag and its woodcock. Pleasant memories of that wood have lingered with more than one sportsman. A former poetic owner of Kirkstead has written of it thus [36b]:—

Remote Bird-Hag, that favourite preserve, To crown some chosen day, the choice reserve Where noble oaks their autumn tints display, And fern gigantic checks the sportsman’s way But well is toil and trouble there repaid, By the wild tenants of that oaken shade, While rabbits, hares, successive, cross your road, And scarcely give the time to fire and load— While shots resound, and pheasants loudly crow, Who heeds the bramble? Who fatigue can know? Here from the brake, that bird of stealthy flight, The mottled woodcock glads our eager sight, Great is his triumph, whose lucky shot shall kill The dark-eyed stranger of the lengthy bill Unlike the pheasant, who himself betrays, And dearly for his daring challenge pays. Small notice gives the woodcock of his flight; Not seen at once, at once he’s lost to sight. Yet short his flight, and should you mark him down, The chances are that woodcock is your own; But quick the hand, and no less quick the eye, Would stop him as he hurries by; Few are the birds, whate’er may be their sort, More try the skill, give more exciting sport.

A few words may be said on the pheasants and partridges; and first of the former. The breed on the Ostler ground have a history. The late Sir Henry Dymoke, of Scrivelsby Court, used to rear, in large numbers, a white breed of pheasant, and as, with the exception of the Ostler ground, he, with his brother, had almost the whole of the shooting, extending from Scrivelsby to the Witham, they spread over that ground, and sought a kind of asylum in the dense cover of the Ostler plantations. Further, the writer’s father-in-law imported an Indian breed, called the “Kalege” pheasant, a very handsome bird; and these two strains have affected the breed on that ground, and, doubtless, have also had their effect on pheasants in the neighbourhood generally. White broods of pheasants are from time to time hatched on the ground; also piebald varieties are not uncommon. In the year 1898, a cream-coloured specimen was shot. Some of the cocks have at times a decided fringe of blue or purple in their plumages from the Kalege mixture.

As to partridges: It is only in recent years that the French, or red-legged breed (Cannabis rufa) have established themselves here. In the sixties, though said to have been introduced into England by Charles II., they were almost, if not entirely, unknown here. The writer shot them in Cambridgeshire in the fifties; and from the south-eastern coast and counties they have persistently spread, until now we have them everywhere. In the first instance, probably, they were brought across “the silver streak” by a gale, like the sand grouse, of which we have read, on the coast of Yorkshire. But whereas the sand grouse were immediately shot as curiosities, the red-leg, being a bird (as every shooter knows) given to running, knew how to take care of himself, and, like many another unwelcome intruder, he came to stay. The flesh is decidedly inferior in flavour to that of the common English brown partridge. I well remember a practical joke being played on a Woodhall keeper. The “Frenchmen,” as they were called, had only just arrived. A party of us were out shooting, and a red-leg was shot. The keeper, seeing the new and handsome-looking bird, was very proud of it, and though he had never yet tasted one, he loudly proclaimed, in his ignorance, that it would be as good in the eating as fine in the plumage. A day or two after we were out shooting again. Luncheon time came, and we lay stretched on the sward under a spreading tree, on a hot day in September, where the ladies joined us, bringing the refreshment. Cold partridges were among the fare, and instructions had been given beforehand that the “Frenchman” should be specially reserved, to hand to the keeper. In due course the Captain passed on to the keeper—as being specially favoured “above his fellows,” by the attention—half of a partridge. Nothing was said, and we all busied ourselves with the viands before us, but the keeper was under our careful observation. Presently his features were seen to be considerably distorted by wry faces, as he turned the leg or the wing about in his hands, while picking them, with some difficulty, to the bone. Probably the bird was not only a “Frenchman,” but a tough old cock into the bargain. At length he could stand it no longer, and, looking round at us, he said, “Dal it! Captain, but this bird’s a rum ’un.” “Don’t you like it?” was the reply; “why, it’s the handsome Frenchman you admired so much, when it was shot the other day.” “Well, then,” said the keeper, “I wish all such Frenchmen were at the battle of Water-gruel. I’ll back the English.” [38]

There are some rather curious facts in connection with the brown English partridge and the French variety. Though different in their habits, and, it is said, even hostile to each other, they yet, in some instances, consort. I once shot on the moor three brown and one red-leg, out of the same covey, all young birds. They had evidently been reared together in one brood, and the old birds were of the brown species. Mentioning this to a friend of large experience, he told me that he had known several instances where the eggs of the two kinds had been found laid in the same nest. The eggs are, of course, easily distinguishable, those of the common partridge being of a greenish drab colour, while those of the red-leg are of a dull, cream colour, covered with small brown spots. I have been informed by another authority that the eggs of the red-leg have also been found in the nest of an outlying pheasant. [39] A curious provision of nature, conducing to the preservation of the species, may be here mentioned as interesting; the partridge, while sitting on her eggs, has no scent. On one occasion a man was consulting me about a tombstone at St. Andrew’s Church, Woodhall. We walked into the churchyard together, and stood conversing opposite the grave in question. I was aware that a partridge was sitting on her nest concealed in the grass between that grave and the next, and therefore would not approach very near. Suddenly I perceived that he had a terrier with him, which was very busily hunting over the churchyard. I begged him to keep it in. He was rather indignant, and replied that it could do no harm in the churchyard. I remarked that he was not aware that within eight or ten feet of us a partridge was on her nest, and I did not wish her to be disturbed. He thereupon called in his dog, but that only brought his dog nearer to the nest, hunting the while; and the dog actually passed over the nest without scenting the bird. [40] The eggs were hatched the next day, and that doubtless accounted for her sitting so closely. Whether or not from an instinctive consciousness of this safeguard is not for me to say, but the partridge is rather given to selecting her nesting place near a highway or a footpath. I have known several instances of this, and only last year I repeatedly saw both the parent birds sitting on their nest together, on a bank close to a public footpath which was daily traversed.

To show how closely a partridge will continue to sit, under very trying circumstances, I give here an anecdote of what occurred in a parish adjoining Woodhall Spa, as it was related to me by the chief witness, the Squire himself.

In a meadow adjoining Roughton Hall, a partridge made her nest in a slight depression of the surface. The meadow was, in due course, mown, the mower passing his scythe over her without injuring her, and unaware of her presence, the depression having still enough grass to conceal the nest. The field was afterwards “tedded,” i.e., the grass was tossed about by a machine, which again passed over the nest, still leaving her unscathed and unmoved. In the process of “cocking,” the field was next horse-raked, the rake passing over the nest, with the same result. One of the haymakers, however, nearly trod on the nest; this drove the bird off, behind him, so that he did not observe it. But a friend was near at hand. The squire, seeing the bird fly away, went to the spot, found the hidden nest, and counted in it the unusual number of 19 eggs (promise of a good partridge season, weather permitting). He at once removed to a distance all the hay lying near, to prevent her being disturbed again, and watched the result. Within a quarter of an hour the partridge quietly returned to her nest. Ten days later she successfully brought off a brood of seventeen, two bad eggs remaining in the nest. Of course, as the hatching time draws near, the mother, feeling the young lives under her, sits more persistently than at an earlier period; but surely this mother partridge exhibited a remarkable instance of fidelity to maternal instinct, after passing through no less than four trying ordeals.

Of wild pigeons we have three kinds: the common woodpigeon or ringdove, of which there are large flocks; the stockdoves, which go in pairs, and (as their name implies) build their nest on a solitary stump or tree, or occasionally in a rabbit hole. The turtledove, though common in the south of England, is a migratory bird, and in these parts not a constant visitor. A “wave” of them spread over the Midland counties in 1895, and since that they have been seen in smaller numbers. The late Mr. J. Cordeaux, F.R.G.S., M.B.O.U., one of our greatest authorities, says that its note is lower and more of a querulous murmur than that of the ringdove. In size it is not much larger than a missel thrush.

The first of these pigeons is the bird named the “Culver,” in old writings, as Spencer sings in romantic ditty:—

Like as the culver, on the bared bough,

Sits mourning for the absence of her mate,

And in her song breathes many a wistful vow

For his return, who seems to linger late,

So I, alone, now left disconsolate.

Mourn to myself the absence of my love,

And sitting here, all desolate,

Seek with my plaints to match that mournful dove.

Of woodpeckers we have on the moor and in Bracken Wood at times, three kinds: the common green species (picus viridis) which is generally plentiful; the lesser spotted (picus minor), not seen every year, but occasionally; and, still less frequently seen, the larger spotted (picus major). Of the former of these spotted kinds, seeing three together, I shot one a few years ago; and the keeper shot another for me more recently, for our Naturalists’ Museum at Lincoln.

Of the “birds of prey,” so called, the greatest part are extinct, or nearly so, too often from a mistaken belief in their destructiveness; whereas they are really useful allies of the farmer, if not also of the sportsman. In the cause of the latter, they, for the most part destroy (if they destroy game at all) the weakly members, so conducing towards keeping up a vigorous breed, and for the farmer they destroy smaller vermin, the mice which, but for them, would multiply (as they have done in several places) until they become a plague. In the year 1890, a very large bird was reported as being seen about the woods near Woodhall, but I could not get a sight of it myself, nor could I get anyone else to give a description of it, except that it was very large. After a time it disappeared from Woodhall, and was reported as being seen for a time about Revesby, and on November 8th an eagle was shot by the son of a farmer residing at Tupholme Hall, in a wood at Southrey belonging to Mr. Vyner. It proved to be a male bird, in good condition, measuring 6ft. 7in. across the wings, and weighing 11lbs. I rode over to see it, but it had been sent to the taxidermist to be stuffed. It was a sea eagle (Haliactus albicilla). The kite (milvus ictinus) used to be common 40 years ago; its presence being notified by our hens cackling, and ducks quacking, as they called together their broods, when they espied it soaring at a considerable height above. If a reckless chick, or duckling, neglected to take the warning, and seek shelter beneath the mother’s wings, there was for a moment a rushing sound, a general confusion in the poultry yard, a half-smothered scream, and the kite flew away with a victim in its claws. [42] I have seen this more than once myself. The kite is now quite extinct in this neighbourhood. The same may be said of the buzzard (buteo vulgaris). Although their food was chiefly mice and small birds; perhaps occasionally game, but not generally; since, though a very fine bird in appearance, they were not rapid enough on the wing to overtake the partridge in full flight; yet the keepers waged war against them “to the knife.” Many is the buzzard I have seen nailed up with the pole-cats and other vermin in the woods at Woodhall. But they are now seen no more, and a handsome and comparatively harmless ornament of our sylvan scenery is gone beyond recall.

The Hen-Harrier (circus cyaneus), a more active bird than the buzzard, is another of the “Ichabods.” Its last known nesting place was on the top of “The Tower on the Moor,” near Woodhall. As a boy, the writer has climbed that tower for the eggs, and he has now a very fine specimen of the old bird stuffed, measuring about 40 inches across, from tip to tip of the wings. These birds were wont to fly at higher game than the buzzard, and doubtless did at times destroy partridges; but they also fed largely on water-rats and frogs, and were not above gorging themselves on carrion. The female is larger than the male.

The beautiful little Merlin (Falco Æsalon) was also seen, though not common, twenty-five or thirty years ago. It was a very plucky little bird, and I have seen one strike down a partridge larger in bulk than itself. This is gone, never to return.

The Sparrow-Hawk (Accipiter fringillarius) survives, although in diminished numbers; and this indeed is the only one of the hawks against which “my voice should be for open war.” It is very destructive and very daring in the pursuit of its quarry. A connection of my own was sitting in a room facing the garden at the Victoria Hotel, Woodhall, when a sparrow-hawk dashed after its prey, broke the glass of the window, and fell stunned on the floor of the room. The female in this kind also is larger than the mate. This bird will kill young ducks and chickens, and partridges, and even pheasants.

The Kestrel (Falco tinnunculus) also still survives, and we do not grudge it a prolonged lease of life. It feeds chiefly upon mice and small birds, cockchafers, and other insects; is a graceful object as it hangs lightly hovering at a considerable height in the air; with its keen vision detects its small prey half hidden in the grass or stubble, and then with lightning rapidity, drops like a stone upon it, and bears it away. I have kept kestrels and sparrow-hawks and tamed them; and the former will become tractable and almost affectionate, but the latter is a winged Ishmaelite, and very treacherous, and if allowed a little liberty, it generally ends in his making his escape. [44a]

Owls are still, I am glad to say, plentiful. They are amongst the farmers’ greatest feathered friends, killing enormous quantities of mice, which otherwise would damage his crops. [44b] We have three kinds on the moor or in the woods: 1st—the barn owl, or screech owl (stryx flammea); 2nd—the wood or brown owl (synnium aluco); 3rd—the horned-owl (asio otus). The two last are very much alike in both size and colour, but the last has two tufts of feathers rising on each aide of the head, from which it gets its name of horned-owl. I have a note among my shooting records: “Dec. 5th, 1872, shot Bird Hag Wood, in Kirkstead, put up about a dozen owls.” These would be the “horned” kind. Five were shot on that occasion, but as a rule they have been carefully spared, one only occasionally being killed as a specimen for stuffing. Within the nineties, being out with my gun, on the moor, when the ground was covered with snow, I passed by a solitary thick Scotch fir, when an owl flew out. I wanted a specimen for a friend who was staying with me, and I shot it. The report created quite a commotion within the tree, and some twenty owls were immediately flying about me. Not being likely to settle in the snow, and apparently dazed by the glare of the sun reflected from the snow, I left them as quickly as I could, to recover their composure, and return to the sheltered quarters in which they had congregated. Hunting, as they do, almost entirely by night, they have little opportunity of interfering with the game, nor is it their propensity to do so. [45] There are three very ancient hollow oak trees in “The Arbours” Wood in Kirkstead. These are a favourite resort of the barn owl.

The carrion crow still nests on the moor, although the eggs are taken every season. But the old birds are very wary, and manage to keep out of shot. The common rook, however, of late years, has got a bad name, as having taken up the marauding habits of the genuine crow. Owing to the improved cultivation of land, there is not now the supply of grubs on which the rook used to feed, and they have taken to hunting for the eggs of partridge and pheasant, and may be seen “quartering” the ground as methodically as a pointer or setter. They are strongly suspected of killing the young as well as rifling the nests of eggs, and the Scotch keepers complain of their depredations on the moors, among the young grouse.

A writer in the “Yorkshire Poet” (of August 22, 1898) says that black game are decreasing in the Border counties, as the rooks destroy the eggs.

This completes the list of the larger birds frequenting the neighbourhood. As I write this chapter, a letter from an old friend says that he well remembers the number of night-jars which were to be heard “churring” about Woodhall on a summer’s evening. This bird (caprimulgus Europœus), locally called fern-owl, comes to us about May. I have a note: “May 23rd, 1873, the first night-jar heard.” During the daytime, the visitor, walking quietly through the woodland paths near the Victoria Hotel, may, if he has a keen eye, see the night-jar lying flat upon the branch of an oak, hardly indeed perceptible, owing to its colour being so near that of the brown bark. Then, towards evening, it may be seen taking its short and wonderfully rapid flights, and you may hear its bills snap together as it catches the moths and cockchafers on which it feeds. It breeds on the moor, the nest generally being laid on the ground among the bracken; whence its name of fern-owl. The old idea of its sucking the goat or cow, from the former of which it gets its classical name caprimulgus (as well as the English equivalent), is, of course, long since exploded. [46a] The churring note is seldom heard except when it is at rest on a branch of a tree.

The brilliant little Kingfisher (Alcedo ispida), the most gay in colour of all our birds, may still sometimes be seen, darting about the only rivulet which we can boast of at Woodhall, and which rejoices in the unattractive name of “The Sewer,” [46b] although its water, welling up at its source near Well Syke Wood, is beautifully clear and pure. The occurrence, however, of the bird here is rare. An old inhabitant of Kirkby assures me that it is not uncommon on the river Bain, in that parish; and of late years, partly through the writer’s influence, it may be seen on the rivers Bain or Waring, in the heart of Horncastle, unmolested, and even fed, by the people.

The Grey Fly Catcher (Muscicapa Grisola) is fairly common on our lawns, where it will sit quietly on a garden seat, or roller, and thence take its short jerky flight after the flies. I have known it to nest year after year, at the Vicarage, in a hole in the wall, where an iron ventilator was broken.

The Wryneck (Yunx Torquilla) is a somewhat uncommon bird at Woodhall, though a pretty one. For several years it also frequented the Vicarage garden, sometimes four or five of them, during the summer months. One year there were so many that I shot one and had it stuffed, and I found that at the same time a noble Marquis was having two stuffed, as being rather rare. It is called in some parts of the country the “weet” bird, from its peculiar note; other authorities say that the note is represented by the words, “Peel, peel,” or “Peep-peep.” I should myself say “Snipe, snipe” was nearer to the sound, and a writer compares it to the sound of Punch, in the old show of “Punch and Judy,” which I think comes nearer to my own interpretation. The body of this bird is in colour a mixture of grey and brown, but its tail and wings are most beautifully marked with dark zig-zag bars, which make it very handsome. In size it is between the blackbird and the lark. Like the woodpecker, it has a very long tongue, which is covered with a glutinous matter, and which it inserts into the grass roots or tree bark, in search of its food. [47]

I give here a list of birds which I have stuffed, all of which were killed in this neighbourhood:—Night-jar (Caprimulgus Europœus), wry neck (Yunx Torquilla), buff blackbird (Turdus merula), razorbill (Alca Torda), little auk (Mergulus Alia), ruff (Machetes Pugnax), green sand piper (Totanus Octaopus), snipe (Scolopax gallinago), water rail (Rallus Aquaticus), golden plover (Charadrius Pluvialis), woodcock (Scolopax Rusticola), large spotted wood pecker (Dendrocopus Major), hawfinch (Coccothraustes Vulgaris), cuckoo (Cuculus Canorus), jay (Garrulus Glandarius), French partridge (Cannabis Rufa), turtledove (Turtur Auritus), horned owl (Asio Otus), hen harrier (Circus Cyaneus), kestrel (Falco Tinnunculus), peregrine falcon (Falco Peregrinus), piebald pheasant (phasianus colchicus), buff pheasant, cormorant (phylacrocorax carbo), jay (corvus glandarius), heron (ardea cinerea), horned owl (asio otus).

In times gone by, never to return, the numbers and variety of wild fowls frequenting the Witham, with its “sykes and meres,” was something extraordinary. Charles Kingsley doubtless wrote, if not of his own knowledge, yet, at furthest, at second hand, when he gave the following description: “Grand it was, while dark green alders and pale green reeds stretched for miles … where the coot clanked, and the bittern boomed, and the sedgebird, not content with its own sweet song, mocked the notes of all the birds around … far off upon the silver mere would rise a puff of smoke from a punt, invisible from its flatness. Then down the wind came the boom of the great stanchion-gun; and after that another sound, louder as it neared; a cry as of all the bells of Cambridge, and all the hounds of Cottesmore; and overhead rushed and whirled the skeins of terrified wildfowl, screaming, piping, clacking, croaking, filling the air with the hoarse rattle of their wings; while, clear above all, sounded the wild whistle of the curlew, and the trumpet note of the wild swan.” “Prose Idylls,” The Fens.

The living clouds on clouds arose,

Infinite wing! Till all the plume-dart air

And rude resounding shore was one wild cry.

Of the swans, we may observe that not only did this bird, in its wild state, frequent the Witham and the Fen waters, but the swannery was a valuable possession. The Abbots of Bardney and Kirkstead owned swanneries on the Witham. (“Archæol.” vol. xvi., p. 153). The swans of various owners were distinguished by marks on the upper mandible, and there were no less than 97 different swan marks on the Witham. A rhyming list of the birds of the Witham is given in Drayton’s Polyolbion (song 25), too long to quote here; suffice it to say that one parish alone, near Boston, some 60 years ago, sent 30,000 wild fowl in a year to London—(Thompson’s History, Boston). The bird’s captured by net were dunlins, knots, ruffs, reeves, red-shanks, lapwings, golden plovers, curlews, godwits, etc. One fowler stated that he had so taken 24 dozen lapwings in one day, and four dozen and nine at one time.—Stevenson’s “Birds of Norfolk,” vol. i., p. 57. Other birds shot by the fowlers were mallard, teal, widgeon, whimbrells, grebes of several kinds, and the “yelping” avocet. A relative of the present writer owned a decoy, where some 20,000 wild ducks were taken, within his own recollection, in one season. [49]

We now come to the last bird which I shall name in this somewhat lengthy list; a goddess among birds, as someone has almost literally called her, “œmula divini suavissima carminis ales”; and the old Scotch poet, William Drummond, of Hawthornden, says:—

Sweet artless songster! thou my mind dost raise

To airs of spheres—yes, and to angels’ lays.

while quaint old Isaac Walton says: “She breathes such sweet music from her little instrumental throat, that it might make mankind to think that miracles are not yet ceased.” The nightingale was first heard in my own garden, at the vicarage, Woodhall Spa, in the spring of 1876. Having heard it at Cambridge, in the South of England, and also in Italy, I immediately recognised the note, and at first was delighted at the arrival of this new visitor to Woodhall Spa, who did not come needing the water, and complaining of aches and pains, but to delight everyone with its rich flood of song. And having thus found its way here, it has further found the attractions of Woodhall so great that, although favouring no other place in the neighbourhood, it has continued its annual visits ever since, and has brought its kindred in increasing numbers. But, although charmed at first with its melody, the novelty wore off; and when, night after night, there were three or four of these birds waking the echoes beneath my bedroom window, trying in jealous rivalry each to outdo the other in compassing the whole gamut, “in the rich mazes of sound,” my admiration considerably abated, and I became rather disposed to vote the performance a veritable surfeit of song, to the utter banishment of much-needed slumber. Before, however, I had arrived at this prosaic way of viewing the “Queen of Song,” I composed in its honour the following lines, with which I shall close this chapter on the Birds of Woodhall:—