Smithsonian Institution

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Alexander Wetmore

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A VERTEBRATE FAUNA OF LAKELAND

EDINBURGH: Printed by T. and A. CONSTABLE,
FOR

DAVID DOUGLAS,

LONDON . . . . SIMPKIN, MARSHALL, HAMILTON, KENT
are AND CO., LTD.

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CAMBRYDGE - « » MACMILLAN AND BOWES.

GLASGOW . . . . JAMES MACLEHOSE AND SONS.

A VERTEBRATE
FAUNA OF LAKELAND

INCLUDING CUMBERLAND AND WESTMORLAND
WITH LANCASHIRE NORTH OF THE SANDS

BY THE

REV. H. A. MACPHERSON, M.A.

MEMBER OF THE BRITISH ORNITHOLOGISTS’ UNION, ETC. ETC.

WITH A PREFACE BY

R. 8. FERGUSON, FS.A.

CHANCELLOR OF CARLISLE, AUTHOR OF ‘A HISTORY OF CUMBERLAND,’ ETC. ETC.

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DAVID DOUGLAS, CASTLE STREET, EDINBURGH
1892

[All rights reserved]

PREFACE

No collection of books is more calculated to fill with amaze-
ment the mind of a visitor to the hbrary that houses it,
than a collection of ‘County Histories’ of the old-fashioned
type. The information contained between their massive
boards ranges over almost every branch of human know-
ledge: from pedigrees to ethnology; from agricultural
statistics to heraldry and architecture; and from natural
history of all sorts to family gossip. Dip into them where
one will, one can hardly fail to be amused and edified.
But let the reader beware of being bitten by a mania for the
in these days

?

formation of a library of ‘County Histories:
when the agents of wealthy libraries at Chicago and San
Francisco compete in the English book-market with the
buyers of County Histories, such books run to much gold,
as would-be purchasers of Nicolson and Burn’s History and
Antiquities of Westmorland and Cumberland, or of Hutchin-
son’s Cumberland speedily find. High, however, as are the
prices attained by the few copies that do come into the
market, the demand is not sufficient to induce publishers to
undertake the risk of reprinting or of publishing volumes of
So expensive a character. Unless the speculation is taken
up by a syndicate of antiquaries and patriotic persons, as 1s
now the case in the neighbouring county of Northumberland,
the time has gone past for producing a history of Cumber-
land, or of any county, on the old-fashioned lines and scale.
‘The work is now sub-divided ; the Fawna and the Flora, the

al PREFACE

Pedigrees and the Geology, the Ecclesiology, and the every-
thing else, are dealt with by specialists in little volumes
devoted exclusively to one subject. A few years ago, one or
two ponderous tomes supplied a country gentleman with all
that was in print concerning his county, whereas nowadays
a whole bookcase is required to house the more portable
and numerous volumes that are in vogue.! One such
volume is now presented to the reader by the Rev. H. A.
Macpherson on Zhe Vertebrate Fauna of Lakeland. But
though this volume is a mere octavo of some six hundred
odd pages, its contents, in order to do justice to its own
special subject—Zhe Vertebrate Fauna, are almost of as
catholic a character as the contents of the old County
Histories it and its fellows are destined to supersede. Thus
the bibliography of the subject, and the personality of the
various local writers thereon, have required much research,
and occupy a considerable portion of the Prolegomena.
Ancient charters, monastic records, parish registers and
accounts, have all of necessity been consulted: the valuable
results extracted thereon would seem to be as suitable to the
pages of the journal of an antiquarian society, as to a book
on natural history. But so it always is; one branch of
learning overlaps another, and the well-informed Lakeland
naturalist should be able to read medieval handwriting with
facility, to take part in a discussion on the age of the Bew-
castle Obelisk, and to blazon most of the local coats of
arms.2 Further, he must have at his finger’s ends The House
Books of Lord William Howard, and The History of
the Cumberland Fox Hounds; it is hard to say what he
need not have learnt or read. Little wonder then that

1A History of Cumberland, by Richard 8S. Ferguson. London, Elliot
Stock, 1890. See the Preface. At the end is a classified list of works
relating to Cumberland.

2 See infra, sub voce The Squirrel, p. 76.

3 Published by the Surtees Society, vol. Ixviii.

PREFACE Vil

Mr. Macpherson has thought it necessary to impose upon
another the task of defining ‘ Lakeland.’

‘Lakeland, for the purposes of this book, comprehends
the counties of Cumberland and Westmorland, and that part
of Lancashire known as Lancashire Over-Sands, or Lan-
cashire North of the Sands: it is, in fact, the present diocese
of Carlisle plus the parish of Alston, which, though in the
county of Cumberland, is part of the diocese of Newcastle.
The most northerly point of Lakeland is the Scotch Knowe,
otherwise called Lamyford, situate on the Kershope Water,
in an angle between the counties of Northumberland and
Roxburgh, the one English, the other Scotch. With the
exception of four miles, defined by a bank of earth between
the rivers Esk and Sark, the whole of the western boundary
of Lakeland is water-washed: by fresh water for a compara-
tively short way, that is, starting from Scotch Knowe, by the
rivers Kershope, Liddell, Esk, Sark, and Esk again. From
the mouth of the Esk the Solway becomes the boundary as
far as the lofty cliffs of the North Head of St. Bees, the most
westerly point of the district. At this point the ‘running,’
if one may so call it, is taken up by the Irish Sea, as far as
the south end of Walney Island, the most southerly part of
the district : round the corner of Walney Island, Lakeland is
bounded along one half of its southern border by the waters
of Morecambe Bay. This long line of sea-coast, nigh 100
miles long, is broken by many estuaries: the estuaries of
Esk and Eden, of Waver and Wampool, of It, Mite, and
Esk, of Levens, and of Kent, and of other minor streams,
whose sands, creeks, and marshes, feeding and sheltering
innumerable flocks of sea-fowl, are happy hunting-grounds
alike for the sportsman and for the naturalist. Great
changes have at various times taken place in these estuaries :
thus the joint estuary of Irt, Mite, and Esk, once, in Roman
and later times, a noble harbour, is now so silted up on the bar,

Vill PREFACE

that nothing drawing over 6 feet can enter. Asa port it is
now deserted and impossible. In Morecambe Bay large
areas have at various times been reclaimed from the
waters; but the waters have frequently reasserted them-
selves: thus in 1828 the Levens washed away the West
Plain estate, a farm of great extent, which had been
reclaimed in 1807-8, and was at the time of its destruction
let for £750 per annum. The East Plain estate, reclaimed
at the same time, escaped destruction. Several reclamations,
made when the railway was formed, have so far survived.
What effect these changes have had upon the sea-fowls, in
numbers or kind, must be left to Mr. Macpherson to deal
with:—in all probability but lttle compared with more
extensive changes wrought by the enclosure and drainage
acts of the end of the last century. This great quantity of
sea-water, said to be warmed by a special branch-off from
the Gulf Stream, has a most material effect upon the climate
of the coast it laves. The temperature is mild, frost un-
frequent, snow rarely lies, while fuchsias and other delicate
plants flourish in the open all the year round. Fish abound
in these waters, and their pursuit in the open sea has bred
up a race of hardy sailors, while their capture in the
estuaries and rivers has been the subject of much legislation,
of many charters, and of frequent litigation, among whose
dreary and jejune records the legal antiquary finds much
pabulum, and the naturalist not a little,

If the western boundary of Lakeland is mainly water, its
eastern one is moor and mountain, defined, now by some
mountain stream, now by a watershed, here and again by
currocks, or little piles of stones, while a big boulder, like
Tom Smith’s Stone, marks a salient or a re-entering angle.
The fells it traverses are part of the great range that runs
from Tweed to Derbyshire, losing itself in the Midlands.
This boundary finds its most easterly point at Ray Cross,

PREFACE 1x

upon Stanemoor. Some way south ef this point it makes
a great re-entering angle to the west and south, so as to
exclude Sedbergh and Dent from its ambit. Turning again
due west, it runs below Kirkby Lonsdale and Burton-in-
Kendal to the sea in Morecambe Bay, which it enters at a
point just south of Arnside Knot. Along this hne no kindly
branch of the Gulf Stream mitigates the rigours of the east
wind: nay, one part of the district, Cross Fell, possesses a
phenomenal and diabolical east wind of its own, known
as the Helm Wind, which blows persistently at some sea-
sons of the year, and which parches the skin, chills the
blood, congests the liver, and plays the plague with tender
lunes.

The area enclosed by the boundaries just described is
irregular in outline. The south-west portion is occupied by
mountains and fells, and forms the Lakeland of the tourist ;
these mountains and fells extend eastwards as far as Penrith
and Shap, at which last place they almost coalesce with the
eastern fells : northwards they reach to Caldbeck and Binsey,
while on the west a narrow slip of plain, widening as it goes
to the north, separates them from the sea. These mountains
and fells include such famous heights as Scawfell, Helvellyn,
Skiddaw, Bow Fell, the Pillar, Saddleback, Black Combe,
Langdale Pikes, Coniston Old Man, etc., and the lakes of
Ulleswater, Bassenthwaite, Derwentwater, Crummock, Wast-
water, Thirlmere, Ennerdale, Buttermere, Loweswater, Win-
dermere, Coniston, Rydal, Grasmere, and Haweswater, as
well as many smaller lakes and tarns. The east is occupied,
starting from the south by Shap Fells, Stanemoor, Alston
Moor, and other fells, ending in the north with Spadeadam
Waste, and Bewceastle Fells. The eastern and western fells
approach very closely at Penrith, and between them, widen-
ing up to the north, lies the great plain of Cumberland
which sweeps round westward by the alluvial flats of the

x PREFACE

Solway to join the strip of plain between the western fells
and the sea.

The western fells, the Lakeland of the tourist, send their
waters mainly westward and westward by south to the sea:
the principal of these rivers, starting from the north, are the
Elne, or Ellen, the Derwent, with its affluents the Greta and
the Cocker, the Calder, the Eden, the Irt, the Mite, the Esk,
the Duddon, the Levens, and the Kent. From the eastern
side of these same fells issue the Eamont, Petteril, and
Caldew, all emptying themselves into the great river of Lake-
land, the Eden, which, rising in Westmorland, runs north-
wards along the eastern side of the plain of Cumberland,
and then turns westwards to the Solway. Its many tribu-
taries drain the eastern fells, while Esk and its tributaries
carry the waters from the northern fells to the Solway:
Waver, Wiza, and Wampool drain the alluvial flats south of
that Firth. With the exception of the three last, the rivers
of Lakeland are rapid, bright and clear; shallows and pools
alternate : they are not navigable, except the Eden, and that
only for a short way.

It must then be apparent to the reader that the Lakeland,
whose boundaries and physical characteristics have been
under discussion, must embrace a great variety of climate
and country: heathery grouse moors in the far north, salt-
ings, bogs, and mosses, along the Solway and the Irish Sea:
highly cultivated arable and pasture land in the plain of
Cumberland, richly-wooded river valleys and sheltered
combes, mountains, meres, tarns and fells, rocks and cliffs,
calculated to attract and shelter a widely varied fawna.
This fawna must have been much affected by the changes
drainage and cultivation have wrought. Scaleby, Solway,
and Bowness mosses, and Wedholm Flow, are but puny and
degenerate survivals of vast morasses which once covered the
alluvial flats bordering on the Solway, and stretched eastward

PREFACE x1

from the vicinity of Rockcliffe along the north of Carlisle for
many miles. In the time of Charles IL, great part of the dis-
trict was forest, and covered with dense scrub of oak, ash,
thorn, hazel, and birch, whose stocks are frequently found
buried beneath the peat, while the scrub itself remains in
many places in the low bottoms. The frequent occurrence
in peat and elsewhere of the antlers of Red Deer, many
much larger than at the present day, shows that the deer
must have had abundance of ‘ browse, —that is, ‘ scrub, —for
their support in times past, extending over a wide range of
country. Modern changes must, too, have greatly affected
the fauna of Lakeland; up to the end nearly of the last
century, thousands of acres in Lakeland were lying waste in
open common. Enclosure acts were obtained, and between
1780 and 1820 thousands of acres of heathy hill and rushy
swamp were enclosed, and converted into cultivated fields
and verdant meadows. Many tarns, such as Tarn Wadling,
Gibb Tarn, etc., have been drained, and the corn now waves
in rich profusion, where fish once swam. Large areas, long
ago denuded of their ancient ‘scrub,’ have been replanted.
Such changes must have affected largely the fauna of Lake-
land, and it is for our author to trace out their effects :! there
is an archeology in natural history as in all other things.

ig teh. lle
1892.

* See The Birds of Cumberland, p. xvii, for a careful summary of
changes in the Avifauna.

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CONTENTS

PREFACE,
CoNTENTs,
List oF ILLUSTRATIONS,

PROLEGOMENA—

The Naturalists of Lakeland,

The Extinct Mammals of Lakeland, .
The Destruction of Wild Animals,
Variation of Colour in Animals,
Hybrid Birds,

Bird Fowling,

Introduced Species,
Review of the Fauna of Lakeland,

Conclusion,
MAMMALS,
BiIRDs,
REPTILES,
AMPHIBIANS, .
FISHES,

NortEs,

I. InDEX oF ScrentTIFIC NAMES,

II. GENERAL INDEX, AND GLOSSARY OF LocAL NAMES,

XVli

xl

lxiv
Ixxiv
Ixxix

. lxxxiii
xe

Xclv

c

1
87

xii

LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS

FULL PAGE.

GOWBARROW Park, THE ANCESTRAL HOME OF RED DEER, . /acing p. 50

LEVENS DEER PARK, . ; 2 : ; : ne 70
ISABELLINE WHEATEAR, : ‘ , ; : bd 92
EYRIE OF THE SEA EAGLE AT Buck CraG, . : : Ps 194
MonxHi_u Loves, A Haunt oF WILD SwAns, : : . 254
FRIGATE PETREL, : i : A , , ka 458
A SaLmon Poon oN THE EDEN, ; : ‘ ; hie 498

HAWESWATER, THE HOME OF THE GWYNIAD, OVERLOOKED
BY WALLOW CrRaG, A FoRMER EYRIE OF SEA EAGLE, a 516

Map oF THE LAKE DISTRICT, : p é é the end

WOODCUTS IN TEXT.

THE Avroc# (the Howgill Castle Ox), ' ‘ : p. hii
Tue AvrRocu (the Muncaster Castle Ox), . ; 4 lvi
Fossit BonEs, ; : ; : , : lix
VARIETY OF THE COMMON VIPER, . : ‘ : Ixxvuli
THE ‘ GUELDER,’ ; ; 5 : ; : Ixxxiv
am “WILE,’ . ; : : ; : : lxxxvi
THE ‘Sprint,’ : , : : : : lxxxvii
TRACHEA OF PoLIsH SWAN, . ; : ; : xevi

Foot or Sea EaGte, . : : : : : cili

XV

THE NATURALISTS OF LAKELAND.

NEARLY two centuries have elapsed since the Fauna of Lakeland Dr. Robinson.
first attracted the attention of Dr. Robinson, a learned divine,

who amused himself with making observations on the habits of

Rooks and other commonplace incidents. The Essay towards a

Natural History of Westmorland and Cumberland appeared in two

small volumes, published in 1709. They do not contribute

anything of interest to our literature, or show much knowledge

of zoology, but the author writes with a self-confidence that

often affords diversion. He deserves all credit for having made

an effort to touch the subject, however superficially.

James Clarke, a native of Ulleswater, possessed little more James Clarke.
scientific knowledge than Dr. Robinson, but he was a shrewd
and painstaking observer. Nobody can afford to speak lightly
of one who could say with sincerity : ‘For my own part, I am
never wearied with researches into nature.’! Clarke was a land-
surveyor, and lived at Penrith. His earliest years must have
been passed at no great distance from the shores of Ulleswater.
The Rev. T. Lees, F.S.A., believes that Clarke was born in the
neighbourhood of Watermillock. It is probably to this circum-
stance that we owe the mention of the Osprey, of Eagles, and
other animals in the appendix of the important folio work which
he launched in 1787, entitled 4A Survey of the Lakes of Cumber-
land, Westmorland, and Lancashire. Clarke enjoyed the reputa-
tion of an unconventional character, devoted to exploring alone
the mountains of his native district, yet by no means averse to
sharing the good-fellowship of his acquaintances. One of the
best-known stories regarding James Clarke represents him as
absenting himself from home for many months, while engaged
in collecting the materials required for his book. His wife
consoled her anxiety by informing the neighbours that news

1 Survey of the Lakes, p. 191.
b

W Richardson.

Dr. Heysham.

XVill PROLEGOMENA

had arrived of the decease of her roving spouse. The sym-
pathetic townsmen of Penrith organised a subscription to assist
the bereaved widow. ‘The fund had just been completed when
Mr. Clarke reappeared, and forthwith took charge of the pro-
vision thus happily provided for his grief-stricken household,
on the strength of which he is supposed to have caroused
somewhat merrily.

It was in the year 1793 that the Rev. W. Richardson first
drew up a quasi-scientific paper on the Fauna of a district of his
native county. Like Clarke he belonged to the neighbourhood
of Ulleswater, not improbably to Pooley Bridge. That he already
enjoyed some local reputation as a scholar and a naturalist is
rendered certain by the fact that the Editors of the History of
Cumberland, which Hutchinson published in parts between 1794
and 1797, expressly remark upon the services which he rendered
to their undertaking. Not only were they indebted to Richard-
son for a catalogue of Cumberland plants: ‘He also favoured
us with the description and natural history of Ulleswater, his
native place, and many valuable articles and observations m every
department of the work.”+ Richardson was no doubt hampered
by conditions of space in the notice which he supplied of the
Ulleswater district. He must have been a delightful outdoor
companion, judging from his wide reading and trained powers
of observation. Meagre and sadly incomplete his paper must
be admitted to be, even allowing for the disadvantages under
which he laboured. Yet, in spite of the slightness of his work,
it shows quite as good quality of tone as that of Dr. Heysham,
although, of course, far less ambitious. We owe to Richardson
an authoritative statement (independently corroborated ten
years later) that the Golden Eagle nested in Martindale in 1787
and in 1789. But if Richardson failed to make his mark as a
Lakeland naturalist, it was because his importance was dwarfed
by the sturdy genius and strong originality of Dr. John Heysham,
his own contemporary. Dr. Heysham came to the border city in
the year 1778, to practise surgery upon the natives, having
previously served his apprenticeship of ‘bottle-washing’ with
Mr. Parkinson of Burton, and studied medicine at Edinburgh.

1 History of Cumberland, vol. i. p. 39.

THE NATURALISTS OF LAKELAND x1x

He was only in his twenty-sixth year when he commenced to
practise in Carlisle, having been born at Lancaster on November
22, 1753. Notwithstanding his comparative youth, Dr. Hey-
sham at once gained a position of some weight in the little city,
which then included a population of only 6000 inhabitants.
His first year of residence was signalised by his taking a pro-
minent part in establishing a public subscription library. Four
years later he achieved a notable success in establishing the
Carlisle dispensary, in which meritorious venture Heysham
derived much assistance from his friend, Dr. Percy, then Dean
of Carlisle. The zeal with which Heysham entered upon duties
of a public character was more than justified by his actual per-
formances ; but though always a devoted servant of the public,
labouring in every way to advance the health and to secure the
increased happiness of his fellow-townsmen, it was only in 1808
that he became a magistrate, being then in his fifty-fifth year.
Thenceforward he found a congenial occupation for his declining
years, sitting in court at the Globe Inn with a brother magis-
trate, to adjudicate upon conjugal amenities, as well as to hush
the altercations of rival washerwomen. The unflinching deter-
mination with which Dr. Heysham and his colleague invariably
mulcted one side, and frequently both sides, in costs (which had
to be paid forthwith), was scarcely calculated to increase the
popularity of the bench; but the chief grievance which rankled
in the minds of the offenders seems to have had its origin in the
fact that the sitting magistrates themselves appropriated the fines
inflicted. There can be no doubt that the sort of rough-and-
ready justice meted out at the Globe Inn was well adapted to
advance the morality of those whose misdeeds came within its
cognisance. Atall events the active mind of the venerable doctor
found a satisfaction in the performance of these judicial duties
up to the very end of his career! There are still some living
who can recall Dr. Heysham attending St. Cuthbert’s Church,

1 A summons for small tithes, kindly lent by Mr. Tom Duckworth,
cites Richard Bell, of Old Grapes Lane, in the parish of St. Cuthbert’s,
Carlisle, to appear before the Justices of the Peace at the Globe Inn. It
bears the names of Thos. Lowry and John Heysham, and is dated the
twenty-first day of May, in the sixth year of the reign of His Majesty
King George the Fourth.

xX PROLEGOMENA

or shambling along the streets with the gait of an aged man.
His fondness for both snuff and sweetmeats lingers, as such
personal traits will ever linger, in the minds of those who were
boys and girls when this distinguished man had far exceeded
the ordinary span of human life; nor has the impression of a
kindly hospitality dispensed to his friends at a house in St.
Cuthbert’s Lane altogether faded from the pages of memory.
But we are more concerned with his pursuits as a naturalist.
Evidence as to this must be sought for in the writings of Dr.
Heysham, because the time when details regarding his zoological
work could be obtained from his associates has long passed
by ; and the only recollection of his researches into nature that
I have come across was narrated to me by an aged pauper,
whose father had seen Dr. Heysham standing up to his waist in
a muddy pool, fishing, as was supposed, for aquatic animals.
Dr. Heysham was proposed as a member of the Linnean Society
in 1788, but without his own knowledge. He was only thirty-
five when he received this unsolicited honour, but he had already
given valuable help to Latham regarding the plumage of the
Hen Harrier at the time that Latham was writing his supple-
ment to his History of British Birds, and had, thus earned some
title to public notice. That Dr. Heysham commenced to study
local ornithology within a very short time of his arrival in
Carlisle is certain, because it was as early as 1781 that he killed
a female Peregrine at her nest near Gilsland, after waiting five
hours to secure a shot. Two years later he visited Lowther to
study the habits of the Pied Flycatchers, which annually nested
in the grounds of that beautiful park. In the same season he
employed his ingenuity to trap Merlins at Rockliffe Moss, and
made notes on the Hen Harriers which then nested on Newtown
common. His marriage with Miss Coulthard took place in the
year 1789, and I question whether he did much field work after
this date, although his active habits and unflagging energy
remained unchanged throughout a long and successful career.
It seems likely that he began to entertain the idea of writing
his Catalogue of Cumberland Animals in the year 1795, because
most of the notes on ornithology relate to 1796, although the
Catalogue was not completed until 1797.

THE NATURALISTS OF LAKELAND Xx1

Most of the avian observations of 1796 are extremely trivial,
and such as a schoolboy could make; but Dr. Heysham was
well aware that occasions may arise when the most trite notes
become useful, or even valuable. Nor did he shrink from
bestowing careful labour on his pursuits while working in the
study. Thus, in the year 1796, when Dr. Heysham was study-
ing the development of the Salmon, he took the trouble to
dissect 198 ‘brandlins. He further tells us himself that the
printing of sheet 32 of his Catalogue ‘ was delayed a consider-
able time to give me an opportunity of examining fry the
present season, viz. 1797. Dr. Lonsdale has hazarded an
amiable conjecture that Dr. Heysham accomplished much zoo-
logical work subsequently to the appearance of his Catalogue.!
It is perfectly true that Heysham continued to make notes of
birds, e.g. of a Turnstone shot on Ulleswater in 1801. At the
same time I feel tolerably certain that the pressure of public
business, together with the multifarious duties of married life,
latterly imposed a barrier between Dr. Heysham and his taste
for natural history.

Dr. Heysham tells us, in his Catalogue of Cumberland
Animals, that he then (1796-7) possessed specimens of the
birds included in his list, with very few exceptions. Some of
the skins remained in his own hands during his lifetime. The
Honey Buzzard, for example, shot near Carlisle in June 1783,
fell into the hands of T. C. Heysham upon his father’s death.
But Dr. Heysham, at a comparatively early period, acceded to a
request of Dr. Law, bishop of Elphin, that he should place his
collection of mounted birds in the deanery at Carlisle, probably
in order that the specimens might thus be examined by many
besides the doctor’s personal acquaintances. On the death of
Dean Milner, these specimens fell into the hands of Dr. Barnes.
What precisely befell the collection during its long stay at the
deanery is open to conjecture, but probably some specimens
came to grief in the interval. The Carlisle Journal of March
29, 1834, commenting upon the death of Dr. Heysham, took
occasion to make the following remark: ‘The remnant [of his
collection of stuffed birds| is now in a room at the House of

1 The Life of Dr. Heysham, p. 93.

John Gough.

XX11 PROLEGOMENA

Recovery.’ The House of Recovery was afterwards pulled
down ; but what became of the ‘remnant’ of Dr. Heysham’s
birds on that occasion is unknown.

Dr. Heysham’s closing years were cheered by the devotion of
his family, and especially by the pious care of the son to whom
he had transmitted his own enthusiasm for natural history. He
died in his own house on Sunday, March 23, 1834, in the 81st.
year of his age. Mr. T. C. Heysham took charge of his father’s
papers. They are not now forthcoming. Had they contained
much unpublished matter, it seems probable that T. C. Heysham
would have published them.

While Dr. Heysham explored the zoology of Cumberland
during the latter years of the eighteenth century, the Fauna of
Westmorland occupied to a lesser extent the attention of John
Gough of Kendal. This remarkable man was born at the
capital of Westmorland in 1757, and built up a reputation such
as ordinary men may well envy, by the force of his mathematical
powers and talent for teaching. He became blind from smallpox
at a very early age, a misfortune which prevented his prosecut-
ing to the full the fine genius for the study of natural history
which he undoubtedly possessed. The labours of ‘the Blind
Philosopher’ upon lines of a general character are too well
known to require mention here. That he was an excellent
botanist has also been widely recognised. But up to the present
time no one seems to have perceived that John Gough was an
acute and painstaking zoologist. This circumstance is to be
explained by the fact that he wrote little regarding birds.
Indeed, the only paper of any intrinsic value to us that
John Gough printed was one published in the second volume of
the Memoirs of the Philosophical Society of Manchester in 1813.
The private papers of Thomas Gough include an interleaved
copy of this little essay, entitled, ‘Remarks on the Summer
Birds of Passage, and on Migration in General, by Mr. John
Gough,’ dated from Middleshaw, Westmorland, Feb. 21, 1812.
This was communicated to the Literary and Philosophical
Society of Manchester by Dr. Holme, and was read to the
members of that body on March 20, 1812. If this paper failed
to contain any novel information, it was, nevertheless, a pleasant

THE NATURALISTS OF LAKELAND XXlli

contribution to the literature of the day, and as the work of one
afflicted with blindness, showed a remarkable insight into the
principles of avian migration. The annotated copy just referred
to contains a few simple observations, as, for example, the
following: ‘The Cuckoo arrives in Westmorland about the
end of April, when the mean temperature is about 49°, and the
noon-tide heat frequently higher than 60°. This circumstance
seems to indicate that a considerable degree of temperature is
necessary to this bird, but I heard one crying merrily on the
evening of the 23d of May 1814, when the thermometer stood
at 41°: the hills were covered with snow, and the wind blew
strong from the N.E. That John Gough was fully alive to the
interest attaching to the occurrence of rare birds is evidenced by
a few notes which he contributed to Graves’ British Ornithology.
Of the Little Owl, he wrote to Graves: ‘A pair took up their
abode in a barn in that village [Middleshaw] in the spring of
1811, one of which died by some accident. Another pair bred
in a chimney in the same neighbourhood a day or two before.
They frequently fly by day, and do not court the shades of
night so much as the other species.| Whether the species was
correctly identified by the blind naturalist from the description
of others is not known. If such was the case, the birds had
probably been introduced and liberated by some gentleman
residing in the neighbourhood. Graves states of the ‘ Little
Awk’ (sic): ‘Mr. Gough of Middleshaw informs us that one
was caught, apparently much exhausted, in a brook which runs
through his garden, Nov. 21, 1807.’ Of the Goldeneye the
same author remarks: ‘Mr. Gough informs us that some were
seen on the rivers in Westmorland, Nov. 9, 1798, which was
considered a very unusual circumstance.’ He states regarding
the Dipper: ‘Mr. Gough of Middleshaw informs us that
November is the season of full song, and that these birds are
exceeding quarrelsome among themselves. They usually build
in February, and have eggs early in March, at least that is the
general time of breeding in Westmorland.’ Strange to say,
however, the only personal notice of John Gough as an ornitho-
logist that I have discovered so far was furnished by Professor

1 British Ornithology, vol. ii., not paged.

T. C. Heysham.

XX1V PROLEGOMENA

Griscom, a distinguished American chemist. This gentleman
visited Gough in 1818 or in 1819, and was much impressed by
the remarkable accomplishments of this blind genius: ‘ He
[Gough] walked with us to Kendal,’ writes Griscom, ‘to dine
with me at the house of a brother-in-law. On the way I dis-
covered that, in addition to the sciences I have mentioned, he is
an excellent ornithologist. He enumerated the different species of
migratory birds, he knows their respective periods of approach
and departure, and can easily distinguish them by the sounds
they utter.’ !

A certain confusion of persons has long existed in the minds
of some naturalists, who have failed to distinguish between Dr.
Heysham and his eldest son, Thomas Coulthard Heysham. The
younger Heysham was born at Carlisle on the 21st of September
1791. His youth and early life appear to have been uniformly
passed in Carlisle. He does not appear to have been educated
for any learned profession, but was constantly associated with
his father, whom he assisted in the transaction of magisterial
duties, as well as the management of his private affairs. Whether
he showed an early taste for zoological studies is unknown.
Like his father he was fast nearing the threshold of middle life
before he published any papers on natural history. At no period
of his career was T, C. Heysham a voluminous writer. He cer-
tainly printed a few summaries of his annual notes on local
ornithology in the scientific magazines of the day, commencing
in 1829 with a paper contributed to the Philosophical Magazine,
followed by others which appeared in the London and Edinburgh
Magazine, in Loudon’s Magazine of Natural History, and in
Charlesworth’s Magazine, during the ‘ thirties,’ for T. C. Heysham
ceased to write in public prints prior to 1840. The paper
which attracted more notice from the public than any other of
Heysham’s essays, was an article on the habits of the Dotterel,
which will be found in the second volume of Charlesworth’s
Magazine of Natural History (pp. 300-303). It will be obvious
that had the claims to distinction which this naturalist pos-
sessed depended in any important degree upon his writings,

T. C. Heysham would never have been acknowledged as a high

1A Year in Hurope. New York, 1824, Vol. ii.

THE NATURALISTS OF LAKELAND XXV

authority upon any branch of zoology. Whether he ever
intended to publish a work on the ornithology of Cumberland
is a matter of entire uncertainty. There can be no doubt that
he felt keenly the poverty of the Avifauna of his county, and
considered that it possessed far fewer features of interest than
such a fortunate county as Norfolk, which has yielded a perfect
wealth of rare British birds. Thomas Armstrong, an entomo-
logist and oologist, now advanced in life, was more or less
intimately acquainted with T. C. Heysham during the ‘ fifties.’
He has always maintained that Heysham wrote a MS. history
of the birds of Cumberland, and that this and other papers fell
into the hands of T. C. Heysham’s relatives at his death.
Whether this surmise be correct or not, there can be no doubt
that Heysham prepared a work on The Land and Preshwater
shells of Cumberland, because there still exist the estimates of
the publishers to whom he applied in the spring of 1845,
The total cost of producing the book with coloured figures was
estimated by Messrs. Reeve Brothers at £350. This Heysham
considered a more expensive outlay than the probable demand
for such a monograph could justify. It will be understood
from this incident that Heysham was a conchologist as well as
an ornithologist. He was in fact one of the most versatile
naturalists that Great Britain has ever possessed. A man of
active habits, enjoying ample leisure, inheriting also a hand-
some competency, he was able to furnish his library with every
European work of importance in all the branches of Natural
History. But Heysham did not rest content with the acquisi-
tion of a fine library. He was essentially a collector, priding
himself on possessing large series of rare insects.1_ Nor was he
one whit less eager to add specimens of rare birds and their
eggs to his own fine collection and those of his friends. Had
this been all, Heysham might well have lived in comparative
obscurity. He won his way to general recognition by the
industry which he devoted to his favourite pursuits, as well as
by the untiring energy with which he initiated and carried on

1 Heysham wrote to Stephen Calverley in June 1846: ‘The truth
however is, that I have done little or nothing in entomology for the last
ten years.’

XXV1 PROLEGOMENA

an enormous correspondence with collectors in all parts of Great
Britain and Ireland. It was a collecting age, and collecting was
then more excusable than at the present time, because naturalists
were fewer, and rare birds were more plentiful and less per-
secuted. T. C. Heysham exchanged specimens with naturalists
far and wide; nothing gratified him more than to receive a
Kite from Monmouthshire, or a Bewick’s Swan from the coast
of Norfolk. The most eminent ornithologists with whom
Heysham corresponded, all since deceased, were Hewitson,
Hancock, J. H. Gurney, Henry Doubleday, John Gould, and
William Yarrell. The last-named zoologist especially benefited
by the liberality with which Heysham communicated to him all
available information regarding the birds and fishes of Cumber-
land. Our knowledge upon this head is chiefly supplied by
such draught copies of his own letters as Heysham happened
to preserve. Thus, on the 9th of January 1834, we find him
writing to Henry Doubleday in the following strain: ‘From a
variety of circumstances I fear that it will be some time before
I can avail myself of your polite and exceedingly kind invita-
tion to spend a few days with you at Epping. Nothing, I
assure you, could possibly give me greater pleasure than to
accompany you to all your favourite haunts in the forest, but
the truth is that at present I cannot leave home for any length
of time, owing to the great age and daily increasing infirmities
of Dr. Heysham, now in his eighty-first year, and which in fact
prevents me from inviting many of my kind ornithological
friends.’ The same letter alludes to Machetes pugnax: ‘The
Ruffs you have been so exceedingly kind as to send me, are
extremely interesting, as exhibiting the very great varieties of
plumage in these birds, but I really doubt much whether any
of them will mount; in fact, I strongly suspect that they were
all at one time intended for the table, their wings being
partially cut, and I fear, therefore, that you have deprived some
epicure of a bonne bouche.” Heysham first met Yarrell in 1837,
as appears from a letter addressed to Henry Doubleday, dated
29 Norfolk Street, Strand, September 23, 1837. In this he
observes: ‘I had the pleasure yesterday of seeing your friend
Mr. Yarrell for the first time, who was so extremely kind as to

THE NATURALISTS OF LAKELAND XXVIII

accompany me to the Surrey Zoological Gardens; indeed I feel
myself under very great obligations to him for his kindness
and politenessto me.’4 Heysham long continued to correspond
with Yarrell, to whom he invariably reported such facts of
avian interest as came under his notice. Thus a draught ad-
dressed to Yarrell on November 14, 1845, referred to the
immigration of Lowia bifasciata into Lakeland. ‘Since my last
note, writes Heysham, ‘I have seen the White-winged Cross-
bill killed in this vicinity on the 1st inst. It is apparently a
female, of the 2d or perhaps of the 3d year; the patches of
white on the wings being of considerable size. Heysham
possessed an extraordinary knowledge of specimens of birds
and eggs, considering that he spent almost his whole life at
Carlisle, rarely visited London, and never apparently saw any
continental museums. His experience appears to have been
derived to some extent from the large series of specimens sent
for his inspection by such dealers as Robert Dunn or Mr.
William Proctor. It was Durn who wrote to Heysham on the
13th of April 1842, to offer him two skins of the Great Auk.
The letter in question commences, ‘ Having just received two
uncommon beautiful skins of the Alca inpennis shot in Iceland
last year and beautifully got up for stuffing, and as I consider
them cheap, I thought it my duty to acquaint you among the
rest of my customers.’ Dunn asked the sum of £7, 10s. a-piece
for his skins of the Great Auk, but Heysham did not secure
them. Mr. Proctor wrote from Durham University Museum on
February 18, 1840, to submit a price list of some eggs which
were then expected to arrive from Iceland, vid Copenhagen.
One of the last items in this list is brief, but speaks volumes :
‘Great Auk, £3. <A draught of one of Heysham’s letters to
Proctor shall here be quoted verbatim, in order to show the
stores of information which the Carlisle Naturalist brought to
bear upon European oology.

‘CARLISLE, July 20, 1841.
‘Srr,—It was not my intention to have unpacked your eggs

1 Yarrell paid a surprise visit to Heysham in September 1838, but
found him out. Heysham was greatly chagrined when he found his
friend’s card lying on his table.

XXVIl1 PROLEGOMENA

until I heard from my friend in the West of England, but being
confined to the house from indisposition, and wet weather, and
having a little spare time, I looked them over this morning. I
have little doubt that the eggs which you suppose to be those
of the Hooded Merganser, are nothing more than those of the
Red-breasted Merganser, as I find that the bird (JZ. merganser)
is sometimes called Toppond by the natives of Iceland, as well as
the Goosander; in fact these two birds have three or four
different Iceland names. I have the Iceland, Lapland, and
Greenland names of nearly the whole of the Birds that are ever
met with in these countries, which I now and then find of some
use in ascertaining the names of any eggs that chance to be
marked with the Provincial names. The Iceland Goldeneye of
your list is, I presume, Barrow’s Duck (C. barrowii, Rich.), which
is common in Iceland, and I make no doubt that the eggs which
you sent me some time ago also belonged to this bird, and not
to the Common Goldeneye. If there is any doubt on the
subject, you must be aware that they are of little value in a
scientific point of view.

‘Are you quite sure that the two eggs which you state to be
the eggs of the Bean Goose really belong to this species? There
are, I believe, four different species of the Genus Anser that
breed in Iceland, viz. :-—

Anser segetum.
» albifrons.
,, leucopsis.
» rficollis.”

‘I shall feel obliged if you can conveniently give me any
satisfactory information on this subject, and I beg to remain,
Yours greatly obliged, T. C. HeysHam.’

1 Barrow’s Goldeneye continued to be considered the only Goldeneye
found in Iceland, until the researches of the Rev. H. H. Slater proved
beyond doubt that both the species of Goldeneye are found in Iceland,
though the first mentioned is the dominant species.

2 The inclusion of the Red-breasted Goose was a mistake. Proctor in-
formed Heysham that both the Barnacle and Pink-footed Goose nested in
Iceland, whence he had received skins and reputed eggs. It should be
borne in mind also that in 1862 the Rev. C. W. Shepherd, F.Z.S., proved

that the Grey Lag Goose bred in Iceland (cf. North-West Peninsula of
Iceland, p. 141).

THE NATURALISTS OF LAKELAND XX1xX

The limits of space unfortunately render it impossible to give
a more detailed account of the merits which this north-
countryman possessed as a scientific ornithologist. His singular
proficiency in every department of zoology was equalled, if not
surpassed, by the devotion with which he sought to advance the
labours of some of his contemporaries. Thus, when Denny pub-
lished his Monographia Anoplurosum in 1842, he included infor-
mation derived from Heysham, who sent him parasites taken
from the Little Auk, Bewick’s Swan, Whooper, Shoveller, Scaup,
Common Buzzard, Great Grey Shrike, and fourteen other species.
Nor should it be forgotten that this singular man was an
excellent botanist. An undated draught is couched in the fol-
lowing words: ‘Mr. Heysham presents his compliments to Sir
William Hooker, and has taken the liberty to enclose him
a specimen of the Whorled Caraway (Carum verticillatwm), which
he gathered a few days ago on a Heath in the vicinity of
‘Carlisle, and which in all probability is the first specimen of
_ this plant Sir William Hooker has yet seen.’ This record does
not appear to have been published at the time. Many years
later Mr. William Duckworth re-discovered the Whorled
Caraway on King Moor, and was not a little surprised to learn
that his researches had long been anticipated by Heysham.
Similarly, Heysham wrote to his old and valued collector,
Cooper, on September 29, 1840: ‘During the early part of the
month I made a short excursion to the Lakes in search of a few
Ferns, etc. The weather as usual proved unfavourable, and I
did not meet with much. I, however, contrived to reach the
summit of Skiddaw, and fell in with Hymenophyllum wilsoni ;
and as I believe this is a plant you have not yet seen, I have
enclosed you a specimen. That T. C. Heysham’s researches in
middle life were hampered by physical indisposition is rendered
certain by the allusions to ill health which occur in some of the
draughts of his letters, as well as to the encroachments on his
time of family business. Thus, when Newman wrote to him
in October 1842, asking that he would furnish a table of the
arrivals of migrating birds to the Zoologist, then upon the eve
of its birth, Heysham denied the request. ‘A few years ago,’
he replied, ‘I paid great attention to this subject, and annually

XO: PROLEGOMENA

sent the results of my observations to the Editor of the Philo-
sophical Magazine and Annals; but since the death of Dr.
Heysham, engagements have devolved upon me which obliged
me to relinquish this pursuit. The truth is, it required no little
time, as well as considerable exertion to make out anything like
an accurate list. From the latter end of March to the first week
in May I was almost constantly on my legs, often walking from
30 to 40 miles a day, and frequently without seeing the species
I was looking after, so that I was sometimes obliged to go over
the same ground for several days before I succeeded in doing so;
in short, I had generally to walk between 500 and 600 miles
every year to fill up my list... . Some day or other I will
perhaps make out a conclusive list with remarks, &c., and send
it to you, but at present I do not feel disposed to work much
with my pen.’ He remained faithful to his first love, and wrote
a good many letters about zoology during the last decade of his

life. Thus he wrote to Dr. Bell in 1850:

‘DEAR Srr,—lI feel much obliged to you for the trouble you
have taken in sending mea copy of the Notes made by Mr.
Dickinson in your vols. of Yarrell’s British Birds. Some years
ago Mr. Harris of Papcastle informed me that a Rose-coloured
Ouzel or Pastor had been shot near Brigham, when associating
with some Starlings, but the person who killed it most un-
fortunately allowed it to perish.!

‘Can this be the specimen observed by Capt. Bethune at
Flimby? I lost no time in delivering your message to Dr.
Lonsdale. ... I trust General Wyndham will not forget to fulfil
the promise made to make a further search after some additional
remains of the Thick-toothed Grampus, which I hope will be
attended with success.—Believe me, Your obliged,

“'T. C. HEYSHAM,’

Heysham wrote again to his Cockermouth correspondent on
November 26 of that year. In this he referred again to the
Grampus: ‘I was fully led to hope, and indeed did expect from
what General Wyndham said at our last interview, that he
would have made a further search for some additional bones of

1 The wings of this bird were sent to Heysham by J. W. Harris.

THE NATURALISTS OF LAKELAND XXX1

the Thick-toothed Grampus before this, but I strongly suspect,
entre nous, that he has a much greater “penchant” for the
“human form divine” than for fossil jaws or antediluvian
bones.’ This letter concludes, ‘'Trusting you will bear the old
jaws in mind, and again thanking you for your note, Believe me,
Your obliged, T. C. HEYSHAM.,’

That T. C. Heysham continued to enjoy the study of zoology
to the close of his life is, may be, exemplified by alluding to the
Crofton Surf Scoter mentioned at p. 305. The note regarding
the trachea of this bird is the latest fragment of T. C. Heysham’s
handwriting that has so far come to light. He had long lived
a retired existence, little understood by his fellow-townsmen,
who were far from being competent to form a correct estimate
of the researches of this remarkable man. Only recently, one
of the most distinguished of modern Cumbrians replied to an
inquiry regarding T. C. Heysham, that the great naturalist led
the life of a recluse, at the same time hinting that a man who
could expend his days in exploring the country on foot in search
of shells or insects, and who was content to spend his evenings
among his specimens, could hardly be looked upon as a perfectly
rational member of society. But though the citizens of Carlisle
failed to recognise the splendid versatility of Heysham’s mental
powers, and though the fragments of notes brought together in
this volume are all that he has left to the naturalists who
followed him, there can be no question that the caution and
scientific precision which Heysham always brought to play upon
his collecting reacted favourably upon those with whom he
corresponded, and that he was able to teach them many things,
and thus to influence, indirectly but certainly, the labours of
those who were his contemporary naturalists. His death took
place at his house in Fisher Street, Carlisle, on the 6th of April,
1857. Although the end came suddenly,—his housekeeper
entered his room as usual on the Monday morning, to find that
he had quietly slept away during the night,—he had long
suffered indifferent health, and for several weeks had felt
seriously unwell. Had he lived until the following autumn, he
would have completed his sixty-sixth year.

Thomas Gough.

X¥XXll PROLEGOMENA

During his later years, T. C. Heysham enjoyed the friendship
of Mr. Thomas Gough of Kendal, whose tastes and talents bore
a close resemblance to his own. John Gough, the father of
Thomas Gough, did not marry until middle life, but he lived
long enough to mould the character of the lad who was his
constant companion up to the time of his death. It was thus
that Thomas Gough came to develop an enthusiastic love of
nature, which never forsook him. When Thomas Gough had
passed fifty, he still looked back with affectionate interest to
the early lessons in field zoology which his blind father sought
to impart. On one occasion, when lecturing at Kendal, he
remarked that ‘of all objects connected with Natural History,’
he cared most for Birds, adding that he found ‘a personal charm
in attending to the form and habits of the most familiar species,
in connection with some of the brightest incidents of early
childhood.’ ‘A bird, he said, ‘was my first lesson in Natural
History, and tho’ the species happened to be somewhat unsuit-
able (for it was rather rare), yet the instruction was not the less
impressive. The garden with its bushy Arbor Vitz, which
harboured the little stranger, the strict silence enjoined when-
ever its babbling note was repeated, the anxiety to couple these
notes certainly with the individual, the capture of our prize, and
then the excitement upon examining a new warbler, and com-
paring it with Montagu’s newly published description ; its
form, weight, and colour harmonising with author’s specific
characters ; and lastly, the burst of joy with which this feathered
visitor, at that time less known to British naturalists than at
present, was pronounced to be the Lesser Whitethroat; all these
incidents remain indelibly impressed upon my memory.’ Dr.
Gough, or Mr. Gough, as he preferred to be called, lectured on
various occasions to his fellow-townsmen at Kendal, and it is in
these lectures that such avian notes as he has left to us are to be
found. His lectures were all popular in treatment, and there-
fore contained much that to a scientific ornithologist is a vain
repetition of the A BC of the science. Happily they include
some capital notes regarding the birds around the Kendal, and the
only fault that can be found with them is that they are not more
abundantly represented. Dr. Gough, it should be understood,

THE NATURALISTS OF LAKELAND XXXI1ll

never limited his researches to any one branch of science. An
intimate, indeed lifelong, friendship with Professor Sedgwick
led Dr. Gough to expend a large amount of his leisure upon
geological research, and that a large measure of success attended
his investigations no one can deny. It has always been recog-
nised that he accomplished excellent results. Thus Mr. H. W.
Cookson wrote from St. Peter’s College Lodge, Cambridge, 5th
January 1871: ‘It will give me great pleasure to receive a copy
of your Cryptogamic Flora of the Kendal district when it is
ready. I know how much science is already indebted to your-
self, and to your fellow-labourers in the field of geology, in years
gone by. But for yourself and others the Silurian groups of
strata and fossils near Kendal would not have been known so
early as they were, and certainly would never have been made
fully known to the world by the brilliant labours of M‘Coy.
Kendal now holds a prominent and very honourable place in all
paleontological works on the Upper Silurian strata of England,
and in our Catalogues here in Cambridge especially.’

Late in life Mr. Gough’s friendship with Mr. Braithwaite
induced him to pay considerable attention to the Salmonide,
upon which Mr. Braithwaite wrote a little book. He delighted
in collecting shells and in exchanging his duplicates with T. C.
Heysham and other friends. foraminifera had a singular charm
for him. He acquired a copy of Blackwell’s great work on
Spiders, and studied those species which he found in Westmor-
land with loving interest. But birds were his first love. So,
though he noted for years the first flowering of the blackthorn,
—he was an accomplished botanist,—and while the appearance
of a Tortoiseshell butterfly, newly roused from its winter sleep,
afforded him year after year the same genuine pleasure as
before, it was to birds that he devoted his best lectures, and of
birds that he wrote with the greatest felicity. The materials
preserved do not contain any notes on Wildfowl or Waders.

Dr. Gough knew many of the shore birds, but his acquaint-
ance more particularly concerned the small birds which frequent
situations in the interior of Westmorland. Take, for example,
this note upon the Ring Ouzel :—

‘My acquaintance with this bird for many years, on Rowland

C

XXXIV PROLEGOMENA

edge and the higher hills of Longsleddle, led me to suppose that
its time of arrival was about the middle of April. But a more
favourable opportunity of watching its habits has brought me
to a different conclusion. I will therefore give you an extract
from my notebook which contains the latest information.

‘1858, March 27, Ring Ouzel arrives. This migrator appears
much earlier on Reston Scar than in any other mountainous
situation with which I am acquainted. It would seem that its
arrival is tolerably steady as to time. In 1856, March 26th,
and in the present year (1858) March 27th. On each of these
occasions a flock has been met with, never amounting | think
toa dozen. They remain hereabouts, most of them at least,
during the whole season. For some days (8 or 10) the only
note heard is a harsh clatter, “ check-check-check,” ending in a
hurried manner. About the commencement of the second week
after their arrival, the male birds sing freely, but mostly in the
evenings. In the early part of May 1857, at 9 pm, I heard
five birds singing at one time, and all within the space of a
mile or a mile and a half. In September the young birds visit
our yew trees, morning and evening, and feed on the yew-
berries along with the Missel Thrushes and Song Thrushes.
The early appearance of the Ring Ouzel in this situation may
be attributed to the shelter and food found about the springs
and boggy places on the south-west side of the scar.’

Of the Waxwing, Gough wrote in the following strain:
‘Five instances of its occurrence in our district have come under
my notice. The first specimen was killed in the early part of
this century in Underbarrow by Mr. Richd. Willison, in whose
possession I met with the bird many years ago. The second
was taken at Cark, near Flookborough in Jany. 1829, and
came into my possession for a while, for preservation. It was
a male bird in beautiful plumage, and therefore I had a coloured
drawing made from that specimen after it was mounted. At
the end of the same month a female was killed not far from
the town, near Lowgroves ; indeed, one of the specimens now
before me in our collection. This, also, I had an opportunity of
dissecting and mounting. ‘The flesh was rich and tender eating.
On opening the stomach I found a quantity of half digested

THE NATURALISTS OF LAKELAND XXXV

hips and several hard seeds. A fourth example, a male bird,
was shot about the same time still nearer to the town, about
Gillingrove: this also belongs to our museum. And a fifth was
taken alive in Novr. 1841, near Newby-bridge. When caught
the bird appeared to be much exhausted. On being put into a
cage it ate (sic) a few haws of the evergreen thorn, rejecting the
seeds; but this stranger died during the night.’ It is hardly
necessary to quote Dr. Gough’s description of the habits of the
Blackcap or the Rock Pipit, because, though prettily conceived,
they do not supply any facts that are absolutely new to us.
With regard to his experience of the birds of prey the case is
different. These species are fast perishing from Lakeland, if
not already extinct, and Dr. Gough’s local experience is there-
fore of permanent value.

Of the Merlin, Gough says: ‘At one time writers supposed
this species to be migratory, visiting Britain in October, remain-
ing the winter... . Later researches have, however, proved
that it is only partially migratory, some few pairs remaining
with us during the breeding season, especially in the northern
counties of England. Such is its habit in this district. I have
had the young in confinement, taken from a nest placed among
heath and rushes by the side of a watercourse on Hay-fell.’

Dr. Gough had a somewhat limited acquaintance with the
Peregrine: ‘Three instances have occurred to me of this bird
having been captured in this neighbourhood, the specimen
before me being one of them; ali were killed on Whitbarrow.
When botanising once, on the side of Goatscar in Longsleddle
with my late friend Mr. Haslam, we observed a large bird of
prey advancing on wing towards us. At a distance, the under-
parts appeared to be white ; but the bird flying over us at a height
of about sixty feet, soon enabled us to recognise distinctly the
black bars across the feathers of the abdomen.’

Strange to say, although Dr. Gough was born early in our
century he seems to have known little of the Harriers: ‘ The
Common Harrier is not, as far as my researches go, an inhabi-
tant of dur neighbourhood, though specimens of Hawks have
frequently been sent to me as this species; but they invariably
turned out to be nothing more than female Sparrow Hawks.

XXXV1 PROLEGOMENA

The Marsh Harrier occurs on marshy moorlands, places
congenial to the animals upon which it lives; these are
Water-fowl, Water-rats, Lizards, and Frogs. The bird is
an inhabitant of this district, and is known by the name
of Moor Buzzard. I have seen it about Buckbarrow and
Goatscar, in Longsleddle.’

Very special interest accompanies Dr. Gough’s acquaintance
with the Kite: Among the Buzzards we have the Common
Kite, in the present day a rare bird. Should you have the
good fortune to meet with a specimen you will know it at once
by its forked tail, short bill, in shape rather like that of the
Eagle, and its short tarsii And then pray remember our
museum, which does not contain a specimen. But the Kite
was formerly an inhabitant of this neighbourhood. When a
boy [he was born in 1804] I well remember seeing one that
frequented the N.E. end of Benson Knot. And you will
recollect that, in one of the characteristic letters of our late
friend and contributor, Mr. William Pearson, mention was
made of a pair that built for many years in a tree near the
Ferry House on Windermere. The reason why the Kite has
become so scarce (extinct almost I fear in this district) is pro-
bably owing to its depredations among poultry, a whole brood
of chickens having been carried off from time to time by this.
pest of the farmyard. Hence, in self-defence, the farmer never
omitted an opportunity, on the return of the breeding season,
of marking the Kite’s nest, and destroying both old and young
birds.

One of his lectures, written on Dean Swift’s mof, ‘ All the
product of all this will be found a manifest incoherent piece of
patch-work,’ includes an amusing notice of a Lesser Black-backed
Gull. This bird entered Mr. Gough’s possession as a young
bird and exercised a tyranny over its companion, a Herring
Gull. But Larus fuscus was also ‘in the habit of having an
occasional contest with another denizen of the garden, a Common
Buzzard, which was tethered by a chain. The cause of con-
tention was food: and our Pet was always the aggressor. If
the Hawk had a dead rat or a piece of offal in his claws, the
Gull ventured within chain reach, and laid hold of the spoil.

THE NATURALISTS OF LAKELAND XXXVII

A tug ensued; one of the combatants exerting his muscular
thigh and foot, the other relying upon the grasp of his bill
and the strength of his neck. But the Buzzard was always
victorious. Had it been a mere trial of strength, I think the
Gull would have been successful. But a severe grasp on the
back of his head from the Buzzard’s spare foot compelled him
to let go his hold. “ Gulliver” was never but once completely
beaten by any bird in open combat. <A female Red-headed
Goosander was his opponent, he as usual being the assaulter:
but her tact was too much for him. Like a modern lancer she
went full speed with neck and bill nearly horizontal, and catch-
ing his side under the wing, threw him over on his back.
They had but two encounters; and our old friend fared so ill
in both, that had not this amazon made her escape in the night,
we should have been concerned about his future peace and
safety.’

It will be seen from this playful note on the Lesser Black-
backed Gull, that Dr. Gough united to his taste for scientific
research much sympathy with the character traits of animals.
Once indeed, when recovering from a severe illness, Dr. Gough
employed himself in writing a charming pamphlet, entitled
Personal Reminiscences of the Habits of Animals, regarding which
he wrote to his friend Professor Sedgwick in the following
terms :—

‘My DEAR PROFESSOR SEDGWICK,—I venture after a long
silence to trouble you once more with a letter. The accom-
panying pamphlet is partly an apology for this intrusion.
During the past spring I had a severe attack of rheumatism,
which made me reluctantly bid adieu to my profession. The
attack left me with partial loss of power in the left arm and
shoulder, and the pain and sleepless nights also entailed upon
me a shattered condition of brain. . . . During a tedious re-
covery, it was necessary for me to have some other employment
in addition to reading. I set to work and strung together
a few sketches of the habits of animals, especially those which
had been among my pets in former years. The publication
now sent contains these reminiscences. And as the little
book is. dedicated to the younger members of our Nat. Hist.

XXXVIl1 PROLEGOMENA

Soc. I should not have troubled you with a copy; nor do I
expect you to have your time occupied with having the con-
tents read to you. But as I had twice introduced you into the
scenes, it seemed only right to apprise you of the liberty taken
without permission.’

Cornelius Nicholson, the author of the Annals of Kendal, and
a well-known antiquarian, was another attached friend of Dr.
Gough. In the summer of 1835 they took counsel together re-
garding the desirableness of establishing a Natural History and
Scientific Society in Kendal. By their efforts the Kendal
Literary and Scientific Institution became established. It was
the Council of this Institution that in 1855 instructed their
secretary to send to Dr. Gough a complimentary letter, as ‘a public
recognition of the services’ which Mr. Gough had ‘so long and
indefatigably rendered to the society.’ Dr. Gough was for many
years a hard-worked medical man, but wherever he went he was
sure to observe the flowering of favourite plants or the migratory
movements of summer birds. He used to scrutinise with care
wildfowl brought from Morecambe Bay to the ‘ Fish Stones’
market at Kendal, ever anxious to acquire a fresh specimen for
the local museum. His health became indifferent with advancing
years, but he still found amusement in fishing the becks in
Kentmere. Like the younger Heysham, Dr. Gough took an
honest pride in possessing a good reference library, including
some expensive works bought in order that he might be com-
petent to arrange the geological specimens in the Kendal
Museum. It was a sorrow to him that so few north-countrymen
took a genuine interest in his own scientific pursuits, but he
worked on with unvarying resolution, always glad to add a rare
local specimen of ‘fish, flesh, or fowl’ to the Kendal Museum.

Unlike the majority of naturalists, Dr. Gough was entirely
unselfish in his collecting, caring nothing for private ends, and
finding an unceasing satisfaction in the improvements which he
wrought out in the Kendal Museum. Mrs. Harry Arnold of
Arnbarrow tells me that in early life she assisted her father in
pressing many species of wild-flowers, just as she skinned his
birds for him at a later period. Diatoms delighted him, and he
worked a great deal with his microscope. He was always

THE NATURALISTS OF LAKELAND XXXI1X

youthful in a certain sense, for even late in life his mind was
always open to receive and assimilate fresh impressions of
nature. Latterly he took a walk in the forenoon, and spent the
afternoon in a pleasant saunter after bird or flower. He
delighted in returning day after day to any particular spot in
which the first arrival of one of our summer birds was likely to
be noticed.

While the evening of life came to T. C. Heysham in the
solitude of his bachelor home in a narrow town street, his friend
Dr. Gough spent his latest years in the home of his married
daughter, surrounded by those who sympathised with his scien-
tific interests and supplied every wish. The last home of Dr.
Gough is situated on the shores of Morecambe Bay. Away to the
north the hills which he loved so tenderly raise their peaks in
the distant background. Immediately to the east, and at the
head of the Kent and Levens estuary, the eye catches the long
line of Whitbarrow Scar, the former haunt of Red-legged
Choughs, whose clear-drawn notes and graceful forms would at
one time have repaid a traveller for a long excursion to that loose
serees of white and crumbling limestone in which the Peregrine
has also reared her brood of ‘Red Falcons.’ Immediately in the
foreground at Arnbarrow are the extensive sands of the estuary,
over which career flocks of loudly ‘purring’ Dunlins, and
many another long-winged, shrill-voiced Wader. It was amid
such scenery, and almost within earshot of the grey ‘cranes,
whose traits of character afforded such pleasure to his re-
tirement, that his spirit went forth to join the ranks of the
distinguished naturalists whose labours in their several genera-
tions command the respect and reverence of those who follow
them. He died on July 17, 1880.

THE EXTINCT MAMMALS OF LAKELAND.

Our knowledge of the larger animals which formerly inhabited
the interior of Lakeland is partly based upon such remains as
have been discovered in peat formations and alluvial deposits.
Hitherto the subject has been very imperfectly explored.
Indeed, the only man who has shown any enthusiasm in this
department of research is a working chair-maker, Mr. Beecham,
of Kendal. This enterprising individual, whose unpretentious
labours the townsmen of Kendal may well be proud to acknow-
ledge, conceived the idea that remains of extinct animals might
probably be found to exist in the limestone fissures of Helsfell,
a knoll of rising ground with an easterly aspect, situated im-
mediately north of Kendal. Having obtained leave of the
lord of the manor to excavate the likely fissures, Beecham
commenced work in or about the summer of 1880. On the
first evening,—his cave digging was accomplished at the con-
clusion only of his day’s work,—Beecham obtained the assistance
of a neighbour in removing a mass of clay, which his single
strength was insufficient to dislodge. Having thus secured an
entrance to the interior, Beecham dispensed with further aid.
He revealed his intentions to no one, but worked on with dogged
pluck for five continuous summers, only suspending his self-chosen
task when he had reached fissures which could not be opened
without blasting. The fissures varied in size, but were generally
twenty feet deep. This involved the removal of a great
quantity of earth, which was patiently carried out in a bucket,
carried to a neighbouring spring, and carefully washed, in order
that no small bones might be overlooked. When Beecham
completed his labours, the bones which he had found were
identified by Professor Boyd Dawkins. They included those of
the Hedgehog, Wolf, Bear, Fox, Wild Cat, Polecat or Foumart,

THE EXTINCT MAMMALS OF LAKELAND xli

Otter, Pine Marten, Wild Boar, Horse, Red Deer, Roe, Bos
longifrons, Sheep, Goat, House Mouse, Short-tailed Field Mouse,
and Rabbit. Some of these no doubt are comparatively recent.
Unfortunately, no levels were taken. Generally speaking, the
smaller bones were found in the accumulated earth, while the
most important remains rested in a deep fissure, filled with
pebbles and fine clay, some twenty yards from the entrance.’
The clay at the top was very tenacious. Beneath, it was dry
and almost of the consistency of lime. After his specimens had
been identified, Beecham desired that a complete series of them
should be placed in the Kendal Museum. This was accom-
plished by their purchase, and they now form the most interesting
exhibit of those possessed by the Kendal Literary and Scientific
Institution.

Order CARNIVORA. | Fam, CANIDAI.
THE WOLKE.
Canis lupus, L.

It is to John Beecham that the credit belongs of having
proved the former existence of this animal in Westmorland.
That our ‘place-names’ point to this conclusion is perfectly
true. ‘ Wolfer Ghyll, for example, seems to be the Saxon
rendering of the French ‘ Gorge du Loup.’ If we bear in mind
that Wolves have been killed in recent times in the Forest of
Fontainebleau, where I first met with this expression, we shall
not have much difficulty in convincing either ourselves or others
that the former presence in our midst of ‘the wolf of the
evening’ is something more than mythical. But Beecham
actually obtained many lupine bones and teeth in the fissures
of Helsfell. Further, he found the entire skeleton of a full-
grown Wolf. The poor brute, feeling, no doubt, that its end
was approaching, had retired behind a large rock, and there
had died in self-imposed solitude. Its fellows respected its
remains, which remained undisturbed until the explorer dis-
covered it in situ, the bones lying close together. These were

1 In describing the Helsfell deposits, I am giving information supplied
to me by Mr. Beecham himself.

xii PROLEGOMENA

collected and mounted. The perfect skeleton is contained in
the Kendal Museum. At that time we may fairly conjecture
that the whole of Lakeland was infested by packs of wolves,
which doubtless preyed upon the herds of the prehistoric men
who then tended their goats and cattle on the pastures of our
dreary uplands. How long the wolf continued to carry con-
sternation into the sheep-folds cannot at present be stated with
any exactitude. Probably the wolf had become rare, if not
extinct, in this region by the end of the thirteenth century. In
Saxon times wolf-hunting must have been a common event.

In the summer of 1865 I had the privilege of examining
two adult wolves which had been taken a few days before in a
pitfall in the Ardennes. Their gaunt, emaciated frames and
cowed carriage told a sad tale of hunger and brutal ill-usage,
but their appearance with their rough-looking captors in a
country town made a strong impression on my mind; young
child as I was at the time, IJ still possess a most vivid recollection
of these poor animals, and have often thought in later years
that such a sight must frequently have been witnessed in the
village communities of our island-home during the first few
centuries of the Christian era.

Quite a considerable literature has gathered round the nucleus
of lupine lore which Pennant first provided, when he narrated
the terrorism once exercised by ‘ that grey beast the wolf in the
weald,’ as the Saxon minstrel described the ghoul which preyed
upon the bodies of the warriors that lay upon the battle-field
awaiting the rite of sepulture which would commence with the
first promise of approaching dawn. Mr. J. E. Harting has done
more than any one else to trace the former distribution of the
wolf in Britain, but he has failed to discover, or at any rate
to publish, any fresh information regarding the Wolves of the
Lake district. Every Cumbrian has read the tale concerning
a lady of the Lucy family being destroyed by a wolf. ‘ Accord-
ing to one version, wrote a distinguished antiquarian, now
deceased, ‘this catastrophe occurred on an evening walk near
the castle; whilst a more popular rendering of the legend
ascribes it to an occasion on which the lord of the manor, with
his lady and servants, were hunting in the forest ; when the

THE EXTINCT MAMMALS OF LAKELAND xlili

lady, having been lost in the ardour of the chase, was after a
long search and heart-rending suspense, found lying on a bank,
slain by a wolf, which was in the act of tearing her to pieces.
The place is distinguished by a mound of earth, near the
village of Beckermet, on the banks of the Ehen, The name of
Woto Bank, or Wodow Bank, as the modern mansion erected
near the spot is called, is said to be derived by traditionary
etymology from the expression to which, in the first transports
of his grief, the distracted husband gave utterance, ‘ Woe to
this bank.’! The authority just cited has bequeathed to us his
opinion regarding the monumental figure of the Lady Lucy
preserved in St. Bees Abbey Church: ‘On the breast of the
lady is an unshapely protuberance. This was originally the
roughly sculptured limb of a wolf, which even so Jately as the
year 1806 might be distinctly ascertained. These figures were
formerly placed in a horizontal position, at the top of two
raised altar-tombs within the church. The tomb of the lady
was at the foot of her lord, and a wolf was represented as
standing over. The protuberance above mentioned on the
breast of the lady, the paw of the wolf, is all that now remains
of the animal. About a century since the figure of the wolf
wanted but one leg, as many of the inhabitants, whose immediate
ancestors remembered it nearly entire, can testify.’2 Another
vague tradition was placed on record by the late Dr. Gibson,
who wrote in the following strain: ‘If it be about the end of
the week, you will probably fall in with my friend Dan Birkett,
“t “heead captain of Seeathwaite Tarn-heead mines,” who will
not require much pressing to take a glass of grog, and whose
varied conversation may amuse you, whilst your ham and eggs
are being cooked. Amongst other matters, he will tell you
that, in the Longhouse Close, on the side of Walna Scar, with
which you shall be made acquainted bye and bye, are to be
seen the remains of an ancient British town, consisting of the
remains of several stone-built huts, and a large enclosure, where
Dan says they secured their flocks from the wolves.’> West

1 White’s Lays and Legends of the English Lake Country, p. 230.
LU Cite... Lol.
> Ravings and Ramblings round Coniston, p. 48.

xliv PROLEGOMENA

wrote in 1774 to much the same purport : ‘ Whilst the villains
of Low Furness were employed in all the useful arts of agri-
culture, the woodlanders of High Furness were charged with
the care of the flocks and herds, which pastured the verdant
sides of the fells, to guard them from the wolves which lurked
in the thickets below.’ Mr. Mitchell states: ‘By some ancient
grants algo recited by West (Antig. of Furness, 1774) it appears
that wolves . . . were common in that district.2 Mr. Mitchell
was perhaps led astray by memory. At all events I can find
no allusion whatever to the Wolf in any of our old grants or
charters. However this may be, it is right to say that,
according to one Furness tradition, the last local Wolf was
killed at Humphrey’s Head. In Cumberland, Bowscar, near
Penrith, can boast of a similar distinction. Having hunted
wearily through many dry volumes for local records of the
Wolf in Lakeland, I was compelled to seek the aid of an expert,
Mr. Hubert Hall, whose great kindness in making a special
search at the Rolls House has placed me under a pleasant
obligation. Mr. Hall reported the result of his investigations
in a letter of December 14, 1891: ‘I have looked in many
places, but find it impossible to get anything for Westmoreland.
The fact is that Westmoreland, in the days when Wolves yet
were, was a sort of no-man’s land, as to which few notices
exist, ¢.g. in the Records of the Court and Law Courts, which
are the chief source of our information here.’

‘I do find the following, which may fairly apply to western
amongst other counties :—

“(1) Patent Roll of Ed. [., M. 2:

John Giffard of Brymmesfield (Co. Glouc.) has license
to hunt the wolf in all the King’s forests within
the kingdom.

“(2) Ibid., M. 20 [2 Salop]:

Peter Corbet has license to take wolves throughout
the King’s forests in divers counties (Glouc.,
Worc., Heref., Salop, Staff.).”

‘Many similar entries could be found on the Edwardian

1 Antiquities of Furness, p. xlv.
2 Birds of Lancashire, p. xiv.

THE EXTINCT MAMMALS OF LAKELAND xlyv

Patent Rolls at least, usually for licence to hunt the wolf, fox,
and wild-cat.

‘T also find in the Tasta de Nevill and Red Book of the
Exchequer, p. 1414, North*, that Richard Engayne held land in
Witteslaye and Laxtone by the service of hunting the wolf.

‘There is no doubt that the whole West of England, from
S. Wales to Strathclyde was infested (well into the 13th century)
with wolves. In 18 Edw. L, a certain tenant had a park made
at Farley, co. Worc., and stocked with “ wild beasts ” (i.e. deer),
given him by the Earl of Clare. The wolves came and
“destroyed” the whole of them. (Plac. coram Rege Trin., 18
Edw. 1, Rot. 50.)

‘I wish I could help you further, but have no opportunity
now to search outside this office.’

Order CARNIVORA. Fam. URSIDZZ.

BROWN BEAR.

Ursus arctos, L.

Whether the bears that reached the city of the Empire from
Great Britain had been captured in any instances among the
caves of Lakeland is unknown. It seems not an unlikely con-
tingent, if we remember that these animals could easily be shipped
from Ravenglass, which was then an important port, as well as
a military station. I have not detected any historical allusion
to the former presence of the Brown Bear in Lakeland. Re-
mains of this species were found in a cave half-way up the
north-west side of Arnside Knot. The cave in question was
discovered by the late J. Ruthven in the summer of 1844.
‘He entered through a low archway into a cavern 20 feet in
length, and from 4 to 5 feet high. In the floor were several
holes, down one of which a candle was lowered, and a deep
chasm was discovered, running into the hill in a south-eastern
direction. Mr. Ruthven let himself through the hole and
succeeded in safely descending to the bottom, which was formed
of angular fragments of limestone cemented together with
stalagmite. The roof and sides were beautifully covered with

xlvi ' PROLEGOMENA

calcareous depositions (sic), clothing the rocks with drapery and
hanging from the roof in long translucent stalactites. Six
yards from the entrance the fissure swells out into a cave six
yards in length, three yards in width, and five yards high.
At the further end is a narrow passage five yards in length,
terminated by a wall of rock, preventing all progress in that
direction. On the left side of the passage a hole was discovered,
through which Mr. Ruthven squeezed himself into a beautiful
circular chamber, the arched roof covered with transparent
stalactites, and the floor with stalagmites rising towards the
roof in the most fantastic shapes, the whole forming a most
beautiful natural grotto. Last week Mr. E. Whitwell and Mr.
Ruthven visited the cave and commenced a diligent search for
bones. They were successful in finding several beautiful speci-
mens of the bones, claws, and teeth of extinct animals. Some
of the teeth have been sent to Professor Owen for examination.’

It was of this cave that Newman furnished a description,
stating, ‘in a long gallery, the floor of which is covered with
debris, have been found a number of bones. Some of them are
pronounced to be those of the hyzna, the wolf, and other
animals now extinct in this country.”

I fancy that Newman was wrong about the Hyena being
represented in the Arnside cave. Sir Richard Owen says nothing
about that genus in the brief notice which he furnished of this
find. ‘I have,’ says he, ‘received remains of a Hog, associated
with bones of a Brown Bear (Ursus arctos), and other existing
species of Mammalia, which were obtained by Mr. Whitwell of
Kendal from a limestone cavern at Arnside Knot, near that
town.’?

In this connection it should be observed that Mr. Beecham
obtained ursine remains at Helsfell, including the basal portion
of the cranium of a young Bear, and at least two large bones.
Professor Boyd Dawkins has referred these relics to Ursus priscus,
but I should think that the species represented at Helsfell is
probably identical with that found at Arnside Knot.

1 Kendal Mercury, August 24, 1844,

2 Zoologist, 1844, p. 709.
3 British Fossil Mammalia, p. 429.

THE EXTINCT MAMMALS OF LAKELAND xlvil

Order CETACEA. Fam. BALZNOPTERIDZ.
COMMON RORQUAL.

Balenoptera musculus (L.).

Although there is no evidence of any Finner Whale having
been stranded in recent times upon our coast, yet 1t would be
unwise to ignore the fact that Sir William Turner has referred
a caudal vertebra, from the Silloth excavations, to Balwnoptera
musculus.. In this connection mention may be made of a
notable find in Morecambe Bay. Some few years ago, after a
heavy gale, which caused some change in the sands of the
estuary, a local fisherman discovered the remains of a large
animal imbedded in a thick deposit of clay near Ulverston.
Having with great labour extracted these bones from their
resting-place, the fisherman carted them home and showed
them to a reverend doctor of divinity, who was then residing
in the neighbourhood. This gentleman unhesitatingly pro-
nounced the bones to be those of a Mammoth. As such they
were exhibited at Ulverston some days later, and attracted
much attention. Some time afterwards a single vertebra fell
into the hands of Mr. W. Duckworth, who sent me a sketch of
it. The Mammoth then resolved itself into a Whale of the
present family.

Order CHTACEA. . Fam. DHLPHINIDA.
THICK-TOOTHED GRAMPUS.

Pseudorca crassidens.

There can be no doubt that this rare cetacean has once occurred
in Lakeland, although the evidence regarding it leaves us in
doubt as to whether it was recent or in a fossil state. It was
found about the year 1850 at Cockermouth, and was probably
represented by a recent jaw. If we remember the tastes of
the epicures of the seventeenth century, we shall be tempted
to surmise that the animal was sent to Cockermouth Castle
from the neighbouring coast as an acceptable addition to the
larder of that establishment. But there is no positive proof of

1 Proc. Ryl, Phys. Soc., vol. viii. p. 386.

xlviii PROLEGOMENA

this. It may easily have been exhumed in excavations on the
coast. Of the identity cf this animal Mr. T. C. Heysham
speaks with absolute confidence in his letters to the late
Richard Bell, Esq., M.D. The first mention of it occurs in a
letter of October 19, 1850, in which he expresses his former
expectation that General Wyndham would have made ‘a further
search for additional remains of the Thick-toothed Grampus.’
On the 26th of November he again reminded Mr. Bell of his
desire for ‘a further search for some additional notes of the
Thick-toothed Grampus.’ On the 29th of March 1851, Heysham
wrote again: ‘It is now so long since I heard anything relative
to the old jaw of the Thick-toothed Grampus, that, to tell you
the truth, the subject had entirely escaped my recollection, and
the first glance of your obliging letter of the 28th instant
startled me not a little. On running my eye over the com- |
mencement, ‘‘In re Orca crassidens,” I at once concluded some
limb of the law had dragged me into the Court of Queen’s
Bench, or into that still more abominable hole, the Court of
Chancery. However, I rejoice to say that the contents of your
letter soon dispelled my delusion. I am glad to find that
General Wyndham has at last commenced his improvements,
although greatly disappointed that no additional remains of this
animal have so far been discovered. Should nothing further be
found, I shall be inclined to think that this jaw has been met
with at some remote period on the coast, and conveyed to the
castle for some purpose or other.’ When referring to the
remains of bones, afterwards proved to be those of the Red
Deer found at St. Bees, Heysham wrote to Dr. Bell on the 22d
of December 1851: ‘I take it for granted you have heard of
the enormous bones that have lately been found in the vicinity
of St. Bees. Ifthe account is really true, the Old Jaw at the
castle will be quite thrown into the shade, not only as regards
size, but also with respect to antiquity, etc.’ In T. C. Heysham’s
time, this species was supposed to have been long extinct ; but
recent records of fresh specimens have disproved this hypothesis.

THE EXTINCT MAMMALS OF LAKELAND xlix

PILOT WHALE.
Globicephalus melas (Trail).

Shoals of this small Whale have on several occasions within
living memory received a record in our local papers as having
visited the Solway Firth. Ihave no moral doubt that specimens
have been obtained in both the English and the Scottish Solway,
but in the absence of material to prove this positively, the
species has been excluded from the body of this work. It is,
however, noteworthy, that a lumbar vertebra belonging to the
genus Globicephalus was found in the Silloth excavations. In
the summer of 1889, an entire skeleton of this animal was
unexpectedly disinterred in a back yard in Caldewgate, Carlisle.
Had information been sent to me at once, a perfect skeleton
could have been secured for the local museum. Unfortunately,
I did not hear of the find for two days, when I hurried to the
spot and found the skeleton broken up. The cranium was not
much injured, but the boys of the neighbourhood had seized the
opportunity of practising a little amateur dentistry, and had
extracted every tooth from the head of the animal. There can
be no reasonable doubt that this animal must have been taken
in the waters of the English Solway, but at what period, no
man can positively decide.

Order UNGULATA. Fam. SUID.
WILD BOAR.
Sus scrofa, L.

In early times, when the savage men who once tenanted the
remote fastnesses of the Lake mountains were accustomed to
slay their quarry with bone arrow-heads,! the Wild Boar must
have wallowed in many of the miry sloughs of our lower
grounds. The Rev. J. Wharton assures me that Bran-pow, the
name of a Westmorland stream, should be rendered Brawn’s
pool, i.e. the place where the wild swine came to wallow. No doubt
this animal was early domesticated. I imagine that some at

1 A bone arrow-head was found in the Helsfell fissures,

d

1 PROLEGOMENA

least of the teeth of an animal of this genus, found plentifully
in the Helsfell fissures, belonged to domesticated animals. In-
deed, a glance at the pretty little teeth collected by John
Beecham suggests at once that the prehistoric Wolf had an
ugly knack of forestalling prehistoric breakfasts, trotting home
to the fissures of her race in the limestone cliffs with the
burden of a shrieking porker, that might well have been destined
for a kinder fate than to be devoured by the whelps of its
savage captor. ‘Grise,’ observe Nicolson and Burn, ‘is a
common name for swine, and it may well seem to have taken
its name from being frequented by wild boars, which are
beasts of the forest. Unto which the large rock called Sty-
barrow on the west side of Ulleswater may have some allusion.”
‘Swinedale,’ they add {probably in error], ‘may be so called
from Wild Boars having frequented there; as there are Grise-
dale, Boredale, Stybarrow, in the neighbouring parish of
Barton ; and Wildboarfell [well known to Pennant] in Raven-
stonedale.” 3

The Rev. J. Wilson has kindly pointed out to me a passage
in the Pipe-Rolls of 16 Henry 11, which appears to refer to the
capture of Wild swine in Inglewood Forest: ‘ Geodefrid: de
Karletoi redd. comp de i. * p porcis captis in forest. In
thro (thesawro) libauit. Et Quiet’ (quietus) est.’ ‘Godfrey de
Karleton renders account of one mark for hogs taken in the
forest. He has paid it into the treasury. He is free.” Two
similar entries follow. That the Wild Boar inhabited Lakeland
at the time of this entry is independently rendered certain by
an interesting tradition which the pen of Bishop Carleton has
bequeathed to us. He traced Bernard Gilpin to the family of
‘ Richard Gilpin, who in the Raign of King John was enfeoffed
in the Lordship of Kentmire hall by the Baron of Kendall for
his singular deserts both in peace and warre. This was that
Richard Gilpin who slew the wilde Boore, that rageing in the
mountaines adjoyning, as sometimes did that of Hvrimanthus,
had much indammaged the Country-people: whence it is that
the Gilpins in their Coate Armes giue the Boore.’ 3

1 Hist. and Antiquities of Westmorland and Cumberland, vol. i. p. 409.
2 Ib. cit. vol. i. p. 479. 3 The Life of Bernard Gilpin, p. 1.

THE EXTINCT MAMMALS OF LAKELAND li

Order UNGULATA. Fam, CHERVIDZ..
RED DEER.

Cervus elaphus, L.

In prehistoric times the Red Deer of our mountains must
have lived as patriarchs in their favourite corries, wandering at
their will across the mountains. There is abundant evidence of
this in the fine antlers which have been found in peat deposits
all over Lakeland, from the borders of Scotland to the moors
round Kirkby Lonsdale. The sands of the estuaries, north and
south alike, yield remains of magnificent heads, some of which
have passed through local auctions as horns of the Irish Elk.
Their proportions and beauty far surpass those of the present
Martindale Deer, among which ‘royal’ heads are scarce, and
were for a long time entirely absent. The Roman deposits
upon which the modern city of Carlisle stands, are full of the
horns of Red Deer, such as had been thrown away, usually
after a portion had been sawn off for some practical purpose.
At the present time it often happens that shed antlers of the
Fallow Deer of Levens find their way into the sands of More-
cambe Bay. But a large number of Red Deer in the course of
ages perished, torn by Wolves or swept away by some water-
spout on the fellside. The ‘spates’ which are so common in
this region sweep large bodies before them, and doubtless many
of the remains of Red Deer found in the sands of our estuaries
had travelled a considerable distance before they became im-
bedded in their last resting-place. A ‘horn’ which had been
found near St. Bees, and to which local opinion attached some
value, was sent to Mr. T. C. Heysham in January 1852. He
replied to Dr. Bell on the 24th of February 1852: ‘I have
now to inform you that Brindle’s horn has been carefully
examined by competent authorities, as well as compared with
specimens in the British Museum, and the result is that it
belongs to the Common Red Deer, the Cervus elaphus of Linnzeus.
The animal must have ceased to exist in the beginning of
summer, at all events before its horns had acquired their full
growth, portions of the “velvet” being still visible, which is the

lii PROLEGOMENA

only notable circumstance about it.’ The Royal Society printed
in their transactions ‘An Extract of a Letter from Mr. Hopkins
to Mr. John Senex, F.R.S., concerning an extraordinary large
Horn of the Stag Kind, taken out of the sea on the coast
of Lancashire. ‘This Horn was drawn out of Raven’s Barrow
Hole, adjoining to Holker Old Park, by the Net of a fisherman,
on the 27th of June 1727. The Tide flows constantly where
it was found, and the Land is very high near it. This Horn
is now in the Possession of Sir Thomas Lowther, Bart. of Holker
in Cartmell in Lancashire.’!

Order UNGULATA. Fam. BOVID.
O X.
Bos taurus, L.

The deposits of Lakeland include remains of two species, or,
more properly perhaps, two varieties, of Ox. The smaller of
these is that known to antiquarians as Bos longifrons, the ‘ Celtic
Shorthorn. To this animal Professor Boyd Dawkins referred,
no doubt rightly, the jaw-bones and other bovine fragments
obtained by Beecham at Helsfell. Mr. R. Lydekker has most
kindly examined a single horn core of an Ox, obtained in the
foundations of the Carlisle market at a depth of twenty feet from
the surface.” He tells me that I am quite right in referring this
to Bos longifrons. Among the deposits of Roman origin recently
unearthed in the foundations of Tullie House, Carlisle, under
the superintendence of Chancellor Ferguson, F.S.A., I was
pleased to recognise a portion of the frontal bones of the same
animal, bearing the cores of the horns in a fairly perfect state
of preservation. Although remains of this ox have not ap-
parently been recorded hitherto from Lakeland, there can be
little doubt that it was the common British Ox, at one time
found everywhere.

Much greater interest attaches to the remains of Bos primi-
genius, the extinct Auroch; and none the less because our

1 Phil. Trans., vol. xxxvii. p. 257.

2T am indebted to Mr. Joseph Leavers, the governor of H.M. Prison,
Carlisle, for this specimen.

THE EXTINCT MAMMALS OF LAKELAND iti

text-books have hitherto overlooked the former presence of this
animal in Lakeland. The earliest notice of a ‘find’ of the
remains of this animal occurs in the account of the parish of
Asby, Westmorland, furnished by Nicolson and Burn. They
state : ‘In digging of peats within this manor, nigh the east end
of Sunbiggin Tarn, about 40 years ago [say in 1737], were found
the horns of two large bulls, jumped together in the position
of fighting, one of them probably having pushed the other into

Tue AvuRocH (the Howgill Castle Ox).

the mud, where they had both sunk. The rest of the skeletons
could not be recovered by reason of the water oozing in. One
pair of these horns was carried to Howgill Castle, where they
are yet to be seen.’ The Rev. J. Wharton showed me some
remains of the horns of an Ox obtained in Sunbiggin Tarn, with

Antiquities and History of Westmorland and Cumberland, vol. i. p. 512.

liv PROLEGOMENA

the assurance that such bovine fragments have been found there
on several occasions. The head sent to Howgill Castle hangs in
the hall of the house to this day. The last time that I saw it,
Mr. Thorpe had most kindly accompanied me, for the express
purpose of obtaining some photographs of this head. He was
much impressed by the fine sweep which the horns of this old
bull possess. The lower jaws are unfortunately missing, We.
should probably refer to the Auroch the skulls of two other
Oxen, discovered within the limits of the English Solway. ‘In
excavating on Burgh marsh,’ says a local print, ‘at a depth of
seventeen feet from the surface, a skull, supposed to belong to
an animal of the wrt species (now extinct) was turned up. The
horns measure 6 feet from tip to tip, and are curved so that the
points come within a few feet of each other, a space of 2 feet
being the extreme distance between them in the inside, They
measure 16 inches in circumference at the root. Some Buck
[? Red Deer] horns were also found at the same place.’?

The catalogue of the sale of the Crosthwaite Museum, dis-
persed by the hammer at Keswick, April 7th, 1870, mentions
a similar skull to the last mentioned, the two having been
obtained within a very few miles of one another. ‘Lot 84,
Skull and other remains of Wild Ox, dug out of a peat-moss
at a depth of four feet, at Broadmire Moss, in Thrustonfield,
near Carlisle. One of the ribs had been broken, and had united
again.’

During the years 1883 and 1884, while the North British
Railway Company was engaged in excavations connected with
the formation of a new dock and a new gas-holding tank at
Silloth, remains of Bos primigenius were discovered. Sir William
Turner obtained these remains for the Museum of Science and
Art at Edinburgh. He has given an interesting account of
these bovine remains, although he was under a slight misappre-
hension when he wrote that the ‘right lower jaw of the Bos
primigenius’ found on this occasion was apparently ‘the only
specimen of the lower jaw of this animal which had been found
in Britain.’ The fact of its rarity induced Sir William Turner

1 Carlisle Patriot, December 21, 1850.
2 Catalogue of Crosthwaite Museum, p. 19.

THE EXTINCT MAMMALS OF LAKELAND lv

to compare its dimensions and characters with those of the
corresponding part of the lower jaw of the Hamilton Wild
White Ox in the Anatomical Museum of the University of
Edinburgh, when the following measurements were obtained :—

Fossil. Hamilton Ox.
Extreme length, . ‘ ; : : 184 in. 152 in.
From angle to tip of sonunatd j : é $ 9
From angle to top of condyle, : : : Up 6%
Height of coronoid, ; : : 3 . a 22
Length of molar alveoli, : : : 63 6
Height behind last molar alveolus ; : 34 34

‘The Mandible, continues Sir W. Turner, ‘ exactly fitted the
large skull of the fine Bos primigenius in the Anatomical Museum
of that university, described by me in 1859; it belonged,
therefore, to a full-grown animal. Three true molars and the
last premolar were in place, the other premolars and the incisors
were absent, although their sockets were present. The molars
were so far worn down that a section through the external
accessory lateral column was in the grinding surface of the
crown. In its general configuration this bone corresponded
closely with that of the Hamilton White Ox, though the latter
had a longer and more attenuated coronoid process; in its
length, however, the fossil considerably exceeded the recent
mandible, and obviously belonged to a much larger animal... .
The left humerus of Bos primigenius was perfect except that
the two tuberosities were injured. Its length from the head
to the radial articular surface was 1532 in.; the breadth at
the condyles was 54 in. It was a more massive bone than
the right humerus of the same species described by me in 1859.
The right tibia was perfect, and a massive bone; its extreme
length was 194 in... . The right metatarsal was perfect ;
its extreme length was 12} in. ... These long bones were
not rubbed, but their muscular ridges and articular surfaces
were sharp and well defined as in a recent bone; their dimen-

1 The series of skulls of this animal exhibited at the Natural History
Museum, South Kensington, includes at least two lower jaws. One of
these belongs to a cranium obtained in the Scottish Solway faunal area,
presented by the Earl of Selkirk.

lvi PROLEGOMENA

sions, however, were considerably greater than in the skeleton
of the Hamilton Wild White Ox.’! |

The only other bovine remains at present authenticated from
Lakeland deposits are identical with a skull obtained in the
Ravenglass estuary by Joseph Farren the fisherman. ‘This was
found in the sand of the river Irt, but Farren told me that he
thought it must have been washed out of a peat deposit. It
was at once claimed by the lord of the manor, and has remained
ever since at Muncaster Castle. In the spring of the present
year Mr. Thorpe accompanied me to Muncaster, in order that
we might take advantage of Lord Muncaster’s kind permission
to reproduce the head in this work.

THE AvRocH (the Muncaster Castle Ox).

Having submitted copies of Mr. Thorpe’s photographs to Mr.
R. Lydekker, I had the pleasure of receiving the following
criticism from that gentleman: ‘ The two photos,’ he wrote,
‘which I am very pleased to have, indicate a very good skull of
B. primigenius. The specimen belongs to the so-called “ trocho-
ceros,’ or curved-horned form, in which the horns are more

1 Proc. Ryl. Phys. Soc., vol. viii. Part 1. pp. 333-338. See also a
paper by J. Leitch, M.B., C.M., entitled Notes on the Geological formation
and fossils of the Silloth New Dock, printed in the Transactions of the

Cumberland and Westmorland Association, No. ix. pp. 169-174. Some
of the bones are figured by Dr. Leitch.

—_

THE EXTINCT MAMMALS OF LAKELAND lvii

curved inwards than in the typical form, as exemplified by
the skull figured in Owen’s British Fossil Mammals. You
are doubtless aware that B. primigenius is now regarded as
a variety of B. tawrus, and that its proper vernacular name is
the Auroch.’

Mr. Thorpe assisted me in taking careful measurements of
both the Muncaster and Howgill Castle heads. We may com-
pare these together with the dimensions of one of the two
skulls found at Silloth, as furnished by Dr. Leitch ;

Muncaster. | Howgill. | Silloth.

ft. in. ft. in. ft. in.
Distance inside between points of cores, . 2 6 Papas | 2 3
Breadth of forehead between cores, . ‘ 1 0 0103 | 010
Circumference of core at base, . , : 1 ii 1 3 1 04
Breadth of forehead between orbits, . : 0 113 0 114
Length of curve of core, . : ‘ ; 2 3h Q 42

From the inferiority of the measurements of the head re-
corded by Dr. Leitch, we may perhaps infer that it belonged to
a cow Auroch. Whether the white wild cattle of Thornthwaite
were the degenerate descendants of the Auroch, or represented
the reversion of some domesticated breed of Oxen to a wild
state is of course entirely an open matter. At the present
time the latter view is that which appears to find most favour
with those best qualified to decide this moot point.

lviii PROLEGOMENA

Order RODENTIA. Fam. CASTORIDZ,

BEAVER.
Castor fiber, L.

The only evidence of the former existence of this animal in
Lakeland was brought to light by Mr. J. G. Goodchild. The
following note includes all the information regarding this im-
portant find that he has as yet placed on record: ‘A few years
back [ze prior to 1883] the people at the Cross Keys Inn,
Cautla, between Ressondale and Sedbergh, had on the mantel-
piece of their sitting-room the skull of an adult Beaver. This
was obtained from some alluvium in the bottom of the Resson-
dale valley, near Clouds, and is worth recording as one of the
few instances, if not the sole instance, of the former occurrence
of this animal in Westmorland.’*

d

BIRD BONES FROM THE ROCK FISSURES OF
HELSFELL, WESTMORLAND.

WE owe to the splendid industry of John Beecham the only
avian remains discovered, so far as my present information goes,
in the Lake District. They were uniformly obtained from
Helsfell. Some of them were placed, undetermined, in the
Kendal Museum. Others, including remains of Buteo, turned
up when I searched Mr, Beecham’s private collection. Having
obtained the loan of the bones belonging to the Museum through
the kind offices of Mr. Joseph Severs, I sent the whole series to
Mr. R. Lydekker, who has made the subject of Fossil Birds
peculiarly his own. The results of this examination are admittedly
small, but they show the desirability of further research in the
same direction. The following is Mr. Lydekker’s report :—

‘The bird bones submitted to me from the caves and rock
fissures of the Lake District are eleven in number, and belong
to four species, viz., seven to a Goose, one to a Fowl, two to a
Buzzard, while the eleventh is a radius which I am unable to deter-

1 Trans. Cumb. Assoc., No, viii. p. 2138.

BIRD BONES FROM HELSFELL, WESTMORLAND

lix

mine. Buzzard.—So far as I am aware, the only fossil remains refer-
able to the Buzzard (Buteo vulgaris) hitherto recorded from British
deposits are three specimens in the British Museum, obtained

from Brixham Cave, near
Torquay,! in association with
remains of extinct mammals.
It is, therefore, interesting to
find this species represented
in the prehistoric fauna of
the Lake District. The speci-
mens referable to this species
are a tarso-metatarsus and
ulna, both of the left side,
and probably belonging to a
single individual. The former
bone, of which four views are
given in the accompanying
woodcut, may be recognised
at a glance as that of an
Accipitrine bird. Some of the
characteristic Accipitrine fea-

tures are to be found in the -

triangular shaft, with its sharp
ridge in front and deep groove
behind ; in the laterally ex-
panded contour of the upper
surface, with the two promi-
nent condyles of the talon;
and in the nearly even line
formed by the three trochlez
at the lower end for the arti-
culation of the toe-bones.
The tarso-metatarsus of the
genus Luteo is shorter than
that of Circus (Harrier), and
larger than that of Milvus

Upper (A), front (B), lower (C), and back (D),
views of the left tarso-metatarsus of the Buzzard
(Buteo vulgaris). a. Tubercli for insertion of
tibialis anticus ; b. perforation in the extensor
fossa of the digits; c. inner condyle of talon ;
d. external do. (broken); f. foramen between
third and fourth metatarsals ; h. facet for the
hallux.

(Kite),

The present specimen

agrees in all respects with the corresponding bone of a
1 See Cat. Foss. Birds Brit. Mus. p. 21 (1891).

lx PROLEGOMENA

recent skeleton in the British Museum. The ulna calls for
no remark, |

‘ Fowl.—A. right tibia belongs to a species of fowl of some-
what larger size than the wild Asiatic Gallus sonnerati. Since
there is no evidence of the former existence of any wild Gallus
in England, it appears probable that the specimen belonged to
a domesticated race. This bone is peculiar in having a distinct
tubercle on the outer side of the bridge over the groove for the
exterior tendons, the Galline generally showing no trace of
this tubercle, although it is always more or less marked in
fowls.

‘ Goose. —The remains referable to Geese are seven in number,
and belong to three immature individuals, Five of them are
tibie, all of which have lost the epiphysis, and all but the
astragalus at the lower end. ‘Two of them are pairs. The other
bones are a pair of tarso-metatarsi, belonging to the same birds
as one of the pair of tibia. Since the tibia to which the astra-
galus still remains attached is larger than the corresponding
bone of the skeleton of a Grey Lag Goose (Anser ferus) in the
British Museum, I am disposed to consider that the Kendal
bones are referable to a domesticated race.—R. LYDEKKER,’

MR. FRANCIS. NICHOLSON, F.Z.S., ON THE
PINE MARTEN.

Martes sylvestris, Nilss.

THE interest attaching to this animal as a native of Lakeland
is of such a special character that an apology is hardly needed
for inserting here a valuable communication sent to me by Mr.
Nicholson. It is only fair to say that Mr. Nicholson’s remarks
were forwarded to supplement the article upon this species
furnished in the body of the work (pp. 17-26).

‘The Marten,’ writes Mr. Nicholson, ‘is found on all the hills
round Keswick, and I never pass over certain parts without
seeing “Fox Cork” and “Mart Cork.” I have been in at the
death of several Marts. A few years ago a lad caught two

MR. FRANCIS NICHOLSON ON THE PINE MARTEN lxi

Marts alive within a few days of one another in Newlands, one
of which I sent up to the Zoological Gardens. A relative
caught one a year or two ago in the woods above Little
Crosthwaite, near Bassenthwaite Lake, on one of the hills of the
Skiddaw range. The Marten, though very fond of Rabbits, is
much more varied in its food than the Polecat, for if you pull
the “corks” or dried excrement to pieces, you will find remains
of mice and birds quite as often as rabbit fur. The country
Martens’ follow is more away from the game-preserving country
than the haunts of the Polecat, and that perhaps is why they
have held their own better than the Polecat, which frequents the
neighbourhood of Rabbits and of hen roosts.’ The remainder
of Mr. Nicholson’s remarks are included in the following article,
which he communicated independently to the Manchester Guardian
of March 20, 1884 :— |

‘It is evident that the Pine Marten is imagined to be of
greater rarity than is actually the case, for, although nowhere
numerous as a species, it is found in small numbers in suitable
localities over most of the north of England, but more par-
ticularly in the Lake District. The Sweet Mart, as it is called in
contradistinction to the Foumart (foulmart) or Polecat, is a great
wanderer, often turning up in localities where it was supposed
to be extinct, and found again after a long interval frequenting
the same spot as in former times. Severe winters may no doubt
have some influence on their movements in causing them to
wander and extend the area of their hunting-grounds, and also
the abundance or scarcity of food. It occurs occasionally in the
mountainous parts of Northumberland, Durham, Westmoreland,
and the Furness district of North Lancashire ; but in Cumber-
land, where it is most numerous, it is hunted with fox-hounds,
and a few are killed every winter. They make a capital hunt,
and hounds are very keen when on their scent. They usually
make at once for the rocks and crevices, going at a great pace at
first, but are soon run into unless they succeed in reaching some
hole in a crag where hounds and huntsmen cannot follow. They
fight desperately with both claws and teeth. When before
hounds on level and snow-clad ground they proceed with a
succession of astonishing long leaps, often six or seven feet

xii PROLEGOMENA

apart. They do not usually come down to the woody parts of
the country except for breeding purposes, but the greater part
of the year they follow the screes and higher fell ground.
Though they generally come down to the woods in the valleys
in April and May to have their young ones, selecting some old
magpie’s nest or squirrel’s dray for a home, still they sometimes
breed in the rocks near the tops of the highest hills. It is only
at such times that the Marten is easily trapped, for unlike the
Polecat, it does not approach a given spot by one track. They
do not seem so suspicious of traps as some wild animals, or as
the Polecat. If you find traces of or see the latter about a build-
ing, you will most likely find a run near which it frequents, and
a trap has only to be set, and it will be taken; not so with the
Marten Cat, as it is only by accident that it is captured in this
manner, and they never approach buildings. The cause of the
sudden decrease of the Marten in some localities is principally
owing to their unsuspiciousness of a baited trap. They are
very fond of Rabbits, and where these are numerous, and are
systematically trapped, if there are any Martens about they are
almost certain to get accidentally into the rabbit traps. It is
said they are not so common as formerly, but the writer does
not think their numbers are much lessened during the last
twenty years in the Lake District. In other parts of England
they occasionally occur, but as woods disappear so does the
Marten. In large woodlands, which are unpreserved for game
and not much disturbed, they may roam at will without their
presence being suspected, which accounts for their having been
taken many times during the last few years in Lincolnshire and
Norfolk ; and in December 1872 one was shot in Hertfordshire,
within twenty miles of London. They still maintain their
ground in the wilder districts of North Wales, Ireland, and
Scotland. There is still a divided opinion amongst zoologists as
to whether there is really a specific difference between the so-
called Pine Marten and Beech Marten, or whether they are only
different forms of the same species or races. The present writer
has seen specimens from various localities in the British Isles,
and all, without any exception, were Pine Martens (the yellow-
breasted variety), and not one the Beech Marten (the white-

MR. FRANCIS NICHOLSON ON THE PINE MARTEN lxiil

breasted variety), The Beech Marten may probably be entitled
to be considered a distinct species, on account of the difference
in breadth of skull and the shape of the upper molar; yet it
should not be included in the British fauna until an authentic
British specimen has been produced. The Beech Marten seems
to be a more southern species than its congener, for it does not
appear to go farther north than Denmark and the Baltic pro-
vinces on the Continent, and is not a native of Sweden.’

Mole.

Wild Cat.

THE DESTRUCTION OF WILD ANIMALS.

Frew things are more interesting than to work out and register
the vicissitudes experienced by the mammals of a faunal area.
Certain species seem to be almost proof against any amount of
persecution. The Mole, for example, has defied centuries of
persecution at the hands of Lakeland agriculturists. The
Rev. A. Warren tells me that when he was instituted to the
living of Bondgate, Appleby, in 1880, the parochial mole-
catcher claimed as his perquisite a sum of seven shillings for
trapping Moles on the Glebe lands; alleging that his father
and fis father before him, had constantly enjoyed the pre-
scriptive right of trapping Moles for the vicar of the parish.
Similarly, I find entries in the Martindale books of payments
for Mole-catching. In the accounts of this parish for 1854-55,
an entry stands: ‘Mole sess. 2s. Od.’ The specral fee of one
shilling has often been exacted for trapping some sacrilegious
Mole which had commenced to tunnel in a churchyard. Thus,
an entry stands in the payments of the Martindale church-
wardens for the year 1826-27, ‘Paid for catching a Mole, 1s.’
The Rey. T. Hodson, vicar of the adjoining parish of Barton,
assures me that on one or two recent occasions he has paid the
customary fee of a shilling for the life of a Mole, trapped in his
churchyard.

The Wild Cat appears to have become scarce in Lakeland
long before the Badger had begun to lose its footing among us.
At all events, records of the Wild Cat are difficult to find in
Lakeland registers, a fact which strengthens my belief that this
fine animal had been driven to seek refuge from its persecutors
among the clefts and hiding-places of the rocks as early as the
closing years of the seventeenth century. That it continued to

THE DESTRUCTION OF WILD ANIMALS lxv

maintain a precarious footing among our scars and precipices
for the greater part of the last century cannot be doubted.
The last mention of this species in the Kendal parish books
occurs in 1727: ‘pd. Jonathan Newton for a Wild Cat
£00, 00s. 04d.’ But this does not prove that the species was
on the eve of extinction. The churchwardens of Kendal
decided in 1729 to withdraw the rewards previously offered
for the heads of Wild Cats and some other animals. That the
old race of Felis catus still lingered on our hills is placed
beyond the reach of all cavilling, by the discovery of entries
chronicling the decease of no fewer than forty-erght Wiid Cats,
in the parish book of Barton, Westmorland. Some few of these
entries refer to Barton, which embraces a large extent of hill
pasture ; but the majority apply to the Chapelry of Martindale.
These records run from 1706 to 1755, and we learn from them
that though a ‘ kill’ of a Wild Cat did not occur every year,
even in this remote and inaccessible region, yet every few years
such an event actually took place, while in one year no fewer
than five Wild Cats perished, all possibly belonging to the same
family. The interest attaching to the former residence of the
Wild Cat in the north of England is accentuated by the com-
parative scarcity of reliable data. Hence the desirability of
printing in full such data as are here printed, for the first time,
from the accounts of Barton parish and its quondam chapelry
of Martindale :—

1706. Martindale. ‘ ffor a wild Catt, . pe Oiwok ss Or:
1710. Martindale. ‘To Mich. Tyson and Tho.

Cookson for killing of two wild Cats

and a badger, OFS Ole
‘Isaac Wright for railkene. a Wild Catt a
a young raven, Ope eee
1711. Martindale. ‘ffor two Wild abies, 0 2°50:
1712. Martindale. ‘To Thomas Cookson for
a wild Cat, . : On Oe
Barton. ‘To Edward Sisson ae a Wild
Catt, ; Ossian
1713. Martindale. ‘One Wild Catt ala by
Mich. Tyson, ‘ ; 0; Loss

1720.

1721.

22:
1724.

1725.
1726.
OAT
1728.

1729.
1730.

1732.
1733.
1736.
1739.

1754.
1755.

PROLEGOMENA

. Martindale. ‘For wild Cats by tho.

Cookson,

. Martindale. ‘To him [Mychall Tyson]

for a wild Catt,

Barton. ‘To Edw. Sisson for falling tar
foxes and a wild catt,

Martindale. ‘the same [Michall Tyson]
for a wild Catt,

Barton. ‘To Josiah Smith for talline a
wild catt,

Martindale. ‘the same [Michal Tyson]
for two wild Catts,

Martindale. ‘a wild Catt Tallin.

Barton. ‘To Josiah Smith for killing a
wild cat, :

Martindale. ‘tow wilde Catts,

Martindale. ‘5 wild cats killing,

Martindale. ‘two wild katts killing,

Martindale. ‘One Wild Cat,

Barton. ‘One Wild Cat killing, .

Martindale. ‘2 wild cats,

Martindale. ‘3 wild Cats,

Barton. ‘One Wild Cat killing, .

Martindale. ‘2 wild cates,

Martindale. ‘2 wild Cats,

Martindale. ‘2 wild cats,

Martindale. ‘1 Wild cat,

Barton. ‘George Mason for 1 wilde one

‘William Sisson for 1 wilde cat,.

Barton. ‘for a wild Cat,

Barton. ‘John Bewsher for wild Catt,

£0

on)

SS

SFY OE ]ogagg Qo] a 2 |] a ©

co)

r= bo

>
eK pw oO dW eH

eS SO ODS OS SO

0?
0?
0”
0’
00’
00’
0°
0’
0’
0?
0?
0?
0?
0
0?
0?
0?

It must be borne in mind, apropos of the last entry, that no
accounts are at present forthcoming for Martindale between
1742 and the present century.

Some animals appear to be proof against any amount of per-
secution, and none more notably so than the Fox.
every parish in Lakeland has at one time or another paid head-

Almost

THE DESTRUCTION OF WILD ANIMALS lxvii

money for Foxes, chiefly during the seventeenth and eighteenth
centuries. Packs of fox-hounds were maintained in our midst
at a much earlier period of history. For example, the Pipe-Rolls
of the third year of King John supply the following entry :—

‘Rié fit Truite redd comp de j. m. p. hiid Canibus ad leporé 7
uulpé. In thro libauit. Et Quiet’ est.’

“Translation—

‘Richard the son of Truite returns account for one mark paid for
dogs for hunting hares and foxes. He has paid it into the Treasury.
He ws quit.’

During the earlier years of the present century the parish of
Martindale owned a pack of hounds, or at all events contributed
to their keep. Thus in the year 1826-27 we have an entry in
the churchwardens’ accounts: ‘Three stone of meal for dogs,
8s. 2d.’ In the year 1827-28 we have an entry: ‘To feeding
Hounds, 4s. Od.’ It is repeated in the year 1830-31: ‘To Rd.
Mounsey feeding Hounds, 9s. Od.’ In the year 1834-35 we
read: ‘To Fox Heads and Keeping Dogs, 11s. 8d.’ The year
1835-36 furnishes another entry: ‘To Wm. Greenhow fetching
Hounds, 1s. 6d.’ The accounts paid on October 19, 1837,
include: ‘To Wm. Jackson for feeding Hounds, 8s. 9d.’ The
price of the meal required for the pack is named in the year
1824-25: ‘To Dog Meal, 6 st. at 2/2—13s. 0d.’ In some
cases keepers killed Foxes to save their Hares; yet this vulpicide
was gravely charged for. The Greystoke books supply two
entries of the kind. Thus in 1767: ‘Aug. 15. To the Game
Keeper at Graystock Castle for 3 Fox Heads and 2 Cubs,
£00, 10s. Od. Again in 1780: ‘April 23rd. To Richard
Holme, gamekeeper, for a ffox head, 3s. 4d.’ But it was the
enterprise of private individuals, coupled with their love of
sport, that supplied most of the parish wiseacres with Fox
heads. The reward was sometimes disputed by the church-
wardens. The Rev. J. Wilson informs me that the order-book
of the Rolls of Quarter Sessions, held at Carlisle in July 1704,
furnishes a decision on the liability of the wardens to pay such
rewards: ‘ Upon the peticon of Thomas Watt setting forth that
he had killed fowerteen foxes, and ought to have fowerteen
shillings for soe doeing, and praying to have the same paid him.

Ixvili PROLEGOMENA

—It is ordered by this Court that ye Churchwardens and over-
seers of ye poore of ye pish of Brampton doe forthwith pay unto
the said Thomas Watt the sume of fowerteen shillings for killing
ye sd foxes according to Law.’ The duty of disbursing the
reward for a Fox head occasionally fell on unlikely individuals.
Thus it happened in the year 1779, in Patterdale, that Thos.
Holme, constable, paid the following bill to Thos. Dawson:
‘Scholars ale, 1s. 6d. Two Foxes and 3 Cubs, 9s. 8d. To one
Fox and one Cub, 4s. 4d.’ But oftenest of all the payment was
claimed by one or other of the huntsmen. Such was the case in
Martindale in 1713, when the clerk entered: ‘Two ffoxes kild
by Mich. Tyson and his fellowes, £0, 6s. 8d.’ The quaintest
entry in the Martindale books occurs in a bill settled by John
Jackson the ‘chaplewarden, Aug. 23, 1818: ‘64 Fox Heads at
3s. 4d. each, £1, 1s. 8d.’ It seems possible that the ‘half’ of a
Fox may have been a cub. The men of Bondgate, Appleby,
were at one time devoted to hunting Foxes, and killed many on
Murton Pike, at Dufton, and elsewhere in the neighbourhood.
They had a weakness, too, for killing cubs, but never entered
them as the ‘halves’ of Foxes. It is written that on the 20th
of April 1734 the wardene paid: ‘for 6 foxes, 5 whereof was
cubs, £0, 3s. 6d.’ In April 1737 they paid: ‘for 4 foxes and
one cub, £0, 4s. 6d.’ They acted similarly in 1739: ‘for 2
foxes, 1 old one, 1s.—a young one (total) £0, 1s. 6d.’ In 1757
they paid for ‘ Four Fox Heads, 1 Old one and 3 cubs, £0, Is. 6d.’
In 1758 they paid for nine Foxes: ‘Fox Heads, viz., 5 old ones
and 4 cubs, £0, lls. 6d.’

According to present information, the practice of paying head-
money for Foxes seems to have become obsolete about the same
time in both Cumberland and Westmorland. I have shown (at
p. 14) that the claim for a reward for killing a Fox was finally
disallowed by the Greystoke vestry in 1856, just thirty-six
years ago. The wild parish of Asby in Westmorland supplies
a rather later date of payment. An analysis of the accounts of
Asby proves that the total number of Foxes paid for in that
parish during half a century, from 1814 to 1864, amounted to
a total of fourteen, at the cost of £1, 13s. 6d. The following are
the last entries of vulpicide for which the Asby churchwardens

THE DESTRUCTION OF WILD ANIMALS lx1x

were responsible: 1863. ‘Fox head, 2s. 6d.’ 1864. ‘Ralph
Johnson, fox head, 2s. 6d. James Sowerby, fox head, 2s. 6d.’
The Pine Marten, unlike the Fox, has always been a local
animal in Lakeland too sparsely represented, even in its most
favoured haunts, to be the object of a uniform persecution.
Very few parishes return any records of the destruction of
Marts; only in fact those of Martindale, Patterdale, Greystoke,
and Kendal, according to the information at present available.
In Patterdale there are only two entries; or rather, one entry
occurs both in 1779 and 1780: ‘To two Marts, 2s,’ showing
that a shilling was the sum then paid for a Pine Marten in that
parish, In Kendal parish the head-money offered for this
animal was originally fourpence, as the following entries
exemplify :—
1684. ‘Sept. 6. Paid to churchw. of Helsington
for 2 Clean Marts, . 25) Ss
1685. ‘April 21. pd. to ye Churchw. of bonedate
[ = Longsleddall] 1 brock and 2 Clean
Marts and 1 Catt on foule mart, : O18?
‘Oct. 20. To ye churchwarden of Longs-
leddall for 2 ffox heads and 1 clean mart, Om 2a
1687. ‘March 29. Pd. to ye churchwarden of
Sleddall for one Brockhead and 2 Clean

Marts, 4 ; : Oveeler 20’
‘June 29. Pd. to William Postlethwaite
for one Clean Mart, . On Ones:

‘Oct. 18th. Payd to Daniel Best of sic
landgate for 5 foule marts and 1 Clean
Marte, : ORES 12%
1688. ‘April 17. pd. to ye Ghorelwaricn ot
Underbarrow for one Clean Marte, . Of © Oin o42
‘April 17. pd. to ye Churchwarden of

Sleddall for 2 Clean Marts, . Oo; 0 8s?
‘April 17. pd. to William eveelethiwaite
for 1 Clean marte, . ; 0.2.07

In point of fact the total number of Martens killed in the
far-reaching parish of Kendal in the decade most favourable
to their destruction, viz., 1679-1688, only reached a total of

Pine Marten.

Foulmart.

lxx ; PROLEGOMENA

seventeen slain. The price paid for Mart heads had reached a
shilling at Kendal in 1794, our latest record for this parish.
The accounts of Martindale, kept during the first fifty years of
the present century, inform us that half-a-crown was the price
set upon the head of this outlawed animal by the local wise-
acres, but it was rarely demanded. In the year 1822-23 we
find entered: ‘2 Foxes and 2 Marts, £1, 0s. Od.’ In 1823-24
there is a similar note: ‘Three Marts, 7s. 6d.’ We read in
1824-25: ‘To 9 Foxes and one Mart, £2, 7s. 6d.’ In 1837
we have another instance of the two species being lumped
together: ‘To Mr. Thomson a fox head and a Mart, 7s. 6d.’
But the best point in these fragmentary accounts must be
admitted to be the reappearance of the old-term ‘ Marterne,’
employed by John Manwood as early as 1598. This has un-
expectedly come to light in the Martindale accounts for the year
1825-26: ‘Two Martern, 5s. 0d.’

Rewards of payments for the heads of Foumarts or Polecats
were paid by the parish of St. Lawrence, Appleby, but especially
by Kendal parish. I can find no returns of Foumarts in the
accounts of Bondgate, Appleby, nor in those of Crosthwaite,
Keswick. They are absent from the books of Greystoke, Dacre,
Barton, Shap, Orton, Hawkshead, Penrith, Martindale, Asby.
These ranked formerly among the largest and wildest parishes
in Lakeland. No accounts are available for the remote parishes
of Alston and Bewcastle, which might have been expected to
yield valuable returns. The accounts of St. Lawrence, Appleby,
commence in 1765, and, like the Kendal entries, are slightly
exasperating by reason of the frequency with which the payments
for different animals are lumped together under the titles of
‘Vermens, ‘ Verment Heads as per bill,’ or ‘ Verment Heads Bill’
The first entry of 1765 mentions the present species: ‘Jos. Bewsher,
2 Raven heads, 1 Folmart, £0, 0s. 8d. Jno. Foster, 1 Folmart,
£0, Os. 4d.’ One of the last entries is for 1830, and runs: ‘for
two foulmart heads, £0, 0s. 8d.’ The species paid in the interval
between 1765 and 1830 are Ravens, Foxes, Badgers, and Foul-
marts. The reward of fourpence never varied. Thus we read
in 1811: ‘4 fox Heads, £1, 0s. Od.; 8 foomt do., £0, 2s. 8d.’
The largest sum paid for vermin in this parish was £2, 5s. 11d.,

THE DESTRUCTION OF WILD ANIMALS lxxi

expended in 1770. The figures even of Foulmarts are very
scanty, and yield absolutely no figures that can bear comparison
with those of Kendal. The only quaint feature they reveal is
this, that the townsmen of Appleby sometimes sent a maid-
servant to claim a payment of fourpence for a Foulmart’s head
at the Kaster vestry meeting. Thus we read in 1766: ‘Mr.
Chris. Harreson’s maid, 1 foulmart, £0, 0s. 4d. Thos. Marton,
Taylor (=tailor)’s servant, 1 ditto, £0, 0s. 4d” In Kendal
parish four books of accounts have been preserved. The first of
these runs from 1658 to 1687. The second book runs from
1688 to 1732. The third book covers the period between 1733
and 1776. The fourth book continues the story down to the
year 1849. The formal decisions of the parochial representatives
to exterminate the fere nature of their district, are stated in
successive judgments. The first was passed on January 19,
1679: ‘We doe likewise order that touching Virmin-heads,
such prices shall be paid by the churchwardens as is hereafter
pticularly limited and sett downe, viz‘. a fox head, 12d.; a brocke,
6d.; an otter, 6d.; a clean mart, 4d.; a foul-mart, 2d.; a wild-
catt, 4d.; a raven, 2d. (if come to flying); provided alway that
no such Virmin-heads shall come, but shall be presented by the
churchwarden or churchwardens of every respective Hamlett
w‘tin the said ptish of Kendal, and that upon p"emptory days
only and every y‘ said Virmin-heads to be brought in the first
peremptory day next after such Virmin-heads be killed, and alsoe
to be brought in w* the haire or downe on. And euery church-
warden soe p'senting these heads in maner and according to
conditions aboue mentioned shall receiue for such head or heads
according to y' p'ticular rates or prices abouesaid, to be paid to
the p'ty who kild any such head or heads, and the said heads
to be brused and carryed to the Kent side and thrown into
middle of the water.’ This order held good for forty years ;
but on June ye 29th, 1718, it was ‘ordered then by the Generall
consent of the Churchwardens at their publick meeting in
Kendall Church that hereafter nothing be paid for any virmin-
Heads except for Foxes and Ravens, which are to be continued
as formerly, viz., for every Fox Head brought in upon any
Peremptory Day, one Shilling; and every Raven Head, two

The Badger.

Ixxii PROLEGOMENA

pence.’ This edict was not strictly acted upon. For example,
twenty-four Foulmarts were paid for in the year 1725-26. But
the active reformers passed a fresh regulation, this time pro-
scribing the Otter as an outlaw, to which fact we owe the
circumstance that seventy-five Otters were killed between 1733
and 1742, both years inclusive. The following was the text of
the new order: ‘Dec, 27th, 1729. Ordered there by ye general
consent of ye Church Wardens at their Publick Meeting in
Kendall Parish Church, That Hereafter nothing be paid for any
virmin Heads Except for Foxes, Otters, and Ravens, viz.: for
every Fox head, 5s.; Cubb, 2s. 6d.; Otter head, ls.; Raven,
2d.’ This decision appears to have held good for many years.
A new generation at length sprang up, and the ancient custom
of paying for Foulmarts revived in 1774. The disbursements
for the year 1794 furnish the last and most remarkable details
of a general slaughter of the wild animals that haunted the hills
round Kendal. On this occasion the return of the slain included
four Foxes, eight Ravens, four Pine Martens, and the extra-
ordinary number of one hundred and seventy-three Foumarts.
While the price for Martens had risen from fourpence to a
shilling, Foumarts were still valued at twopence each.

Under the title of ‘Brock,! this interesting but ill-used
animal figures in the lists of the victims of our hill-men with
tolerable frequency, though the Kendal tale of slaughter is at
present unsurpassed. There are certain holes on Orton Scar
known as ‘ Pate holes.’ The elder Gough offered the comment
a century ago, that ‘ Pate’ was an obsolete name for the Badger.
After searching many folios of parish accounts, often difficult
to decipher, I have at last discovered this name in one of the
books of Penrith parish. It occurs as far back as the year
1658: ‘payed for Killinge a ffoxx £00, 02s, 06d. payed for
killinge of two paytes, £00, 02s. 00d.’ The irony of fate compels
me to withdraw an unlucky remark, made on p, 42, that 1741

1 Professor Skeat derives ‘Brock’ from the Celtic broch, which is
identical with the Gaelic Broc. He adds: ‘It is most probable, as
Mr. Wedgwood suggests, that the animal was named from his white-
streaked face; just as a trout is, in Gaelic, called ‘‘ dreac,” i.e. spotted’
(Dictionary of the English Language, p. 78).

THE DESTRUCTION OF WILD ANIMALS Ixxill

is the first date at which I have found the name of ‘ Badger’
applied to Meles taxus in Lakeland.’ It appears to have been
first recognised locally towards the close of the seventeenth
century. The Dacre parish book contains an entry, ‘To
Lancelot Holme of Penerath [Penrith] for Killing of a badger,
£00, 00s. 06d.’ This payment was registered in 1690. Seven
years later, in 1697, the Penrith wardens made an entry of
their own: ‘To John Salkeld for a Badger Head, £0, Os. 6d.’
The Barton parish book includes an entry made for the Chepelry
of Martindale in 1706: ‘To Mich. Tyson and Tho. Cookson
for killing of two wild Cats and a badger, £0, 3s. Od.’ In
1715 an entry occurs in the Barton parish book: ‘To Lord
Lonsdale’s Huntsman for a badgher, £0, 1s. Od.’ In the Dacre
parish the word ‘ Brock’ continued to be used in preference to
the term ‘ Badger’ for the first few years of the eighteenth
century, a remark that is equally true of Barton; but the
modern term soon supplanted the older synonym. The records
of Badgers butchered in Dacre parish between 1685 and 1750,
a period of sixty-five years, yields a total mortality of thirty-
six individuals, This includes an entry for the year 1736, in
which the chronicler records the death of ten of these harmless
creatures in a single year. Perhaps the saddest feature of this
exterminating policy lies in the fact that no mercy was shown
even to the tender young. Among the disbursements of the
churchwardens of Dacre for 1694 you may read this shameful
entry: ‘Imprimis for 6 Brock heads 4 old and 2 young,
£00, 05s. 00d.’ The Barton book is equally guilty in assert-
ing the slaughter of such innocents. In 1731 it records, ‘One
old Badger, £00, Ols. 00d., 3 young Badgers £00, Ols. 00d.’
The same thing recurs in 1732 : ‘ 3 ould Badgers, £00, 03s. 00d.,
2 young Badgers, £00, 00s. 08d.’ Truly a ‘ pittisome’ affair this !

1 Professor Skeat says that in Middle English [1200-1460] ‘ this animal
had three familiar names, viz., the brock, the gray, and the bawson, but
does not seem to have been generally called the badger’ (Dictionary of
the English Language, p. 47). He adds thatthe name is a sort of nick-
name derived from the Middle English badger or bager=‘a dealer in

corn.’ This fanciful origin is verified by the fact that the French equi-
valent ‘ blaireau’ is derived from the French b/é, corn.

Mammals.

VARIATION OF COLOUR IN ANIMALS.

POPULAR opinion has long attached an artificial value to the
occasional appearance of individual birds or beasts presenting
such a marked variation of colour, or negation of colour, as to
justify criticism. Instances of leucotism occurring among our
Mammalia are tolerably numerous. Moles perhaps exhibit
white and buff phases more frequently than any other Lake-
land Mammals. Ben Batey, a border mole-trapper, tells me
that ‘a breed’ of white Moles has existed in a certain field
near Barron Wood ever since he can remember. The only
white Bat that is known to have occurred in Lakeland fre-
quented the ‘ Nunnery;’ this was probably a Pipistrelle. No
white Otters or Badgers have ever been killed in Lakeland.
Such ‘white’ Foxes as I have traced out were merely light-
coloured examples. Leucotism is fairly common among the
Rodents. The Carlisle Patriot of August 13, 1839 refers to a
‘beautiful White Hare,’ which had ‘for some time been seen
in the park in front of Lowther Castle.” This animal was
unfortunately killed with a scythe. Its deficiency of pigment
recurred in one of its descendants. The Carlisle Patriot of
July 15, 1842 mentions that a second white Hare had appeared
at Lowther: ‘It isa fine full-grown Leveret and perfectly white.’
Nor are pied Hares entirely unheard of. In November 1884
a prettily-pied Leveret was killed in East Cumberland. It was
a red Hare, but the forehead, muzzle, the sides of the head, the
two forepaws and one hindpaw were all pure white. Of the smaller
Mammals, it may suffice to say a piebald race of Short-tailed
Voles frequented a field near Carlisle within the memory of
Mr. William Duckworth. I have seen very similar examples,
stated to have been taken in Northumberland. White Weasels

VARIATION OF COLOUR IN ANIMALS Ixxv

have been killed near Keswick on one or two occasions. Mr.
J. W. Harris secured such a specimen from that district.
Melanism is comparatively rare among British Mammals. In
September 1884 Mr. Tom Duckworth observed a ‘black’ Squirrel
near Rose Castle, which in many parts of the Continent would
have been considered no uncommon event. Mr. J. Cairns
assures me that Major Irwin’s keeper recently killed a black
variety of the Weasel at Lynehow. Unfortunately it was not
preserved. A poacher from the west of Cumberland volunteered
that he had once seen a black Leveret, and that the animal in
question changed handsin Cockermouth market. Black Rabbits
frequently do duty as examples of melanism. Such specimens
have occurred to me in localities very dissimilar to one another,
e.g. on Walney Island, and on the top of Whitbarrow. On the
whole, perhaps the most reasonable interest attaches to the
various- types of colour exhibited by the Fallow Deer of
our private parks. Allusion has been made (at p. 71)
to the occasional occurrence of milk-white Fawns at Levens.
Three such animals have been produced there in the last ten
years. That at present tenanting the park is a Doe, bred from
a dark Doe. The difference between the white Fallow Deer
occasionally dropped at Levens, and somewhat similar individuals
bred at Edenhall, lies in the fact that the white Fallow Deer at
Edenhall are cinnamon in colour when first born, but become
white gradually during the first four or five years of their exist-
ence. The same remark would probably apply to the white
Fallow Deer which belong to Mr. Banks of Highmoor, Wigton.
On the other hand, the milk-white Deer of Levens are constantly
of the same shade of colour during their entire existence.
Though the dark form has long been preserved at Lakeland
(see p. 71), this variety did not compose the original stock of the
Levens Deer, as is generally supposed. At least Mr. T. W.
Holme of Sedwick stated, upwards of thirty years ago: ‘ There
are two kinds of Fallow Deer in Levens Park; what they style
their old or original stock are the Spotted Deer. There are now
but very few of these left in the park ; the greater number being
the brown [7.¢.“‘black”| Deer.’ The greatest amountof individual

l Kendal Advertiser, December 25, 1863.

Birds.

lxxvi PROLEGOMENA

variation in the colour of our Lakeland Fallow Deer is to be seen
in Mr. Bank’s park at Wigton, probably due to the herd having
been made up by draughts of other herds procured from different
parts of England. The Fallow Deer kept at Muncaster are
chiefly of a light sandy type, with black tail and conspicuously
white hind quarters. Those kept at Dallam Tower are most
conspicuously spotted.

With regard to white and pied varieties of birds, those
enumerated in the Birds of Cumberland would cover most of the
abnormities procured in Lakeland, since these tend to recur
again and again. Among certain species leucotism is almost
to be termed common: the House Sparrow, Starling, and Rook
are instances. Genuine albinism on the other hand is extremely
uncommon. Last year Mr. H. E. Rawson found two White
Willow Wrens in a nest in his garden at Windermere. ‘These
were true albinos, with eyes ‘like rubies.’ Similarly, Mr. C.
W. Smith has written to inform me that, a few years since,
he took two albino House Sparrows from a nest in a haystack
and reared them. The interest commonly attached to white
examples of the Raven dates from classical times. Johannes
Caius supplies the first mention of white Ravens in Lakeland :
‘Anno domini, 1548, Augusto mense, corvos duos candidos ex
eodem nido vidi et contrectavi istic in Cumbria nostre Britannie,
apud ejusdem provinciz comitem nativos, atque ita ad aucupium
factos ut accipitres. Nam et brachio falconarii quiete insidere,
et soluti ad ejus vocem atque signum vel e longinquo quam
celerrime advolare docti errant.’+ Sandford’s record of a
white Raven at Ravenglass may be compared with the fore-
going, as well as John Evelyn’s remark on the white Raven—
‘bred in Cumberland ’—which he saw in London.? White game
birds have often been noticed. The Red Grouse is occasionally
much pied or variegated. A female bird which Leslie received
from Alston was shown to me on October 13, 1888. Two of
the primaries in each wing were pure white, as was the right
side of the breast. The underwing coverts were chiefly white.
The Carlisle Patriot of August 27, 1858 furnishes the following

1 De rariorum animalium et avium stirpibus.
2 Cf. Birds of Cumberland, p. 60.

VARIATION OF COLOUR IN ANIMALS Ixxvil

note: ‘A fine specimen of the white grouse was shot on Monday
by Mr. John Hasell of Dalemain. It has been sent to Mr.
Hope of Penrith to be stuffed.’ Cooper, the head keeper on
Lord Hothfield’s Appleby estate, assures me that the brace of
nearly white Grouse, mottled with brown, recorded (P. Z. S.,
1884, p. 45) as shot on his master’s ground in 1883, in his
opinion bore in flight a considerable resemblance to Ptarmigan.
A bird considered at the time to be a Ptarmigan, and perhaps
the last of the race, was shot on Roman Fell early in the present
century by an ancestor of my friend the Rev. J. Wharton. It
is possible that this was a similar variety of the Red Grouse to
that last named. fPartridges with white horse shoes are far
from uncommon in Lakeland. The ‘blue’ Partridge, with
pale buff head, is rarer than the last, but I have examined local
examples from both the north and the centre of Lakeland. The
gamekeeper at Levens possesses a curious Black Cock. The
tail feathers and the tips of the wings are speckled with white,
so distributed as to suggest that the bird had been powdered
with flour. The Waders are generally true to the colour of the
species that they represent, but the Lapwing has a tendency to
develop pied flight feathers. Mr. Richard Mann kindly gave
me a prettily-pied Peewit, which had been picked up dead in
one of the fields near Allonby. The head unfortunately was
useless. A pretty variety of the Woodcock, which Dr. Heysham
obtained on October 8, 1786, was of ‘a fine ash colour, with
frequent bars of very delicate rufous.’ A loose note of his son
records that a cream-coloured Common Snipe was shot near
Carlisle in the autumn of 1847, and stuffed for Mr. Losh of
Woodside. A very pretty bird which exhibited the usual
markings of this species on a sandy ground, was shot near
Stapleton, November 7, 1888. Cooper, the obliging and
observant head keeper at Appleby, assured me that a white
Jack Snipe was repeatedly seen on a moor in that neighbour-
hood in the early winter of 1890. He tried hard to secure it
for his master, but it managed to escape destruction. I once
bought a Snipe in Carlisle market, which was quite as dark as
some of the reputed examples of the variety known as Sabine’s
Snipe, though not a typical specimen of that rare form.

Reptiles.

Ixxviil PROLEGOMENA

The only local reptile that seems to show a tendency in the
direction of variation is the Common Viper. Most of the
Lakeland Vipers are grey or brown in ground colour, regardless
of their sex. The only instance at present known to me of
the capture of a ‘red’ individual within our limits, relates to
a Viper which Joseph Boadle presented to the Whitehaven
Museum. ‘Instead of being grey and black, it is a dull ferru-
ginous red, and the zigzag markings are a dark mahogany
colour.’! This animal had been caught near Rig House, Dean,
West Cumberland. The late Mr. Kirkby of Ulverston once
met with the very remarkable Viper here figured. He showed

VARIETY OF THE COMMON VIPER.

it to me a short time before his death. It was taken with his
own hands in the neighbourhood of Ulverston, where he lived
so long. It was unique to his experience. The ground colour
of this snake is uniformly olive grey. The curious feature is
that the usual zigzag dorsal pattern is entirely absent, and has
been replaced by the even, ribbon-like black band depicted in
the woodcut, which has been drawn from a photograph of the

specimen.
1 Whitehaven Times, December 8, 1874.

'

HY BRD Blk Ds,

HYBRIDISATION among birds has not hitherto received much
attention from British ornithologists. This may, perhaps, be
accounted for by the fact that cross-breeding is extremely
rare among wild birds. The females of any given species will
often ostensibly make up a love-match with males of another
species in confinement, but they seldom permit such males to
perform the functions of generation even under strictly artificial
conditions, and if at all, generally in response to the challenge
of males of their own kind. It is obvious that if birds are
reluctant to accept strange mates in captivity, they are still less
likely to choose unnatural loves in a state of freedom. Nor
should it be forgotten that the eggs of birds of different species
mated together usually prove sterile, while cross-bred young are
well known to be extremely delicate during their earlier stages
of development. There is one story of a Blackbird and Song
Thrush having paired and reared hybrid young, that specially
relates to Lakeland ; but, in the absence of evidence to show that
the female bird was properly identified, it does not seem desir-
able to cite it here. That the Goldfinch, Linnet, and Greenfinch
are, all of them, given to occasional cross matches in a wild
state, no one can dispute. Two male hybrids between the
Goldfinch and Linnet were caught near Carlisle in November
1885, not, indeed, together, but only about twelve miles apart.
One of them lived for several years in the possession of the late
James Fell, on whose death his widow sold it to a bird-fancier.
The other was purchased from the birdcatcher by John Addison
of Denton Holme, Carlisle. He gave £1 for it, and won some
prizes by its exhibition before he parted with it. They both
sang lustily.

lxxx PROLEGOMENA

Mr. D. L. Thorpe lately acquired a hybrid between the Gold-
finch and Greenfinch, caught near Carlisle in the autumn of
1891. This wears the usual plumage of such female hybrids,
and tried to build a nest in the spring of 1892. A much rarer.

_hybrid than any of those mentioned hitherto is that resulting
from the union of a male House Sparrow and a female Tree
Sparrow. On two different occasions I have myself seen wild
birds which presented all the appearance of having been bred
from a male Tree Sparrow and female House Sparrow. In
coloration they closely corresponded with a Sparrow which
was living in an aviary at Norwich in August 1887. Its owner,
Mr. Otty, assured me that it had been reared in his aviary from
the union of a male Tree Sparrow and a female House Sparrow,
a statement which its plumage fully indorsed. This bird, a
male, had the crown red ; occiput tinged with lead grey; cheeks
greyish white, centred with dusky black. The black gorget
was more extended than is usual in the Tree Sparrow.t In
general coloration this bird bore most resemblance to the Tree
Sparrow, while in size and shape it agreed closely with the
House Sparrow. Its back appeared to be of the same colour as
that of the House Sparrow. Its actions were much clumsier
than those of a Tree Sparrow. These remarks may appear
somewhat irrelevant here, but they have been introduced that the
reader may be the better able to judge of a male hybrid between
the House Sparrow and the female Tree Sparrow.{ During the
summer of 1891 a cock House Sparrow mated with a hen Tree
Sparrow at Aiglegill, where the two species frequently meet in
the farmyard. They built a nest, but were disturbed and left.
Presumably they bred somewhere in the neighbourhood. At
all events a male hybrid Sparrow appeared at Aiglegill early in
the spring of 1892. It was closely observed by Mr. R. Mann,
with whom I had often discussed the question of such hybrids.
In its actions it appeared to be a Tree Sparrow. After a few
days of observation the bird was shot, and shown to me. After
carefully comparing the specimen with examples of the House
and Tree Sparrow, I felt it quite impossible to resist the force

1 I took down a rough description of this bird as it flew about the
aviary, but had not the advantage of holding it in my hand.

HYBRID BIRDS | lxxxl

of Mr. Richard Mann’s opinion that it was a male hybrid
between the cock House Sparrow and female Tree Sparrow,
a@ view in which Mr. Johnson and Mr. Thorpe concurred.
Knowing by experience how readily my friends in Lakeland
accept my opinion on avian questions as final, I judged it best
to secure an outside criticism, and therefore despatched
‘Phillip Sparrow’ to my old friend Mr. O. V. Aplin, whom I
knew shared my own strong interest in the hybridity of birds.
Mr. Aplin replied on the 24th of May 1892: ‘The hybrid
Sparrow arrived safely. I have compared it with a series of
skins of both species, and have made the following notes upon
it. The beak is that of P. domesticus, but is a little smaller.
Head intermediate in shape, and of the size of that of P. mon-
tanus. Whole size rather shorter than that of P. domesticus.
Markings of head of the pattern of P. domesticus, but quite
distinct in colour, and quite peculiar to itself. Nape strangely
grey, mixed across the narrow part with tan. Whole upper
parts curiously cold in tint ; unlike either species in this respect.
The mantle most nearly resembles that of P. montanus, lower
back and upper tail coverts even greyer than P. domesticus,
which in turn is greyer there than in P. montanus. As to the
wings, the brown edging of the hybrid’s quills is paler and
colder than either. Small coverts have the large amount of
white seen in P. domesticus, and want the exposed black seen
in P. montanus. The greater coverts want the white tips
which make a second white line across the wing of P. montanus.
The black on the chin and throat barely exceeds in amount that
of P. montanus. It is brownish and poor in quality ; and it is
considerably less extensive than in P. domesticus, and does not
extend down to the upper breast or spread out below, as it does
in P. domesticus. I am certainly of opinion that the bird is a
hybrid between Passer domesticus and P. montanus, and a most
interesting specimen.’ | The comparative scarcity of the Hooded
Crow within the limits of Lakeland renders the occurrence of
hybrids between this well-marked species and the Carrion Crow
an uncommon event. The only two examples of cross-bred
Hoodies that have come under my notice in this part of
England have already been recorded. One of the two, which

f

lxxxll PROLEGOMENA

shows a preponderance of Hoodie blood, was shot in Wastwater.?
Reports of hybrids between the Common and Red-legged
Partridges reached me from the north of Cumberland, but were
not authenticated by the necessary production of at least one
specimen of the supposed cross. A male hybrid between the
Red and Black Grouse has already been recorded from Cumber-
land.?. A similar bird was reported to me as having been killed
on the Crossfell range in 1887, but it is said to have been too
hard shot for preservation.2 The younger Kirkby of Ulverston
received for preservation a local example of the hybrid between
the Pheasant aud Black Grouse in 1887.

No instances of hybridisation among any species of Wild-
fowl have as yet come to light in Lakeland as regards free
birds. It may be opportune, however, to remark that two
Canada Ganders, kept at Moorthwaite, paired with domestic
Geese in the spring of 1889. The eggs resulting from this
cross proved fertile, but the hybrid offspring, while still small,
were killed by rats.

1 Birds of Cumberland, p. 58.

2 Ib. cit., p. 124.

3 If Lakeland sportsmen would take the trouble to look out for hybrid

Grouse, it is quite possible that this cross might prove to be less exces-
sively rare than has hitherto been conjectured.

BIRD FOW LING

Devices for snaring various species of Wildfowl have probably
employed the ingenuity of the native Lakelanders since pre-
historic times. I have not, however, met with an earlier refer-
ence to the subject than that supplied by one of the Pipe-Rolls
of King John. In this we find notified a payment to William
the Fowler (‘ Willo aucupi’), due as his wages, and for the keep
of his dogs. Mr. William Timperon, a living example of the
fine type of yeomen for which Cumberland is so justly celebrated,
and now on the verge of completing his seventy-eighth year,
tells me that he perfectly remembers the time when it was con-
sidered quite a correct proceeding to net the Partridges which
the dogs had found in the stubble fields. Any that escaped the
net might be shot, but there were few men who shot flying birds
in his youth. It seems not unlikely that ‘Will the Fowler’
. was retained to render such service as that just indicated. The
poorer folk could not perhaps always afford nets, and were wont
to employ their winter evenings in making horsehair nooses.
The manipulation of these varied. The country lads were in the
habit of catching small birds with the ‘Guelder.’ The ‘Guelder’
simply consists of a few cross-strings run across a hoop or a bent
stick, such as that shown in the accompanying woodcut. The
cross-strings served to secure numerous nooses of horsehair.
When a fall of snow induced the Linnets, Larks, Snow Buntings,
and other small birds to gather in the farmyards in search of
food and shelter, the moment for employing the ‘Guelder’ had
arrived. Accordingly, a space was swept clear of snow, and a
few handfuls of grain were thrown down. The ‘Guelder’ was
placed on the ground above the grain, and the birds noosed
themselves in their endeavours to reach the corn below. The
practice of eating the small birds thus secured was general two

lxxxiv PROLEGOMENA

hundred years ago, and until recently it still prevailed in the
neighbourhood of Allonby. Small birds were also taken with
the riddle, with trap-cages, with bat-fowling nets, and with bird-
lime. Clap-nets, on the other hand, are a comparatively recent
innovation. The method generally employed for using bird-
lime has hitherto been to place the prepared twigs (tied around
the base with dry twigs) on the tops of the hedges, at various
distances from the caged call-birds. Some Whitehaven bird-
catchers employ dummy Linnets to attract the wild birds.

G =< —“<
ZS yy

) -
a +, SSS

THE ‘ GUELDER.’

These roughly-stuffed dummies answer much the same purpose
as the ‘stale’ or stuffed Chaffinch used by the Club Row bird-
catchers when pursuing their favourite pastime of ‘ pegging’ for
Chaffinches. The difference is, that while the stuffed Chaffinch
is an object of animosity to the wild bird, the stuffed Linnets
only encourage the live birds to join their company on the lime
twigs. The shy habits of Wildfowl necessitate the use of
greater craft in their capture than is required for the destruction
of unsuspicious dickey birds. Our country histories are
uniformly silent upon the fascinating subject of duck decoys.
Whether this method of fowling was ever extensively employed
on the numerous sheets of inland water which supply the
natural title of this work, is more than I can say. Recent

BIRD FOWLING lxxxv

inquiries have only brought to light the fact that decoys existed
at Muncaster Castle, and at Lowther Castle, probably as lately as
the close of the eighteenth century. The names are all that
now linger, but some of the stakes of the Lowther decoy were
still standing in the water a few years ago. The decoy pond at
Lowther no doubt attracted the Wildfowl of Haweswater and
those of the Eden valley. The decoy pond at Muncaster must
at one time have proved fatal to many of the Wigeon that
annually haunt the rivers which discharge the over-flowing
waters of the becks and springs of the mountains into the Irish
Sea at Ravenglass. The original decoy pond at Muncaster is
now grown over with vegetation. Tall trees, not less than a
century old, have rooted in the basin of the former lakelet. A
casual inspection suffices to show that once upon a time the
accumulated waters of this decoy burst the dam which pent
them in, and pouring away to the low grounds, left the decoy a
natural hollow watered by a little stream. Judging that this
disaster was fatal to {the success of the decoy, the lord of
Muncaster constructed a smaller sheet of water, and there his
new ‘pipe’ was laid. This held water, but it must have been
too small for practical purposes, and local tradition affirms that
it was recognised to be a failure. In the neighbourhood of
Allonby a large number of Wild Duck used to be taken in the
‘wile,’ represented in the following woodcut. <A quiet, slow-
running watercourse was generally chosen for the operations of
the country folks who used ‘wiles,’ a brook that possessed
sufficient depth of water to enable the Ducks to feed with their
heads beneath the surface. The ‘cross-piece’ of the ‘ wile’ was
forced into the bank side on a level with the water. The horse-
hair nooses, shown in the diagram, were then arranged in such
a manner that they floated on the water, or at least hung over
it. A few handfuls of wheat or barley were then scattered
on the mud immediately beneath the ‘wile.’ It was in the
endeavour to reach the grain that the Ducks were caught. The
tall peg shewn upon the bank was driven firmly into the ground,
in order to anticipate the contingency of a noosed Duck flying
away with a ‘wile. Mr. Richard Mann, from whom I had
first the pleasure of hearing of this method of fowling, tells me

Ixxxvi PROLEGOMENA

that the practice of setting ‘wiles’ for Ducks became obsolete
about the year 1865, at least in the neighbourhood of Allonby.
The only ‘ wile’ that he ever himself set, caught a Wigeon, but
it proved to be a pinioned bird which had escaped from his own
farm. His relative, Mr. William Timperon, assures me that he
caught many Ducks in ‘wiles’ set on the ‘runners’ of the mosses.
He enjoys the pleasure of reciting how he caught a loafing
fellow in the act of stealing Ducks out of his own snares, with
the result that the offender was promptly soused in the beck.
This incident happened fifty years ago. The pranks of such

THE ‘ WILE.’

light-fingered gentlemen were generally frustrated by the custom
of marking every ‘wile’ with the initials of its owner.
Allusion has already been made to the practice of snaring
Woodcock, as described by Pennant in 1772 (see p. 371).
When staying at Rusland Hall, I had the pleasure of hearing
a description of the practical working of the ‘sprint’ used in
Lakeland, from the lips of Richard Holme, gamekeeper to Mr.

BIRD FOWLING Ixxxvili

Archibald. Mr. C. F. Archibald has favoured me with a com-
pletely equipped sample of the ‘sprint’ made by Richard
Holme, together with a minute description of the working of
the trap. He says also that the ‘sprints’ are (or were) set on
moonlight nights, on such spots as the birds are known to feed.
In setting ‘sprints’ for Woodcock, a ‘walk’ is formed of rough
stones, making a barrier a few inches high, and the snare is
arranged ina gap. Woodcock object to walking over the stones,
and follow them alongside until they find an opening: they are
therefore easily conducted to the desired spot. Richard Holme

THE ‘ SPRINT.’

used to set scores of sprints when a boy ; the prices he obtained
in Ulverston were threepence for a ‘Nanny’ Snipe, and three
halfpence for a‘ Jack.’ He has himself taken an old Black
Cock out of a ‘sprint,’ and has known a Foumart to be captured
in the same manner. This last was caught by the hind leg,
and so strung up, that it could just reach the ground. It had
scratched up a heap of earth like a mole-hill in its struggles to
escape. Richard Holme has known the Wood Pigeon to be
taken in considerable numbers in ‘sprints, but Woodcock and
Snipe are the birds for which the ‘sprint’ is most commonly set.

Residents at Kendal and other towns near Morecambe Bay
tell me that they occasionally see considerable numbers of
Common Scoters, and a few Scaups also, hawked for sale
through their scats. These are the birds taken upon the cockle-
beds in nets suspended on small stakes, hung some fifteen inches

lxxxvill PROLEGOMENA

above the sands. They have been figured by my friend, Mr.
F. §. Mitchell, in the Birds of Lancashire (see p. 151). Neither
Mr. Mitchell nor I have seen them at work. The fact is that
they are only used occasionally, and then only in the winter
months. But they have been described to me by the Flook-
burgh fowlers, and no fault can be found with Mr. Mitchell’s
account. The same remark applies to the Flight-nets used upon
the north coast of Lancashire for taking Oyster-catchers,
Dunlins, and other seafaring birds. Flight-nets have never
taken a proper footing on the Cumbrian coast. They were used
for a few years at Haverigg, near Millom, whence a few Terns,
which had meshed themselves in the nets, were sent to me.
The last time that I inquired about them, I was told that their
owner was dead. On Walney Island such nets were used by
Troughton, who caught great numbers of Oyster-catchers. This
species, together with Knots, Peewits, and Dunlin, constitutes a
large proportion of the birds netted by the Flookburgh fowlers.
I have seen these nets at work likewise on the shores of the
Scottish Solway, but the idea of using them was introduced
from Lancashire, I believe; at all events, it had a foreign
origin.

Last, but not least in interest, allusion must here be made to
the obsolete custom of capturing Guillemots and Razorbills in
nets, while the birds perched in rows upon the ledges and
pinnacles of the Sandwith precipices: ‘ And Ther is fowles ther
builds in the St. Bees Rock: it is called: these fowles as bigg
and swift of wing as duck and mallard: And builds in the Rock
they hangs over the see: and They Let downe a broad nett from
the Topp of the Rock And frights The fowles of ther nests, and
the netts cacth them: They cannot flye when they are half a
mile from the sea.’ There does not appear to be any
documentary evidence that Guillemots have been netted at their
breeding stations on any other part of the British coasts. The
only notice of the kind that I have as yet been able to dis-
cover appeared in an unsigned article, entitled ‘A Fortnight in
Faroe,’ contributed to No. lxxx. of the Worth British Review. The
writer was evidently an ornithologist, and his essay contains

2 Sandford ms., p. 18.

BIRD FOWLING lxxxix

several references to the employment of nets for capturing
Guillemots and Puffins at the Faroes. Thus, for example:
‘Sometimes four men will go in a boat under the cliffs, where
the young birds [Common Guillemots] who have not yet begun
to breed, sit on the lower ledges, and then with nets at the end
of long poles, two of the crew catch the birds, either as they sit
or as they fly past.’

INTRODUCED SPECIES

Mammals. ALTHOUGH several species of Mammals have become extinct in

Birds.

Lakeland during the last hundred years, it does not appear that
a single species has been successfully acclimatised. Indeed, the
Fallow Deer appears to be the only quadruped that we can
claim with positive assurance as having been introduced into
Lakeland, since the heavy tramp of the Roman legion ceased to
awake reverberating echoes among the crags which crown our
mountain precipices. There is some reason, however, to suppose
that Lepus variabilis has been turned down in Lakeland. The
late Jerry Smith assured me that General Wyndham turned
down some blue hares on Skiddaw. It may well be, that this, or
some similar experiment, gave rise to Murray’s statement that
the animal in question ‘is sometimes found [in the south of
Scotland and] even in Cumberland.’! The Romans might very
well have introduced the Fat Dormouse (Myoxus glis) into our
coverts, just as they acclimatised Helix pomatia at many of their
British stations ; but they seem to have had too serious fighting
in Northern Britain to spend much time on the pleasures of the
table.

Several attempts have been made to introduce American.
species of birds into Lakeland. For example, a consignment of
three hundred eggs of the Pinnated Grouse (Cupidonia cupido)
reached Liverpool from the States of Ohio and Illinois in June
1874. Some of these are said to have been sent to the late Mr.
Jackson Gillbanks of Whitefield House, near Ireby, as well as to
the then Lord Bishop of Carlisle.? There does not at present seem
to be any information regarding the fate of these eggs, but we
must conclude that the experiment proved a failure. The Vir-

1 Geographical Distribution of Mammals, p. 252.
2 Whitehaven News, July 2, 1874.

INTRODUCED SPECIES xcl

ginia Quail (Oriyx virginianus) has been shot in Cumberland in
a couple of instances, near Carlisle and near Allonby. I have
examined both specimens, and they appeared to be in adult
plumage. It is not known who turned them down. Possibly
the late Mr. Jackson Gillbanks may have attempted to introduce
them. The late Sir F. Graham, Bart., obtained Scotch eggs of
the Capercaillie (Tetrao urogallus) in more than one season.
Several young birds were reared, but they never established
their race in the Netherby coverts. One fine male lived for
some time in the neighbourhood of Longtown, where he was
well known to the public from his fearlessness. The late Jerry
Smith told Mr. Senhouse and myself that he had heard old men
say, when he was a boy, that the Capercaillie had once upon a
time inhabited the pine forests which clad the naked mountains
of Lakeland before so many trees were cut down for shipbuilding
and for charcoal-burning. It is by no means unlikely that bones
of this species may yet be discovered among the animal remains
which lie hidden in the fissures of the limestone rocks of West-
morland. The Purple Gallinule (Porphyrio ceruleus) appears to
have been shot at Grange in September 1876, and the proba-
bility is that this bird had been artificially introduced. The
specimen was shot by a man named Allen, who afterwards died
in America. Mr. E. T. Baldwin investigated the history of the
bird a few months after it had been killed. To his thoughtful
kindness I owe the opportunity of quoting the accounts of it
furnished by the younger Kirkby, who mounted the bird, and
by Allen, who killed it. James Kirkby states in his letter of
August 2, 1877, that ‘there was not any appearance of [its
having been] an escaped bird, it seemed to be in full plumage
(of a very dark purple), the bulk of the bird would be about the
size (sic) of a large coot, the beak and forehead being of a bright
crimson, the legs very long. Writing from Castlehead Lodge,
near Grange, on the 8th of August 1877, the keeper, Allen, in-
formed Mr. Baldwin that he believed his bird ‘to be called the
Sultana bird or Hyacinthi Gallinule, a native of South Africa.’
He saw it frequently for a month before he shot it. The first
time that he noticed the Gallinule, ‘it was in Company with a
very large Covey of Partridges in the stubbles. When at a dis-

Reptiles.

XCil PROLEGOMENA

tance I first thought them Pheasons, and he looking like the old
Cock among them, but as soon as I came nearer to them the Parté.
took wing into the turnips, and he run some distance from me,
and then flew Across two fields into the reeds in the old pool
where the river Winster had formerly run. He frequently was
with the same party, but always made for the Reeds when dis-
turbd ; it has no marks whatever to indicate that it had ever
been in confinement, as the man that stuft it and myself
examined it minutely, legs being free from any mark, and
feathers all sound and fine glossy plumage in the various Colours.
At the time I shot it, I was not expecting or looking for it,
but it Arose in the reeds at A long distance, about fifty yards
off, when I made a very quick shot and killd it dead, one shot
having enterd back of head and coming out at the eye. I have
the bird still in my possession and [it] may be inspected by any
that have the curiosity to do so.’ It would be interesting to
know the present whereabouts of this Porphyrio. Both Mr.
Gurney and myself have endeavoured to trace it, but without
success, up to date. The Egyptian Goose (Chenalopex egyptiaca)
and the Canada Goose (Bernicla canadensis) have occasionally
been shot in Lakeland. I am not aware that the former species
has become established as a breeding species within our faunal
area. The Canada Goose may perhaps be considered to have
become acclimatised. Mr. H. E. Rawson kindly tells me that
two pairs of this bird breed every year upon Rydal Water.
There are many nooks and corners in Lakeland where such
species as the Gadwall, the Pochard, and Tufted Duck might
breed in peace and security, such as Seathwaite and neighbour-
ing tarns, if our local proprietors possessed sufficient interest in
natural history to introduce a few pairs of pinioned birds. The
fact that a pair of pinioned Pintail bred for several years at
Ambleside should itself encourage landed residents to show some
enterprise, both for the sake of those who have developed a
capacity for enjoying the patient study of wild birds, and for
the sake of their own rough shooting.

In the summer of 1886 a fine Lizard of Ethiopian origin was
captured on the edge of a heath to the north of Carlisle, and taken
to Mr. Parker, the chemist of Rickergate. Having no knowledge

INTRODUCED SPECIES Xclll

of any but the European Reptiles, I took the specimen to Mr.
Boulanger of the Natural History Museum, South Kensington,
who readily identified it as Pseudocordylus microlepidotus, a native
of the interior of South Africa. At that time this species was so
rare in European museums, that its occurrence as a waif in Lake-
land would have been thought extremely improbable. There can
be no doubt, however, that it had been intentionally imported
alive, and that it had escaped from some travelling show. On
the other hand, the introduction into our midst of Gecko mauri-
tanicus, was a pure accident. It had dropped into a box of oranges
in the packing-shed, had been overlooked, and travelled safely to
Carlisle, where it was discovered in full health and vigour. Mr.
William Duckworth, whose interest in zoological matters has so
materially assisted local progress, secured the Gecko as a specimen,
and sent it up to me for determination.

The introduction of fishes into new localities is of such great
importance, and, moreover, occurs so very frequently, that
angling associations as well as private owners of fisheries
should endeavour to record their operations in print as often as
possible. Undoubtedly, the most interesting addition made to
our fish-fauna of late years was the introduction of the Grayling
(Thymallus vulgaris) into the upper waters of the Eden. Par-
ticulars of this will be found at pp. 518,519. Considering the
relative abundance of the Grayling in many Yorkshire streams,
it is a matter for some surprise that this game fish had so long
remained a stranger to the waters of Lakeland.

Fishes.

Mammalia.

Birds.

REVIEW OF THE FAUNA OF LAKELAND.

OUR present knowledge proves that a total number of 421
species of vertebrate animals have at one time or another
occurred within our faunal limits. The Mammals are repre-
sented by six orders and fifty species. They include such
interesting forms as the Auroch (Bos primigenius), the British
Beaver (Castor fiber), and, in particular, the Thick-toothed
Grampus (Pseudorca crassidens), an animal of very considerable
rarity. Of present residents, the Red Deer (Cervus elaphus) not
only survives in a wild state in Martindale, but is also abun-
dantly represented in several of our parks, notably in those of
Muncaster, Crofton, High Moor, and Gowbarrow, in Cumberland,
as well as at Lowther, on the borders of Westmorland. I have
personally inspected both these animals, and most of our park
Fallow Deer (Cervus dama), but was content to accept the
authority of a friend for the existence of Fallow Deer at Naworth.
Let me take this opportunity, then, of apologising for the inad-
vertent mention of Naworth (at p. 71) as the home of Fallow
Deer. That some outlying bucks are still to be found there is
probable, but they are no longer kept in the park, which has
therefore ceased to be a Deer park.

The other localities mentioned (on p. 71) as the home of
Fallow Deer can be implicitly relied upon. As to the micro-
mammals, the Bank Vole (Arvicola glareolus) has so far been
obtained only in the Cumbrian plain. The Dormouse (M/uscar-
dinus avellanarius) is chiefly found in the Lancashire portion of
this region. Thus, in Cartmell, Mr. W. Duckworth finds that
the Dormouse is well known; only last year he himself dis-
covered three nests of this species in the woods near Ayside.

The 262 species of Birds here recorded from Lakeland
represent sixteen orders, in the following proportions :—

REVIEW OF THE FAUNA OF LAKELAND XCV

Passeres, 87 species; Picariz, 11 species; Striges, 7 species ;
Accipitres, 18 species; Steganopodes, 3 species; Herodiones,
8 species; Anseres, 31 species; Columbee, 4 species; Pterocletes,
1 species; Galline, 8 species; Fulicariz, 7 species; Alectorides,
2 species; Limicole, 36 species; Gavise, 20 species; Pygopodes,
13 species; Tubinares, 6 species. But, if the so-called Parrot
Crossbill (Loxia pityopsittacus) and Pallas’s Great Grey Shrike
(Lanius major) are considered good species, our census rises to
264. Lanius major is a good Siberian species, but it is not
easy to decide the parentage of all the intermediate forms of
- these Shrikes which are obtained in Great Britain. The
Spotted Eagle, which was found on Walney Island in 1875, had
been lost sight of for some time, even when Mr. Mitchell
recorded the species on the authority of Mr. Durnford in the
Birds of Lancashire. Myr. Durnford referred the bird to Aquila
nevia in his list of ‘Birds found in the neighbourhood of
Walney Island.’ Mr. Mitchell referred it to Aguila clanga, but
he had never had an opportunity of examining the bird. I
have given a little additional information concerning this rarity,
and provisionally accepted the determination of Mr. Mitchell,
who told me he had corresponded about the bird with Mr.
Durnford. But which form of Spotted Eagle this bird really
represents does not appear to be certainly known. My efforts
to trace it locally have so far proved futile.+

In assigning full specific rank to the Polish Swan (Cygnus
ammutabilis), I have taken up the same position as Yarrell,
Macgillivray, and Dresser. Should any critic think that I have
gone astray in this matter, he will at least admit that I have
erred in good company.

The accompanying cut, which should be compared with the
figure of the sternum of the Mute Swan furnished in Yarrell’s
British Birds (fourth edition, vol. iv. p. 656), has been drawn
from a preparation made by Mr. D. L. Thorpe, and by him
photographed for the use of this work. He kindly lent me his

1 The offer of a reward by advertisement in the local press only resulted
in an Osprey being reported. I have great pleasure in acknowledging
the kind assistance of the Rev. T. Edge Wright, Vicar of Rampside, who
has obligingly supplemented my own inquiries at Barrow by an active
search for this lost bird.

xevl PROLEGOMENA

valued assistance in dissecting the bodies of the two Polish
Swans mentioned on p.252. It appeared to us that both these

examples showed a marked divergence of structure from the

Mute Swan. I allude to the method by which the trachea is

|
=

TRACHEA OF POLISH SWAN.

inserted into the thoracic cavity. The trachea of the Mute
Swan enters the body without any contact with the furculum.
The trachez of the two Polish Swans passed downwards below
the furculum, then turned upwards, and, ascending through the

REVIEW OF THE FAUNA OF LAKELAND xcevll

base of the furculum, soon entered the lungs from below. To
quote the exact language employed by Macgillivray in his
description of the anatomy of the Polish Swan, ‘the trachea,
on reaching the intrafurcular space, forms a slight curve out-
wards, and then directly enters the thorax.’!

It appears to me, that those who decry the validity of the
Polish Swan have yet to explain away the striking cranial
characters of the bird. The fact that Polish Swans have hitherto
visited this country only, as I believe, in small flocks, and at
the winter season, appears to strengthen the position of those
- who incline to regard the Polish Swan as a northern form of
the Mute Swan. That the Mute Swan has produced white off-
spring appears to me to be a fact without any direct bearing
on the validity of the Pole. Species should be founded as far
as possible on real structural characters. It is said that tame
Mute Swans occasionally show some of the external characters
of the Pole. If, as I believe, both the Polish and Mute Swan
owe their origin to one and the same ancestor, it is only natural
to expect that recently-acquired characters should sometimes be
replaced by disused characters and vice versd. This, then, is an
argument for the validity of the Polish Swan. Mr. J. E.
Harting formerly recorded Bonaparte’s Gull (Larus philadelphia)
as having been once obtained ‘on one of the English Lakes.’ *
This statement was founded on the much more indefinite remark
of Yarrell, that such a bird had been killed ‘on one of the lakes
in England.’ Such a bird was apparently killed, as reported
by Yarrell; but at a very great distance from Lakeland. With
regard to the position of the Great White Heron (Ardea alba),
reported as obtained in Cumberland by Dr. Heysham, the ex-
clusion of this species from his catalogue of 1796-7 goes far to
suggest that he had discovered a flaw in its pedigree. When
Mr. J. H. Gurney lately revised the claims of British Great
White Herons, I pointed out to him that in my opinion Dr.
Heysham’s entry of it should be regarded as unsound. The
White-eyed Duck (Puliqula nyroca) must also be removed from

1 British Birds, vol. iv. p. 656.

2 Handbook of British Birds, p. 173.
3 British Birds, third edition, vol. iii. p. 555.

g

Reptiles.

Amphibians.

Fishes.

X¢Vill PROLEGOMENA

the Lakeland list; since it turns out that the gentleman on
whose authority the reputation of the reputed Cumbrian
specimen depended, is the owner of a treacherous memory, and
cannot be implicitly relied upon.

The Reptiles of Lakeland are too few to call for much
criticism, but attention may be drawn to the local distribution
of the Ringed Snake (Tropidonotus natrix). This species, so
abundantly represented in southern England, is fairly numerous
in certain of the woods in the Lancastrian portion of Lakeland ;
nevertheless, it becomes extremely uncommon to the north of
the Lake mountains, which appear to have offered a barrier to
its travelling into the Cumbrian plain from the south-west.

Two species of Newts have been included in the text of this
work. Iam thankful to add that the Palmated Newt (Triton
palmipes) is also present. It appears to be so rare, or at least so
local, that its existence in our midst was only ascertained at the
eleventh hour. On the 15th of June 1892, a young lad named
R. M. Dixon invited me to inspect ‘two efts and a minnow’
which he had just caught ina pool near Carlisle. The ‘ minnow’
was an eleven-spined variety of Gasterosteus pungitius. In the
‘efts,’ I was delighted to recognise my old favourite, Triton
palmipes, male and female. Mr. C. A. Witchell, of Stroud, most
kindly sent me two pairs of Palmate Newts to compare with
the first examples of this pretty little species obtained in Lake-
land. The specimens agreed in all the external characters, but
the Carlisle specimens were the largest and the brightest in
colour. It will be noticed that care has been taken to prove
that the Natterjack Toad (Bufo calamita) exists locally in
Westmorland and Furness, as well as in Cumberland.

The exploration of a marine fauna cannot be adequately
conducted by a naturalist residing forty miles from the open
ocean; but so far as circumstances have permitted me to in-
vestigate our fish fauna, the results are not entirely discourag-
ing. For example, the occurrence of Sciena aquila, Oreynus
germo, and Thynnus pelamys upon any part of the British coasts
would be worth chronicling ; in the present instance, the facts
possess a value of their own, as materially extending the dis-

1 The fishes of Lakeland are represented by 97 species. _

j

REVIEW OF THE FAUNA OF LAKELAND xXc1x

tribution of these species. Perhaps most interest attaches to
the Salmonide of our inland waters. The Vendace (Coregonus
vandesius) is believed to exist only in Bassenthwaite and Der-
wentwater. The late Mr. Braithwaite had the misfortune to
quote Dr. Davy, as saying that he had taken this fish in
Windermere. His slip has been copied by Professor Seeley and
other writers. ‘The Gwyniad or ‘ Schelly’ (Coregonus clupeoides)
is peculiar to Haweswater and Ulleswater ; unless it be true—
as asserted by Braithwaite (and copied without inquiry or
acknowledgment by Dr. Day),—that there are ‘Schellies’ in
Red Tarn on Helvellyn. Should such be the case, they have
probably been artificially introduced by one of the numerous
gentlemen who at one time or another have amused themselves
with experimenting on the local Salmonde. The Charr now
(Salmo alpinus) exists in Windermere, Coniston, Haweswater,
Crummock Water, Buttermere, Ennerdale, Wastwater; but is
believed to be extinct in Ulleswater. There are no Charr in
Derwentwater, though Dr. Day unfortunately records them
from that lake. Nor do they exist in Esthwaite or Bassen-
thwaite, but I believe that they do exist in one or two of the
mountain tarns. The Charr of Haweswater are usually small.
Those of Windermere appear to run the largest. The late
T. C. Heysham alludes to the Charr in a letter sent to the late
Dr. Bell of Cockermouth, February 24, 1852: ‘I am afraid, he
says, ‘your brother M. D., who resides at Keswick, will find
some difficulty in procuring Charr from Derwentwater. I have
never been able to obtain any from this quarter, but as he
resides constantly on the spot he may be more successful. The
largest I have received during the last eight or ten years was
sent to me from Coniston.’ He had previously written to Dr.
Bell on the 15th of the same month: ‘Perhaps you will also
be kind enough to inquire whether there be any chance of
procuring a few Charr from the adjoining lake next summer.
During the last I had occasion to examine some from Ennerdale
Lake, and found them much infested with a species of /iliaria,
and I am rather anxious to ascertain whether this is accidental,
or prevails in Charr in all the lakes.’

CONCLUSION.

BEFoRE taking leave of this fascinating subject, I desire to
express, however inadequately, my warm appreciation of the
good-fellowship with which my brother naturalists in Lakeland
have always sought to strengthen my hands. The names of
Messrs. C. F. Archibald, W. Duckworth, W. Nicol, R. Mann,
and several others occur so often in the text, that they would
hardly perhaps thank me for enlarging on this topic. The fact is,
that I have never failed to secure the assistance of my friends
on any single occasion. On the contrary, I have found them
ever ready to back me up in investigating matters of local
interest. An old college friend, Mr. H. Patricius Senhouse,
M.B.0.U., placed at my disposal more than twenty letters of
the late T. C. Heysham, which carried the observations of that
lamented naturalist down to a much later date than his private
papers. To the liberality of Mr. Harry Arnold I owe the
privilege of having been able to quote the unpublished notes
of that lovable scientist, the late Dr. Gough. I have to thank
my brother clerics in the Diocese of Carlisle for the hearty
welcome which they gave me, to ransack the unpublished
archives of the oldest and most mountainous parishes. The
late beloved Lord Bishop of Carlisle always expressed a warm
interest in my attempts to stir up an interest in zoology in the
different parishes of his diocese. On the last occasion that it
was ever my privilege to meet our deceased friend—in the draw-
ing-room at Bowness vicarage—he remembered my hobby, and
with the bonhommie which ever characterised his relations with
his juniors, offered his spontaneous congratulations on the
addition to our list of the Frigate Petrel; an incident which
seemed to interest him thoroughly, trivial as most persons
would have considered it. Let me take this opportunity of

CONCLUSION Cl

thanking the subscribers to this work for their kindness in
ordering advance copies. The only worrying circumstance
connected with the publication of this book was the difficulty
of beating up subscribers. After addressing eight hundred
circulars with my own hand, the number of copies ordered in
response was so limited that the work might have remained
unpublished, had not such friends as C. F. Archibald and F. P.
Johnson worked hard to get the book taken up by the county
men. I have the greater pleasure in thanking those who, like
Mr. Harvie-Brown, not only encouraged me to persevere in the
face of a discouragement which made me disposed to abjure
the printing press altogether, but themselves subscribed for
supplementary copies. My personal friends have shown me the
kindest possible attention in this uninteresting matter. The
illustrations are not perhaps as successful as they might have
been, but they have the advantage of being based on photographs
taken on purpose for this work! I owe the existence of these last
to the energy of Mr. Thorpe, whose presence in Carlisle during
the printing of this book, has enabled me to obtain the opinion of
a keen local ornithologist on all that I have written. Mr. Thorpe
is much more than a local ornithologist, and his criticism
is always valuable. His devotion to my interests induced him
to carry his cameras over the hill-tops of Lakeland, sometimes
joining Mr. H. E. Rawson and myself in visiting the breeding-
grounds of the rare and decreasing Dotterel—sometimes sliding
down slippery screes of rock in nimble pursuit of the Red Deer,
which lent a deaf ear to all the blandishments of their admirer,
and defied his efforts to take their photographs. The eyries of
the Sea Eagle at Wallow Crag, Haweswater, and Buck Crag,
Martindale, proved difficult to photograph, because, in each
instance, the birds nested in the shadow of a great rock, so
that no gleams of sunlight could reach their gloomy eyrie.
Our artist, Mr. Kinneard, has ventured upon a slight anachronism
in representing the old Eagles in the act of returning to their
eyrie at Buck Crag; the cap of grey cloud, shewn hovering
daintily over the breast of the precipice, is highly characteristic

? The coloured plates of the Isabelline Wheatear and Frigate Petrel are
portraits of specimens unique as British.

Cli PROLEGOMENA

of the locality. The woodcuts of the Prolegomena were drawn
by Miss E. C. Woodward, whose faithfulness in delineating her
subjects deserves a hearty acknowledgment. Nor must I forget
to thank Mr. R. Lydekker, at whose suggestion several of the
figures were drawn, for his very valuable aid. The courtesy
and kindness of my publisher, Mr. William Douglas, have
materially lessened the anxieties inseparable from the issue of
a scientific work.

Having thus discharged my conscience of personal explana-
tions, which could not well be omitted, let me utilise the scanty
space remaining by a brief reference to the past ‘Ornis’ of
Lakeland. It may interest some readers to know that the
Hen Harrier nested regularly on Wedholm Flow down to about
1840. Mr. William Timperon well recollects the days when
the ‘blue glede’ used to try to carry off the wild ducks from
his snares; he himself saw several nests of this Harrier on
Wedholm Flow. He knew the Marsh Harrier, and describes
its plumage, but it never nested in the ‘ English Solway’ to
his knowledge. A more interesting reminiscence attaches to
Kelswick Mire, near Abbey. This locality has long been
valuable arable land, but it was not drained until about 1820.
When William Timperon’s father was born in the farmhouse
which stood beside the Mire, about 1780, the locality was a
natural morass; the home of many a Snipe, and ‘a serious
place for Ducks.’ Here, a pair or two of Bitterns nested every
year. Ona moonlight night you had only to stand at the door
of grandfather Timperon’s house, to hear the ‘bump, bump’ of
this retiring bird. As the summer advanced, the young lads
of the family used to wade out into the reed beds in search of
nests. Sometimes they came across the unfledged brood of
the ‘Miredrum.’ Such an event was hailed as an opportunity
for making the captives ‘ spew paddocks. This interesting con-
summation was obtained by spurting water into the gullets of
their discomforted prizes. Our last reference concerns the Sea
Eagles of Lakeland. The kind and valued assistance of Major
Parkin has at length resulted in my tracing the right foot of
the Sea Eagle killed at Buck Crag, to the possession of Mrs.
Sisson of Clibburn. This good lady recollects Edward Sisson, who

CONCLUSION Clll

shot the Buck Crag Eagle, as being an active elderly man, when
she first met him in 1843. He was vigorous enough to shoot
Wild Duck on Ulleswater with the ponderous muzzle-loader
which now adorns the kitchen ceiling of Mistress Sisson. As
early as 1785 he had been paid a shilling for killing some
- Ravens that haunted the crags of Barton parish. I have reason
to believe that he shot the Buck Crag Eagle between 1793 and
1806. The foot was in his possession at the time of his death
in 1844, and has remained in the
care of the family until now. The
Barton book records a payment on
the death of an Hagle in the same
district in 1736. ‘To William
Lancaster for killing an Eagell,
£0, ls. Od.” In 1750, there is a
still briefer entry, ‘for an Eagle
£0, 1s. Od.’ ‘By the kind help of
Mr. John Birkett, I have ascertained
that Mr. Christopherson purchased
the two other feet of Sea Eagles, now
temporarily in my possession, at the
sale of the Crosthwaite Museum. The
largest of these probably belonged
to the bird sent to Greystoke from
an eyrie near Buttermere (p. 191).1
The other may have belonged to a
male Sea Eagle killed in Borrow-
dale.

With this explanation, I must
furl canvass and let go the anchor.
How far our voyage has been a

: Foot of Sea Eagle, 4 nat. size,
success or failure may safely be left killed at Buek Crag.

to the judgment of a generous and impartial public. J am not
conscious of having neglected my duties in any way. On the

1 The Buttermere Sea Eagles nested ona shelf of rock in the centre of
a great mural precipice, between High Crag and High Stile. This eyrie
faced east ; that of Buck Crag had a northerly aspect. The Wallow Crag
eyrie faced west.

civ PROLEGOMENA

contrary, every pains has been taken to secure as high a standard
of scientific accuracy, as can fairly be expected from one who
resides in what the late Dean Stanley designated as ‘ the wilds
of Cumberland, and who has often felt the inconvenience of
living at a great distance from town. Information has been
hewn, so to speak, from the native rock. It is only now
and then that the worker hits upon a valuable seam, and
months often elapse before this can be tapped. But so far as
circumstances have permitted, the facts here gathered together
have been uniformly set forth in chronological order. If my
critics pelt me with hard words, I shall plead with Hubert,
‘An your highness were to hang me, a man can but do his
best.’ That I have won, and retained the unswerving allegiance
of the Lakeland naturalists, is in itself a reward for much
fruitless labour. The question of success or failure lies outside
the field of my binoculars.,

‘No ; it must oft fall out
That one whose labour perfects any work
Shall rise from it with eye so worn that he
Of all men least can measure the extent
Of what he has accomplished. He alone,
Who, nothing tasked, is nothing weary too,
May clearly scan the little he effects ;
But we, the bystanders, untouched by toil,
Estimate each aright.’ }

Postscript.—Since the foregoing passage was printed, I have
performed the melancholy task of disinterring the remains of a
Ruddy Sheldrake (Tadorna rutila) from the bottom of a manure
pit. This fine bird had been shot on the river Wampool, July
18, 1892, and thrown away as valueless. It was one of a pair,
and undoubtedly of wild origin.

1 Robert Browning, Poetical Works, vol. iii. p. 67.

Wook First.

MAMMALIA.

- Order CHIROPTERA. Fam. VESPERTILIONID.

BARBASTELLE.

Synotus barbastellus (Schreb.).

THE only examples of this Bat that are known to have
occurred in Lakeland were captured many years ago in the
neighbourhood of Carlisle. They were skinned for the collec-
tion of Mr. T. C. Heysham. At the sale of his specimens they
were purchased by the late Mr. F. Bond, at whose house I had
the pleasure of examining them in March 1886. Their presence
in Cumberland can only be accounted for by the supposition that
they had migrated into Lakeland as summer visitants. There
can be no doubt that some species of Bats migrate seasonally.
In April 1891 I observed a small flight of large-sized Bats
migrating through one of the passes of the Pyrenees. These
animals were not hawking, but kept in a fairly compact body,
and flew with the same definite purposeness that one is accus-
tomed to remark in Swallows pressing forward on the return
journey to their breeding quarters.

LONG-EARED BAT.
Plecotus awritus (L.).

This species is less evenly distributed than the Pipistrelle,
but in some places it is almost as numerous. The late James
Fell informed me that, while following his trade as a slater, he
had on several occasions found large colonies of this species in
the roofs of old buildings.

A

2 VERTEBRATE FAUNA OF LAKELAND

NOCTULE.
Vesperugo noctula (Schreb.).

The Great Bat is so familiar to me as a London resident, and
I have spent so many summer evenings in watching its lofty
flight above the Serpentine, that had it been of general dis-
tribution in Lakeland it could hardly have eluded my search.
Mr. Tom Duckworth, however, almost satisfied himself that
several large Bats, which frequented Bowness on Solway in
July 1888, were Noctules. His careful description of their
flight favours this view, but he did not obtain a specimen. The
Noctule ranges at least as far north as our most southern limits.
Several specimens were taken near Carnforth some few years
ago, and carried to Mr. Murray for identification.

PIP GS PRE en:
Vesperugo pipistrellus (Schreb. ).

This small Bat is fairly common in many parts of Lakeland,
and may often be seen hawking actively on a mild afternoon in
winter. Its numbers certainly fall short of those that one is
accustomed to meet with in the southern counties; yet in some
localities it might be termed tolerably abundant.

DAUBENTON’S BAT.

Vespertilio daubentonii, Leisler.

I have examined a specimen of this Bat, formerly belonging
to Mr. T. C. Heysham, and labelled as captured on the Carlisle
Canal, near Beaumont, in 1852. It was taken in the month of
August. Mr. W. Borrer procured Daubenton’s Bat ‘in July
1863, from Ulswater, where, as I am informed by a friend, as well
as at Grasmere, they do not fly till late at night over the lakes.’ 1
I have never myself procured a fresh specimen, but it must not
be inferred from that circumstance that the species is very rare
in Lakeland. No doubt it is local, but I have on several

1 Zoologist, 1874, p. 4128.

é
%

MAMMALIA 3

occasions seen a species which I supposed to be Daubenton’s
Bat. Thus on November 16, 1889, between half-past four and
half-past five, I watched three Bats at Whin’s Pond, which
appeared to be identical with this species. They flew actively
over the water, frequently dipping, sometimes two or three
times in succession, apparently feeding, their shadows being
reflected as they hovered over the water, and the motion of
their wings recalling the flight of the Common Sandpiper.
They flew uniformly low over the water. Sometimes one would
approach the margin of the lake, but they seemed to obtain
most of their prey in the centre of the lake.

REDDISH-GREY BAT.
Vespertilio nattert, Kuhl.

Early in August 1886 a numerous colony of this Bat was
discovered by Mr. A. Smith to have become established in an
outhouse, in immediate proximity to the chimney of the gas-
works at Castletown. Of three living specimens sent up to me
one happened to escape in a room during the afternoon of its
arrival, and flew restlessly to and fro with a light and petulant
flight. Although, of course, entirely unaccustomed to its new
and strange environment, this bat constantly and with consider-
able dexterity avoided coming into contact with any external
body, until it happened to reach the window-panes, when it
appeared to be spurred with the hope of escape, fluttering
against the panes with all the eagerness of a bird that fails to
understand the substantiality of the transparent barrier opposed
to its desired exit. Subsequently resuming its interrupted
flight, the Bat gyrated freely in all directions, usually flying at
a height of 10 or 12 feet, and wheeling to and fro with enviable
grace and buoyancy.

Mr. Duckworth subsequently observed an example which had
strayed into a room at Castletown, probably one of those previ-
ously evicted from the outhouse.

The species has not been met with since in the neighbour-
hood of Rockliffe, but as its discovery in 1886 was accidental,
the probability is that it still frequents the neighbourhood.

4 VERTEBRATE FAUNA OF LAKELAND

Mr. T. C. Heysham independently obtained a specimen of this
Bat in Cumberland, but it does not seem to have been procured
in Westmorland.

WHISKERED BAT.

Vespertilio mystacinus, Leisl.

The late Mr. Bond showed me a specimen of this Bat from
the collection of T. C. Heysham. The label is in Heysham’s
handwriting, and describes the example as having been found
adhering to the side of a house early in August 1852. Another
specimen was obtained near the Eden, October 11, 1885. A
third was captured near Carlisle on the 26th of September
1889. Mr. Tandy has recorded another specimen, taken near
Penrith. This he brought to me in the first instance.

Order INSHCTIVORA. Fam. HRINACEID.
HEDGEHOG.

Hrinaceus europeus, L.

Fossil remains of the Hedgehog have been found in the
fissures of Helsfel, from which it becomes evident that the small
quadruped which we meet with so frequently in the hay-fields
and on the skirts of our pheasant covers, inhabited its present
haunts when wolves and bears roamed through the virgin
forests which then covered many parts of Lakeland. Whether
the ‘urchin’ was ever the subject of general persecution in our
country parishes has not yet transpired. That it was some-
times outlawed appears from the accounts of Orton parish. In
this wild part of Westmorland the price usually set on the
head of the Hedgehog was twopence. The spelling of the
word varies. Thus we read in 1637, ‘ item for a hedghogg jj d.’
In 1653 an entry occurs, ‘ffor a Eddhogg £00, 00s. 02d,’
In 1660, the Hedgehogs were all lumped together: ‘Item
for Hedghogs £00, 03s. 06d.’ An entry follows in 1661:
‘Disburst by him to Robert Whitehead for 17 hedghoggs
£00, 02s. 10d.” Three entries stand together in 1662: ‘to
Chas. Bland for 9 Hedghoggs £00, 01s. 00d. To ye Clerk son

MAMMALIA D

for 2 Hedgehoges & 5 Pyats £00, 00s. 09d. To myself for
5 Hedghoggs £00, 00s. 10d. Only six of these animals were
killed in 1675, Possibly they were becoming less plentiful.
It is a little surprising that the grown men who killed Wild
Cats and Brocks in precipitous and dangerous places were not
ashamed of slaughtering the harmless Urchin. That such was
actually the case may be instanced by another Orton entry,
for the year 1674: ‘To Anth. Ward 1 brock head 2 hedgehogs
£00, Ols. 04d. Mr. Coward informs me that he has on
several occasions come across remains of the Hedgehog in the
larder of the Foumart. This fact was independently brought to
my notice by Mr. George Dawson, whose experience is precisely
similar.

Order INSECTIVORA. Fam. TALPIDA.
MOLE.
Talpa europea, L.

When we remember the unremitting warfare waged against
the Mole during the autumn and spring months, the persever-
ance with which it contrives to maintain its footing among us
is really astonishing. In former times the destruction of the
Mole was sometimes compassed by private owners. On other
occasions it was accomplished at the public expense. It is to
the first system that we owe the following extract from Lord
William Howard’s accounts for 1612: ‘April... 25. To
George Berton for spreading moale hills, vijs. vjd.’ The
necessity for this outlay, which at the time must have been
considered less trivial than it now appears to us, was no doubt
suggested by the difficulty experienced in cutting hay with the
scythe in fields studded with mole-hills. The accounts of Hawks-
head parish supply an entry which deserves attention as illustrat-
ing the remarks which follow : ‘1795, May. To John Middlefell
for catching Moles at Poor house two years, 2s. Od.’ The
evidence of the authors of the Agricultural Survey of Cumber-
land shows that the practice just instanced prevailed exten-
sively when they wrote, in 1797: ‘For destroying Moles—a
most excellent practice is prevalent here, for every parish to let
the taking of their Moles for a term of years, at a certain yearly

6 VERTEBRATE FAUNA OF LAKELAND

sum, which is raised in the same manner as the parochial
taxes, and does not now exceed a halfpenny an acre; which,
they justly observe, was much cheaper than they could have the
ground scaled for, were the moles not destroyed in this manner.
It is a pity but there was a law to oblige every parish in the
kingdom to destroy their moles in the same manner; which
is done so effectually here, that we scarce ever saw a mole-hill
upon the enclosed grounds of most parts of Cumberland,’ +

Pringle writes regarding Westmorland about the same date:
‘The mole-hills are carefully spread in most parts of the county,
and the fields are cleared of moles at the rate of 3d. an acre,
where they have not been catched before ; 2d. an acre are paid
the second year, and a penny or three-halfpence yearly there-
after.’ 2

William Kitchin, a native of Kentmere, who has followed
the occupation of a mole-catcher among the native dales for the
last thirty-five years, tells me that he is usually paid for his
labour by the farmers, who generally pay by the acreage for
aterm of years. From him I learn that it is still the custom
in some parishes for the residents to club together to pay the
mole-catcher, the rate paid being the same. Kitchin remarks
that though no trapping is required on the higher fells, yet a
few individuals often work their way up far above the dales,
generally travelling along the grassy banks of fell becks. When
snow lies in heavy wreaths and drifts on the highest grounds,
the Moles frequently tunnel their way through the snow in
their endeavours to descend to the lower and more sheltered
regions. Mowdywarp, Moudiwarp, and Mowdywark are
slightly different variations of the title ordinarily applied to
the Mole in different parts of Lakeland.

Order INSECTIVORA. Fam. SORICID.

COMMON SHREW.

Sorex tetragonurus, Herman.
This Shrew is quite common in most parts of Lakeland, but
from its retiring habits is little noticed by the majority of
1 Agricultural Survey of Cumberland, p. 237. 2 1b. cit. p 293.

MAMMALIA a

persons, unless the mortality which so often occurs among
Shrews in autumn happens to arrest their attention. It fre-
quents the banks of the hedges which enclose our hayfields,
and its shrill cry can often be heard on a summer evening.
This small animal appears to be more active in the gloaming
than during the earlier hours of the day.

LESSER SHREW.

Sorex minutus, L.

This Shrew has only been sent to me for identification from
two localities, but as these are wide apart it is quite possible
that the species may be thinly distributed over Lakeland. Mr.
W. Duckworth kindly forwarded a specimen of this Shrew from
Ulverston. Mr. Richard Mann favoured me with another speci-
men, procured near Allonby, in the English Solway district.

WATER SHREW.
Crossopus fodiens (Pallas).

Both the black and the pied forms of this Shrew frequent the
ditches and smaller becks of Lakeland. Judging from my own
experience, I should have supposed that this small mammal
must be comparatively rare, but this is refuted by the fact that
they are often obtained by their natural enemies. House cats
more frequently bring them to notice than any other animal,
but their skulls occurred somewhat numerously in the pellets
of the Barn Owl taken in the neighbourhood of the Eden.
Mr. Bailey of Cummersdale brought to me specimens of both
forms. The last of these was all black, and had been obtained
on the Caldew, its capture being due to the loud cries with
which it challenged attention on a summer evening. Mr. W.
Hodgson, A.L.S., states that whether stationed at Aspatria,
Frizington, or Watermillock, during the last fifty years, he has
ever found them in respectable numbers: ‘They are entirely
aquatic in their habits, and in droughty seasons, such as those
of 1859 and 1868, suffered severely from the drying up of little
rills or water-courses.’ During the summer of 1842 our old
friend had almost daily opportunity of studying a brood of five

8 VERTEBRATE FAUNA OF LAKELAND

young Water Shrews, which with their parents disported in an
artificial pond, formed by damming up a little brook which
flowed through his garden: ‘ When the sun shone out brightly
their glossy submerged coats glistened like frosted silver—
arising, I am informed, from the innumerable bubbles of air
that cover their velvety coats. Their watery gambols strikingly
reminded the spectator of those of a brood of ducklings at play.
Nor is their gamesomeness confined to the water. In 1876,
while botanising on the Frizington Parks estate, I was an inter-
ested spectator of their frolics on ferra firma. Here again the
family consisted of five members, exclusive of the parents. At
the termination of a drain, where it opened into an open
water-course, was the entrance to their burrow. The field was
in grass at the time and depastured with cattle. In a semi-
circle round their hole were a number of grass-covered runs,
artistically arranged with the view apparently of forming a
first-class recreation ground. A number of paths, wide enough
only to accommodate a single Shrew, radiated from the burrow
as a centre, each extending about 7 or 8 feet in length. These
were crossed by parallel semicircular tracks about a foot apart,
the entire ground-plan giving much the idea of a geometric
spider’s web cut in half. Along these tracks, lengthwise and
crosswise indiscriminately, the youngsters chased each other
with almost lightning speed. Should any two of their number
chance to “forest”’ each other, there was a squabble and much
shrill recrimination ensued. When tired with racing, they
would suddenly scuttle into the burrow, only to return ina few
minutes and renew their frantic exertions.’ From Mr. Hodgson’s
description of this Shrew as ‘white beneath, I infer that he
has not met with entirely black specimens. They are no
doubt of less frequent occurrence than the particoloured form,

Order CARNIVORA. Fam. FELIDA,

WitLD, CAs.
Felis catus, L.

Although little has been said in recent years of the former
existence of the Wild Cat in the Lake district, and though ©

1 Trans. Cumberland and Westmorland Assoc., No. xi. pp. 38, 39.

MAMMALIA 9

the memory of its quondam presence no longer survives among
the venerable dalesmen whose grandfathers were the chief
instruments of its extinction, yet fortunately we possess satis-
factory evidence that at one time it was to be found in many
of the wilder portions of Lakeland. It is not probable that
it was ever numerous during the historical period. But that
it ranged over the Scottish borders is no less certain than
that it inhabited the great wastes of eastern Westmorland
and the heart of the Cumbrian mountains. Our first note of
its presence is supplied by an entry among ‘My Lord’s
Parcells’ in Lord William MHoward’s accounts for 1629:
‘Maye... 6. Fora wilde cattskinne iiijs.’ A fox skin was
priced at the same time at three shillings, so that the pelage
of the cat was evidently the scarcest and the most difficult
to procure.

A graphic description of the country between Naworth and
the Scottish march, as seen about the middle of the last century,
appears in the seventh edition of Defoe’s Tour. The writer
observes regarding Christenbury, “It has at present no In-
habitants but Wild Cats, of which there are many, the largest
I ever saw.’! The information thus embodied by Defoe was
first printed in the Gentleman's Magazine. It appeared in the
month of November 1754, and it seems not unlikely that the
tourist paid his visit to Bewcastle in August that year. Wild
Cats do not appear to have been sufficiently numerous to
figure frequently among the victims of church rates. I have
discovered entries of ten Wild Cats in the parish books of
Kendal and Orton, and have little doubt that additional re-
search would increase the number of known entries. The
churchwardens of Orton, near Appleby, gave a shilling apiece
for the heads of Wild Cats. Entries of heads of Cats occur
singly in the years 1649, 1650, 1661, and 1672. In 1670 we
find two separate entries of cats’ heads. The first runs thus:
‘To Robt. Wilson for a wild cat head, £00, 01s. 00d.’ The
next is similar : ‘ To James Ward for a wild catt, £00, Ols. 00d.’
There is a more general entry in 1672: ‘for a wild Cat and
other vermine, £00, 01s. 05d’ The Kendal parish books

' Tour through Great Britain, 7th edition, vol. iii. p. 333.

10 VERTEBRATE FAUNA OF LAKELAND

supply a few similar entries. Thus in 1703, ‘Dec. 27. To
Anthony Wilson for one Wild Catt head, £0, Os. 4d.’ The
next entry that I have detected occurs in a long list of the
‘vermin’ paid for at the Easter vestry meeting of the same
churchwardens, April 1713: ‘and for one Wilde Catt Head,
£0, Os. 4d.’ At Easter 1726 the Wild Cat crops up again:
‘pd. Robt. Rutson for a Wild Cat Head, £0, 0s. 4d.’ These
animals were very probably killed in that eastern portion of
the parish which borders on Shap, forming part of the same
great stretch of moorland as that included in the neighbouring
parish of Orton.

But it must not be supposed that these animals only tenanted
the wastes of the dreary moors that flank our faunal area to
the north and east. They existed in the heart of the Lake
mountains. Clarke states that twelve Wild Cats were killed in
the neighbourhood of Ulleswater at Whitsun-week 1759; while,
in describing the vicinity of Keswick, he alludes to the wooded
rocks, Catt-gill and Catt-cragg, ‘so named I supposed from the
wild catts which inhabit there. The same writer states in
his Appendix: ‘The Wild Cats here are of different sizes,
but all of one colour (grey, with black strokes across the
back); the largest are near the size of a fox, and are the
most fierce and daring animals we have; they seem to be of
the tyger kind, and seize their prey after the same manner ;
they cannot be tamed, their habitation is amongst the rocks or
hollow trees.’ It was of the Windermere district that Pennant
remarked, ‘Wild cats inhabit in too great plenty these woods
and rocks.’ Gilpin made a personal tour through the Lakes
in 1772, and this is what he says : ‘ The thickets among these
mountains (Helvellyn and others adjacent), and indeed many
other parts of the country, are frequented by the Wild Cat,
which Mr. Pennant calls the British tyger, and says it is the
fiercest and most destructive beast we have. He speaks of it
as being three or four times as large as a common cat. We
saw one dead, which had been hunted on the day we saw it;
and it seemed very little inferior, if at all, to the size he men-
tions..! Mr. Housman contributed to Hutchinson’s History of

1 Picturesque Beauty of the Lakes, vol. i. p. 173.

.
,

MAMMALIA tt

Cumberland this note regarding Wastdale, Netherwastdale, and
Eskdale: ‘On the summits of these mountains are many wild
cats, foxes, and martins. Richardson wrote from Ulleswater
in 1793 a note that may or may not imply that the animal
was still abundant, but Dr. Heysham negatives the idea,
manifestly believing that Wild Cats were dying out [1796],
as no doubt they were: ‘very few wild cats are now to be
met with in any of our woods, except those bordering on the
lakes, and even there they are far from being numerous.’ Mr.
Dickinson furnishes another passage: ‘In 1843 the late Mr.
John Walker of Ullock told me that about fifty years before
Joseph Pearson of Ullock, with the aid of his mastiff, killed -
a wild cat in Watern Woods, Loweswater, after a long chase
and severe fight. The cat weighed seventeen pounds. ‘These
animals had been numerous in most of the wooded and rocky
parts of the country ; and had been very destructive to game,
and occasionally to young lambs; and from their great activity
and ferocity were more than a match for any but a very strong
dog, single-handed. Pearson and his dog killed many.’! That
veteran, Mr. W. Hodgson, says, ‘the Wild Cat lingers among
the fells of Cumberland only by tradition. The last I ever
heard of was captured in Great Mell Fell early in the present
century by the famous pack of hounds maintained by the squire
Taylor of Baldhow of that day, from whom I derived my in-
formation more than forty years ago [1885]. ?

The Carlisle Express of March 4th, 1871, states that Walter
Graham, keeper for Mr. Standish of Brackenhill Tower, caught
a Wild Cat in one of his rabbit-traps, upon the 27th of
February that year. It had been ‘viewed’ for years about
Whitesyke, but had always previously escaped. The animal
was stuffed by Mr. Plenderleath of Longtown for Mr. Richard
Wright, a well-known wrestler. I have no faith whatever in
this animal having been a true Wild Cat. Specimens of very
large cats, which had been killed in Patterdale and in other
wild districts, have come under my notice from time to time,
but no one of the number could be referred to Felis catus.

1 Cumbriana, p. 166.
2 Trans. Cumberland and Westmorland Assoc., No. xi. p. 27.

12 VERTEBRATE FAUNA OF LAKELAND

Order CARNIVORA. Fam. CANIDA.

FOX.
Canis vulpes, L.

Westmorland is too mountainous to be a great fox-hunting
country, but the sister county offers good opportunities for sport,
especially in the Cumbrian plain. The anonymous author of an
admirable pamphlet, entitled The Cumberland Foxhounds, tells us
that fox-hunting (in the sense understood, say, in Leicestershire)
dates its inauguration as a Cumbrian sport from the year 1827.
However that may be, there can be no doubt that the Foxes of
our fells have been hunted with such dogs as those of the
Patterdale pack from time immemorial. At one time the
pelage of this animal enjoyed considerable repute. The monks
of Lanercost included among their chartered privileges a tenth
of Fox skins: ‘decimam totius venationis preedicti Roberti de
Vallibus et heredum suorum, tam in carnibus, quam in coriis et
pellibus vulpinis ubicunque per totam terram suam in Cumber-
landa venabuntur.’

A good day’s sport was generally followed by a ‘ jollification ’
at some favourite inn. The country gentlemen recognised the
sport of their poorer neighbours as a useful assistance to their
shepherds. Thus Sir Daniel Fleming includes in his accounts
for May 12, 1673, ‘Item, to some Ambleside men who had
killed a spotted fox, £00, 00s. 06d.’ The same sum was also
forthcoming to the same men in the following year. Similarly,
Lord William Howard’s accounts for 1612: ‘Nov. 27. To Mr.
Skelton’s man caching a fox, vs.’ Perhaps this Fox had proved
to be a Tartar; he may have inflicted some audacious outrage
on the Naworth hen-roosts. At all events the price was a high
one for the beginning of the seventeenth century. The church-
wardens of most of the parishes among our mountains gave an
unstinted support to vulpicide, but the figure set upon a fox’s
head varied in different times, and rose gradually in nearly all

1 Dugdale, Monasticon, vol. vi. p. 237. In the seventeenth and
eighteenth centuries our fell folk were in the habit of gathering. together
from far and near to hunt the ‘ vermin.’

Seen ye ee ee

MAMMALIA 13

the parishes. In the parish of Orton, Westmorland, only a
shilling was given for a fox’s head between 1636 and 1670.
The Cartmell accounts for June 13, 1653, show that half-
a-crown was the rate paid for every Fox whose mask was pro-
duced before the wardens: ‘To Willm Kilner for killinge of foxes,
£0, 10s. Od. P4to Tho. Atkinson and Edwa. Newbie for the
like £0, 2s. 6d. P® for drinke to ye hunters for killinge a foxe,
£0, Os. 6d.’

Some question of the rate of head-money to be given must
have arisen at this vestry meeting, because it supplies a special
“memorandum: ‘A.D. 1653. It is ordered and agreed that
Willm Killner shall paye to the hunters for killinge of foxes
xxj d., and likewise that the Churchwardens shall paye to them
xxilj d. more furth of ye xx® (twenty) M’ke Caste, and that the
hunters shall have vs. for eache olde foxe and for every younge
one xijd.’ Canon Bardsley cites a few entries from the accounts
of Ulverston parish, which prove that five shillings was com-
monly paid for these animals in the next century: ‘1728...
to one ffox head, 5s. 1729. A fox cub, 5s. 1741. Jan. 12,
paid Saml Gawith for ffox heads, 15s. 1742. ffeb. 13, to
Thomas Postlethwaite for killing fox 5s.’ The zeal of the
churchwardens abated at the close of the last century ; but
among various entries in the accounts of the churchwardens of
Dalton in Furness for 1789 we have an item: ‘ Killinge 1 old
fox and 3 young ones, £0, 5s. 6d.’

Numbers of Foxes were killed in the wild dales which Kendal
parish once included in its area. From 1700 to 1718 the price
claimed for a fox head in this part of Westmorland was a
shilling, subsequently it rose to five shillings. Thus at Easter
1732: ‘April 11. Pd. to Leo Cowperthwaite, chaple warden
for Overstaveley, for a fox head, £0, 5s. Od. Pd. James
Garnett for a Cubb hd., £0, 0s. 6d.’

The Keswick men at one time tried cub-hunting for a few
seasons. In 1723 they killed thirteen cubs and only three old
foxes. In 1725 they claimed head-money for twelve cubs and
only one old fox. But they soon found that killing cubs was
unremunerative. The churchwardens of Crosthwaite Church at
this period gave three shillings and fourpence for an old fox,

14 VERTEBRATE FAUNA OF LAKELAND

while a cub was only worth a shilling. Consequently the
entries which follow in succeeding years refer almost exclusively
to full-grown foxes. An analysis of the moneys expended by
the Greystoke churchwardens, upon the encouragement of
vulpicide, shows that the total number of Foxes paid for at
Greystoke, during the fifty years from Easter 1752 to Easter
1802, was ninety-one. ‘This included eleven cubs and eighty
full-grown animals. ‘The moneys expended upon their destruc-
tion during the half-century amounted to £13, 16s. 8d.
Twenty-four of these Foxes, including seven cubs, were paid
for between 1752 and 1762. Twenty-one heads were presented
in the next decade, including those of two cubs, which for some
unexplained reason were disallowed. The numbers killed in
the three decades which follow amounted to fifteen, eleven, and
twenty respectively. The price usually paid was a shilling for
a cub and three shillings and fourpence for an old fox. Thus:
‘{1799] May 15, To Materdale people A fox head, £0, 3s. 4d.’
Nor was the custom of paying for fox heads discontinued at the
end of the century. At Greystoke it only became obsolete in
1856. ‘On entering this church,’ says the Rev. T. Lees, ‘on
Easter Day 1856, I was startled to find the door disfigured by
a grinning fox’s head, and a chaplet of ravens’ heads nailed up.
According to the ancient custom, 3s. 4d. for the cub’s head, and
4d. each for the raven’s heads, were demanded at the vestry the
following week.’! These charges were disallowed for the first
time, on the ground that the keepers who claimed the reward
were paid by their employer to kill vermin, and therefore
were not entitled to a subsidy from church rates. But though
instances of churchwardens continuing to pay head-money

for the Foxes of our fells in our own time are exceptional, —

there can be no doubt either as to the serious losses which
these animals inflicted upon the flock-masters, or the real
necessity for keeping their numbers in check. About sixty
years ago, ‘the shepherds and others, resident at Crosthwaite,
Watermillock, Patterdale, and Martindale, presented a hand-
some silver cup to John Taylor, Esq. of Baldhow, for his
indefatigable exertions in destroying foxes by his excellent pack

1 The Parish Church of St. Andrew, Greystoke, p. 13.

ee ee See a Se

a ee

MAMMALIA 15

of hounds. In the course of the last two years these dogs have
killed fifty-six foxes.’ 4

In some cases it was found necessary to supply the funds
previously expended by the churchwardens from private sub-
scription. In 1847 a society was voluntarily established in
Cartmell ‘ for the express purpose of extirpating all the foxes in that
district. 'The members were staid yeoman and farmers, servants
and young men being declared ineligible. The scale of pay-
ment was £1 for every vixen, and 5s. for dog foxes and for
eubs. Mr. John Atkinson killed five cubs and their mother, for
which service he received £2, 5s. from the newly formed

society.’ ? :

- Almost all that has been said of the vulpicide practised among
the crags of the Lake mountains will seem disagreeable reading
to any south-country fox-hunter, but the truth should be told.
The fact is notorious that animal life is so scarce on our hill-
sides, that unless the Foxes helped themselves to ‘lamb’
occasionally, they could hardly exist. On the other hand,
these animals often make their ‘earths’ in precipitous places,
where the gun and the steel trap must be employed to keep
their numbers in check.

One day last autumn we visited an ancient dame, dwelling
alone in an ivied cottage on a lonely height above Ulleswater
Lake. There she had lived for sixty years, and her only
trouble was the apprehension of a visit from the Fox. When
she lay awake in bed in the still night, she frequently heard his
short, shrill bark, and trembled for the safety of the hen-roost,
which had so often been desolated. ‘The farmers on the lower
grounds are equally loath to lose their fattened geese. Only a
few weeks ago a Fox killed eight geese on one farmstead. So
public opinion maintains the warfare against Reynard as a public
enemy. If the outlaw will afford good sport, he gets fair play,
but when he lies up in a lair among steep recesses of the
weathered cliffs, the dalesman has obviously no choice but to
enforce the reduction of a vulpine family by harsh measures.
Thus it has come about that the people in the dale are

1 Carlisle Journal, January 10, 1829.
2 Carlisle Patriot, May 21, 1847.

16 VERTEBRATE FAUNA OF LAKELAND

strangers to such feelings of mingled regret and pity as those
which once came over me on a moor near Crossfell. We were
tramping along on a fine summer evening, when suddenly a
beautiful red vixen sprang out of the heather close to our feet.
When my terrier dashed off in pursuit, we saw with sorrow that
one of her dainty ‘pads’ had been cruelly crushed in the heavy
iron trap which was dangling from the extremity of the broken
limb. So little does a native of these parts appreciate the
criminality of destroying Foxes in cold blood, that he has no
scruple in advertising the success of the strategy employed for
the safety of the hardy Herdwick sheep, by exposing the
carcasses of his victims to the public view. When the Rey. T. P.
Hartley visited Mardale in 1888, he came across three defunct
Foxes suspended in a row from a small tree, the hind-legs
having been trussed together to improve the artistic effect of
the exhibition. Old sportsmen love to argue about local breeds
of Foxes. Most of the number maintain that the ‘terrier’ Fox
is an animal that lives on the lower grounds. The ‘greyhound’
is, of course, the Fox of the hills. Captain Kinsey Dover, who
long resided at Keswick, used to maintain that the Foxes paid
for by the Crosthwaite churchwardens of bygone days were
‘of what we used to call the “ greyhound ” breed ; they had much
longer legs than the present race, and with no black upon
them; the face was also much longer—in fact, it was larger in
every way than the black-footed Irish one. It is now quite
extinct in this district [1882], and has been for many years
past. I knew the animal well.’

Little has been said of the Foxes which have their earths in
our larger coverts. The individuals which take to life on the
mosses are often troublesome to nesting birds, such as wild
ducks engaged in the duties of incubation. But they afford
grand sport on occasion, not perhaps furnishing such heroic tales
as those which are best recited at the fireside of the shepherd’s
lonely house on Skiddaw, but still affording a lively interest
to those who have the good luck to follow them across

country.
1 Zoologist, 1882, p. 108.

MAMMALIA Vi

Order CARNIVORA. Fam. MUSTELIDA.
PINE MAARTEN.

Martes sylvestris, Nilss.

Although the ‘ Mart’ has long enjoyed a pleasant reputation
among the sportsmen of the Lake mountains, it fell to the lot
of a stranger to be the first to record the existence of this
animal in Westmorland. John Manwood gave his account of
the matter in the year 1598: ‘The Marterne, or Martron, as
some old Foresters, or Woodmen, do call them, being the fowerth
beast of chase, whereof we have no great store in these forests
on this side Trent, but yet in the County of Westmerland in
Martendale there are many.’! The district thus indicated is
appropriately named; not that ‘Marts’ are more numerous in
that dale than in others, but because it is situated in the centre
of the region across which this mountainous species chiefly
roams. Outlying ‘Marts’ are killed from time to time on the
skirts of our faunal area. -A keeper named Solomon killed a
‘Mart’ in Barron Wood in 1880, and sent it to James Fell, at
whose house I examined it some few years afterwards. Mr.
Lindsay was once sent for to kill a ‘ Mart’ which had worried a
sheep near Broughton; he also killed the only ‘Mart’ ever known
to have visited Blackcombe, about the year 1847. Clements of
Tebay showed me a fine specimen killed in 1889, remarking
that he thought it must be ‘the last of the Westmorland Sweet
Marts.’ This Marten had at some previous period lost one of
its feet in a trap. It was killed in a very unromantic way, for,
having found its way into a barn, it was worried by the farmer’s
cur-dog. Other instances might be cited to show that Martens
occasionally appear on low grounds, on mosses, and in woods
at a distance from their usual haunts; but they happen very
seldom. Mr. J. A. Harvie-Brown once wrote of the Marten as
‘not uncommon in the east of Cumberland.’? I am not aware
that any specimen of the Marten has ever been heard of, far less
taken, in that part of Lakeland to which Mr. Harvie-Brown
referred, though Thomas Knox trapped a stray Marten on

1A Treatise of the Forrest Lawes, p. 26,
* Zoologist, 1881, p. 162.
B

18 VERTEBRATE FAUNA OF LAKELAND

Great Barrock Fell, April 1857.1 In prehistoric days the Mart
no doubt enjoyed a much more general distribution ; possibly it
ranged through the forest lands of the Cumbrian plain and the
bottom of the valleys. Its existence in our midst in those early
times has been proved by the discovery of teeth, in a fine state
of preservation, obtained from the fissures of Helsfell. The
‘Marts’ of the present century frequent the high mountains
of Central and Western Lakeland, including Kentmere, Long
Sleddale, Hawswater, Mardale, Martindale, Patterdale, Grasmere,
Kirkstone Pass, in Westmorland; Borrowdale, Eskdale, Enner-
dale, and Wastdale, in Cumberland; Ulpha and Coniston, in
North Lancashire. ‘Marts’ have been hunted in all these
districts, but they appear to have been most numerous for the
last sixty years in Eskdale and Wastdale. ‘Gay smittle ground
is Coniston, quoth old Lindsay; adding, a moment later, that
he thought Ennerdale almost as good.

The Marten is almost compelled to live on the roughest ned
most broken ground that it can find, because on an open, level
plain it could easily be run down even by a fast cur-dog. On
a fine day the Marten is generally to be found sunning itself,
half-hidden among the briars and ling of some lofty crag. The
animal travels almost exclusively by night, when it wanders
considerable distances in search of carrion, upon which it largely
subsists. It is fond of feeding on birds, but, curious to say, the
most attractive bait that can be used for the Marten is fish.
Shepherds sometimes complain of individual Martens worrying
sheep, but it rarely happens that any such loss is inflicted on
the farmers, whose worst enemies are the Foxes. Mr, Lindsay
can vouch only for two cases, within his personal knowledge, of
Martens worrying sheep. In one case the ‘ Mart’ had killed an
old ewe. In the second instance, a ‘ Mart,’ which had worried
two lambs, was hunted and killed in the ‘screes,’ Wastdale.

Daring as are the leaps which these small animals venture to
make when hard pressed by dogs, Mr. Lindsay remembers only
one involuntary fatality. The Marten in question tried to leap
from one ledge to another, but missed its footing and was
dashed to pieces.

1 Carlisle Journal, April 24, 1857.

MAMMALIA 19

The Marten brings forth from two to three young ones in the
month of May. Once, and once only, has Lindsay known this
limit to be exceeded. Four was the number then produced.
He has found the young in holes in the crags on several occa-
sions, not at the end of deep and tortuous passages, as might be
be expected, but ‘ only a laal bit inn—any J found.’

Mr. A. H. Cocks, whose valuable researches into the life-
histories of British quadrupeds are well known, obtained a
litter of three cubs from a Cumberland Marten, after she had
lived six years in his possession.

‘An adult female Pine Marten, sent to me from Cumberland
in May 1876, had for the last two, if not three, years, shared a
cage with a male of the same species, without showing any signs
of breeding, until about eleven P.M. on April 7, 1882, I heard
the unmistakable whimpering or squeaking of young ones pro-
ceeding from one of the bed-boxes in this case; I had fed the
Martens about six o'clock, and feel certain that no young were
then born. I at once shut off the male animal, not knowing
how he might treat the youngsters. On the morning of the
10th I ventured to take out one of the young. It was about
6 inches long, including the tail, which was about, or nearly,
12 inches long, and appeared out of all proportion in so young
an animal. It will, I believe, be a surprise to others, as it
certainly was to me, to learn that this species is at first quite
white; the coat being, of course, fine and short.’} Mr. Cocks
adds that his young Martens were quite full-grown by the
following autumn.

The Marten usually prefers to live on the sunny side of a fell.
Foxes and Martens do not flourish very well on the same
ground. ‘ When foxes is rank, marts is scarce. The dalesmen
only hunt Martens in the winter-time, and generally find the
quarry hiding up ‘in a brossen rock where there is a deal of
heather.’ The ‘foil’ of the Mart is sweet, but all dogs are willing
to follow it. Some dogs will hunt Otters but not ‘Foumarts;’
others will hunt ‘Foumarts’ and not Otters, but as to ‘Marts’
there is no difficulty.

Mr. W. A. Durnford has furnished so picturesque a description

1 Zoologist, 1883, p. 203.

20 VERTEBRATE FAUNA OF LAKELAND

of a ‘Mart’ hunt that no apology need be made for quoting it
im eaxtenso :—

‘The meet, he says, ‘was at Wastdale, one of the grandest
and most secluded valleys in the Lake district. Long before
daybreak we were awakened, at the little inn, by the voice of
the huntsman who had arrived with six couple of hounds, vary-
ing in size from a beagle to a foxhound, together with three
wire-haired terriers. As the mist still hung lke a wet blanket
on the hills, and the day had not yet broken, it was decided
that we should begin by trying our luck on the low ground at
the head of the valley, and thither we accordingly bent our steps.
We proceeded thus for nearly an hour, and though an occasional
whimper from one of the hounds led us to think that something
had passed that way during the night, if it had done so we were
quite unable to hit off its line. Being particularly anxious to
show some sport, the huntsman now resolved to take to the

hills, notwithstanding the mist; and, having received instruc-

tions to keep well together, we commenced the ascent of
Yewbarrow, a mountain rather over 2000 feet in height. It
soon became evident that something was on foot; the hounds
showed evident signs of excitement, eagerly examining every
nook and crevice, and stopping now and again to drink in, as it
were, the scent from all the rocks. Still they seemed at a loss,
until an old dog, which had been steadily hunting at a little
distance from the rest, suddenly commenced to give tongue.
The others made a rush towards him, and the whole pack was
quickly off full ery up the face of the mountain, raising a chorus
which resounded from crag to crag across the valley below, and
was re-echoed again and again from the rugged sides of Scawfell
and the adjoining heights. The object of our early start now
became manifest ; the knowing ones proclaimed that it was a
Mart which we were in pursuit of, and that we were probably
close upon it, having no doubt taken it unawares before it had
returned home from its nocturnal rambles. The hunting now
commenced in earnest—no easy galloping over well-kept pastures,
no awaiting one’s turn to pass through a crowded gate or well-
worn gap, no convenient check at a pleasant covert-side, but
downright hard work, not unaccompanied with the spice of

MAMMALIA 91

danger—at one time clambering on hands and feet up a
perpendicular precipice, at another crawling through a narrow
crevice between two high boulders; now running across a
sea of stones, which gave way at every step and render it
impossible even to think of standing still; now stepping from
ledge to ledge, and trusting one’s life to the sturdy alpenstock
with which each one has armed himself before setting out.
The hounds meantime are clambering up with an agility
which would astonish their relations further south, resembling
a party of squirrels rather than members of the canine race,
as they vie with one another in their anxiety to be to the
fore,

‘About an hour of this sort of work brought us to what was,
comparatively speaking, level ground, and here we for the first
time met with a check. The Mart had considered discretion
the better part of valour, and had taken refuge in a deep crevice
in the face of arock. As the efforts of the terriers were of no
avail, artificial means were now brought into requisition in order
to dislodge the varmint. We all set to work to collect as much
grass as the locality afforded ; the huntsman produced from his
capacious pockets a box of matches, a little gunpowder, and an
old newspaper, and in a few minutes a fire which consisted of
smoke rather than flame was burning as far down the crevice as
the fuel could be thrust. We had not long to wait. All stood
back, and in less than three minutes along dark object was seen
scampering over the rocks above our heads, having escaped out
of a hole a little distance off.1 Away we went again, both
hounds and men more excited than ever, leaping from crag to
crag, and performing acrobatic feats from which any one would
have shrunk in cold blood. The ground now became of a rather
less difficult nature, and we were able, without imminent danger
of destruction, to take a glance at the surrounding scenery. The
rising sun had dispelled the mist, and the atmosphere had by
this time become quite clear, though a few clouds hung on the
summit of the higher peaks. From our elevated station we

1 Tobacco has sometimes been employed as fuel in lieu of grass and
heather. Occasionally the hunters ‘rolled’ the ‘ Mart’ out of its hiding-
place with fragments of rock.

22 VERTEBRATE FAUNA OF LAKELAND

looked across to the rugged face of the Screes, one of the grandest
hills in the district. Beneath us Wastwater lay like a duck-pond,
the cultivated fields at the head of the lake contrasting well with
the dark sides of the surrounding heights. Towering above,
Lingmell, Great Gable, and Scawfell Pikes, seemed to watch
over the scene, while away to the west the waves of the Irish

Sea sparkled under the rays of the morning sun. Close to us 1
a pair of ravens and a buzzard, attracted by our presence, were ;
doubtless wondering who it was that had ventured to invade their .
domain. But it would not do to linger; already the hounds
were out of sight, and nothing but their baying would enable i
us to follow in their track. Another check, this time amongst
a quantity of loose boulders, extending for some hundreds of ‘
yards in each direction. Again the terriers were set to work, 4
and again the ‘ Mart’ continued on his way unharmed. It was, :
however, the beginning of the end. We were now on the sum- é

4

mit of the mountain, and before us extended a grassy plateau,
only here and there broken by fragments of rock. The quarry t
was evidently making for the Pillar Mountain, which stood out
in the distance, a notable stronghold for birds and beasts of
prey, and which, if once reached, would afford a certain protec-
tion. Bravely the little creature raced on, no longer stopping
to take refuge in the rocks, which it knew could not give it ’
shelter, but staking all on its swiftness of foot. On the level .

ground, however, it had no chance, though it managed to head ;
its pursuers for about a mile after leaving the rocks. The actual ‘
circumstances of its death need no description ; in fact, the hounds ‘
alone were present at the critical moment,’ ? t
Such was the royal sport enjoyed by the dalesmen when }
‘Marts’ were more plentiful.2 The hounds still hunt their old \
i

1 Field, 6th December 1879; reprinted in the Zoologist, 1891, pp. 406-
408.

2 It is always pleasurable to draw out a venerable sportsman on the
subject of his darling hobby. I onceasked old Mr. Jackson of Martindale,
then in his eighty-sixth year, whether he had hunted ‘ Marts.’ The face
of the veteran lighted up as he replied : ‘ We oft hunted ‘‘ Sweet Marts”
at different places—they were very common onceover. They were paid
for out of church rate—‘‘ Marts,’”’ Foxes, and Ravens. I can’t mind of
anything but Foxes and ‘‘ Sweet Marts ” and Foumarts of that tribe.’

MAMMALIA 23

ground, and occasionally kill a ‘ Mart’; this, however, is now a

much rarer event than formerly. But 1t must not be imagined

that the hounds ever killed many ‘Marts’ in a season. It was

never so known in Lakeland. Any large figures should be dis-

counted liberally. Lindsay says that he never remembers more

_ than five or six being killed in Eskdale in a single winter, even
when the animal was comparatively plentiful.

An aged native of Boarsdale, who had often hunted ‘ Marts,’
doubted if as many as five or six were ever killed in a season
in Martindale, Patterdale, and the country round. In Wastdale
‘not more than four to six are killed by the hounds each year,’
wrote Dr. Parker rather more than thirteen years ago.

Yet it must not be supposed that Martens are or were obtained
only with the fox-hounds and otter-hounds. The last that was
caught among the crags at the head of Martindale had had the
misfortune to stray into an ordinary steel trap set for rabbits, a
circumstance by no means very rare. Indeed, the keepers whom
the tourists thoughtlessly persuade to procure specimens of the
Marten generally take them in steel traps baited with carrion.
One old method was identical with the species of trap known
a ‘deadfall.’ The animal was of course crushed by the ‘ dead-
fall.’

Fifty years ago a dog ‘ Mart’ fetched 6s. 6d. at Kendal for
the sake of his skin. A bitch fetched 5s. 6d. for the same
purpose. On the other hand, plenty of men about Whitehaven
and elsewhere in the west were at that time only too glad to
purchase live Otters, ‘ Foumarts,’ and ‘ Marts’ for their dogs to
kill, Though the poor ‘ Mart’ could not fight as ferociously as
the Foumart, yet it was considered game enough to show good
sport. Accordingly a ‘ Mart’ that was caught ‘ wick,—the term
applied locally to all‘ vermin ’ caught alive,—readily commanded
ten shillings. The trap, therefore, devised to take the ‘ Mart’
- ‘wick’ was constructed on the same principle as the schoolboy’s
‘brick trap.’ In lieu of bricks the trapper employed three long
flags of nice grey stone, covered by a fourth, and set in the
haunts of the ‘ Mart.’ It was sometimes baited with carrion, or
with a dead bird, but the most guccessful bait was fish. A salt

1 Zoologist, 1879, p. 171.

9A VERTEBRATE FAUNA OF LAKELAND

herring which had been steeped in water was very frequently
employed.

During the last nine years I have conversed with many per-
sons who have hunted ‘ Marts,’ or who had received them from
Lakeland for preservation, but I have met no one who in a
knowledge of ‘ Marts’ could compare with the intimacy of that
keenest and gamest of old hunters, Tommy Lindsay of Eskdale;
accordingly I have drawn fully on his experience. But he begs
me to say that his old friends Cookson and Tommy Dobson are
or were quite as successful hunters as himself, and are equally
qualified to speak authoritatively. The average weight of a dog
‘Mart’ runs from 4 lbs. to 5 Ibs. Itis curious that so interest-
ing aspecies as this Marten should have been ignored by early
local writers. Dr. Heysham only tells us that ‘the Martin is
much less frequent than the foulmart. It inhabits woods, and
its smell is rather agreeable than otherwise.’ The Doctor seems
on this occasion to have copied Richardson, who had written
that the ‘ Clean Mart’ occasionally afforded good sport to the
hunters in the woods and about the rocks, and that its skin was
in much estimation. The author of the Observations, chiefly Litho-
logical, visited Keswick in 1803. He there drew up this note:
‘The foul and sweet Marts (as is the provincial expression for
the Martin) are very common here, and are valuable on account
of their skins. The first sells for eightpence in the market, and
the latter for four shillings and sixpence.’ The Pine Marten
does not seem to have been paid for as ‘Vermin’ in many of
our parishes. ‘The only references that I have been able to dis-
cover exist in the parish books of Patterdale, Greystoke, and
Kendal. The entries in the first two of these are most meagre,
and relate only to four or five animals, described as ‘ Marts.’
For example, I find an entry in the Greystoke accounts for 1825:
‘Novr. 5. To Jno. Ubank for 2 Marts, £0, 5s. Od.’ Even the
number mentioned in the Kendal books is inconsiderable. The
largest number ever paid for, separately at any rate, in one year,
was only five, though the northern portion of the parish included
some of the strongholds of this species, such as the crags of
Kentmere. If the reader will take the trouble to compare the
following figures from the Kendal parish books with those of

MAMMALIA 25

the Foumarts, he will find the relative rarity of the Pine Marten
evidenced in the first years of the last century : ‘[1700]. June
29, Pd. to ye Churchwarden of Overstaveley for Tow Clean
Marts, £0, 0s. 8d.’ ‘[1701] Oct. 18. Pd. to ye Churchwarden
of Under[barrow] for 5 Clean Marts, £0, 1s. 8d.’ Dec. 27. Pd.
to Wm. Towars for 8 foule Marts, one Clean Mart, 2 Ravens
and one Brock, £0, 2s. 6d.’ ‘[1704] April. To Geo, Wilson for
one Clean Mart, £0, Os. 4d.” ‘[1705] April. Paid to Alec Jack-
son for one Marte and one Brock heads, £0, Os. 10d.’

In Lakeland the Pine Marten is often called the ‘Sweet
Mart’ nowadays, but I have never heard the term ‘ Clean Mart’
employed. It has probably become obsolete. Old hunters
usually speak of the Marten simply as ‘the Mart,’ but some-
times as the ‘Crag Mart.’ The latter expression is used in dis-
tinction to the ‘Pine Mart,’ which is locally supposed to be a
darker animal, Jacking the yellow tinting considered character-
istic of the ‘Crag Mart,’ and more at home among trees. Any
‘Mart’ will ascend tree after tree like a squirrel if hotly pursued
by dogs and men. On such occasions an old Magpie’s nest often
offers a temporary shelter, of which the ‘Mart’ is not slow to
take advantage. Otters, if to be caught ‘wick’ (i.e. alive), must
be ‘tailed’; if a ‘Mart’ is to be secured without injury to itself
or its captor, it must be ‘clicked’ by the neck. On looking
over my notes, I find the following specimens of the Pine Marten
mentioned among others that have come under my scrutiny of
late years: One killed in 1888 near Crosby Ravensworth,
where two others had been trapped by the same keeper a short
time before; one killed in the Patterdale district in 1889; two
killed in the Windermere country in December 1890, and
January 1891; yet another was killed at Hawswater, and sent
to Hope on May 6, 1891. Mr. F. P. Johnson informs me that
a dog and bitch were killed at Wallow Crag, near Keswick, in
November and December 1891. Those presented by Mr. J. W.
Harris to Tullie House were obtained in the Keswick district.
It should be remembered that though the haunts of this animal
are remote and difficult of access, its numbers have of late years
greatly decreased. ‘Marts’ are so much scarcer than they used
to be, that our sportsmen might well take a pride in preserving

26 VERTEBRATE FAUNA OF LAKELAND

@ brave quarry that has inhabited their fells from the Pleistocene .
period.

WEASEL.

Mustela vulgaris, Erxl.

This game little quadruped is still sufficiently plentiful about
our hedgerows to contribute in an important degree to the
destruction of the Brown Rat. If our good neighbours on the:
Borders would only encourage Weasels and Owls, in place of
exterminating their best allies, we should hear less of plagues of
Rats and Field Mice in the Scottish Lowlands. Weasels have a
weakness for young birds, but any harm that they do is limited
to a few weeks in the year, while they are always doing good
in season and out of season.

The hateful Brown Rat has no more determined foe than the
Weasel, and a pair of these animals will, if encouraged, exter-
minate a large colony of Rats. That Weasels and Stoats take
to water readily is a fact of common knowledge, but instances of
the former species crossing large sheets of water voluntarily
appear to be rare. A Weasel was once killed when swimming
across Ulleswater at a point where the lake is three-quarters of
a mile broad.!

S TOA T.

Mustela erminea, L.

ee eo a ee

Trapping has latterly checked the increase of the Stoat, and
though its weakness for leverets cannot be denied, it should be
accredited with rendering useful service in keeping down the
Brown Rat. Mr. T. Coward tells me that he has come across
large packs of Stoats on several occasions, always in the fall of
the year. They appeared to consist of the young of the year,
and were probably performing a partial migration. The Rev. T.
Lees informs me that he once saw a pack of Stoats hunting a
Hare in Gowbarrow Park. He stood still and saw both the
Hare and its pursuers pass within a very few yards of him. The
Stoats were in full cry. Stoats do not appear to vary as much

1 Carlisle Patriot, Dec. 29, 1843.

MAMMALIA JAG

«in size as either Martens or Foumarts. The largest Stoat that
I have seen in the flesh was killed on our northern border
in March 1885, a male, in the ordinary brown pelage. The
head and body of this animal, irrespective of the tail, measured
13 inches, thus exceeding the figures given in Bell’s British
Quadrupeds by more than 2 inches.

POLECAT or FOUMART.
Mustela putoria, L.

Within the last thirty years the Polecat has become very
‘scarce in Lakeland. Formerly it was to be found in almost
every dale, and on all the mosses, seldom venturing to seek
shelter among the crags and boulders behind which the ‘Sweet
Mart’ lodged, but enjoying a very general distribution from the
mosses round Morecambe Bay to the wild wastes which march
with the Debateable Land. The active yeomen, to whom this
animal was an object of admiration from the sport which it
afforded to their hounds and the determination of its defence,
early learnt to call it the Foul Mart, in contradistinction to the
Clean Mart or Sweet Mart. Latterly the name of Foul Mart
has been shortened by the contraction into Foumart, under
which it is still well known on all our country-sides, though now
very scarce in most parts of the Lake district. My inquiries
about Foumarts commenced about nine years since, and were
made from likely individuals in all quarters. At that time the
Foumart had nearly disappeared from all the dales which it
formerly frequented, and had become almost extinct on most of
the lower grounds. A few individuals lingered in the Eden
valley, while others haunted sedgy fields and rough meadows
on our northern border. The real stronghold of the species in
the Cumbrian plain was then, and still is, a narrow strip of
timbered and marshy country extending from Carlisle to
Wigton, Maryport, and Bowness; that tract, in fact, which lies
between the Solway Firth and the Maryport and Carlisle
Railway. But before we discuss the latest details in the history
of our Foumarts, it may be convenient to consider the distribu-
tion which this animal formerly enjoyed. Up to the middle of

28 VERTEBRATE FAUNA OF LAKELAND

our century the Foumart was numerous in the Alston valley,

and about the villages which lie at the foot of the Pennine
range. It was plentiful in the woods near Keswick. The
stone walls of the Coniston district afforded many a safe hiding-
place to this nocturnal animal, especially near the lake side. In
the higher dales it was always less common, because food grew
scarce in the upland valleys, but still it long maintained its
footing. Mr. Jackson, who has lived all his life in Martindale,
and has passed his eighty-fifth birthday lately, assured me that
a few Foumarts were always to be found in Martindale in his
younger days. His son showed me the exact spot on which the
last Martindale Foumart known to him was killed, about the
year 1859. In the beginning of the eighteenth century the
Foumart was more numerously represented in Lakeland than
has been the case at any subsequent period. The accounts of
Kendal Parish Church afford us many entries of payments by
the churchwardens for the heads of Foumarts. From this source
I supply some statistics, in reference to which it should be
remembered that Foumart hunters generally commenced their
amusement after the first frosty night or two in November. The
heads of the animals killed up to Christmas were tendered to the
wardens on a ‘ Peremptory Day,’ generally about two days after
Christmas. The accounts were then settled, and the sport was
carried on with additional enthusiasm in the months of February
and April, the animals’ heads procured during these spring
months having to be accounted for at the Easter Vestry meeting.
Commencing in the year 1700, we find that the Kendal vestries
passed the following accounts: ‘[1700] Dec. 27. Pd. to Tho.
Dodgson son for 2 ffoule marts and one Raven, £0, 0s. 6d. Pd.
to Dan. Best for 4 ffoule marts, £0, Os. 8d. Pd. to ye Church-
wardens of Grayrigg for 4 ffoule marts and one Raven, £0, Os. 10d.
Pd. to Wm. Parker for 5 ffoul marts, £0, 0s. 10d. Pd. to
Tho. Hodgson son of Birkhagg for 5 foule marts, £0, Os. 10d.
Pd. to Tho. Dodgson son for 6 ffoule marts and one raven,
£0, 1s. 2d” At the Easter Vestry in April 1701 the following
moneys were ordered to be disbursed: ‘Pd. to Tho. Hudgson
for one ffoule Mart, £0, 0s. 2d. Pd. to ye Churchwardens of
Underbarrow for 15 foule Mart and one Raven, £0, 2s. 8d. Pd.

eS Ne ie ea Se EE ee eS Me eae ee Ee Se See

MAMMALIA 29

‘to ye Churchwarden of Strikland Roger for 19 foule Mrt.,
1 Clean Mt., and 1 Raven, £0, 3s. 8d. Pd. to Edw. Hallithown
for 14 ffoule Marts and 3 Ravens, £0, 2s. 10d. Pd. to ye
Churchwarden of Whiterwell for 3 ffoule Marts, £0, Os. 6d.’
In the early winter of this year, 1701, a Vestry meeting held on
December 26 passed the following accounts: ‘Pd. to Matthew
Wilson for 4 foule Marts, £0, 0s. 8d. Pd. to ye Churchwarden
of Stricklandroger for 22 foule marts, £0s. 3s. 8d.’ At the
Easter Vestry in April 1702 no fewer than jifty-one Foumart
heads were produced and paid for. At the Vestry meeting held
at Easter 1704 some of these trophies of hunting prowess
appear to have been overlooked, because there occurs a special
entry on the 3d of August : ‘Pd. to ye Churchwarden of Grey-
rigg for 11 ffoule marts, being due ye last year, £0, 1s. 10d.’

At the Easter Vestry 1705 only sixteen Foumarts appear
to have been specified by name, the heads of ten of the num-
ber having been presented on the 18th of December 1704, and
the remaining six in the ensuing April. In 1705 a Peremp-
tory Day was held on Dec. 27th, when the following accounts
were discharged: ‘Pd. to ye Churchwarden of Crooke for 12
ffoule Marts, £0, 2s. Od. Pd. to James Cock for 14 ditto,
£0,2s.4d. Pd. to Robert Smalwood for 2 Ravens and one ffoule
Mart, 6d.’ The price never varied. 'Twopence was the head-
money set on every Foumart in this far-extending parish, and
this sum was paid, whether the supply of vermin was great or
small, until 1718, when its discontinuance was ordered. The
practice of paying for the heads of Foumarts did not, however,
become obsolete at once, because I find that eleven Foumart
heads were produced, and were duly paid for by the wardens on
the 27th of December 1725.

No doubt the sport repaid to venturesome spirits by this
fleet and game little animal was in itself a sufficient inducement
for its organised destruction. A local journal supplies a de-
scription of a Foumart hunt among the Westmorland hills, which,
though high-flown in metaphor, appears to be an accurate
narrative of ‘A Grand Foumart Hunt’ that took place nearly
half a century ago ‘on the barren hills between Esthwaite and
Windermere.’ The date fixed for the meet was the 7th of

30 VERTEBRATE FAUNA OF LAKELAND

February, at which time the male Foumarts had begun to run
in search of their mates. ‘Long before the appointed time
(ten o’clock at night) lots of hunters and hounds had appeared,
and a large firewas light up (sic) till all who were expected arrived.
At the time mentioned not a cloud was above the horizon, nora
breath of wind upon the hills: the great and little Bears were
swinging round the polar star that marked the north, whilst
the grand constellation of Orion was shining in all its bright-
ness, and the glorious Jupiter glittering in silvery magnificence
over the western hills. The hounds threw off above Colthouse,
and soon a merry cry proclaimed that game was stirring, and
over the hills flew the hounds, the hunters following as fast as
they could, over ice and rocks, sometimes up and sometimes
down, but on they went regardless of every difficulty, for the
wilder the danger the sweeter the chase. ‘The hounds ran the
game merrily through part of the plantation of H. Curwen, Esq,
and to Pete Crags; then they scaled the Scale, where the hunters
looked down upon Windermere flowing majestically through
the valley beneath, while the amphitheatre of hills on the
eastern side combined to make a noble and interesting land-
scape ; from hence they ran through the Sawrey valleys, where
the hounds made a turn near Sawrey, and ran to a place called
Old Intack, where the Foulmart holed, and as the hunters did
not wish to destroy the creature which had afforded this
“glorious chase,” it was left undisturbed, and as the morning
was now far advanced, each took his way home, to dream over
again the pleasures of the night.’! It is probable that on this
occasion a junction had been arranged of the Ambleside and
Kendal hounds and those of the late Mr. George Romney.

The sport when pursued on our lower grounds must have
lacked the pleasurable risk of slides and falls over rocks and
‘screes, which enhanced the enjoyment of night-runs over the
fell lands, but the pace was more severe.

Mr. T. Coward of Carlisle, who, as an enthusiastic Lakeland
sportsman, has taken the kindest interest in the present essay, esti-
mates that he killed about 250 head of Foumarts in different parts
of the Lake district during a period of five-and-twenty years.

1 Westmorland Gazette, Feb. 15, 1845.

ae ee ee ee ee ee

MAMMALIA Ai |

Sometimes he had the good luck to kill two dog Foumarts in a
day, but this was a rare occurrence, and generally happened in
February, or the first week in April. He considers it unsports-
manlike to kill a bitch Foumart. When residing at Ulverston,
Mr. Coward saw a good many Foumarts killed in that neigh-
bourhood, as well as on Blawith Fell, and about Broughton
Beck. At that time the Foumart was common on mossy ground
near Windermere, and on the borders of other Westmorland
lakes. There were many Foumarts on the mosses round the
Duddon. They abounded at one time on Muncaster Feil.
During the ‘sixties,’ the Foumart still existed on mosses at
Scaleby, Hayton, and Cumwhitton, immediately to the north of
Carlisle, while Captain Johnson had at an early period hunted
Foumarts in the Brampton district, once a great stronghold of
the race. The country, however, immediately west of Carlisle,
contained fewer proprietors who trapped their ground. Many
of the property owners in this district were comfortable states-
men, farming their paternal acres, sharing with their nearest
neighbours in the common shooting rights of the adjacent moss.
Such was the case at Bowness Moss; so long as it continued the
Foumart continued to show sport—in fact, down to the middle
of the ‘ seventies,’ after which Foumart-hunting rapidly declined,
though hardly yet entirely obsolete. Mr. Coward took part in
many excellent runs until about sixteen years since, when he
gave up the Otter-hounds. The chase, as already hinted, might
either be pursued by moonlight, as that keen old hunter, ‘ Billy
Little,’ prefers, or at break of day, as Mr. Coward thinks best
sport. A few Foumarts were generally killed during the last
two months of the year, but the sport was followed up most
enthusiastically from the beginning of February until the end
of April, the dates varying with the severity or mildness of the
season. ‘The reason why the best runs occurred in spring was
that the male Foumarts were then rutting, and travelled long dis-
tances in search of mates. At this time their ‘foil’ or scent is
so strong that it thangs about a run for many hours, so that the
dogs will follow a trail in the early morning left by a Foumart
the previous evening, perhaps ten hours earlier.

Mr. T. Farrall has described the Foumart as frequenting ‘ the

32 VERTEBRATE FAUNA OF LAKELAND

sandy slopes of the Solway.' This is so far correct, that Fou-
marts often visited the sand dunes in search of rabbits, and even
now occasionally do so. I have a note of one shot very recently
under such circumstances, But the Foumart does not make
its home among the sandhills permanently. It prefers to lie
up in damp woods and mossy flows, in rough meadow lands,
or on the skirts of the salt marshes, generally near water. The
sexes live entirely apart. Foumart-hunting, be it understood,
does not originate in dislodging a Foumart from its stronghold,
and then following the animal in hot pursuit across the country.
The Foumart has generally left its hole some hours before the
dogs are put onto the scent. Hence the runs are frequently pro-
longed. Mr. Coward on one occasion laid the hounds on to the
scent at five A.M., and the run lasted until half-past one in the
afternoon, the distance covered in following the trail of the
animal being about forty miles.

The largest number of Foumarts that Mr. Coward ever knew to
be killed in this district in aseason was thirty-nine.? Their skins
were sold to be sent to London for the use of the furriers, who
converted their pelage into boas and muffs. They used to fetch
about half-a-crown a piece, and were sold for the poorest of the
hunters. Old Storey once assisted in killing forty-two Foumarts
in a season, but that was fifty years ago, when Foumarts were
common even in the neighbourhood of Carlisle. Mr. Coward
has seven fine Foumarts of the local breed, two of which, being
bitches, are considerably smaller than the rest. A bitch Foumart
in good condition weighs about 1? lbs., whereas an average dog
weighs about 2} lbs. Mr. Coward possesses the head of an
enormous Ioumart, which weighed 4# lbs. This was a dog of
exceptional size, the largest and finest that he ever saw.

1 Field, May 5th, 1883.

2 Mr. T. Lindsay, who has had a large experience of Foumarts,
remarked to me the other day that there were no Foumarts left in
Lakeland, except in the Abbey Holme: ‘It was steel traps that killed
Foumart.’ He generally killed about a score of Foumarts in a season
during the ‘fifties.’ He had leave to trap, and got ‘many out of
Muncaster Woods.’ As for Muncaster Fell, ‘it was never clear of them.’
Drigg Common was a stronghold of the species. Five Foumarts were
trapped there on the first night that traps were set for rabbits.

MAMMALIA ao

Male Foumarts are ferocious at close quarters, and if driven
to ground will fight every inch of their fortress, backing and
giving battle to hound or terrier at every turn. If desperate, a
male Foumart will fly straight at the nose of a dog, and hold on
tenaciously, unless shaken off, or nipped by its assailant behind
the forelegs, where pressure upon the heart causes death. An
old Foumart-hunter once walked into Carlisle exhibiting a live
Foumart which he had taken out of its hole uninjured. Mr.
Coward knew a native of the Coniston district who made a
practice of capturing Foumarts alive. After a capture he sum-
moned those who wished to test their terriers, and the animal
being released in an old tree stump or other retreat, the dogs
did their best to show sport. Mr. Coward tells me that a
Foumart’s home is generally furnished with several entrances,
one of them often close to the water, so that the animal may
leave no scent as it returns home. The nest includes several
chambers, a privy—tfor these animals are cleanly in their habits,
—a, larder, and a sleeping compartment. It is in the last that
the bitch Foumart produces her young in May and June, the
number dropped varying from five to seven. Mr. Isaac Stordy
once reared a young bitch, which became well known in the
Thurstonfield district as a great pet, but which never crossed
with a ferret during her captivity.

Foumarts are destructive to poultry, and will kill full-grown
rabbits, but with us they feed largely on birds of the Thrush
tribe, such as redwings and fieldfares. Old Lalor, who was a
keen Foumart-hunter as a young man, assured me that he once
found a dead sparrow-hawk in a Polecat’s larder. But frogs
and eels constitute a large proportion of their dietary. Mr.
Coward thinks that the well-known propensity of this animal
for storing food is due to its lying up in the hole to a consider-
able extent in winter ; but the Foumart often sallies forth in
search of prey, either when snow is lying on the ground or at a
break up of frost. On one occasion Mr. Coward came across
the track of a Foumart which had carried an eel from a loch
to its lair. Those present tracked the animal over the snow,
and on opening the nest discovered that the larder contained
five fine eels, three of them still alive. The fishes were taken to

C

34 VERTEBRATE FAUNA OF LAKELAND

a neighbouring inn, and when cooked afforded an excellent
meal to the hungry hunters. Mr. Coward is disposed to think
that a few Foumarts might still be found in their old haunts, if
searched for with otter-hounds or a scratch pack. He is no
doubt correct in saying that the breed still exists in very small
numbers. J examined a very fine Foumart belonging to Mr.
Cairns, trapped on Weddholm Flow in October 1888, when two
others were killed. In December 1889 two were killed near
Silloth. One of these was preserved by Mr. Ismay, who found
the second lying dead, and too decomposed to preserve. In
1890 another (but a small one) was killed by a keeper at Bray-
ton. I was assured about the same time that a very few still
exist near Stapleton.

When the Berwickshire Naturalists’ Club visited Gilsland in
1880 they found the remains of a gibbeted Foumart. ‘On
coming to the vicarage at Lanercost,’ writes Mr. Hardy, ‘ the
feet and tail of a polecat were observed to be affixed to the
stable-door,—the relics not unlikely of one of the last of its race
in that vicinity, for in the Brampton district it occurs now very
occasionally.’! Of the accuracy of this latter statement there is
unfortunately no room for doubt. The same may be said of
most parts of Lakeland. It is true that I have notes of speci-
mens taken in localities widely apart during the last nine years,
but they are few in number. The era of steel traps has well-
nigh swept away the race of Foumarts, whose game ancestors
afforded such good sport to the hunters of the last century.

The skins of Foumarts were largely utilised, even within my
own recollection, for muffs, boas, and other articles of feminine
attire. Those killed by Lindsay in the ‘fifties’ went to Kendal,
who made about £5 a year by the skins he sold. The prices
that he used to receive at Kendal were eighteenpence for a dog
Foumart’s skin, and a shilling for that of a female. The pelage
varies in condition seasonally. It is ragged and poor at the end
of the breeding season, and is in the finest condition about the
end of the year—e.g. in frosty weather. Considerable variations
will be found to exist in the colours of any large series of
Foumart’s skins ; there is also some difference in texture, the

. BD. N.C. vol. 1, 0; 256:

MAMMALIA 35D

pelage of the Foumarts of the fells being rough, and more harsh
to the touch than that of animals killed on the low ground, just
as some difference was supposed to exist between the furs of
Foumarts killed on open mosses, and such animals as had led a
purely silvan existence. Any reader interested in such distinc-
tions should consult the paper ‘ Des races et des varietés dans
Vespéce Mustela putorius,’ published in the Bulletins de L’ Académie
Royale du Belgique, vol. xiv. pp. 365-368 ; par Adolphe Duon fils.
M. Duon recognises two races,—a black race, which frequents dry
places and the neighbourhood of houses, and a yellow race, which
_lives in wet situations. He considers the black race to be longer
in the body than the yellow form, and to have shorter legs, and
its disposition is much more fierce than that of the yellow
variety. The most ordinary form he considers to be ‘ le putois
brun-jaune, the result originally of a cross between the two
strongly marked races, typical specimens of which he considers
rare, I have the more pleasure in referring to M. Duon’s paper
because his observations were based upon an examination of no
less than 200 individuals. He had himself trapped no fewer
than 108 specimens. The other 92 specimens were brought to
him by the ‘ gardes-chasse.’

OTTER.

Lutra vulgaris, Erxl.

It would be difficult to name any part of Britain as better
adapted to the tastes and requirements of the Otter than the
English Lake district. With rivers and becks of every size at
his disposal, the Otter enjoys the life of easy plenty, and
pursues his marauding expeditions in all the salmon waters,
from the Kent and Crake to the most northern streams. The
only serious check upon the Otter’s increase is effected by those
who surreptitiously trap these fine animals. This winter, for
example, 1891-92, no fewer than seven Otters met with an
untimely fate, being trapped on the Petteril near Penrith.
Four of the number were young ones. The destroyer had
better a thousand times have spared the cubs to sport with their
fond old dam in that easy-tempered stream of their birth,

36 VERTEBRATE FAUNA OF LAKELAND

exercising their lithe and sinewy limbs in wrestling contests
until the day arrived when their craft and high courage should
be tested in a struggle for life with gallant hounds and dare-devil
terriers. Long ago the Otter ranked as ‘vermin’ in some parts
of Lakeland. At the commencement of the last century an
Otter’s head fetched sixpence in Kendal parish: ‘[June 29
1704] Pd. to Joseph Smalwood for Tow Otter Heads
iO, Ls. Od.

A shilling was the grant allowed for every Otter killed on
the Kent between 1731 and 1770. No fewer than thirteen
Otters were paid for in the year 1731-2. This was exceptional,
because it rarely happened that more than two or three Otters
were killed in a season. Whether these Otters were hunted
with hounds I do not know, but probably they were. Richardson
described Otter-hunting on Ulleswater a hundred years ago in
much the same language as has been employed times out of
number to record the doings of local packs of Otter-hounds in
our own day. ‘The chief distinction between the old method
and the new is that the barbarous use of a spear in hunting
Otters has happily fallen into desuetude. The old method was
to strike at the Otter, whenever an opportunity offered, with an
‘otter-grains or barbed spear.’ !

Otter-hunting was originally carried on by the enterprise of
a few enthusiasts, each of whom kept two or three hounds, which
he could use with the same facility for hunting Foumarts and
Otters. After a time separate ownership of hounds ceased.
Such dogs as happened to be available were used to form the
nucleus of a regular pack. The ‘Carlisle Otter Hounds’
assumed a public character in this fashion; so did the ‘ West
Cumberland Otter Hounds’ and the Kendal Hounds. The
latter were recently sold to be hunted in Cheshire. Previous to
their removal, these dogs had hunted the Lune and the Kent,
and had made many good kills on the former river, especially
in the neighbourhood of Tebay. The ‘West Cumberland’ pack
hunt the rivers Greta, Cocker, Ellen, and Derwent. They meet
sometimes at Buttermere, and occasionally ‘kill’ in the neigh-
bourhood of that lake. Their waters are greatly inferior to

1 Hutchinson’s History of Cumberland, vol. i. p. 448.

MAMMALIA a1

those of the Carlisle Hunt; consequently they seldom kill more
than four or five Otters in a season.

The Carlisle Otter Hounds have meets during the summer
on the Esk, the Lyne, the Liddell, the Irthing, Petteril, and
other rivers. The Eden affords the finest sport, especially
about Wetheral, Armathwaite,. and Appleby. These dogs
generally kill ten or eleven Otters during the season, which
often commences in May, but is regulated by weather and the
condition of the rivers. In 1887 they killed no fewer than
sixteen Otters on the various rivers which they visited. Tom
Parker, the huntsman, is a local oracle, whose judgment regard-
ing Otters enjoys an honest reputation. From him I learn that
female Otters usually vary in weight from 14 lbs. to 17 Ibs.
when full-sized. The largest female Otter that he ever saw
scaled 21 Ibs. He once weighed a. bitch Otter of 20 lbs. But
these last weights are rare in Lakeland. Dog Otters are con-
siderably larger than the bitches, and weigh, in condition, from
22 lbs. to 26 lbs. Otters of 27 lbs. have been killed on both
the Esk and the Lyne in recent years, but they were very big
fellows. The heaviest and longest Otter that has been killed
by the Carlisle Hounds was drowned in the Eden opposite the
Ambrose Holme. This grand dog Otter scaled 31 lbs., and is
preserved in the possession of Mr. Wilson of Carlisle. The
Otters do not seem to be quite as fine in West Cumberland.
The largest that Lindsay ever killed on the Irt was 25 lbs.: ‘A
gay smittle river is Duddon, but Irt is smittlest, and worst
to get,’

The dogs should be laid on to the ‘ foil’ of the Otter as soon
as possible after daybreak. If the sun shines powerfully, the
‘foil’ leaves the gravel-beds, and checks occur. Otter-hounds
hunt by nose, and sometimes work on the ‘ foil’ of an Otter for
four or five hours before they view the animal. Young Otters
are often found by the hounds in the summer; indeed, the
bitch Otter may produce cubs at any time. I examined a baby
Otter which a terrier had ‘snapped’ on the Eden in June 1889.
Mr. J. Bolton found a tiny cub on the banks of the Cocker,
July 26,1880. Mr. Tom Coward recollects seeing a litter of
small cubs on the 1st of August. The supply of Otters varies

38 VERTEBRATE FAUNA OF LAKELAND

considerably. This is to be partly accounted for by illicit
trapping ; not entirely so.

It has been noticed that Otters are scarce on the Eden in
seasons which have heen preceded by heavy floods in the
previous twelve months. It is thought that, owing to the
extreme rapidity with which our rivers rise, the female Otters
are sometimes unable to remove all their cubs to a place of
safety before the ‘fresh’ reaches them, and that a percentage
thus perish in infancy. Young Otters are far less apprehensive
of danger than their experienced companions. It is not long
since a fine young Otter was caught quite uninjured on Hawes-
water (where the rocks supply fine cairns), and sent as a pet to
Lowther Castle. Fly fishermen often observe Otters in the
gloaming and in the early hours of day. In the dark they hear
the whistling of the Otter with dislike, for his arrival frightens the
fishes and reduces the chance of their feeding. Otters live more
on the banks of rivers than many persons are aware of. When
snow is lying on the ground an expert should have no difficulty
in recognising the ‘spur marks’ or ‘pad marks’ of the Otter in
the fields near the water-side. Only this last January [1892]
R. Raine traced the ‘footings’ of an Otter for a long way
across the meadows, and found that the animal had eaten a dead
rabbit. He and Parker agree that Otters live chiefly on eels,
‘skellies’ [=chub], and other coarse fish, on the Eden at any
rate. I have seen a nice grilse lying on the Eden side, out of
which an Otter had taken his favourite cut; so probably have
most people. But I believe that the Otter renders valuable
service in keeping down the numbers of worthless fish. The
distances covered by Otters in a single night often extend into
the teens of miles. If a stream is too strong to allow the Otter
to make headway comfortably, the animal lands and travels
along the bank. An Otter cannot travel as fast as a hound on
a dead level, but it can worm its way through a wood more
rapidly than any dog. When a river is low, or its dimensions
happen to be small,a hunted Otter often prefers to continue
the chase on land, and long defies the exertions of a pack in a
thick wood. Otters perform considerable land journeys when
desirous of changing their fishing-grounds. The Otters of the

SS

MAMMALIA 39

Lyne often cross to the Liddell, near Newcastleton.t Those
which frequent the Wampool occasionally travel to the head
waters of the Caldew. The lower reaches of this river are pro-
bably too much disturbed to please an Otter. At all events it
is never visited by any members of the tribe. Strange to say, a
fine old dog Otter of 26 lbs. was run over by an express when
crossing the line at Little Salkeld Station, M.R., one morning
last October [1891]. Otter skins were in great request at
Keswick in 1803. They fetched fourteen shillings each, and
were used in the manufacture of hats, perhaps as a substitute
for Beaver.”

BADGER.
Meles taxus (Schreb.).

That Badgers held their strongholds among the Westmor-
land hills in prehistoric days is evidenced by the fossil remains
which have been found near Kendal. Their descendants long
tenanted the ancestral chambers of their race. For sixteen
centuries of the Christian era the Lakeland Badgers maintained
their footing without having, so far as we know, to resist any
organised plan of extermination. It is clear from parish records
that in the seventeenth century the dalesmen developed a mur-
derous propensity for slaughtering all the wild animals whose
presence supplied a charm to their bleak and forbidding moun-
tains. Among the species included under a bann of proscription
was the poor Badger, which, although apparently better able
to resist its enemies than some of the smaller animals, yet ulti-
mately succumbed to the devices employed for its extermination.
When the war against ‘vermin’ broke out, Badgers had their
earths in Inglewood Forest and among the mosses of the Solway,
no less than in the heart of the Lake mountains. Such place-
names as Brockbanks and Brockholes survive in many parts of
Lakeland, attesting that Badgers once existed in districts from
which all tradition of their former presence has long died out.

1 Mr. Lindsay once ‘dragged’ an Otter on the West Cumbrian Esk. It
left that river and raced across country six miles to the Duddon, which it

gained in safety.
* Observations, chiefly Lithological, p. 59.

40 VERTEBRATE FAUNA OF LAKELAND

The extermination of these poor Badgers was accomplished
under the religious sanction of pious churchwardens. It is to
their accounts that we owe the fullest evidence of the crusade
against the ‘ brock,’ which they so unfortunately subsidised.

If we extract the accounts regarding Badgers from the Kendal
parish book for a period of only eight consecutive years, ranging
from April to April, it will be found that no fewer than seventy-

three Badgers were separately paid for within that short period. —

This does not include the full quota of the victims of a mistaken
zeal, because in several instances the heads of Foxes and Badgers
were paid for collectively. But the figures subjoined tell their
own pathetic tale of the fierce encounters which took place
between the Badgers and their assailants :—‘ Disburst since
March 25th, 1668, as follows: Paide to Wm. Blakelm for one
Brock head, £00, 00s. 06d. Paide to Lawrence Edmonson for
3 Brock heads, £00, 03s. 00d. Paide to Miles Lancaster for
a Brock head, £00, Ols. 00d.’ The total number killed in these
twelve months was only five. But the number of victims soon
rose. Among the sums disbursed after April 13, 1669, the
following entries appear: ‘ Paide to Tho. Lickbarrow of Steddall
for 3 Brock heads, £00, 03s. 00d. Paide to John Low of
Natland for a Brock head, £00, 01s. 00d. Paide to Lawrence
Edmonson for a Brockhead, £00, Ols. 00d. Paide John
Todd of Sleddall for a Brock head, £00, Ols. OOd. Paide
Lawrence Edmonson for 3 Brock heads, £00, 03s. 00d.’ Thus
nine were killed this year. A heavier blow followed, no fewer
than nineteen Badgers biting the dust during the next year :
‘Disburst since April ye 5, 1670, as follows: Paide to Christo-
pher Airey of Sleddall for 2 Brock heads, £00, 02s. 00d. Paide
to Thomas Lickbarrow of Sleddall for 2 Brock heads, £00, 02s.
00d. Paide to Richard Beacham for one Brockhead, £00, O1s.
00d. Paide to Lawrence Edmonson for 2 Brock heads, £00,
02s, 00d. Paide to Wm. Rowland and another for 2 Brock-
heads, of Grayrigg, £00, 02s. 00d. Paid to Thomas Busher of
Underbarrow for 3 Brock-heads, £00, 03s. 00d. Paid Tho.
Hick for 2 Brock heads, and one he brought at Easter, £00, 03s.
00d. Paide Thomas Brackin of Strickland Roger for a Brock
head, £00, 01s. 00d. Paid Henry Postlethwaite for a Brock

MAMMALIA 41

head, £00, Ols. 00. Paid Tho. Hick for 2 Brock heads, £00,
02s. 00d.’ These deaths appear to have thinned out the
Badgers of Sleddale, Grayrigg, and Underbarrow. Only five
appear to be accounted for in the expenditure of the year dating
from Easter 1671: Paid Christopher Airey of Sleddall for a
brock head, £00, Ols. 00d. Paid Tho. Lickbarrow of Sleddall
for 2 Brock heads, £00, 02s. 00d. Paid Tho. Audlin of Hutton
for a Brock head, and Wm. Harrison for another, £00, 02s. 00d.’
But a good season recruited the number of the Brocks, and 11s.
were expended in remunerating the dalesmen for killing that
number of Badgers between April 1672 and the ensuing Easter :
_ *Paide to Robert Sympson of Selside for 3 Brock heads, £00,
03s. 00d. Paid to Tho. Lickbarrow of Sleddall for 2 Brock
heads, £00, 02s. 00d. Paid Tho. Kilchin and John Wilson for
6 Brock heads, £00, 06s. 00d.’ There were other Badgers killed
this year, because a supplementary entry accounts for 9s. as
expended ‘for ffox heads and Brock heads. From the last
settlement to Easter 1674, the dale people contrived to kill
eighteen badgers: ‘ Paide Tho. Gregson for 5 Brock heads, and
Rich. Bulfell for 2, £00, 07s. 00d. Paid for 7 Brock heads
before Chmas., £00, 07s. 00d. Paid Ric Bulfel of Natland for
4 Brock heads, £00, 04s. 00d.’ The only two entries for the
next year are these: “ Paide Anthony Borwick of Grayrigg for
2 Brock heads, £00, 02s. 00d. Paid John Todd of Sleddall
for 18 ffox heads and Brock heads, £00, 18s. 00d.’ There
is only one entry in the year commencing Easter 1676: ‘ Paid
to Lawrence Edmonson for 4 brockheads at 6d. apiece, £00,
02s. 00d. This last entry proves that the price set on the
Badger’s head had dropped from a shilling to sixpence. The
dalesmen were not a whit discouraged, but continued their
guerilla warfare against the Brocks. Between 1700 and Easter
1701 fifteen Brocks perished: ‘P4 to James Warriner for
6 Brock heads, £0, 3s. Od. Pd. to Dan Best for Tow Brock-
heads, £0, 1s. 0d. Pd. to ye churchwarden of Natland for one
Brock head, £0, Os. 6d. Pd.to Henry Hudgson for Three Brock
Heads, £0, 1s. 6d. Pd. to ye churchwarden of Whinfell for
3 Brock heads, £0, 1s. 6d.’ The Badgers had evidently been
thinned out by the beginning of the eighteenth century, and the

42 VERTEBRATE FAUNA OF LAKELAND

notices of their deaths occur only in very small numbers there-
after in the Kendal books. The Kendal men were no worse
than their neighbours either. In 1673, the churchwardens of
Kirkby Lonsdale spent £2, 7s. 3d. upon the heads of Badgers,
and paid for eleven heads in Middleton alone three years earlier.
In the neighbouring parish of Orton it appears that one or two
Badgers were destroyed every year; two were killed in 1661,
1670, and 1675, while single animals were paid for in 1673
and 1674. The entry of 1661 is this: ‘for 2 brock heads,
the one to John Cobry of Sunbigin, the other to Jo. Fothergill,
£00, 02s. 00d.’ Canon Bardsley quotes one or two similar
entries out of the accounts of Ulverston parish (which happened
to be a good Badger country, and one in which there were a few
of these animals at the beginning of the present century): ‘1728.
To Thomas Adison for brock head, 6d. 1741. Jan. 12. For a
badger head, 4d.’ This date of 1741 is the first at which I
have found the present species to be locally entitled by the
modern name of Badger. There seems to be no doubt that the
animal was early known as the ‘gray.’ Nicolson and Burn
remark that the manor of Grayrigg was ‘ probably so called from
being frequented by badgers, brocks, or grays, as on the east
side of the river Lune, opposite thereto, is a place which yet
bears the name of Brockholes.’ !

Our local faunists have unfortunately neglected to tell us any-
thing about the Badgers of Lakeland. Richardson is silent.
Dr. Heysham says little : ‘ Badger-baiting is a common diversion
in the north of England.’ The old gentleman might as well have
confessed at once that his friends and neighbours in Carlisle
were as fond of baiting Badgers as any men in the north of
England. Probably he enjoyed the entertainment heartily, for
he was a man of the times, and lived in an unsentimental age,
when the public thought little about the sufferings of the lower
animals. Be that as it may, there can be no doubt that Badger-
baiting was a common amusement of the Carlisle citizens for
the first half of the present century. Indeed, the practice re-
vived a few years ago, but has since died out. The plan adopted
for drawing the Badger was a simple one. The contest took

at Vols i..p. 120.

;
|
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f

j
;
5 4

MAMMALIA 43

place in a wooden structure something like an old-fashioned
clock-case in appearance. It measured in length from 7 to 8
feet. The depth and height were about 3 feet. One ex-
tremity of this case was partitioned off for the Badger’s den.
This recess was entered by a hole, either round or square,
through which the dog had to seize the Badger and drag it forth.
The case was of necessity strongly built, and barred above.
The Badger had the palpable advantage that he could present a
pair of formidable jaws, strongly articulated to the glenoid
cavity, to his opponent, and probably came off best in many of
the encounters. Some wily old Badgers got to understand the
game, and would allow the dogs to draw them with the least
possible show of fight. Such cunning individuals had to be
replaced, as circumstances permitted, with fierce, fresh-caught
Badgers. One of the best of the local tales of Badger-baiting
is that of the long-headed Cumbrian who, having wagered
£5 that his cur-dog would draw a Badger, proceeded to win the
event by introducing the hind quarters of an astonished sheep-
dog to the mouth of the Badger’s den, from which the owner
rapidly emerged holding on like grim death to the haunch of
his sot-disant assailant.

When Mr. W. Hodgson was a young man, he knew a local |
worthy named Billy Foster, who lived at Melkinthorpe, and
enjoyed nothing more than narrating to his acquaintances his
experiences of catching Badgers in the last century. ‘ The village
lads of Lowther and Melkinthorpe,’ writes Mr. Hodgson, ‘ used
to go to their haunts provided with empty sacks, the mouths
of which were kept open by wooden hoops. The sack’s mouth,
so extended, was placed over the entrance to the burrow, and
steadied between the knees of the holder, means being taken at
the same time to drive the Badger from his lair. The dread of
a bite from the animal’s formidable jaws was so great that my
informant’s knees ‘ doddered’ (i.e. trembled) against the rim of
the sack. It is sad to think that all this ingenuity was exerted
for the cruel purpose of baiting the animals so captured.t

The late Mr. W. Dickinson, who must have enjoyed the most
ample opportunities for collecting information about Lakeland

1 Trans. Cumberland and Westmorland Assoc., No. xi. p. 36.

44 VERTEBRATE FAUNA OF LAKELAND

Badgers when surveying our fell lands, only furnishes a brief
note: ‘Badgers are now [1875] extinct in the wild state in
Cumberland, but were not scarce till about the end of the
eighteenth century. ... There were brock holes in Eskat Woods,
near where the cottage now stands, and these animals being fond
of basking in the sun, a hedger came suddenly upon two of
them sleeping, and, making a quick stroke with his bill-hook, he
wounded one, but both got into their hole and were never seen
again. These were the last known in that part.’?

Whether the Badger really became quite extinct in Lakeland
within the limits of the eighteenth century is a difficult point
to settle. On the whole, the balance of evidence seems to favour
the belief that this species lingered on the fells of Cartmell and
Windermere for at any rate the first thirty years of our own
century, a view favoured by Mr. T. Coward. Mr. T. Lindsay
was crossing Birker Fell, Eskdale, on the 24th of February 1850,
when his hounds detected the presence of an animal, which
proved to be a Badger, among the rocks. It was fierce, and
made a plucky fight for life. Tradition had long associated the
locality with the Badger, but none of those then living in Esk-
dale had ever seen a wild Badger on the fell before, though they
had heard the old people talk of them. This was a Badger of
23 lbs. weight. Another was trapped in the middle of the
present century near Bridekirk, by Richard Chapman, the cele-
brated wrestler. Another was caught by the Newtons near
Broughton-in-Furness, between 1850 and 1860. It was pro-
posed to sell this Badger for baiting, but the men fell out about
the sale, and being unable to agree about its disposal, they
settled their difference by drowning the poor Badger. Another
was dug out at Dearbields, Grasmere, in February 1863. It
weighed 15 Ibs. The capture of this Badger elicited from the
Westmorland Gazette the remark that ‘the old hunters say that
the last Badger caught in Westmorland was in 1823.’ It would
be easy to extend the list of Badgers captured in Lakeland
within a comparatively recent period. The late Mr. George
Mawson recorded that a large Badger was caught in a wood near
Cockermouth in February 1867, adding that from whence or

1 Cumbriana, p. 172.

MAMMALIA 45

how the animal had come into that neighbourhood there was
not the slightest evidence to show.t. A dog Badger was caught
on Whitbarrow in 1872, and another Badger of 19 lbs. weight
was caught ina trap at the Heads Lyth in May 1874.2 During
the summer of 1885 a Badger took up its quarters among the
rocks above Gowbarrow, and this was possibly the animal killed
by the Blencathra Hounds in the vale of Naddle, St. John’s,
Keswick, in the following year.* <A Badger killed on Lazonby
Fell, and two others which were obtained near Edenhall, had,
as I understand, been intentionally introduced by a private
landowner with the laudable intention of restoring the breed.
Mr. F. P. Johnson believes that a similar experiment has
actually succeeded, and that a few Badgers are now permanently
established near Castlesteads; but they are colonists, not abori-
ginal Badgers. Clements of Tebay stuffed a iarge Badger which
was killed near Tebay in 1889. Tebay is quite the country
for Badgers, but I have no doubt that this and all the Badgers
killed in Lakeland during the last forty years had escaped from
confinement. This view is that held by all the older men whose
opinion is worth anything : indeed, I am not aware that any one
would dispute it. A regular trade in live Badgers is carried on
through a London paper. These animals often escape from con-
finement, and the fact that, so far as I know, all the recently
taken Badgers have been dogs, except one of the Edenhall speci-
mens, is quite in favour of their having escaped from those who
kept them for ‘baiting.’ Of course modern ‘ baiting’ very rarely
crops up, but so do the Badgers. As recently as the year 1889,
my friend Mr. Bailey was asked to assist in capturing ‘a strange
wild beast, which had gone to earth in a garden at Cummersdale.
On repairing to the spot he found that a Badger had strayed
thither, having escaped from the garden of a Carlisle gentleman
who liked to keep a Badger among other pets. None of the
villagers ‘ ever seed sic a thing afore.’

1 Zoologist, 1867, p. 822.
2 Kendal Courier, May 138, 1874.
3 West Cumberland Times, May 8th, 1886.

46 VERTEBRATE FAUNA OF LAKELAND

Order CARNIVORA. Fam. PH OCID£.
COMMON SEAL.

Phoca vitulina, L.

Seals are decidedly rare on our coast; perhaps the sandy
character of our foreshore and the absence of rocks and islands
to some extent account for the fact. Odd ones occur at irregular
intervals both in Morecambe Bay and in the main channel of
the English Solway. ‘The last known to have been captured on
the Lancashire Sands became entangled in the salmon nets near
Chapel Island. The animal was not preserved, but Mr. W.
Duckworth saw it in the flesh, and sent me a description of it.
It was caught in the autumn of 1889. I did not hear of
another local specimen until December 1891, when a solitary
straggler turned up near Port Carlisle, and was shot by a fisher-
man. ‘Two of the fishermen belonging to that village eaught a
Seal in their Haaf nets in July 1877. I have only one note of
any Seal being killed in the English Solway between 1878 and
1891. The animal in question was a very young one, and was
killed on the Esk.

Seals were occasionally dressed for the table of Lord William
Howard, but whether they were obtained on our coast is f
unknown. Most probably they came from the east coast.

GREENLAND SEAL.
Phoca grenlandica, Fab.

Although a common form in northern latitudes, and one
with which, as I understand, the Dundee whalers are especially
familiar, this Seal has rarely been identified as a wanderer to
any part of the British coasts. That it has been detected in a
single instance on the north-west coast of England is due to the
scientific acumen of the late Dr. Gough, who announced its
occurrence in the following words :—

‘Capture of a Seal in Morecambe Bay—On Thursday, the
23d of January [1868] the Messrs. Crossfield shot a seal near the
viaduct on the Lancaster and Ulverston Railway, near Arnside.

MAMMALIA 47

When first discovered, its dark-coloured head, alternately bobbing
above and ducking under the surface of the water, was taken for
a duck. But a nearer approach soon made known the prize
which the marksman had to secure. A discharge of shot
wounded the animal severely, and repeated blows on the
muzzle and head rendered it a helpless captive. ‘This monster
of the deep was conveyed to Kendal on the following Saturday,
and was purchased for the Museum of the Literary and Scien-
tific Institution. We had an opportunity of examining the
specimen soon after its arrival. Its length was six feet from
_ the tip of the nose to the points of its hind toes; circumference
behind the fore feet forty-three inches; colour of the head dark
brown, rather dark on the back, the rest of the body grey,
blotched with brown spots.’ After pointing out that he recog-
nised the species by the arrangement of the grinders and the
comparative length of the first and second fore toes, Dr. Gough
expressed his opinion that the animal was ‘a young male, pro-
bably in the imperfect clothing of the third or fourth year. An
examination of the contents of its stomach proved that this
wanderer had fared badly in the bay; for we found nothing but
a moderately-sized pulpy mass, mixed with the bones of small
fish,’ }

The accuracy of Dr. Gough’s judgment, in considering this
Seal to represent Phoca grenlandica, was subsequently confirmed
by Professor Turner.’

This specimen is still preserved in the Kendal Museum.

Order CET ACEA. Fam. PH YSETERID.
SPERM WHALE.

Physeter macrocephalus, L.

A Whale of this species was washed ashore on our coast near
Flimby, on the 21st of April 1840. The length was 58 feet,
breadth across the tail 14 feet, height 8 feet, and girth 26 feet.®

1 Westmorland Gazette, Feb. 1, 1868.

2 Journal of Anatomy and Physiology, vol. ix. pp. 163-165.
> Carlisle Patriot, April 24, 1840.

48 VERTEBRATE FAUNA OF LAKELAND

Local tradition affirms that another example of the same
species was washed up many years ago near Whitehaven. That
a large Whale was actually stranded in the neighbourhood there
can be no doubt, but its specific identity must remain doubtful.

COMMON BEAKED WHALE.

Hyperoédon rostratum (Chemnitz).

In August 1887 an example of this Whale was washed ashore
in a decomposed state near Maryport. It was carefully examined
by the Rev. R. Burn and J. B. Baily, prior to being buried by
the coastguards. I believe that this animal has occurred a
good many times on our coast. Newspaper reports leave much
to be desired, but the following extract seems to suit the dimen-
sions of a large specimen of this Whale :—

‘On Thursday the 3lst was caught at Cockin-in-Furness a
grampus, which was discovered by Mr. J. Clark of that place,
when he rode into the water and drove it on shore. It measured
8 yards and 2 feet in length; its tail was 8 feet broad, its snout
or nose 2 feet long; was thought to weigh about 4 tons, and
computed to yield 3 hhds. of oil. It was sold by Mr. Clark to
Mr. Butcher of Ulverston for four guineas.’!

‘Dr. Gray also mentions one [under the synonym of JZ. lati-
frons| taken in Morecambe Bay, Lancashire.’?

Order CETACEA. Fam. DELPHINID.
GRAMPUS.

Orca gladiator (Lacép. ).

Judging from the dimensions of the cetaceans that have been
stranded on the sandy shores of the north-west of England at
one time or another during the last seventy years, I should be
disposed to infer that the Grampus had occurred on our coast in
half-a-dozen instances. Some of the newspaper reports refer to

1 Carlisle Journal, May 19, 1804.
2 Bell, British Quadrupeds, p. 426.

—— = eS -

MAMMALIA 49

Morecambe Bay, others to the English part of the Solway Firth;
but in no case does the identity of the animal appear to have
been decided by an expert. When taken alive, the unfortunate
animal has invariably been destroyed by its captors. Thus, in
September 1828, ‘two living porpoises’ were stranded near
Allonby. ‘They were first discovered by a boy, who promptly
gave information, when a number of carpenters and others rushed
to the spot, and, after a furious set-to with axes, pitchforks, etc.,
by which the defenceless animals were dreadfully mangled, suc-
ceeded in capturing them; one measured 20 feet in length, the
other 18 feet.’}

The only recent occurrence that I can positively vouch for
was stranded near Skinburness in July 1876. It was examined
by Mr. Nicol, who remembers it well, and assures me that it
measured about 16 feet in length. Another friend extracted a
tooth from the same animal, This I showed to Professor
Flower, F.R.S., who kindly satisfied me that it had belonged to
an adult specimen of Orca gladiator. This is all the more inter-
esting, because Dr. Heysham had recorded the species from
Cumberland in the following words: ‘The Grampus is very
rarely met with on the Cumberland coast. One was thrown
upon the shore, in the district of Abbey-Holme, about twenty
years ago,’ i.e. just a hundred years before the Skinburness
specimen, and on the confines of the adjoining parish—a curious
coincidence.

PORPOISE.

Phocena communis, F. Cuv.

The Porpoise is often mentioned in Lord William Howard’s
accounts, but whether the animals of this species served up at
his table belonged properly to the North Sea, or to the Irish
Channel, is not easy to say. Schools of Porpoises are often seen
off Whitehaven ; to watch their aquatic sports from the cliffs
at Sandwith is enjoyable on a fine day. Stragglers are occa-
sionally killed in Morecambe Bay and in the waters of the
English Solway. Such remains as I have seen washed ashore

1 Carlisle Patriot, Sept. 12, 1828.
D

50 VERTEBRATE FAUNA OF LAKELAND

on Walney, and also on the sandy shores of Cumberland after
wild weather, have belonged to the common species. It is quite
possible, however, that some of those which have been killed
by our fishermen may have belonged to one or other of the rarer
species. They are usually converted into oil within a few hours
of their capture.

Order UNGULATA. Fam. CERVID.
RED DEER.

Cervus elaphus, L.

During the Roman occupation the wild Red Deer roamed
without let or hindrance over the mountain-tops traversed by
the military roads of the foreign legionaries, which doubtless
included in the ranks of their fighting men and camp-followers
not a few intrepid and eager hunters, men of the vigorous
stamp that Horace had in mind when he traced those sparkling

lines :
‘ Manet sub Jove frigido
Venator tener conjugis immemor,
Seu visa est catulis cerva fidelibus,
Seu rupit teretes Marsus aper plagas.’!

That the strangers not only enjoyed our venison, but con-
verted the antlers of the Red Deer into domestic utensils of a
rude kind, is rendered certain by the remains which are found
from time to time beneath the modern city of Carlisle.

Of the hunting forays which must have been frequent in Saxon
days, no information is apparently forthcoming.

With the arrival on British soil of that Norman Duke who
‘loved the tall deer as if he were their father,’ the forests
became the object of jealous affection. Doubtless the great
nobles were glad to emulate their liege in the rigour with which
they sought to enforce their rights.

Nor were the great religious communities of Lakeland loath to
accept the goodly venison which the estates of their benefactors
were so well able to furnish, Thus in 1210-12, Aliz de

1 1 Carm. i. 25-28.

DIE EIR

FRO) Meee Ost aves)

ING N= Sip dae ZANTE

Wiebe

GOWBARROW PARK,

MAMMALIA 5]

Rumeli, daughter of William, son of Dunekan, in her viduity,
for the safety of her soul, and the souls of all her ancestors and
successors, and of her husbands of good memory, Gilbert
Pippard and Robert de Curtenai, grants to the abbot and
monks of Furness in frank almoigne, all Borchedale (Borrow-
dale), with hart and hind, boar and sow, goshawk and spar-
row-hawk, and venison and all beasts of game to be found
there.!

We learn from another charter that the same grey monks
obtained hunting rights on the Furness fells (Montana de
_ Furnesio) :

‘ Predicti vero Gilbertus et Helwysa uxor sua concesserunt, et
quietum clamaverunt predictis abbati et monachis de Furnesio
cervum et cervam et accipitrem, et omnem omnino libertatem,
quam ipsi Gilbertus et Helwisa habuerunt in illa parte Monta-
norum, que ad ipsos Monachos pertinet, amodo absolute et
quiete.? At a later period, namely, in 1338, the Abbot of
Furness was licensed to impark his woods of Ramshead (Ramp-
side), Sowerley, Hagg, and Millwood in Low Furness, and of
Claife and some other parts of the fells. Shap Abbey obtained
forest rights in Swindale and a tithe of venison, by the gene-
rosity of Robert de Veteripont, who declares, ‘Dedi etiam dictis
canonicis omnes decimas mihi pertinentes omnium molendinorum
meorum, de tota Westmeria, et omnes decimas novationis bes-
tiarum, quee captee erunt, de cetero in omnibus forestis meis in
Westmeria per me, vel per homines meos, de domo, vel de
manerlis meis, sive per arcus, sive per canes, Another of the
Shap charters defines one of their territorial boundaries as
travelling down to the bottom of a hill,—‘usque ad magnum
lapidem ubi homines solebant facere Lestablie.’ Nicolson and
Burn comment on this: ‘ Stable-stand was where the men stood
with bows or clogs ready to shoot or course ; and tenants were
in some places bound, at the summons of the lord, to assemble
ad stableiam faciendum, which was called the buckstall.’? |

Reference to hounds recalls the fact that the enclosures

1 Calendar of Documents relating to Scotland, vol. i. p. 97.

* Dugdale, Monasticon, vol. v. p. 249.
* History of Westmorland and Cumberland, vol. i. p. 470.

a2 VERTEBRATE FAUNA OF LAKELAND

known as hunting ‘hays’ existed in Lakeland no less than in
other parts of England. One ‘hay’ in particular was noticed
repeatedly in lawsuits. In 1208 a case pending between
Uctred de Sokebrede and Agnes his wife, plaintiffs, and
Robert de Curtenai and Alicia his wife, defendants, was decided
on the morrow of St. Andrew by Adam de Port and other
justices in the King’s Court at Carlisle. The tenants of Robert
and Alicia were then required to make and repair at their own
cost the hunting fence in Carrock with the men of Kaudebec.
In 1256, Gilbert de Halteclo agreed in Court that he and his
heirs, with Alan and Alicia’s men of Kaudebek, should for the
future make and repair the hunting ‘hay’ of Alan and Alicia of
Karrok, when needful.!

Where private parties were concerned, mutual courtesies
anticipated difficulties by sagacious foresight. Thus, when a
final decision was given in the King’s Court at Westminster
between Alan de Muleton and his wife Alicia, plaintiffs, and
Lambert de Muleton and his wife Amabilis, concerning the
moiety of the manors of Egremunt, Aspatric, Caudebek, and
Braythwayt, a clause was inserted expressly stipulating that if a
deer should be roused on the lands of Lambert and Amabilis,
their huntsmen and hounds should have the right to follow and f
take it in the land of Alan and Alicia without hindrance, and i
vice versa.2, Provision was made for the punishment of servants ‘
who abused their employer’s privileges. Thus a grant to Furness 4
Abbey expressly stipulates that should any servant of the M
monks break bounds, and do damage in the granter’s forest to
her beasts of game, and be duly convicted, he must be dismissed
from their service, and lose his wages.?

The area occupied by [ed Deer at one time included almost
the whole of Lakeland, from Furness and Mallerstang Forest to
the Scottish borders. The forests which survived into the
Elizabethan period were those of Inglewood, Ennerdale or
Coupland, and Walton, in Cumberland, and Martindale in
Westmorland. When the monks of Lanercost enjoyed a tithe
of the venison of Walton Forest, the quarry ranged through the

1 Documents relating to Scotland, vol. i. p. 400.
2 Ib. vol. 1. ‘ip. 203. 3 Ib. cit. Po Oe

MAMMALIA 53

border country from Brampton to Christenbury.1 How long
the Forest of Walton was recognised as a deer-preserve I can-
not discover; but the fact of a chase existing on our northern
march in the reign of Queen Elizabeth has been emphasised by
the attractions which it possessed for the Scottish nobles, who
availed themselves of the privileges of sport enjoyed by their
neighbours with scant courtesy, until the liberties which they
took were suppressed with a heavy hand. Sir Robert Carey
was the Englishman who came into contact with the Scottish
hunters, after being appointed Warden of the Middle March.
‘The next summer after,’ says the Warden, ‘I fell into a
cumbersome trouble, but it was not in the nature of theeves or
malefactours. There had beene an antient custome of the
borderers, when they were at quiet, for the opposite border to
send to the Warden of the Middle Marsh (sic) to desire leave
that they might come into the borders of England, and hunt
with their greyhounds for deere, towards the end of summer,
which was never denyed them. But towards the end of Sir
John Foster's gouvernment, when he grew very old and weake,
they took boldnesse upon them, and without leaveasking would
come into England, and hunt at their pleasure, and stay their
owne time ; and when they were a hunting, their servants would
come with cartes and cutt down as much wood as every one
thought would serve his turne, and carry it away to their houses
in Scotland.’ Carey wrote to ‘Fernherst, the Warden over-
against mee, to desire him to acquaint the gentlemen of his
March that I was no way unwilling to hinder them of their
accustomed sportes to hunt in England as they had ever done,
but withall I would not by my default dishonour the Queene
and myselfe to give them more liberty than was fitting: I
prayed him therefore to let them know, that if they would,
according to the antient custome, send to mee for leave, they
should have all the contentment I could give them ; if otherwise
they would continue their wonted course, I would do my best to

1 Lysons says that Thomas de Hextoldesham, elected Prior of Lanercost
in 1357, was compelled by his bishop to make a solemn promise that he
would not frequent public huntings, or keep as large a pack of hounds as
he had done previously.

54 VERTEBRATE FAUNA OF LAKELAND

hinder them.’ Finding them defiant, he sent out a party of
troops, who surprised the hunting party on a fresh foray, ‘ broke
all their cartes, and tooke a dozin of the principall gentlemen
that were there, and brought them to mee to Witherington, where
I then lay. I made them welcome, and gave them the best
entertainment that I could. They lay in the castle two or
three dayes, and so I sent them home, they assuring mee that
they would never hunt there againe without leave, which they
did truly performe all the time I stayed there; and I many
times mett them myselfe, and hunted with them two or three
dayes; and so wee continued good neighbours ever after. But
the King complained to the Queene very grieveously of this fact.
The Queene and Council liked very well of what I had done ;
but to give the King some satisfaction to content him, my two
officers were commanded to the Bishop of Durham's, there to
remaine prisoners during her Majesties pleasure. Within a
fortnight I had them out againe, and there was no more of this
businesse.’ ?

When the last of the antlered stags disappeared from the
domains which this honest Warden protected so effectually, we
do not know. ‘The old race lingered long enough at any rate
to afford sport to that grim baron, Lord William Howard, who,
by the way, spent his nights as well as his days in ‘ fishing’ for
outlawed men.

The Lansdowne Ms. tells us of a visit which certain stray
gallants paid to Naworth. These officers, being forced at first
to seek entertainment ‘in a very poor cottage in his liberties,’
were pleased to meet with ‘lucky entertainment, to wit, a cup
of nappy ale, and a peece of a red deere pye, more than we thought
fit to acquaint his Lordship with.’ The lord of Naworth was
not, however, niggardly of venison. He sent many presents to
his friends in office. There exists an entry in his Accounts for
1619: ‘March 28. 2 padlocks for the 2 hampers with dear
pyes, xlij) d.’ I borrow from the same source an entry made in
1633: ‘July 30. To Jo Grayme of the Woodheade in the
Batable lande, who informed my Lord who killed his Lordship’s
deare, xx s.’ That the Red Deer of this district were destroyed

1 Memoirs of Robert Cary, Earl of Monmouth, pp. 129-135.

MAMMALIA 535)

during the troubles of the Commonwealth is far from im-
probable.

The Royal Forest which enjoyed the greatest reputation was
that of Inglewood, which extended along the western side of
the Eden valley, from Penrith almost to Carlisle. The game of
this Forest was strictly cared for, and the Bishop of Carlisle
(who himself enjoyed hunting rights) was bound to mulct
offenders for trespasses. It was upon the confines of this
Forest that the monks of Holme Cultram cut their timber ;
here they kept a stud of horses, and reclaimed portions of
waste. In 1225 the Abbot of Holme Cultram agreed to make
a fine of twenty marks with Henry II1., in return for which he
was allowed to assort and cultivate, during the King’s pleasure,
ten acres of the border of the King’s wood, next the Abbot’s
land, held of the King next Caldebec. This arrangement in-
volved a special proviso, that ‘on the side of the said lawn of
Wernayl towards the forest, they shall make a low hedge, that
the deer may enter and go out; and on the other side, next the
waters of Caldew and Caldebec, they shall make a high hedge,
and a good one, so that the King’s deer may not get out of his
forest by that hedge.’}

On another occasion the same Abbot protested to the Sove-
reign that certain commoners were clearing and enclosing tracts
of land, to the hurt of the King’s Forest, and to the injury of
his monks. In consequence of this complaint, the King ordered
Robert de Veteripont to cause the newly-made enclosures to be
destroyed. The Bishop, the Earl of Carlisle, and other notables,
enjoyed from time to time Crown grants to kill stags and bucks
in Inglewood. The Scottish nobles were partial to English
venison, and paid frequent visits to Cumberland on hunting
forays. The oft-quoted story of Hartshorn Tree, preserved in
the distich,

*‘ Hercules killed Hart-a-Greese
And Hart-a-Greese killed Hercules,’

owes its existence to this Scottish custom of hunting the Penrith
country. I shall only quote the account of the event furnished

1 Calendar of Documents relating to Scotland, vol. i. p. 162.

56 VERTEBRATE FAUNA OF LAKELAND

by the Countess of Pembroke, because all the others already
exist in books easy of access, and are really worn too threadbare
to stand in need of repetition here.

‘This summer,’ writes the lady who played such a spirited
part in local history, ‘by some mischevious people, secretly in
the night, was broken off and taken down from the Tree, near
the Pails of Whinfield Park (which for that cause was called
the Harts-horn Tree), one of these Harts’ horns which, as men-
tioned in the summarys of my auncestors Robt. Lord Clifford’s
Life, were set up in the year 1333 at a Generale Hunting, when
Edward Bal-ial, then King of Scotts, came into England by per-
mission of King Edward the third, and lay for a awhile in the
said Robt. Lord Clifford’s Castles in Westmoreland, when the
said King hunted a great Stagg which was Kill’d near the said
Oak Tree, in memory whereof the Horns were nail’d up in it,
growing as it were naturally in the tree, and have remained
there ever since, till that in the year 1648 one of these horns
were broken down by some of the army, and the other was
broken down as aforesaid, this year, so now there is no part
thereof remaining, the tree itself being so decayed, and the bark
of it so peeled off that it cannot last long.’?

The Scottish hunters were not over-scrupulous about limit-
ing their game to the number of head allotted to them by
grant, but any excess was noted and reported by the foresters
of the English King.

Thus in 1353, just twenty years after the exploit of Harts-
horn Tree, Edward I11., at the request of his cousin Edward de
Balliol, granted pardon to the nobles and others who had
hunted with him on various occasions in Inglewood Forest, and
had slain fourteen stags, two bucks, eleven hinds, and sixteen
red deer calves in summer, and sixteen hinds, fifteen red deer
calves, twenty-one bucks and does, and seventeen fawns in
winter; these facts being attested by indenture between the
King and William Lengleys, chief forester of Inglewood.?
Just two years later, on the 3d of December 1355, we find
Edward 1. again granting pardon to the same parties, who

1 Countess of Pembroke mss.
2 Calendar of Documents relating to Scotland, vol. iil. p. 288.

MAMMALIA 57

on this occasion had killed nineteen harts, fourteen hinds, seven-
teen calves, two bucks, four ‘sourells,’ thirteen does, a ‘ priket,’
and two fawns.

These offences were exactly what had occurred in Edward 1.’s
reign. For example, in 1285, Robert de Brus, lord of Annan-
dale, and John de Seytone his knight, were indicted before
the justices itinerant on pleas of the Forest of Cumberland ; the
charge formulated against them being that, when hunting in
_ Inglewood, they had taken a doe and a red deer ‘ priket’ in
excess of their allowance. One of the most curious cases of the
day was that in which a beneficed priest figured as a lawbreaker.
In the year 1258 Robert de Veteripont appeared in a suit
against Walter, parson of Newbiggin Church, and Walrand of
Soureby, in a plea why they entered his park of Whynefel
(Whinfell) and there took staggs and bucks without his leave.1

Inglewood Forest long remained a royal chase, and as such
receives incidental notice in various public documents. Thus
it is mentioned among divers woods, lands, and tenements
‘wherein his Mat® hath a right and title which is by some
persons of late controverted,’ in a Treasury warrant issued from
Whitehall, on July 21, 1668.?

Even after the accession of the Prince of Orange, ‘ the Town
and Manor of Penreth and the Forest of Inglewood’ were held
‘of her pr’sent Majesty the Queen Dowager as Lord thereof.’?
William 111. soon granted the Manor of Inglewood to the Duke
of Portland, who sold it to the Duke of Devonshire in 1737.

Thave failed to ascertain the precise date at which this magni-
ficent chase ceased to be the home of the wild Red Deer. ‘Edward
Hasell, who owned Dalemain from 1794 to 1825, inherited the
family sporting tastes, and with his hounds assisted at two
occasions, which may be called historical, the capture of the last
stag on Whinfell, and the capture of the last stag in Inglewood
Forest, when those two famous and ancient chases were dis-
forested. The Dalemain hounds continued to find stags in
Martindale, where the Countess of Lonsdale, in the glories of a

1 Documents relating to Scotland, vol. i. p. 420.
* Palgrave, Antient Kalendars and Inventories, vol. iii. p. 441.
5 Forty-first Annual Report of Deputy Keeper of Public Records, p. 18.

58 VERTEBRATE FAUNA OF LAKELAND

carriage and four, and outriders, would not unfrequently be seen
gracing the meet.’! |

Another ancient Cumbrian Deer Forest, which existed con-
temporaneously with that of Inglewood, continued to flourish
until the later years of the eighteenth century, and receives
mention under the names of Coupland Forest, Wastdale, and
Ennerdale, owing to the great extent of the wild hill-country
over which herds of these animals moved, descending no doubt
from the hill-tops to more sheltered situations when hard
pressed by frost and snow during the earlier months of the
year. In one of the charters which William de Meschin, the
founder of the religious house of St. Bees, granted to the
members of that community, he assigns to them a tithe of
venison: ‘decimas piscariarum mearum de Cauplandia, necnon
et decimam porcorum, et carnis venationis mez, per totam
Caupalandiam.’* The property belonged to the Earl of North-
umberland at the beginning of the sixteenth century. There
still exists, among the mss. of Lord Muncaster, an award of
Henry Earl of Northumberland, granting to Sir John Penygton,
knight, and John Lamplugh, Esquire, the ‘office of maistir
forstership’ of all his woods and game within his lordships
of Eskdale (Esshedaille) and Wastdalehead (Wasedaillhed).
Neither was to exercise his office without the assent of the
other.*

The Earl of Northumberland’s Household Book, published in
1827, contains ‘ An Account of all the Deer in Parks and Forests
in the North, belonging to the Earl of Northumberland, taken
in the 4th year of Henry vir. Anno 1512,’

From this we learn that the Earl possessed in Cumberland a
total of 1463 head of Red and Fallow Deer. The number of
Red Deer in Wastdale was computed at 230. Of park Deer
there were 456 head at Langstrothdale Park ; 307 at Adylthorp
Park; 205 at Adylthorp Old Park, and 319 in Helaugh Park,
these numbers including both Red and Fallow Deer.

‘ Above Irton,’ writes John Denton, about the year 1610, ‘in

1 The Cumberland Foxhounds, pp. 8, 9.
* Dugdale, Monasticon, vol. iii. p. 577.
3 Hist. Manuscripts Comm., vol. xli. p. 228.

MAMMALIA 59

the fells and mountains, lies a waste forest ground full of Red
Deer, which was called the Wastdale, now Wasdale, the inherit-
ance of the Earl of Northumberland.’?!

This is all that we hear of the Coupland Deer for fifty
years.

At the close of the year 1660 a Westmorland magnate, Sir
Daniel Fleming, Bart., became sheriff of Cumberland. In the
following year he apparently had to entertain the Judges on
Assize, and venison was of course in requisition. Accordingly,
we find from his private accounts that he obtained bucks from
Lowther, Muncaster, Naworth, Workington, Millum, and Kirk-
by. The only Led Deer venison forthcoming was supplied from
Wastdale and Martindale; the stags sent from these, the two
last surviving, deer forests being respectively entered (under
date of August 25, 1661): ‘Item, a stagg from Innerdale,
£00, 10s. 00d.’; and, ‘Item, a stage from Martindale, £00, 05s.
00d.’ ?

In the Survey of Cumberland which Sir Daniel Fleming drew
up in 1671, there appears the brief note, ‘ Hnnerdale, a fforest
well stored with deer. * He alludes also to ‘ Wastall, a large
forest or wast ground replenished with Red Deer.’ 4

Sandford, writing about 1675, refers to ‘the mountaines and
fforest of Innerdale, wher ther is Reed dear, and as great Hartts
and Staggs as in any part of England: if you can get vs a
warrant from y® brother of Karle of Northumland for a Brace of
Stages. The bow bearer is a brave gentleman: I have been at
his house in the Lower end of Enerdale: a seat for any gentle-
man: his name Mr. Kelleway, and we will hunt that dear
gallantly ; and eat it more brauely for y® sake.’ ®

How much longer the ‘ great Hartts and Staggs ’ roamed over
‘the mountains and fforest of Innerdale,’ can only be stated
approximately ; probably not much more than a hundred years
after Sandford proposed a gallant hunt. Hutchinson states in
his account of ‘the mountain Scofell or Scowfell,’ in the chapelry
of Eskdale, that ‘ within this century, several red deer were there,

* Denton mss. p. 20. 2 Rydal mss. p. 388.
3 A Survey of Cumberland, p. 9. 2570s Cita pea:
° Sandford’s ms. p. |.

60 VERTEBRATE FAUNA OF LAKELAND

one was chased into West-water and drowned, within the
memory of several persons living [circa 1794].’?

Housman says: ‘ Nicolson and Burn make mention of a large
forest of deer, which extended from hence (Wasdale Head) to
Sty-head in Borrowdale ; but I neither saw nor heard any account
of deer in my passage over that alpine tract.’ ?

Dickinson found traditions of the Red Deer of Ennerdale still
existing among the dalesmen of his young days. He states that
in the early part of the present century a reliable old dalesman

told him that before the Red Deer were destroyed in the Crown

Forest of Ennerdale, sheep used occasionally to venture upon
the Pillar Stone in search of a chance bite of grass, while the
Deer occupied the surrounding forest during the latter half of
the previous century. Some of the old stags also chose the
same elevated stand as a look-out. If they found a sheep or two
in possession they invariably forked them over the side, treating
them to a fall of about 200 feet. To prevent such losses the
shepherds assembled at the place, and handed stones from one
to another along the dangerous entrance neck, and had a wall
built high enough to prevent the ingress of sheep and deer.®

I am indebted to the Rev. Joshua Tyson, the present vicar of
Ennerdale, for kind assistance in ascertaining whether any tradi-

tions of the Red Deer are current in Ennerdale in 1892. Mr.

Tyson finds that an aged parishioner named Daniel Walker, a
native of Loweswater, but who has resided in Ennerdale for the
last sixty years, has a clear recollection of hearing the old folk of
his youth talking of the Red Deer which once lived on their
fells. According to Mr. Walker, the Red Deer used to be
plentiful once on what is called ‘ The Side, then thickly wooded,
but now all cut down. This is situated on the south side of
Ennerdale Lake, and their depredations almost ruined the
farmers at Gillerthwaite, at the top of the lake, and also at Mire-
side Farm on the east side, and they had to put old scythes and
pitchforks in the gaps and open places in the fences to keep
them out of the crops. ‘The Side Wood’ joined Coupland, and
ran up to Wasdale Fell, and was under the lord of the manor of

1 History of Cumberland, vol. i. p. 580. 2 Jb. cit. vol. i. p. 580 note.
3 Cumbriana, p. 178.

—— ee

_— -<- ee

ee ee ee

MAMMALIA 61

Egremont. Mr. Tyson ascertained from his parishioner that he
could give no date for the dying out of this herd of Red Deer.
This strengthens my belief that it took place about 1780, as
nearly as one can guess. That is only rough approximation ;
but I do not think that it is more than ten years too early, or
too late, whichever the case may be.

The only ancient forest which still continues to afford shelter
to the antlered monarchs of the glen, and to supply a grateful
bracken-shade to the young calves carpeted on the delicate fronds
of the parsley fern, which grows luxuriantly in these wilds, is
that of Martindale. This is the one surviving centre now pos-
sessed by the descendants of the lordly stags that bellowed
hoarsely to their loves on the pathless hills above the lake,
_in the days when the various wild creatures enjoyed the com-
pany of their natural mates in a peace and seclusion only broken
when man first appeared upon this lovely scene.

When Thomas Pennant visited the Lake district, he was told
that the Red Deer, which still ran wild in Martindale Forest,
sometimes strayed down to the neighbourhood of Windermere.!
This forest is only noticed in Saxton’s map of 1576, as ‘ Marken-
dale chapel.’ Our knowledge of its early history is derived from
an unpublished portion of the Machel Ms., quoted by Nicolson
and Burn, by Clarke, and other writers. Thus Hutchinson
states: ‘Mr. Hazel of Delmain is possessed of the Chace of
Markendale, which borders on the lake [ Ulleswater], and includes
most of the heights which lie on the eastern side. The lands of
his manse being of customary tenure, are attended with this
badge of servility, the tenants are bound to attend their Lord’s
hunt within this chase once a year, which is called in their court
roll a Boon Hunt. On this occasion they have each their district
allotted on the boundaries of the chase, where they are stationed
to prevent the stag flying beyond the liberty.’ 2

Clarke says that Martindale was a separate and independent
manor until Queen Elizabeth granted it to the Earl of Sussex
as parcel of the barony of Barton, reserving to herself and her
successors for her pad when she came to hunt there. Under
this tenure it was bought by Sir Christopher Musgrave, along

1 Tour in Scotland, vol. ii. p. 41. 2 An EHacursion to the Lakes, p. 82.

62 VERTEBRATE FAUNA OF LAKELAND

with the rest of the barony of Barton. The manor consisted
of small tenements. ‘The forest lands are held on the common
forest tenure, the tenants having what grass they can take with
the scythe. They likewise covenant not to drive the lord’s deer
out of it at any time of the year. In summer, however, the deer
seldom come there, they being mostly red deer, which always
frequent the tops of the mountains in that season. Whenever
the lord goes to hunt the stag, the Bailiff summons all the ten-
ants before sunset the preceding night, to attend to their strones
or stations. These stations are at two places, viz., Bampkin and
Bannerdale, where the deer chiefly lye, and where the tenants
stand with their dogs, to prevent the deer escaping to the moun-
tains. This service, which they are to render once a year, is
called a Boon Day, and for this every tenant has his dinner and
a quart of ale. It is also a custom here that the person who
first seizes the hunted deer shall have his head for his trouble.
It is remarkable that the first buck taken here was seized by a
woman: she, for the sake of his head, laid hold on him as he
stood at bay upon a dunghill, threw him down, and getting upon
his neck, held him fast. The late Mr. Hassel frequently called
upon the tenants for this service.’ }

The Rev. W. Richardson, writing in 1793, informs us that
‘Stags still range the hills of Martindale, and are the property of
Edward Hassel, Esq. of Dalemain. Old people speak of the noble
diversion of hunting the Stag ; and they describe, with peculiar
pleasure, Philip Duke of Wharton, riding on a gallant steed, after
travelling in his coach and six as far as he could, preceded by a
running footman in white. Sometimes the Stag is driven into
the lake, and taken up by boats. There were many noble stag-
chases about four years ago [1788-9], when Mr. Hassel sold
some of the breed, which were afterwards hunted in the county
of Surrey.’ ?

The oldest inhabitants of Martindale and the neighbouring
valleys still recall the days when ‘t’auld Squire Hasell’ enter-
tained his friends at Dale Head, in a house which was eventually
burnt down. They like to descant on the extraordinary merits

1 Survey of the Lakes, p. 34.
* Hutchinson, History of Cumberland, vol. i. p. 449.

MAMMALIA §3

of the huge pasty always provided for the guests, and the
excellent qualities of the liquor which slaked the thirst of those
who assisted in driving a Stag from the hill to the lower ground.
Once at bay, the animal was secured alive with ropes, in order
to afford sport in the annual celebration of the Inglewood Hunt.
Sometimes the quarry was obtained from Gowbarrow Park,
which the Martindale stags occasionally chose to visit, swimming
the lake near Howtown. As lately as October last I paid a
visit to both herds. This was all the more interesting, because
the arrival of the pairing season had induced the older stags
to join their seraglios. As soon as we entered Bannerdale a
stag commenced bellowing hoarsely on the Nab, and a few
minutes later we saw thirteen on the top of Rampsgill, stand-
ing out in clear relief against the sky-line far above us on the
left.

Climbing the nearest face of the Nab,—the hill was slip-
pery from a frost which was fast melting in the sunshine,—
we soon saw three hinds gazing intently at us. <A little more
walking brought us up to a fine stag accompanied by five hinds,
and then nine hinds appeared with a stag, whose weight was
guessed at 18 stone. After crossing a small ridge, we scrambled
along a small knoll on the wet hillside, and saw between sixty
and seventy head, old and young, beneath us, grouped together
in every possible variety of attitude. Some of them appeared
to be disconcerted by our appearance, and trotted hastily out of
sight. One or two of the older stags advanced a few yards
towards us, but they soon decided to retire, following in the
wake of the hinds and calves. For many years the breed
remained pure, but the present owner has recently introduced
a Scottish stag and a few young hinds, in the hope of improv-
ing the heads. They are very wild during the summer; as
Clarke says, they are not fed in winter, at least the majority are
not. Some of the younger animals are learning to avail them-
selves of the provision lately made for them in severe weather,
by the erection of feeding-troughs; a judicious arrangement,
and one well calculated to prevent a recurrence of the heavy
losses experienced by their owner in some seasons of long pro-
tracted frost and snow. The hardy Herdwick sheep character-

64 VERTEBRATE FAUNA OF LAKELAND

istic of the district graze on the same hills as the Deer, and no
doubt depreciate the character of their food. Clarke tells us
that ‘the Stag sometimes, in harvest, in the dead of the night,
leaves the mountain and comes into the cornfields. . . . If he
stays two or three days, he so over-eats himself that he is easily
run down.’ At the present time it is not unusual for the Stags
to visit fields of turnips during hard weather. When oats were
more extensively grown, the damage done by outlying stags
was often considerable. It was partly in consideration of the
heavy damage inflicted on their growing crops by Deer, that
Edward IL, in 1363, granted the men and tenants of Penrith,
Salkeld, and Soureby, in Englewood Forest, right of common
pasture for all their animals therein for ever.! But the stags
do not wander as much to the lower grounds as formerly. The
deer-keeper makes it his business to look out for outlying
animals, and to hound them back to Martindale with a cur-
dog specially trained to perform that duty. The animals are
increasing, and well they may, for only five stags are shot
annually. ‘There are of course more hinds than stags or calves.
Possibly more female calves may be dropped than males, but the
deer-keeper tells me that the male calves have a harder struggle
for existence. ‘The stag is jealous of a male calf in the rutting
season and drives it away from the hind, thus weaning
it at six months, and depriving it of a mother’s care during its
first winter. The hind calves follow their mothers throughout
the winter, and have thus a better chance of obtaining food and
shelter than the male offspring of the herd. No disease has
ever been known to break out among these animals. They die
either from old age, or from gradual inanition, due to a deficiency
of food during the early spring months. In winter a good
many Red Deer cross over to Place Fell, on the top of which
they find a fine strong growth of heather.

1 Documents relating to Scotland, vol. iv. p. 20.

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MAMMALIA 65

FALLOW DEER.

Cervus dama, L.

Whether the introduction of this Deer into Lakeland was
effected by the officers of our Roman colonies in the days of
_ Hadrian, or was only accomplished by our Saxon forefathers,
has never apparently been settled. Although I should naturally
have favoured the former hypothesis, truth compels me to state
that all the early remains of antlers discovered in Lakeland that
I have yet seen appeared to have belonged to the Red Deer. In
the thirteenth century there was a good stock of bucks and does
in Inglewood Forest, as we learn from the earliest of our local
historians : ‘Eodem anno [1280] tertio idus Septembris (Sept. 11)
venerunt dominus Edwardus rex Angliz et regina Alienora apud
Lanercost, et prior et Conventus obviabunt eis in cappis in
porta. Item, rex obtulit pannum sericum; rex autem in venatu
suo, ut dicebatur, cepit tunc ducentos, cervos et cervas in
Ingelwod.’ 4

Henry 11. had already bestowed hunting rights upon the
Bishop of Carlisle and his successors: ‘liceat eis cum venatoribus
et canibus suis feram vel feras suas sequi per forestam nostram
et capere, sine impedimento et disturbatione forestariorum vel
quorumcunque ballivorum nostrorum vel eorum ministrorum, et
cum venatione sua et venatoribus et canibus, vel si forte vena-
tionem non ceperint, cum venatoribus et canibus, licite et sine
impedimento ad propria redire.’? Three years after his hunting
experiences in Cumberland, Edward I. commanded Geoffrey de
Neville, keeper of the king’s forest ultra Trent to give Robert
de Brus, Earl of Carrik, twelve bucks in Inglewood, a species
of grant that was frequently renewed. Thus in July 1319
Hidward 11. commanded John de Crumbwell, the keeper of
Inglewood, to give John Bishop of Carlisle twenty-four fawns,
one half hinds and the other does, to stock his park of ‘la Rose,’
which had been destroyed by the Scots.®

This reference to Rose Castle reminds us that Edward 1.

1 Chronicon de Lanercost, p. 106.

* Nicolson and Burn, vol. ii. p. 544.

2 Calendar of Documents relating to Scotland, vol. iii. p. 123.
E

66 VERTEBRATE FAUNA OF LAKELAND

induced many of his nobles to keep Deer, both Red and Fallow,
by the liberality with which he granted charters of imparking, an
example followed by his two successors. A large proportion of
these lay between Kendal and Morecambe Bay. Leland observes,
‘There be about Kendall divers fair woodes, as Master Parris
Park, and many other.’ !

Saxton’s map of 1576, embracing both Westmorland and
Cumberland, shows Mallerstange Forest as unenclosed. It
includes two parks in the neighbourhood of Kirkby Stephen,
those of Smardale and Hartley Castle. Other Westmorland Parks
are Brigster, Syserghe, Kendall, Watlande, Camswick, Colnhead,
Seggewicke, Firbank, Croscrake, Barborn, and Middleton, all near
Kendal. Whinfield Forest is shown to be enclosed, as is Leke in
Lancashire. In Cumberland, seven enclosed parks are figured
on this map, those of Wethermlake, Grastok Castle (with a
stag stalking about in it), Stainton, Barren Wood, Blencrake,
Widehope, and Broughton near Cockermouth. Of the older
Westmorland parks, the only one still tenanted by Fallow Deer is
Levens, which Thomas de Strickland imparked in the reign of
Edward 11. Dallam Tower was enclosed only in 1720.
Several other ancient parks could be mentioned—Hartley
Castle, Crosby Ravensworth, Whitfield, Thornthwaite, and
Troutbeck among the number. Naworth is shown as un-
imparked, but Lord William Howard made a park of it. Gow-
barrow, included in this map under the old name of ‘ Wetherm-
lake,’ possesses the special interest of being the home of many
Red Deer, which, though not so shy as those of the Martindale
fells, yet roam over an enclosed stretch of similar country,
under perfectly natural conditions, except that they cannot
escape unless by breaking bounds or swimming Ulleswater
Lake. Stags have occasionally been known to cross from
Martindale to Gowbarrow. This great park is not mentioned
in Saxton’s map as ‘Gowbarrow,’ but under the older, and now
forgotten, title of ‘Wethermlake.’ Saxton also shows that
Barron Wood was enclosed in 1576. Peculiar privileges often
attached to parks of Fallow Deer. Thus, an award of the
second year of Richard 11. decided that Anna, late wife of John

1 Itinerary, vol. v. p. 130.

MAMMALIA 67

Fleming, should enjoy, for her dower, lands in Claughton in
Lonsdale, and one tenement in Coningston, and yearly during
her life, one buck or doe out of Coningston Park.

Some parks were destroyed or depleted of their Fallow Deer
during the civil wars, while in other localities the Deer were
probably neglected or allowed to become impoverished for
want of change of blood. In 1512 the number of Fallow
Deer in the Forest of Westward was computed to consist of
225 individuals. Some sixty-six years later the herd had
dwindled down to 92 head. The following extract from a
‘Survey of Westward Forest, dated the 14th of April 1578,
tells its own story :—.

‘There is at this present, within the said forest or chase, the
number of fourscore and twelve fallow deer or thereabouts,
which, if the frith and grounds aforesaid were enclosed and
preserved, would soon increase, and plenish to a convenient
number, and without the same provision there can never be any
increase, by reason the grounds (being suffered and used as
common) are depastured so bare in summer that the deer
(especially the fawns and old deer) die and perish in winter,
so many (and sometimes more) as commonly do increase in the
summer,’

That no pains were taken to preserve these Deer appears
from Sandford, who wrote about 1675: ‘And over a more wher
the Coles are got, north westward yow come into westward ;
and a quondam park full of fallow deer: but now vanquisht.’

Denton, writing about 1610, tells us that ‘Mr. Hudleston,
the present Lord of Millum, and diverse of his ancestors, have
made there a park enclosed for deer, which yet to this day is
ealled Uffbay.’ The herd of Fallow Deer which existed at
Millum in Denton’s time continued to flourish for two hundred
years. ‘ Millum Castle, says the scribe, ‘the antient seat and
capital mansion of this manor, is placed at the foot of the river
Dudden, and through length of time threatens ruin. Howbeit
the lords thereof make it still their dwelling-place and abode,
holding themselves content, that the old manner of strong
building there, with the goodly demesns and commodities
which both land and sea afford them, and the stately parks full

68 VERTEBRATE FAUNA OF LAKELAND

of huge oaks and timber woods and fallow deer, do better
witness their antient and present greatness and worth, than
the painted vanities of our times do grace our new upstarts.’
Many a haunch of venison reached Sir Daniel Fleming from
his cousin at Millum between the years 1656 and 1688. Gene-
rally, the present consisted of half a buck or half a doe; but
when the Judges were entertained at the Carlisle Assizes in
1661 an entire buck was sent for the banquet all the way from
Millom. Good-fellowship ran strongly in those days, and the
Cumberland Gallants were as welcome to hunt at Millom as at
Naworth, or any other great baronial seat. John Kirkby wrote to
his nephew, ‘ D.[aniel] F.[leming]’ at Rydal, on June 22d, 1657:
‘IT have had some discourse with your cousin Kirkby concern-
ing the “intended progress of hunting” of the Cumberland
Gallants. When you go to Naworth, you may tell them that
Sir William [Hudleston]’s absence need not hinder their hunting
at Millom. Your cousin Kirkby, who has command of the
game in Sir William’s absence, will shew them all sport for the
killing of a brace of bucks, and give them such accommodation
as his little house will afford.’

Dickinson has given a somewhat full account of the end of
the Fallow Deer at Millom, asserting that, at the end of the last
century, the Earl of Lonsdale decided to dispark this estate,
partly in consequence of complaints of outlying bucks damaging
crops, partly because in hard weather the Deer diminished the
grazing available for cattle: ‘The herd numbered about one
hundred or a little over, and, when the order came for their
destruction, a sale was effected with a speculator from Darlington
at a pound a head.’ He assures us that an attempt to capture
the Deer in nets having failed, the herd was shot down seriatium
by five of the neighbouring yeomen, who persevered in the work
of slaughter ‘till only two remained of the herd. These were
long watched, until one was brought down, but the other was
too wily to allow of being shot. At last the hounds were
collected, and he was hunted and broke bounds, and afforded a
few capital runs before the last of the herd was finally torn
down. And so ended the race of the “harts and hinds, wild

1 Rydal s., p. 22.

MAMMALIA 69

boars, and their kinds, and all aviaries of hawks,” reserved by
De Boyville in the reign of Henry the First, when he gave all
the parishes between Esk and Duddon to the Abbey of St. Mary
at York.’! As early as 1690 Ferdinand Hudleston had cut
down ‘a large forest’ to further the manufacture of iron, and to
build a ship of considerable burthen; but he had spared the
Deer. Jefferson tells the story of their extinction more curtly
than Dickinson: ‘So lately as 1774, when Nicolson and Burn
wrote, the park was “ well stored with deer.” It was disparked
by the present Earl of Lonsdale about the year 1802, when
207 deer were killed, and the venison was sold in Ulverston
Market and elsewhere, at from 2d. to 4d. per pound.’?

Some idea of the management required for a herd of Fallow
Deer may be gathered from the entries in the Household Book
of Lord William Howard. The home stock of park Deer was
recruited chiefly by the introduction of young animals, whether
Red or Fallow. In like manner, fawns were sent from Naworth
to other properties. Thus in 1612 we have the following
entries: ‘Junij ... 6. ij hind calves to H. Geldart’s men,
lijs.... To H. Geldart’s men carrying ij hind calves to
Thornthwate, iiijs. July ... To the keeper of Graystock
bringing ij fawnes,vs. To Mr. Rumney’s son bringing ij other,
vs. ... Mr. Penington’s man, bringing 2 fawnes and 6 herns,
xs. This last refers to animals sent from Muncaster, a long
ride, but distance was lightly esteemed in those days. Presents
of venison came to the Baron’s table from far and wide; equally
welcome whether it came from a near neighbour or was brought
by Mr. John Preston’s man all the way from Furness Abbey.
The courtesy of the times bestowed gifts of venison with fine
generosity even on the poor prisoners languishing in the jail at
Carlisle. Thus an entry occurs in 1621: ‘Sept. ... 15. To
Rob. Burthom, carrying veneson to the prysoners, xii d.’

The young Howards were fond of buck-hunting, and the cost
of their amusement is duly entered in the Acounts. In 1618, for
example,‘ Dec. 20. To Sr. Francis, for his journey to Keswick
to take dear, iijs.’ But there was no need for the young men to

1 Cumbriana, pp. 163-165.
* Jefferson, Allerdale Ward, p. 163.

70 VERTEBRATE FAUNA OF LAKELAND

leave home in search of sport, for in one season they killed 120
bucks out of their father’s parks. The younger animals required
some attention in several winters. In 1619 there is entered, on
January 25th, ‘ij boyes getting yvie for the deer, iiijd.’. The Deer-
house was littered with bracken. Thus in 1620 was paid on

Aug, 28th, ‘ For getting xl thrave of brackins for the dear house,

vis. viijd.’ Another requisition for the comfort of these animals
is mentioned in 1621: ‘Janu. 9. To Wm. Ridley, for iij dayes
making vij troughes for deer at Gelt, iiijs.’ Another duty is
mentioned in 1612: ‘May ... 8. To Ch. Ellot, for watching
the orchard for deare iij nights, xvilid.... Juni... 5.
Watching the orchard for deare, vid. . . . Nov. 4. Watching
the deer in the orchard one night, vid.’ Sir Daniel Fleming
records that his family seat of Rydal Park ‘was replenished
with deer, until the great-grandfather of the present owner
thereof [Sir Daniel himself] caused all the Deer to be killed.”*

This park, like so many, owed its title to Edward 1. Sir
Daniel Fleming often enters payments made to the servant-men
wno brought ‘a fouch,’ or ‘a side of venison’ from his relatives
and acquaintances. Occasionally this applies to live animals, as
in 1659: ‘ Aug. 18. Given unto my cosen, Andrew Hudleston’s
man, for bringing a young fawne, £00, 02s. 00d.’

Busy public man as he was, Sir Daniel was no cynic, but
found time to share the pleasures of the chase with his neigh-
bours :

*[1657] July 25. Spent and given att Hutton when I
was a-hunting with my Lord Howard there betwixt the 20th
and the 25th of July, £00, 16s. 00d.’

Nor did he forget the duty of attending to the creature-
comforts of humbler sportsmen :

‘[1668] Sept. 17. Given to my brother Roger for the buck-
killers to drink, £00, 05s. 00d.’

‘[1661] Sept. 11. Given amongst the tenants to drink
att the hunting att Conistone with Sir George Fletcher,
£00, 10s. 00d.’

‘Sept. 12. More to the hunters to drink, £00, 02s. 00d.’

Such an event as a christening was an excellent excuse for a

1 A Description of Westmorland, p. 17. ;

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MAMMALIA 1B

jovial family gathering, and of course, if venison was in season,
venison must garnish the table:

‘[1659] Aug. 9. Paid unto my brother William, which hee
had given and spent when hee gott us some venison against the
christening, £00, 03s. 00d.’

Alas, that a touch of truest pathos should attach to one of
the last items entered in the Naworth Accounts of 1640 !—
‘August 23. To the keeper at Graystocke for killinge a doe
against my Lord’s burial, vs.’ A grand, soldierly spirit had
gone home.

It is not my intention to enlarge upon the present dis-
tribution of park Deer in Lakeland. To do so might seem
ungenerous to Mr. J. Whitaker, who has informed me privately
of his intention, announced also in print, of furnishing a
complete return of all the Fallow Deer at present confined in
English parks. But, without forestalling Mr. Whitaker, I may
venture to remark that Fallow Deer exist at Naworth, Crofton,
High Moor, Ravenglass, Armathwaite near Cockermouth; at
Greystoke, Gowbarrow, and Edenhall in Cumberland ; at Dallam
Tower, Levens, Rigmaden, and Lowther in Westmorland; at
Holker in North Lancashire. The Earl of Lonsdale has a very
fine herd of Red Deer in Lowther Park, which has recently been
extended for the use of these animals, and affords them a
magnificent range of the forest kind; very unlike that of the
Gowbarrow Deer. The brightest and most beautiful Fallow
Deer that I have seen in Lakeland are kept at Holker. Levens
has the peculiar merit of having long preserved the dark form
of Fallow Deer without change of blood. The does of this herd,
on some rare occasions, have dropped milk-white fawns. I saw
one there. The Fallow Deer at Edenhall have just received a
change of blood by the addition to their numbers of one or two
bucks from Dallam Tower. This herd at present numbers
between 170 and 180 head. There are usually a few white
bucks and does, but not of the milk-white type dropped at
Levens. Curiously enough, a small herd of Fallow Deer were
formerly kept by the Hasell family in Martindale—not of course
on the fells, but in the bottom of the valley. This herd
dwindled away gradually, and is believed to have become

72 VERTEBRATE FAUNA OF LAKELAND

extinct early in the ‘ forties.’ Some of our herds are, or were, of
purely modern origin. Thus a local paper made this announce-
ment some forty-two years ago: ‘Lord Brougham is about to
convert some of his fine lands near Brougham Hall into a Deer
Park, the high walls of which are making rapid progress
towards completion. It will be stocked by deer from Lowther.
On Monday last, bold Tom Yarker and his assistant caught ten
fine deer for that purpose, which, with the like number taken
on a previous occasion, will be conveyed to the new park at
Brougham Hall.’}

Forty years afterwards, in 1890, it was decided to give up
the Brougham herd, and the animals were carted back to
Lowther, as the original home of their progenitors.

ROE DEER.

Capreolus caprea, Gray.

The Roe in prehistoric days must have wandered through the
coppices of the Duddon valley, across Whitbarrow, and through
many other parts of Lakeland. We know that it was numerous
in Westmorland, because its bones occur plentifully in the cave-
fissures, especially those near Kendal. Singleton may have had
some tradition of its former distribution in mind when he wrote
in 1677 that there existed in a house in Melmerby a coat of
arms which included three Roebuck heads. At that time the
range of the Lakeland Roes appears to have become restricted to
our northern borders. In the neighbourhood of Brampton this
animal was sufficiently plentiful to supply Lord William Howard
with many opportunities of sending Roes and Roe pies to his
neighbours and acquaintances. Thus, among the ‘ Law Causies,’
in May 1620, I find an entry, ‘ For careing roe pyes to my Lord
Chancler’s, xviij*.’ In 1634 there is an entry of August 12th:
‘Wm. Grayme and Tho. Mulcaster, ther charges at Carlisle,
goinge with a roe kidd to Judge Cawlye, xij4.’

The fame of the Roe of Naworth had long since reached the
Court of Charles I. As early as 1618 a consignment of live
Roes had been sent to the Metropolis. This we learn from an

1 Carlisle Patriot, April 20, 1850.

pS aoe i ee a ae

MAMMALIA 73

entry of September 27th: ‘Making a pannell for Jo. Bodwell,
for carrying iij rey kidds to London, xx%.’ This experiment
was followed by no fewer than thirty-two young Roes being
despatched to London in 1633. First of all, we have an entry
of the remuneration bestowed on the men who caught the Roe
kids. This is dated the 29th of June: ‘To severall persons for
takeing 31 roe kidds, as appareth by Dill, vii. xii® vj? . . .
To Micha. Fidler for 1 kide, v’’ Under the heading of Hus-
bandry we have an entry on ‘Julye 1°. To Rowland Hewthwaite
for makeing a payre of cart wheeles for the roes, x*.’ On the
16th of this month we read of another necessary charge: ‘ To
Wm. Lancaster, the smith, for bindinge 3 payre of wheeles with
iren which carried roes to London, vi". xvj*.’ (there is probably
a mistake in the sum charged). The August accounts tell us
who the worthy was to whom the duty of conveying the Roe to
London was delegated : ‘21. Richard Crofte’s charges to London
(with 6 menne and 7 horses cariinge roes to Kinge Charles),
ther and home againe, per bill, xxii!, ij’ ix?’ The wear and
tear of the long stage-journey, across Shap Fell and all through
the midland counties, entailed some damages, which were
prudently repaired when the party returned from Londor:
‘For repairinge 3 cartes sent with roes to London to Kinge
Charles, thether and home againe, xv’. x4.’

So far as we can judge, the Naworth Roe Deer ranged at
their pleasure over the mosses and woods round Brampton.
When their venison was wanted, a deer-keeper was sent out to
shoot the number required. Thus, we have entered on the 12th
of March 1618: ‘To Lionell Geldart for his charges at Bramp-
ton, iij nightes to kill ij roes, ij% vid’ The younger animals
were probably picked up in the woods by the country-folk, and
taken to the castle, as in 1622, when we find entered on June
11th, ‘To a boy bringing a rey kidd, vj*’

The descendants of those very Roes whose kids were sent
to Charles 1. still haunt the coverts of the border-land. A few
exist near Naworth, and a few more wander through the planta-
tions of the Netherby property. On some rare occasions these
animals have been known to cross the Eden, and even to wander
up the valley of that river into the neighbourhood of Penrith.

74 VERTEBRATE FAUNA OF LAKELAND

A solitary Roe frequented some plantations near Cotehill for
several seasons. In 1868 one of these animals strayed into the
neighbourhood of Rockliffe, and was shot at Crookdyke on the
5th of June. ‘Where the animal came from is mere conjecture, as
one of the kind has never been seen before in the neighbourhood,
but the probability is that he had strayed from Thornhill, or
some other of the Duke of Buccleuch’s Border preserves. He
was first seen feeding in a garden on the edge of Solway Flow
on Sunday morning, from whence he set off in the direction of
Castletown.’ +

Similarly, a strayed Roe frequented King Moor, near Stanwix,
for several months in 1883.

Order UNGULATA. Fam. BOVID.

WILD WHITE CATTER:

Bos taurus, L.

That this fine animal once enjoyed an extensive range through
the forest-lands of Westmorland is highly probable ; but all that
we positively know of its former existence in Lakeland relates to
a herd which was preserved at Thornthwaite, near Haweswater, at
the commencement of the seventeenth century. ‘ Thornthwaite,
says Sir Daniel Fleming, ‘ was the antientest land belonging to
y° Curwens of Workington in Cumberland, it being possessed by
that family from the Conquest until S‘ Hugh de Curwen, Kn‘,
sold the same unto y® Lord William Howard of Naworth Castle
in Cumberland, who gave it to S' Francis Howard, his younger
son, whose son and heir, Francis Howard of Corby Castle in
Cumberland, doth now enjoy it.’ When Lord William Howard
effected this purchase he acquired the Wild Cattle, which had
probably been driven by disforesting into this remote corner
among the hills, and had been protected by the Curwens for
several centuries. It has been suggested that these animals were
in the habit of ranging into Martindale, but to those who know
the ground it appears more natural to conjecture that these

1 Carlisle Journal, June 8, 1868.
2 Description of Westmorland, p. 25.

— —

MAMMALIA 75

animals had ranged from Thornthwaite to Mardale than that
they tenanted the bleak hills round Martindale, which formed no
part of Lord William’s purchase, but belonged to a different
proprietor. The herd had been for some years the property of
the Howards, before it occurred to Lord William to draft
some of the animals to Naworth, no doubt with a view of creat-
ing a second herd. The idea took a practical form at the
beginning of January 1630. The reason for accomplishing the
removal of the beasts at such an inclement season may perhaps
have been that the animals were tamed to some extent by
scarcity of provender, and could be surrounded and secured more
easily than in the summer-time. At all events we possess an
entry of the actual expense incurred in the removal: ‘Januari 9.
To Anthony Bearper, George Bell, and William Halle, for ther
charges and paines, in bringinge wild cattell from Thornthwate,
vs. iiij*.’1 After an interval of a few years a death took place
in the original herd, and the hide of the animal was accounted
for in the receipts of 1634: ‘June 22. Rec. for 30 sheep skinns
soulde at Thornthwate, xx®. Rec. for two kine skinns there, xiiijs.
Rec. more of him for one wild kowe skine, iij®.’* In the same
year we find entered: ‘August ... 23. To Mr. Thomas Howarde’s
manne bringinge one quarter of a wilde calfe to my Ladie, v*.’#
Nothing further is heard of the Wild Cattle of Thornthwaite, and
the date of the extinction of the herd is shrouded in obscurity.
Those kept at Naworth did not long survive their removal from
Haweswater. In 1675 Sandford alludes to the ‘White wild
Cattel with black ears,’ as having formerly existed at Naworth,
without a hint of the source from which they were supplied, or
a suggestion as to how the race had become a memory of the
past.

My endeavours to rake up further evidence regarding the
Wild Cattle of Lakeland have proved ineffectual hitherto. It is
true that Cornelius Nicholson alludes to these animals having
once inhabited Mallerstang Forest, but not one shred of evidence
has been produced to fortify his vague statement.’ * Mr. Joseph

1 Household Book of Lord William Howard, p. 264.
2 Ib. cit. p. 284. 3 Ib. cit. p. 318.
4 Mallerstang Forest and the Barony of Westmorland.

76 VERTEBRATE FAUNA OF LAKELAND

Bain prints, as an abstract of an old grant, the following
passage : ‘ The K. allows Andrew de Harcla, earl of Carlisle, to
take 6 wild cattle and 6 deer in Englewood Forest.’! But a
correct translation of the original, which I owe to Mr. J. P. Hore’s
great kindness, proves that the Wild Cattle of Mr. Bain derived
their supposed existence from the lively fancy of a copyist. The
translation is the following : ‘The King to the Keeper of our
forest on this side of the Trent, or to his lieutenant in our forest
of Inglewood—greeting. We command you to permit our dear
and faithful Andrew de Harcla, Earl of Carlisle, or his people in
his name, to take and have six bucks and six does in our said
forest of Inglewood of our gift. Given at Newcastle upon
Tyne the 19th day of September [1322]. By the King
himself.’

It is melancholy to reflect that, as Edward 1. executed Sir
Andrew early in the following year, these bucks and does must
have been the Jast which the gallant Earl hunted in Inglewood.

Order RODENTIA. Fam. SCIURIDA.
SQUIRREL.

Sciurus vulgaris, L.

It is difficult to conjecture with any degree of nicety the
period at which the Squirrel first colonised our forests. The
Rev. T. Lees reminds me that this animal is represented on
the Bewcastle Cross, but it would be unsafe to hazard a positive
opinion upon such slender evidence. Mr. J. A. Harvie-Brown
is disposed to infer that it has long been known among us, from
its occasional appearance in the armorial bearings of county
families: ‘The family of Hasell of Dalmain bears three hazell
slips; crest, a squirrel feeding on a hazel nut. The family of
Mounsey of Castletown bears a Squirrel.’ ?

In an able paper on this species, Mr. George Tait, F.G.S.,
offers the following remarks : ‘ Whether squirrels are indigenous

1 Calendar of Documents relating to Scotland, vol. iii. p. 145.
2 Proc. Royal Phys. Soc., vi. 35.

MAMMALIA 7

to the Borders, or existed there in ancient times, is doubtful ;
the climate is evidently not unsuited to them; and it is possible
that the extensive destruction of forests and woods, from the
period of the Norman Conquest till the accession of James I. to
the English throne, may have caused the extirpation of the
original breed ; but of this there is not evidence. The skins of
Squirrels, as well as of cats, foxes, hares, rabbits, kids, and
lamb, were articles of commerce in the district [Berwick] in
1377, when, according to a charter for pontage, one hundred of
them was charged a toll of one halfpenny on passing over
Alnwick Bridge; but such skins may not have been grown (sic)
in the district,’ 4

A little more than a hundred years ago the Squirrel was
certainly well established in our midst. Clarke volunteers the
suggestion that Swirls-gate ‘ signifies, I believe, Squirrels-gate, as
the word Swirl is in this country used for a Squirrel. The
situation of this hill (near Thirlmere) indeed argues as much,
as it was within these last few years covered with wood of
various kinds, and was the resort of those nimble animals.’ ?

Dickinson ignores this suggestion in his Glossary, and supplies
‘Con’ asa synonym for the Squirrel commonly employed in
Cumberland. This name is also recognised by Mr. W. Hodgson,
A.L.S., who has enjoyed exceptionally favourable opportunities
for studying the habits of Squirrels. Among other points
arrived at by my old friend is his conviction ‘that the Squirrel
does not hibernate, as I have been taught almost from infancy
to suppose; for even during the terrific snowstorm of March
1881, and others scarcely less severe in the seasons immediately
preceding it, their visits to my back door were never intermitted.
Only when the hazel-nuts were ripe and fairly abundant would
they disappear for a few weeks at a time.’

Mr. F. P. Johnson, one of the most observant and experienced
field-naturalists in Cumberland, writes to the same effect: ‘With
regard to the hibernation of Squirrels, which is just now receiv-
ing attention in the Zoologist, I would mention that here,—in

1 B. N. C. 1863-8, p. 441.
2 Survey of the Lakes, p. 117.
2 Trans. Cumberland and Westmorland Assoc., No. xi. p. 27.

78 VERTEBRATE FAUNA OF LAKELAND

this part of the country at any rate——I would undertake to
find the traces of the Squirrel in the snow whenever the ground
is covered with it. My belief is that Squirrels dislike damp
and wet much more than cold.’?

Order RODENTIA. Fam. MYOXID.
DORMOUSE.

Muscardinus avellanarius (L.).

The Dormouse occurs sporadically in a few of the most
densely planted portions of Lakeland, from the Rusland valley
up to the slopes of the fells at the southern end of Windermere.
Dr. Gough recorded it in 1861 as not infrequent in the neigh-
bourhood of Kendal, but I have not heard of its recent occur-
rence there. Mr. T. N. Postlethwaite wrote in 1885 that he
had frequently met with the Dormouse in the neighbourhood of
Millom: ‘One was shown to me, some winters ago, frozen to
a piece of wood; and last year, while trout-fishing, a boy
with me found one amongst the rocks on the banks of the

stream.’ ?
I have never yet been able to trace the Dormouse in the

eastern parts of Cumberland or Westmorland. Mr. Ben Jonson
caught two Dormice in his garden at Dalston in 1880, about
which time Mr. W. Hodgson obtained a specimen in the same
neighbourhood. Dr. Heysham recorded the Dormouse as found
in the Cumbrian portion of Ulleswater, and this is fully borne
out by modern evidence. Mr. Hodgson resided in the parish
of Watermillock, Ulleswater, as the village schoolmaster, for a
long series of years. He tells me that he repeatedly came
across the Dormouse during the extended excursions which he
was accustomed to make in search of wild-flowers.

1 Zoologist, 1891, p. 152. During the fall of the year this Squirrel shows
a marked partiality for Fungi as an addition to its usual dietary. Mr. Tom
Duckworth tells me that it especially prefers the red-fleshed mushroom
(Ammonita rubescens) and the variable mushroom (Russula heterophila).
2 Zoologist, 1885, p. 211.

MAMMALIA 79

Order RODENTIA. Fam. MURIDZ.
HARVEST MOUSE.

Mus minutus, Pall.

This diminutive quadruped is extremely rare in Lakeland.
Many years ago a typical nest of this mouse was found by Mr.
Duckworth of Blackwell, an observant and painstaking naturalist
of the old school. The species reappeared in 1888, because in
the autumn of that year a specimen was secured near Silloth by
Mr. J. H. Doeg, as I learnt from that gentleman himself at the
time. Strangely enough, there does not at present appear to be
the slightest proof that the Harvest Mouse exists anywhere in
the south of Lakeland. It is possible that both the above-
mentioned instances relate to cases of accidental introduction of
the species, possibly among seeds or plants sent from the south
of England.

LONG-TAILED FIELD MOUSE.
Mus sylvaticus, L.

This Mouse is of general distribution throughout Lakeland,
and commits serious acts of devastation in kitchen-gardens. It
is a very charming little animal nevertheless. Though timid, it
is easily tamed, and lives longer in captivity than any of the
Voles. Some specimens which I procured for a friend lived
upwards of two years in confinement, a considerable period
for so small a mammal.

HOUSE MOUSE.

Mus musculus, L.

This generally distributed pest possesses the redeeming
feature that it is easily tamed, and readily learns to confide on
those whose kind offices induce it to lay aside its natural dis-
trust of men.

Several residents in Carlisle have succeeded in winning the
regard of wild mice; among the number Mr. Eales, who assures
me that at one time he derived great pleasure from watching the

80 VERTEBRATE FAUNA OF LAKELAND

lively antics of a tribe of mice which frequented his workroom,
fed at his call, and in every way recognised the friendship
of their benefactor.

BLACK RAT.
Mus rattus, L.

An incidental allusion to this Rat, as established at Rydal in
1686, is furnished by an entry in the Accounts of Sir Daniel
Fleming: ‘ Dec. 13. Paid unto Thomas Loftos of Rufford, near
York, ratcatter—besides 2s. 6d. I am to give at Easter next if

he kill the rates for a year—£00, Ols. 00d.’ It seems a little

curious that the ratcatcher should have been a stranger, because
at that time the Black Rat was no doubt of general distribution.
Yet so rapidly did this species die out in Cumberland after the
immigration of a stronger species, that even in 1796 it had
become, in the words of Dr. Heysham, ‘very rare, having been
expelled from this country, in great measure, by the brown rat.’

Although I have inquired for this Rat of many ratcatchers,
no information as to its surviving in any Cumbrian localities

has ever been vouchsafed. Thomas Armstrong obtained a’

piebald specimen at Coathill on the 6th of January 1859.1 It
may be inferred from this that some individuals lingered about
the farm-houses and cottages. Mr. H. P. Senhouse recollects
a small colony as existing near Cockermouth in 1876. A strict
search might possibly bring other occurrences to light, especially
in the fell districts. In Westmorland this Rat seems to have
existed quite recently. It was only in 1883 that Mr. J. Good-
child wrote, from an intimate acquaintance with the north-east
borders of Westmorland : ‘It may not be generally known that
the Black Rat yet lingers in small numbers about the fell-side
farms in Westmoreland. It is no uncommon thing for specimens
of this species to be captured in the barns and outhouses, at
Milburn, for example; but the species is every year becoming
rarer, aud will doubtless soon be as entirely supplanted by its
foreign congener there as it has been elsewhere.’ ”

1 Zoologist, 1859, p. 6442.
2 Trans. Cumberland and Westmorland Assoc., No. viii. p. 218.

Se. pee, a ee

MAMMALIA 8]

A ‘watcher’ belonging to Walney Island, who undoubtedly
has been in the habit of killing a great many Rats in the winter-
time, recently volunteered the remark that afew Black Rats still
existed on the island, but he has not confirmed this statement
by forwarding any specimens. The Black Rat recently existed
in Furness. Mr. W. A. Durnford obtained an adult female and
her young ones at Barrow in 1879.1 That this breed has been
introduced into the port by foreign vessels is highly probable.”

Dr. Heysham furnishes ‘ Ratten’ as the Cumbrian for Rats.
Dickinson spells the same word ‘ Rattan’ in his Glossary.

BROWN RAT.

Mus decumanus, Pall.

This destructive animal is one of the few mammals which
have not inhabited Lakeland from prehistoric times. Within
fifty years of its arrival, the Brown Rat extirpated all but a few
individuals of the Old English Rat, and asserted its obnoxious
superiority in many ways. Latterly its numbers have increased
owing to the policy adopted by farmers and keepers of extermi-
nating with trap and gun the birds and animals that would
naturally have held this injurious species in check, I never
shall forget the mistaken pride with which a Cumbrian farmer’s
wife showed me the body of a poor Barn Owl. It was still warm
and bleeding; indeed, we had heard the discharge of the gun
with which the farmer shot the ‘ fancy bird,’ as he called it, so
that the deed was only just complete. This was in the middle
of the ‘close-time.’

This rat is quite as much at home in the burrows which it has
tunnelled in the hedge-banks of Walney Island as in the farmers’

1 Zoologist, 1879, p. 234.

2 Mr. T. Lindsay, whose extensive acquaintance with the ‘ ground
vermin’ of Lakeland has already been noticed, was asked whether he
had ever come across the Old English Black Rat at any of the remote
farmsteads of the fells. He at once replied that ‘the only breed’ of
black rats that he had ever heard of swam ashore at Seascale, from the
wreck of a foreign fruit vessel. This occurred about 1866. For the time
they became established at Seascale.

F

82 VERTEBRATE FAUNA OF LAKELAND

ricks of corn, or in the semi-aquatic quarters which it shares in
summer with the harmless Water Vole.

Order RODENTIA. Fam. ARVICOLIN.

WATER VOLE:
Arvicola amphibius (L.).

The Water Rat is common throughout Lakeland from Furness
to the Scottish borders, upon which it is especially numerous.
At Ravenglass these animals have runs among the sandhills,
and burrow in the sand in many directions, thus showing a
curious divergence from their usual choice. The black variety is
rare in Lakeland ; indeed, it is only known to me by report. It
is said to have occurred in two instances in the Eden valley.
The late Mr. Grayson of Whitehaven told me that a few Black
Rats frequented a small beck in that neighbourhood, Mr. W.
E. Beckwith informs me that Black Water Voles occur on Rydal
Water and Windermere, but no resident in the district appears
to have seen them. If they still exist they must be very rare,
because my local inquiries have been well directed. A ‘ black
rat’ reported to Mr. G. A. Hutchinson as having been killed
on the Kendal Canal, but not preserved, was probably a black
Water Vole.

COMMON FIELD VOLE.

Arvicola agrestis, De Selys.

The Short-tailed Field Mouse has increased in most districts
of late years, in consequence of the destruction of owls and
kestrels. It frequents our hills no less than the low grounds.
Under some circumstances this Vole appears to approach dwell-
ing-houses in search of food. Among the Ms, notes by the late
Dr. Gough I find this amusing little paragraph : ‘ A company
of these voles had made their way into a storeroom indoors
during the autumn; and in the winter about half a dozen of
them were found dead among the syrup of gooseberry-jam,—a
sweet kind of death for a novice.”

MAMMALIA 83

RED FIELD VOLE.
Arvicola glareolus (Schreb.).

This species was first ascertained to be resident in Lakeland
in March 1887, when Mr. Richard Mann forwarded to me for
identification a fresh specimen, which had been ‘turned by the
plough’ at Aigle Gill, near Allonby. Mr. William Duckworth
previously felt confident that he had seen the species on King
Moor, near Carlisle, as did his brother, Mr. Tom Duckworth ;
but they had never been able to fortify their opinion by securing
a specimen for examination. In December 1887 Mr. R. Mann
favoured me with additional specimens of the Bank Vole. Two
of these I kept alive for some weeks, at the end of which I found
that our special favourite had been killed and scalped by his
companion, a mouse of sullen and untameable disposition. The
deceased was a Vole of charming temperament, always gay and
cheerful, delighting to exercise his muscles on a ‘ wheel,’ working
at it with all his might, his tail straightened with pleasure.
When a little tired he would whisk out of the ‘ wheel,’ and
refresh himself with a nibble at an apple before he returned to
his gymnastics. He often amused himself thus during the day,
but it was generally about half-past one in the morning that he
became most active. His practice then became so noisy as to
deprive me of sleep, and eventually I was compelled to fix the
wheel before retiring. In January 1891 I received three more
Bank Voles from my friends at Aigle Gill. These had also been
captured in the centre of the heaps of turnips among which they
lie up for the winter. They are only found on one part of the
farm, a dry and fairly elevated situation, and are partial to the
skirts of a small wood. I have not hitherto met with any Bank
Voles during my rambles through Westmorland or Furness.
The species is in all probability extremely local in Lakeland,
but is sure to be found sooner or later in additional localities.

84 VERTEBRATE FAUNA OF LAKELAND

Order RODENTIA. Fam. LHPORID.
HARE.

Lepus europeus, Pall.

Hares are now comparatively scarce on many Lakeland shoot-
ings, a matter of regret to ardent*sportsmen, but easily
accounted for by the Ground Game Act. Where leases favour
the increase of this animal, the Hare is still numerous. It is
from such preserves as those of Netherby and Edenhall that the
country-side receives a supply of stray Hares, since these animals
travel long distances during the night, and will at times desert
their favourite parks in order to lie out on the open salt marsh,
or to visit a field of clover. Mr. W. Hodgson, A.L.S., whose
retentive memory enables him to speak with accuracy of his
youthful experience, considers that Hares have been decreasing
in Cumberland for the last sixty years. Dr. Heysham wrote at
the end of the last century that this Hare was ‘ plentiful every-
where’ in Cumberland, a remarkable statement when we
remember how common the foumart and other ‘ vermin’ were
in the old Doctor’s time. Lord William Howard must have been
keenly alive to the merits of hare-soup, if the number of this
species purchased for his kitchen be allowed to serve as a
criterion. The price never varied. Sixpence was always given
for a full-grown Hare. <A Leveret fetched threepence. How
the Hares supplied by the neighbourhood were procured is open
to conjecture. The probability is that they were snared or
netted in the fashion still in vogue among our local poachers.
It is not unlikely that some of them were ‘ traced’ when snow
was lying on the ground, illegal as the practice had recently
been declared to be. But there can be no doubt as to the sport.
openly enjoyed by county worthies of the seventeenth century.
Singleton wrote regarding Melmerby in 1677, that the ‘bedds
of whinnes (or furrs as in the south you call them),’ were ‘for
the hunters’ recreation, being a receptacle for the hares. Sir
Daniel Fleming notes [1685-6]: ‘Jan. 5. This day an hair was
started near Grasmere-mill, and was followed by three hounds,
which hair came by the Rydal stable door and run into the Hall

1 Machel ms. vol. vi., not paged.

MAMMALIA 85

Court, and she being followed into the court by my sons Michael
and James, they and some other of their brothers did take her
in Rydal Hall Court.’ That Hare-hunting enjoyed popularity
in Cumberland a century ago is certain. ‘But a Cumber-
land hunt,’ says a local writer, ‘there undoubtedly was during
the last century, and a relic of it is now before me in the
shape of its button, a large flat button of plated silver, on which
is engraved the figure of a Hare at full speed, and over, the
words ‘ The Cumberland Hunt.’?

RABBIT.

Lepus cuniculus, L.

The coast-line of the north-west of England is singularly well
suited to the habits of this animal; indeed, our Cumbrian
warrens have been famous for many centuries. The Furness
monks preserved a fine warren. That belonging to the Abbot of
Holme Cultram was valued, together with some fishing rights,
at the annual rate of £2, 6s. 8d. ;—‘ warenn’ cuniculorum,’ it is
termed, in a roll of 30 Henry vu. The author of a ‘ Letter
giving an account of a Survey of the N. West Coast of England
in August 1746,’ informs his readers that ‘the Grune is a re-
markable head of land, whose position the common maps have
widely mistaken. It is now only a rabbet warren, and hardly
any vestige left where an antient chapel stood, called the chapel
of the Grune. . . . Hence [from Dubmill] we have a low coast
till you pass the Blue-dial ; then the shore begins to be bankey,
and rises by degrees to the Bankend point, with a skirt of low
ground under the banks for rabbet warrens. The sea-sand is
full of stones, some pretty large. The coast all along from
Skinburn-naze is entangled with sea-holly, and very few other
herbs, save the serpyllum and rest-harrow. When we get to a
single house called the Boin, the coast elbows round, and the
whole track from thence to Derwent mouth is a low benty soil,
so broken with rabbets that ’tis almost impossible to ride it after
night falls.’ ? Dr. Heysham in 1796 alluded to the importance

* Rydal ms. p. 404. 2 The Cumberland Foxhounds, p. 6.
3 Gentleman’s Magazine, 1748, pp. 1-5, 291, 292.

“See
ew

86 VERTEBRATE FAUNA OF LAKELAND

of the Cumberland warrens, while in the following year there
appeared a note that ‘some narrow tracks of light sandy soil
along the coast, from Harrington to Abbey-holm, are occupied
by rabbits. There are also warrens in the parishes of Wyber-
thwaite, Drig, and Heskit.’* Mr. Pringle adds a note regarding
Westmorland: ‘A few rabbits are kept in the neighbourhood
of Brough and Orton, and there is asmall warren in Ravenstone-
dale, but it is rare to see them in any other part of Westmor-
land.’2 But though local in distribution in Westmorland even
as recently as the close of the last century, the Rabbit has long
been numerous in many parts of Cumberland. A warrener was
constantly employed as one of Lord William Howard’s outdoor
servants at Naworth. There is an entry in 1622, which shows
this worthy to have been proficient in ferreting: ‘ Tho. Warriner.
Feb. 4. A wallet for the ferrets, viij*, Corde, viij4, An yron for
his staffe, xiiij, A hanck of yarn for mending his net, vi%’3
But he also caught the conies in traps, because we find an entry
to this effect in August 1634: ‘11th. To Rowland Hewthwate
for 8 dayes’ woorke in makeinge trapps for the warraner, and
mending waynes, vi’. viij*.’ Apparently he was paid by piece-
work; for example, in 1622, we find that he was paid eight
shillings for rabbiting: ‘ Feb. 19. To the warriner for xij jur-
neys to Peatwath to kill conyes, viij’” He was employed also
in improving the warren. The following entries refer to 1634:
‘March 6. For castinge boroughs in the cunnie warren, xij’.
April 5. For makeinge cunnie bourrowes in the warren, xvj*.
20. More to the warraner for makeinge cunnie burroughs, xxij*.
April 28. More to the warraner for makeinge cunnie burroughs
in the warren, x.’

It would be idle to enlarge upon the habits of this animal,
but to some an instance of its occasional longevity may be of
interest. In 1883 there was living in Carlisle a wild Rabbit
which had entered on its eleventh year, and still enjoyed rude
health. It was a household pet, and showed a strong predilec-
tion for drinking tea.

1 Agricultural Survey of Cumberland, p. 216. * 1b. cit. p, 2B;

3 Household Books of Lord William Howard, p. 179.

Wook Second.

AVES.

Order PASSHRES. Fam. TUORDIDZ.
Sub-Fam. TURDINZ,

MISSEL THRUSH.

Turdus viscivorus, L.

The Mountain Thrush or ‘Shrite’ is fairly distributed over
Lakeland in the breeding season, and many individuals cross
the mountain tops on their autumnal migrations. Notwith-
standing the courage which this bird displays in defence of its
young, at other times it is frequently plundered by the Starling,
which finds it less laborious to snatch the earthworms of the
garden lawn from the Missel Thrush than to subsist by its own
exertions.

SONG THRUSE

Turdus musicus, L.

This species is known all over Lakeland as the Throstle, a
term of some local antiquity, since we find it mentioned in the
Naworth Accounts as early as 1612: ‘A curlue, vjd. Another
and uj throssels, viijd.’ Probably few of the general public
realise the extent to which this delightful songster is an immi-
grant, arriving in our midst during the early part of the year,
and commencing to practise the summer songs in the month of
February. Mr. W. Duckworth forwarded to me a wing of the
Song Thrush, with the information that the ss. Topic, Captain
M. Ferguson, fell in with a large flock of migrating birds when

88 VERTEBRATE FAUNA OF LAKELAND

running from Belfast to Ulverston in February 1890. The
night of the 21st was very foggy, with a south-easterly wind.
On the morning of the 22d the deck of the Topic was strewn
with dead and wounded birds, The crew picked up about sixty
birds, chiefly Song Thrushes, together with a Snipe and a few
Blackbirds, Starlings, and Skylarks.

REDWING.

Turdus tliacus, L.

During the months of October and November we often hear
flights of Redwings passing over the border city between
11 pM. and1A™M. Farren of Ravenglass tells me that when
fishing off that coast he has often recognised in the dark the
cries of parties of Redwings travelling along the seaboard.
Many individuals cross the Lake hills. In bad weather you may
see them in the dales, aimlessly drifting about the fields as if at
a loss to find shelter from the showers of driving sleet which
descend in such blinding squalls from the mountain side.
During protracted frost Redwings seek the neighbourhood of
sheep, or congregate on the river-banks; a few individuals
haunt the exposed edges of our tide-worn salt marshes in the
struggle to adapt themselves to their altered environment.

FIELDFARE
Turdus pilaris, L.

A solitary entry of January 1620 shows that the trivial name
of this Thrush was then in use in Lakeland: ‘ A felde fare, j d.’
Then, no doubt, as at the present time, vast numbers of Felties
occasionally visited Lakeland. The autumn of 1890 was a
great year for this bird. The first droves that I heard of made
their appearance on the fells near Kirkby-Stephen before the
end of September. Three weeks later the country was fairly
inundated with swarms of these birds, the greater number of
which passed away to the westward, possibly to Ireland.

BIRDS 89

BLACKBIRD.

Turdus merula, L.

The Blackbird is mentioned in the Naworth Accounts as
worth one penny, a comparatively high price for the times:
*4 black birds, iiijd... Nowadays the species is ubiquitous, or
nearly so, in Lakeland, having regard of course to suitable cover.
It varies less in its choice of nesting sites than most birds;
hence one might have supposed that the eccentric conduct of
the female Blackbird which, in the year 1883, built her nest
and laid in a waterspout above the porch of a private house,
would have remained unique! But history repeats itself even
in the domestic economy of the Blackbird. My friend Mr. J. C.
Dove, a few years later, observed an exact repetition of the per-
formance on the part of another hen Blackbird. This bird built
in a spout under the roof of a house at Stanwix.”

RONG O UZ i i:

Turdus torquatus, L.

A few Ring Ouzels enliven many of our fell lands with their
cheery presence during the summer months, frequenting rough
ground varied with rocks and heather, by preference. At the
same time they may often be seen flitting about the stone walls
of the Pennine range. Their gestures when disturbed are full of
vigour and animation. Their wild rich song is well calculated
to harmonise with the lonely regions which they share with the
Raven and Red Grouse. The last days of March witness the
return of the Ring Ouzels to their upland home. They nest in
April and May, generally beside one or other of the numerous
becks that have scored such long, deep furrows on the hillsides,
by reason of the rain and snow which descend in winter-time.
I have known the young of the Ring Ouzel to leave their nest
as early as the 26th of May, but most of the first broods fly
during the second week of June, at least in the majority of
seasons. They begin to gather into small flocks about the end
of July, and for the remainder of their stay they rove about in

1 Birds of Cumberland, p. 3. 2 Field, May 14, 1887.

90 VERTEBRATE FAUNA OF LAKELAND

search of food, sometimes challenging danger by entering
gardens in search of fruit, ¢.g., near Alston; elsewhere content
to feed on wild berries, as, for example, those which hang in
gay festoons from the branches of the rowan-tree in such
situations as Honiter Pass. They leave us at the end of Sep-
tember. Some birds may linger into October, but I have not
as yet obtained any proof that the Ring Ouzel winters in Lake-
land. I have sometimes remarked with surprise upon the pre-
cision with which the Ring Ouzel repairs direct to its breeding-
ground, rarely appearing on our lower grounds even on vernal
migration. There are of course exceptions to this. Thus in
1890 a solitary Ring Ouzel made its appearance in a field near
Aigle Gill on the 30th of March, and there rested a few days.
On the 14th of April the same year Mr. W. Hodgson saw a
fine Ring Ouzel on the beach at Workington, which, as he wrote
to me, ‘might have passed for a common Blackbird, had not
his loud tac, tac, tac induced a closer scrutiny, when his white
gorget was distinctly seen.’

WHEATEAR.

Saxicola enanthe (L.).

This Chat, the first of our spring immigrants, makes its appear-
ance almost simultaneously upon our higher fells and the low
grounds near the coast, the influx being often noticed over a
wide area. Thus in 1888 the Wheatears arrived all along the
breadth of Cumberland, from Wright Green to Gretna, within
three days. The first to appear were a few males, which arrived
at Aigle Gill on March 28th, followed on March 30th by a fresh
influx, this time including both males and females ; at Wright
Green a few males were seen on March 30th, and many had
arrived at Skinburness on the morning of the same day. Some
few of these birds were observed during the day to cross the
Wampool and Waver estuary, and the day following none could
be seen, the majority having evidently shifted their quarters
during the night ; possibly these were the identical birds that I
noticed near Carlisle and Gretna on the lst of April. At that
season many Wheatears haunt the salt marshes of the English
Solway, not frequenting the centre of the cattle-run, but flitting

BIRDS 91

about the broken edges of the salt marshes. It is a little sur-
prising that the Wheatear does not breed on our salt marshes,
since the broken turfs above the water-line afford many suit-
able niches for its nest, while food, in the shape of small beetles,
is undoubtedly plentiful. But though the Wheatear crosses
‘many portions of our area, as from Grange to Kendal, it does not
usually breed on the sea-level, except on Walney Island and else-
where along our open coast, as at Ravenglass and among the
sand-hills and turf-covered banks near Silloth. The birds that
breed inland may often be seen in early spring on ploughed lands,

but they soon go up into the high grounds, breeding commonly
_ throughout the more elevated portions of our faunal area.

There can be no doubt that this bird is just as characteristic
of the bleakest fells as of the golden sands that break the force
of our south-westerly gales; the pale blue eggs are equally
familiar to the long-line fisherman, and to the shepherd in the
most remote dales of Westmorland. Everywhere the Wheatear
exhibits the same characteristics, always a bright joyous bird, at
one moment carolling blithely on the wing with fond half-
hovering flight, at the next balancing its slight form on some
conspicuous vantage-point, or chasing away arival in mock anger
from its nest.

When crossing Melmerby Fell one summer day we stumbled
across a little colony of breeding Wheatears. They were
evidently nesting in the holes which the rabbits had excavated
in a light sandy soil; but, curiously enough, these birds persis-
tently perched on the tops of some tall hawthorn bushes, though
stone walls, such as they usually affect, were quite as near. In
autumn the migrating birds occasionally rest on telegraph-wires.
An individual which haunted the Willow Holme for ten days in
September 1888 constantly perched on the hedgetops. The
autumnal movements of this Chat chiefly affect us in the months
of August and September, when many birds appear in the fields
and on the salt marshes, as well as on the open coast. This
autumn (1891), I found quite a score of Wheatears flitting about
the beach on the north-west side of Walney Island on October
20th. It is a trifle unusual to see more than a single straggler
when the season is so far advanced.

92 VERTEBRATE FAUNA OF LAKELAND

ISABELLINE WHEATEAR.
Saxicola isabellina (Riippell).

The National Collection includes the only example of this
Chat which has hitherto been obtained in Great Britain. I sent
to the Jbis of January 1888 the following notice of its occur-
rence: ‘I have pleasure in stating that an example of the
Isabelline Wheatear (Sazxicola isabellina) was shot at Aigle Gill,
near Allonby, Cumberland, on the 11th of November 1887. The
bird was first observed on that day by Messrs. Thomas and
Richard Mann, tenants of Aigle Gill farm. The weather was
fine, but dull, with a slight wind from the north. The bird made
its appearance in a field which Messrs. Mann were sowing with
corn, and was quite alone. It perched upon clods of earth, after
the habit of S. wnanthe, but appeared to be less lively in its
movements than that species. It was unsuspicious of danger,
and was easily approached. Having had a visit from Mr. Sen-
house and myself only six days earlier, when I begged my friends
to continue to search for doubtful Wheatears, and struck by the
light colour of this late bird, Messrs. Mann decided to shoot it
for me. It was therefore shot by Mr. Thomas Mann, and posted
to me the same day. I received the bird the following day in
fine condition, and [not having any Chats by me at the moment]
took it to Mr. Howard Saunders, who [was just then writing
the Chats for his Manual of British Birds, and] kindly pointed
out to me its identity with specimens of S. isabellina in his
possession. ‘The bird was also examined in the flesh by Dr. R.
B. Sharpe, but especially by Mr. Seebohm, who compared it in
my presence with his extensive series of Sazicoline. Mr. Harting
saw the specimen before skinning, so did Mr, G. E. Lodge, who
made a coloured sketch of it [now in the possession of the family
at Aigle Gill]. The bird was also exhibited on my behalf by
Mr. Howard Saunders at a meeting of the Zoological Society of
London on Dee. 6th [1887]. It proved upon dissection to be a
female, and the retention of some delicate bars upon the lower
breast seems to indicate that it is a bird of the year. The irides
were dark hazel, legs and bill black. Total length, 6°5 ins.;
wing, 33 ins. The stomach was empty... .

(eo Lee) MvyaLvaune BNI imaaver

Wy Peyuey

BIRDS 93

The Isabelline Wheatear is new to Western Europe. Its
range eastward and southward is extensive, including Somali-
land and Nubia, Palestine, Asia Minor, Greece, the Caucasus,
Afghanistan, and the N.W. Provinces of India; in Russia,
Mr. Seebohm received eggs of this Chat from Sarepta; he has
also two skins from Krasnoyarsk, Siberia. It visits the region
of Lake Baikal on migration, breeds commonly in Daiiria, and
was obtained by Pere David in the neighbourhood of Pekin.
It has been recorded from Madagascar.’

It only remains to add that Prejevalsky pronounced this Chat
to be an exquisite songster.

WHINCHAT.

Pratincola rubetra (L.).

The sweet song of this common summer visitant may be heard
in most of the less elevated districts of our faunal region, espe-
cially where extensive meadow lands afford plenty of rough
cover. I have met it numerously near Kendal and Windermere; it
abounds in one or two localities near Carlisle, and is very plentiful
near Drumburgh, but becomes rather more scarce in the west of
Cumberland. The Whinchat is one of those species that often
betray their young by their fussy agitation. In August, when
migration has set in, the immature birds chiefly appear singly,
as though they preferred to perform a part at least of their
journey southward in solitude. At that season I have some-
times noticed the Whinchat actively foraging for insects in the
bean fields.

STONECHAT.

Pratincola rubicola (L.).

Dr. Gough did not consider the Stonechat a common bird at
Kendal. It has always appeared to me to be of tolerably
general occurrence on our moorlands, at an elevation of a few
hundred feet above sea-level. It occurs all along our coast-line
from Drumburgh to Skinburness, and westward to Maryport,
Whitehaven, and Walney Island.

94 VERTEBRATE FAUNA OF LAKELAND

Mr. Archibald has taken its eggs in the last-named locality,
where it winters, as on other parts of our coast. During severe
frost the resident Stonechats are sometimes sadly pinched for
food. In December 1890, for example, a pair of Stonechats
haunted the roadside near Skinburness in forlorn condition ; all
the spruceness of their summer airs forgotten, they hopped
round us as wistfully as any Redbreast, peering pitifully out
of their bright eyes, their feathers ruffled out, and their wings

drooping despairingly, affording a striking contrast to the |

jaunty birds that nest in the yellow gorse coverts around the
deep cutting that leads to Sandwith Lighthouse. When study-
ing this Chat during the winter months, I have been surprised
to see single males feeding out in the very middle of grass
fields; their movements seemed so unlike the usual habits of the
Stonechat, that some little trouble was taken to place their
identity beyond a doubt.

REDSTART.

Ruticilla phenicurus (L.).

Comparatively scarce in the neighbourhood of our coast-line,
where it is chiefly to be met with on migration, the Redstart
becomes numerous where timber affords it suitable nesting-
places. Ascham Bridge, on the Westmorland border, is one of
the prettiest localities that this species specially affects. It
straggles as far up the fells as trees or brushwood are found,
and breeds sparingly even on low grounds, as in the Cumbrian
plain, though not at any time very abundant in the west of
our faunal area. In autumn it occurs on migration chiefly as
a solitary straggler. Its soft ‘weet’ resounds plaintively from
our hedgerows, especially in the month of August, when young
birds are on the move.

BLACK REDSTART.
Ruticilla titys (Scop.).

There seems to be no doubt that a pair of Black Redstarts
were really shot near Scotby in the spring of 1876. The late Mr.
Dickinson states in an annotated copy of Yarrell’s British Birds,

BIRDS 95

belonging to Mr. H. P. Senhouse, that he met with individual
Titys Redstarts in Lakeland in three different springs. Mr. J,
W. Harris tells me that he once saw a single Black Redstart in
Borrowdale, but he has forgotten the date. By far the most
satisfactory occurrence is that of a single bird, undoubtedly a
Black Redstart, which was identified by Mr. Tom Duckworth
and others in November 1886. This bird appeared at Holm
Head, near Carlisle, at the period of autumnal migration, and
frequented some heaps of manure in quest of food—a proceeding
completely in character with the general habits of this bird.

REDBREAST.

Erithacus rubecula (L.).

The Redbreast breeds numerously in the larger woods, as well
as in our gardens. In autumn a few stragglers frequent the
creeks of the salt marshes. The intolerant character of the
Redbreast is equally well known with its most attractive traits,
Iu September 1883 a pugnacious Robin was repeatedly worsted
by a Tree Pipit, which finally drove its rival off the field. The
contests between the two were not a little diverting while they
lasted,

Sub-Fam. SYLVIIN ZZ.
WHITETHROAT,
Sylvia cinerea (Bechst.).

On its first return in April this warbler is shy and silent,
furtively searching for insects among the bare branches of the
smaller trees, and so little conspicuous that only naturalists
would detect its presence. After a day or two of warmer
weather the Whitethroat breaks into song, but does not at first
display its full vigour, unless the season happens to be genial.
In 1891, it was not until the 27th of May that I noticed the
Whitethroats chorusing loudly in flight, singing as they started
into the air, and descending to the hedges with the tail depend-
ing at an angle; this occurred near Cockermouth in bright
sunshine, which no doubt stirred into life their latent amatory

96 VERTEBRATE FAUNA OF LAKELAND

instincts. Had the day been raw, with an easterly wind, the
Whitethroats would probably have been contented to sing in
cover.

LESSER WHITETHROAT.,
Sylvia curruca (L.).

Though aware that this warbler visited the neighbourhood of
Kendal, Dr. Gough catalogued the species as ‘not a common
one. I have rarely met with it in Lakeland. The first pair
that I identified near Carlisle were seen at Rose Hill; curiously
enough, a bird killed there by James Barnes appears to have
been the only one noticed by T. C. Heysham. He remarks in
a private note: ‘Mr. Barnes of Botcherby this day showed me
a specimen of this bird which he had shot near Rose Hill, when
singing on the 11th of May 1849. Mr. W. Duckworth con-
siders the Lesser Whitethroat to be almost exclusively a passing
spring migrant to Lakeland, and this view is probably the right
one. At the same time it should be understood that the species
continues to nest in one or two favourite localities, near Keswick
for instance, and at Kendal. Mr. H. E. Rawson assures me that
he finds several nests of this species every summer at Winder-
mere. Another brother Ibis, Mr. KE. W. Holdsworth, volunteers
that he has searched for it near Oxenholme for several seasons
without even hearing its familiar song.

BLACKCAP.
Sylvia atricapilla (L.).

Upon its first arrival, in the month of April, the male
Blackcap flits demurely about the shrubberies and elder-trees ;
but, after a short rest, this warbler breaks forth into the rich
song which is heard pianissimo even in July. Nowhere in
Lakeland can the Blackcap be accurately termed a very numerous
bird. Yet every recurring season finds it re-established in its
favourite haunts. The cock-bird appears to share the duties of
incubation. In May 1891 Mr. F. P. Johnson found a bird in
full male plumage, lying dead upon a nest containing five eggs,

BIRDS 97
at Castlesteads. The sex of this specimen was not determined
by dissection, but the dress agrees exactly with that of the adult
male. We do not often enjoy an opportunity of hearing the
Blackcap’s song in autumn, but Mr. A. H. Macpherson heard a
Blackcap singing at Keswick, on the 26th of September [1890].

GARDEN WARBLER.
Sylvia hortensis (Bechst. ).

The anonymous writer ‘X. Z.’ tells us that, when visiting
_ Arnside in 1793, he fell in with ‘that variety of the Motacilla
Trochilus, called in Westmoreland a Strawmear.’+ Dr. Gough has
independently shown that this name (which may have been
suggested by the light fabric of a Warbler’s nest) is applied in
Westmorland to both species of Whitethroat and the Garden
Warbler. The latter was probably the species referred to by
‘X. Z.’ Its shy habits render it easy to under-estimate the
numbers of this Warbler, which is fairly distributed in Lake-
land, though hardly as abundant as the Blackcap. It is seldom
seen on the English Solway littoral. Indeed, Mr. Richard Mann
never met with it near Allonby until August 1890, when a
single bird was shot for identification as it skulked in a haw-
thorn hedge.

GOLDEN-CRESTED WREN.

Regulus cristatus, Koch.

The Goldcrest is far from uncommon in our gardens and
plantations. It even nests in a solitary clump of small wind-
twisted firs in the middle of one of our mosses, and its affection
for particular spots is stronger than that of most small birds.
At no time during the last seven years has a Goldcrest omitted
to build in a certain tree at Rockliffe, although of course the
elevation of the nest has varied considerably. A good many
Goldcrests flit about our hedges in the winter-time, but the
spinnies of young larches and firs are their chief haunt. Some-
times they take very kindly to the river-side. I once saw a

1 Gentleman’s Magazine, 1794, p. 326.
G

98 VERTEBRATE FAUNA OF LAKELAND

large tree on the banks of Eden fairly alive with Goldcrests ;
this was on a bright frosty day, and very attractive the little
midgets looked as they actively prospected the finer twigs in
search, I suppose, of hibernating insects.

FIRE-CRESTED WREN.
Regulus ignicapillus (Brehm).

I have paid considerable attention to the annual immigration
of the Goldcrest into our spinnies and plantations, without
ever detecting the presence of the Firecrest among the Gold-
crests. In the beech woods of Navarre we found it easy to
identify the Firecrest, and even to distinguish a female of
this species on the wing. In the neighbourhood of Kendal
a sharp look-out has been kept latterly for Firecrests, but
only Goldcrests have been procured. No doubt can reason-
ably be entertained as to the correct identification of a male
Firecrest killed with a stone at Rose Hill, near Carlisle, by
Mr. Graham, in 1845. It was only identified as a Firecrest
after a careful reference to the figure and description of this
Regulus in Yarrell’s British Birds, which was then in course of
issue. Mr. Graham is an accurate, painstaking observer of birds,
and recollects the circumstances perfectly. He allowed Story,
the bird-stuffer, to have the specimen. Story most likely dis-
posed of it either to T. C. Heysham or Mr. Losh of Woodside.
I have not been able to ascertain in whose possession it finally
rested. Mr. Graham’s impression was that Heysham most likely
secured it, but his transaction was only with Story. It is
possible that Story sold the bird to one of his customers at
Newcastle.

CHIFFCHAFE.
Phylloscopus rufus (Bechst.).

As long ago as the year 1831 we find T. C. Heysham writing
to his friend Doubleday : ‘ The Lesser Pettychaps, I have reason
to believe, seldom visits the immediate neighbourhood of Car-
lisle ; indeed, I have only heard its note once, and that some
years ago. The Wood and Yellow Wrens are abundant.’ Sixty
years have passed, and still this Phylloscopus is only sparsely

BIRDS 99

distributed over Lakeland as a summer visitant, scarce in
the sheltered valleys of the south of this area, such as Rusland
(where Mr. Archibald meets with it only in small numbers), and
seldom noticed in Cumberland east of the Eden valley. Mr. Tom
Duckworth found two nests of Chiffchaffs, full of young birds,
in an afternoon’s stroll near Gilsland, during the present summer
[1891].
WILLOW WREN.
Phylloscopus trochilus (L.).

The Grune Point, near Silloth, is a long shingled beach,
covered with scrubby gorse, which affords fair shelter to small
birds resting on their travels. Here, accordingly, a good many
Willow Wrens halt on the spring passage, shy and voiceless,
until the fatigue of their last long flight has passed, and they
find themselves able to renew their northward journey with fresh
vigour. In autumn their movements are less exclusively noc-
turnal ; the young birds, conspicuous by reason of their brighter
tints, then appear pretty freely in our hedgerows. Like the
Goldcrest and the Whitethroat, this small Phylloscopus has
occurred on migration at St. Bees Lighthouse. It is of course
numerously diffused throughout our woods as a breeding bird.

WOOD WREN.
Phylloscopus sibilatrix (Bechst. ).

The Wood Wren is just sufficiently local with us for some
interest to attach to its presence ; but granted a sheltered situa-
tion and a good supply of old timber, you may find a pair or
two of Wood Wrens in most parts of Lakeland. Their numbers,
like those of the Grasshopper Warbler, fluctuate from season to
season. Yet even such an isolated plantation, as that which
clothes the banks of the Aigle Gill beck, will, on examination, be
found to hold a pair or two of these charming little warblers.
I have listened to its shivering song in many pleasant places—
in the park at Holker, in the Windermere Woods, on the banks
of the Lowther river near Penrith ; but there is no more certain
‘find’ for the Wood Wren than King Moor, where the citizens
of Carlisle used to hold their race meetings.

100 VERTEBRATE FAUNA OF LAKELAND

REED WARBLER.

Acrocephalus streperus (Vieill.).

A few years ago I drew attention to the rarity of the Reed
Warbler in Lakeland, stating that the only satisfactory proof of
its occasionally visiting us was supplied by the fact that Mr.
Graham took a nest and eggs of this species on the Eden in
1840, and that a single bird had once been shot at Bassen-
thwaite. Since then I have searched for it in the extreme south
of Lakeland with the same lack of success as elsewhere, although
quiet reedy nooks, such as the Reed Warbler loves, are by no
means rare. Mr. Hindson writes from Kirkby-Lonsdale: ‘ This
warbler I have never seen to be certain about, but I once found
a nest attached to four or five reeds at Terra Bank Tarn, about
15 inches above the ground.’

SEDGE WARBLER.
Acrocephalus phragmitis (Bechst. ).

Though evincing a more marked predilection for nesting in
hedgerows at a distance from water than is common in the south
of England, the Sedge Warbler is pleasantly associated with the
willow beds and rushy pools of Lakeland, among which you can
hear its song any summer’s day as the birds flit restlessly from
one branch to another, occasionally hopping across the bare
ground under a screen of furze or other close cover.

Once, in Germany, I made the acquaintance of an eccentric
Sedge Warbler which sang steadily in the top of a tall tree,
exposed to anybody’s view. Our Lakeland Sedge Warblers are
much more retiring birds. One day, last May [1891], a Sedge
Warbler took up his position on a bare spray of bramble close
to where I was crouching in the hedge. The little fellow had
not the least idea that he was being interviewed, and proceeded
to pour forth an earnest love-song, little thinking that every
vibration of his tiny throat was closely scanned through a pair
of binoculars. The lateness of the spring assisted this observa-
tion, for had the leaves been fully expanded, my little friend
would most assuredly have sung under cover, I have always

‘
i
e
i

BIRDS LOW

imagined that Mr. Cordeaux must have had the Sedge Warbler
in mind when he penned his description of what he calls ‘the
little reed wren, —‘ rattling away at its own wild song, and, not
content with that, appropriating the notes of many another bird,
then quietly at rest in the woods of Silverhow.’ !

This reminds me that it is during the sympathetic twilight of
a summer's night that the lay of the Sedge Warbler can be heard
to the best advantage, in Lakeland at all events. Throw astone
into a clump of willow bushes at any time, and your action will
provoke a polite rejoinder from a Sedge Warbler; but that is
nothing to the interest of a full choir of Sedge Warblers chorus-
ing in noisy emulation during the first minutes of the new-born
day. Strolling along the top of the sandstone cliffs known as
Etterby Scar, one lovely night in May [the 21st, 1889], I felt
constrained to halt and listen for a while to the lays of many
Sedge Warblers, aye rehearsing afresh their oft-told professions
of love, while the silver moonbeams glanced fitfully on the rest-
less flood of Eden’s fast-gathering waters. Suggesting to a passer-
by that he too should pause and listen for a moment to the
Sedge-bird’s story, that enlightened individual assured me with
portentous gravity that the weird burden of sound produced by
the mixed Babel arising from so many tiny throats was ‘ only
the clocks of Carlisle striking twelve!’

GRASSHOPPER WARBLER.
Locustella nevia (Bodd.).

None of the summer birds are more whimsical in choice of
haunts, or fluctuate more in number from year to year, than
the Grasshopper Warbler. Yet it nests sporadically over most
of this area, from the mosses of Lower Furness to Newbiggin
Fell and the shores of the Solway Firth. Mr. Archibald finds
that a few pairs nest in the Rusland valley. The late J, Hind-
son wrote in his Ms. notes: ‘I have only heard the song of this
little warbler twice, once in a bed of furze, near Huttonroof,
again in a thick part of the hedge in Casterton Lane.’ These

1 Zoologist, 1867, p. 870.

102 VERTEBRATE FAUNA OF LAKELAND

localities just mentioned are in the south of Westmorland, but
the bird breeds also in the centre of the county. J. B. Hodg-
kinson annexed a full clutch of the eggs of the Grasshopper
Warbler, which he found near Windermere Lake in 1890.

Rambling all over Cumberland, I have heard the song of the
Grasshopper Warbler at a good many points, especially in the
north of the county, but it becomes rare in the west. At Wright
Green, for example, Mr. Dickinson considers it a rare breeding
bird. Mr. Tom Duckworth has paid great attention to the habits
of this bird,—the 29th of April is the date which he considers
about the nearest approximation to the arrival of the male birds.
He has found complete clutches of eggs as early as the 14th of
May, and as late as the 6th of August. The song of this
Warbler can be heard to the greatest perfection in the dusk of
the evening, and again during the early hours of day. The Rev.
R. Wood of Rosley has enjoyed a close acquaintance with this
species for many years ; so abundant is the species, comparatively
speaking, in some seasons in his parish that he once counted
fourteen different Grasshopper Warblers singing during an even-
ing’s walk. It does not of course follow that the songsters were
all males. William Little showed me a Grasshopper Warbler
which he felled with a stone while the bird was in the act of
‘burring’ in the hedge in full view of him. On dissection the
specimen proved to contain a perfect egg ready for exclusion.
Mr. Wood fully shares my experience that this bird sings a good
deal during the day. I have noticed this especially during the
last few seasons. For example, on the 19th of July [1890] I
happened to be crossing some fields near Whitrigg with a friend,
who doubted if the Grasshopper Warbler really sang during the
day. Hearing one of these birds singing in the hedgerow, I
took out my watch and found it was half-past eleven in the
forenoon.

Sub-Fam. ACCHNTORIN,
HEDGE SPARRO.
Accentor modularis (L.).

From the hedgerows of Walney Island to the stone walls of
our eastern fells, the Dykey, or Creepy-dyke, is a well-known

BIRDS 103

bird. Bewcastle folk call it the Hemplin, a term applied in
West Cumberland to the Linnet, though the Hedge Sparrow is
dubbed the Hempie in many districts of southern Scotland. It
is an early breeder; it often happens in a /ate spring that the
first eggs are chilled in consequence of the leaves not having
expanded sufficiently to save the nest of this small bird from
the inundations of April showers. The earliest brood that came
under my notice this year [1891] hatched out on the 15th of
May. From the first they were partially invested with a cover-
ing of black down. By the 24th day of the same month they
had feathered nicely, and could chirrup strongly to their parents.
In 1888 I found a brood which did not leave the nest until the
8th of September.

Order PASSERES, Fam. CINCLIDZ.
DLP Rr RR:

Cinclus aquaticus, Bechst.

Dr. Gough described the Water Ouzel as common on the
rocky parts of Kent, Mint, and Sprint. Mr. W. Duckworth
finds that his favourite bird nests as regularly beside the quiet
streams near Ulverston as on the gills and becks of the more
remote fell sides. No river perhaps offers greater attractions to
the Dipper than the Eden, the banks of which, from Wetheral
upwards, assume an irregular and often precipitous character,
affording many of those ledges, overhanging the deeper pools,
upon which the Dipper loves to frame its nest. Though a
shelf or wall of rock most frequently supports this structure,
a few pairs nest beneath bridges and in the roots of trees.
Singularly aberrant was the conduct of the pair of Dippers
which, for several seasons, nested in the branches of a tree at
Corby. Yet no sooner had the fact been reported than other
instances of the Dipper nesting in trees appeared in the public
press. A novel departure in the Water Ouzel’s arrangements
is liming the nest with feathers. For thirty years Mr. Tom Duck-
worth had examined many nests every season without finding a
single trace of feathers. In 1890 he found, for the first time,
a nest partially lined with feathers. Verily, it is parlous to
dogmatise too nicely about the practices of wild birds!

104 VERTEBRATE FAUNA OF LAKELAND

Last autumn I found that the Dippers on Ulleswater and up
in Martindale were singing lustily in the last days of October.
The Duckworths have overheard the Dipper singing in all the
summer months. In May 1891 I listened to a Dipper singing
on the Saark; but its notes are most often uttered in frosty
weather. The Dippers enjoyed a good time in the sharp frost
of January 1891, when other birds were shivering and weak
for want of food. On the 7th of that month a friend and IL
crossed the meadows between Edenhall and Langwathby, forced
our way through the alder grove, where Redpolls nest in the
summer-time, flushed a ‘cock’ as we tore our way through the
hawthorn hedge, startled the gaily dressed Mallards from a hole
still open in the frozen ‘runner,’ left behind us the scrubby
bushes in which Blue Tits, Coal and Great Tits, were hunting
eagerly ; so reaching the open banks of the Eden, to at once
espy the hardy Dipper squatting on a great hummock of ice,
whence he was pouring forth a strong, shrill burden of song, as
though in defiance of the ‘Ice King.’ Undisconcerted by our
near approach, he sang on and on, his shadow reflected in the
water, at the brink of which he perched, all absorbed in his own
delicious melody. At last he paused, rose, and flew a few yards,
alighted upon the chilling waters, so floated along in the
stream’s current, until a rock that took his fancy coming into
view, he flitted across the stream for a moment, poised himself
gracefully on the boulder, and then disappeared in the recesses
of a favourite pool. Nor is the gaiety of the Dipper subdued
by damp and foggy days. Ona recent Christmas Eve (1890),
I walked up the Eden banks in a thin and raw fog: a sudden
thaw had set in. When the haunts of the Dipper were gained
a thick and lowering mist invested the landscape, but the joy
of the Ouzels seemed unabated: curtseying sedately on the
rocks, they pursued their usual avocations with zest and spirit.
One individual hopped after a quaint fashion about a sandbank.
Another in merry sport chevied its mate along the stream.
Whether the loosened ice floats down the river, ever increasing
as it journeys on, or the flowering of the pilewort in the hedge-
side afford an omen that the present is the time to love, the
Dipper is ever a perfect embodiment of grace combined with

BIRDS 105

indomitable energy. He at least retains a spirit unsoured and
unchafed by the petty disappointments of life. Nothing seems
ever to come amiss to him. When the Redwing hops dolefully
across the snow-drift, and famishing Rooks fall tooth and nail
upon weaker fowl, the Dipper preserves his equanimity intact ;
nay, more, he manages to secure an easy competency. ‘The only
time at which the Dipper finds it difficult to enjoy a good
‘square’ meal is when a succession of heavy ‘spates’ have
unduly swollen the lower waters of the larger rivers. If this
occurs, the habits of the Dipper are modified for the nonce.
Last year, for example,—the 24th day of January,—the Eden
was running very high, owing to a thaw setting in suddenly in
its head waters. Near Cargo, but on the opposite bank, I
watched a Dipper foraging for food after a method new to me.
It was hopping like a thrush over the grassy sods upon the
bank, now upright, now wading into the shallows of some soppy
ground, frequently inserting its bill into the loosened soil.
Although it hopped like a thrush, it was not of course feeding by
ear, like that bird, but was patiently boring into the ground in
every direction, evidently in the hope of being able to appro-
priate some unconsidered trifles.

Order PASSERES. Fam. PA RID.

WHITE-HEADED LONG-TAILED TITMOUSE.
Acredula caudata (L.).

A review, which Dr. R. B. Sharpe contributed to Nature in
1886, took exception in a friendly spirit to a suggestion that
this Titmouse, so familiar to many of us as a continental species,
might occur some winter in Cumberland. A very few years
have sufficed to justify my supposed rashness. On the 26th of
November 1891, that accurate and cautious naturalist, Mr. Tom
Duckworth, came across a drove of about a dozen Long-tailed
Titmice in a lane between Orton and Thrustonfield. The
morning was bright and frosty ; the light was excellent. Three
of the Tits were conspicuously distinguished from the rest of
their companions by their pure white heads. They were not at
all wild, and permitted of a close inspection. Mr. Duckworth

106 VERTEBRATE FAUNA OF LAKELAND

followed the birds up and down the lane for some time,
endeavouring without success to knock down one of the white-
headed birds. Having thus failed to obtain a specimen, he
came to me to see a skin of the continental bird, to ascertain
whether the tints of the body-colour were precisely identical.
He assures me that such was the case; but whether the strangers
had yellow eyelids could not of course be ascertained. The fact
of three individuals occurring together materially strengthens
the evidence of this excellent ornithologist.

BRITISH LONG-TAILED TITMOUSE.
Acredula rosea (Blyth).

I have never come across this Titmouse in any of the more
exposed portions of Lakeland, but it occurs in very tolerable
numbers throughout the plantations of sheltered valleys ;
frequently, also, beside our becks and watercourses, in the
neighbourhood of which it appears to find a plentiful supply of
the tiny caterpillars which it prefers to any other insects. Mr.
W. Duckworth considers it fairly common in the country round
Morecambe Bay. Dr. Gough catalogued the species as ‘common’
near Kendal. The newly-fledged young are especially attractive,
as they flit about the low bushes or perch in rows on the
branches of trees beside the river, overflowing with zeal to
secure the larve of Geometre, their long rectrices streaming
through the air as they follow their fellows in undulating flight.

GREAT TITMOUSE

Parus major, L.

This species and the Blue Tit frequent the trees of our older
parks, such as Holker or the fine avenue of oaks at Levens, the
timber there affording many nest-holes, and hecatombs of tiny
caterpillars, which, if unchecked, would devastate the foliage.
In the last days of June, often earlier, the old birds forage
actively for their newly-fledged broods. It is pretty to see them
encouraging the youngsters to persevere in their first aérial
efforts. Both species nest in every manner of situation; a hole

BIRDS 107

in a cottage wall, a freshly-painted pump, a letter-box, or a
cranny in the church tower, are all eligible sites; but the Great
Tit on the whole perhaps is rather more partial to tree holes
than the Blue Tit. Public opinion appears to be divided as to
whether the Great Tit really inflicts much injury on hive-bees,
A man named Camm, of Keswick, wrote to T. C. Heysham in
1835: ‘We have got a bird which we call a bee-cater, owing to
the Bird Beeing a great destroyer of that insect.’

BRITISH COAL TITMOUSE.
Parus britannicus, Sharpe and Dresser.

Wherever extensive plantations of coniferous timber are
found, the Coal Titmouse asserts a numerical superiority over
the other members of the genus. It is numerous, for example,
in the woods which extend over Penrith Beacon, and follows
the young firs up the sides of the fells: its distribution depends
on the relative abundance or scarcity of the food-supply, and
not perceptibly on altitude. During the colder months of the
year the Coal Tit often joins company with allied species, and
shares in the feasts of cocoa-nuts and other dainties which some
good souls remember to hang around their window-sills for the
benefit of the giddy sprites, that hang with heads towards the
ground in every variety of attitude.

MARSH TITMOUSE.

Parus palustris, L.

The Marsh Titmouse is much the most local of the family in
Lakeland ; not that it can be termed rare, but rather that it
does not enjoy the ubiquity of hardier species. At one time or
another this Tit has occurred to me in most of the more
sheltered districts; for example, on the mosses in Furness, in
the Windermere woods and those of Penrith. Nor is it absent
from the more open parts of the country, since a few small flocks
visit the open country of the English Solway in the winter time.
As a nesting bird the Marsh Tit is far less common; yet a fair
sprinkling of pairs appear to breed every year in Lakeland.

108 VERTEBRATE FAUNA OF LAKELAND

BLUE TITMOUSE

Parus ceruleus, L.

Not the least entertaining idiosyncrasy of the Blue Tit is that
of occasionally appropriating the nests of other birds.) Mr. F.
P. Johnson recently discovered a pair of these Titmice occupy-
ing the nest of a Greenfinch, in which the female Tit had laid
eleven eggs. The finches built a new nest near their original
habitation. Two careful observers, Mr. Plenderleath and Mr. A.
Smith, independently discovered two different couples of Blue
Tits occupying the nests of Hedge Sparrows. I examined the
nest of one pair, a typical nest of the Hedge Sparrow, built in a
hawthorn hedge at Castletown. T. C. Heysham found that a
pair of Blue Tits appropriated the nesting hole of a pair of Pied
Flycatchers. A note appeared some years ago of a Marsh Tit
which I happened to see hunting the lamp-posts at Oxford for
such insects as might chance to be resting on the glass panes.
The Blue Tit does the same. On November 5th, 1889, I spied
a Blue Titmouse alight on a lamp-post in Carlisle, and proceed
to scrutinise its four sides. Before the bird crossed the) road to
try another post, I saw him deliberately squint through the
round hole left for the gas-burner, in order to assure himself
that no insects were left lurking in the interior. In districts
where trees are scarce or absent, little parties of Blue Tits are
often to be seen flitting about the stone walls which replace the
hedgerows of the lower valleys.

Order PASSERES. Fam. SITTID.
NO Ea mC:
Sitta cesia, Wolf.
When calling on Turner, the Penrith bird-stuffer, on October
18th, 1848, Mr. T. C. Heysham was assured that the Nuthatch

had occurred on the banks of the Eamont, and was common
about Lowther. The Nuthatch has been reported to me once

1 Readers interested in the vagaries of nesting birds should consult a
most interesting treatise by Dr. Paul Leverkiihn, entitled Fremde Kier im
Nest.

BIRDS 109

or twice of late years as seen in the same district, but not by
any one possessed of an intimate acquaintance with the bird.
As long ago as 1782 a pair of Nuthatches were shot at Arma-
thwaite. Most likely they had intended to breed there. At all
events they were sent to Dr. Heysham on the 11th of May.
There is some reason to think that a single Nuthatch visited a
garden near Silloth on and after September 24th, 1889. The
description given by those who saw it agreed closely with the
appearance of the Nuthatch, I mention the circumstance, not
because the identification was complete—no ornithologist saw it
—but merely as a hint to local observers, who should look out
for the bird. It is a little surprising that the Nuthatch of the
north of Europe, Sttia europea, has not been detected as a rare
visitant to the British Isles. Its addition to the British list is
probably merely a question of time, but like other rare birds it
is much more likely to occur in the eastern portions of Britain
than among the mountains of Lakeland.

Order PASSHRES. Fam. TROGLODYTIDA.
WREN.
Troglodytes parvulus, Koch.

Abundant throughout our faunal area, the Common Wren is
nowhere perhaps more thoroughly at home than at St. Bees,
where its loud and cheering song rings lustily along the sand-
stone precipices, especially where the broken cliffs slope gradu-
ally towards the sea, affording considerable shelter for small
birds. Many unlikely spots hold a Wren’s nest. The materials
used are also very various. Not the least curious is one found
near Cumwhinton in the spring of 1891, by Mr. Little. This
nest is of the usual shape and proportions, but the material used
for the exterior portions is exclusively stout straw, with a slight
addition, i the crown, of common hay. This nest gives the
impression of one run up in a hurry of the nearest materials ;
perhaps the bird filched all the materials from a stable or farm-
yard. ‘The straws used are remarkably large and coarse to have
been employed by so small a bird.

During the autumn solitary individuals haunt the smaller

110 VERTEBRATE FAUNA OF LAKELAND

creeks of the Solway, particularly in the month of October,
when the edge of the marsh is also favoured in the same way.
These birds appear to be only resting on migration ; but some
individuals undoubtedly spend all the winter among the sand-
banks to the west of Silloth, in company with a few Skylarks |
and Meadow Pipits. Furze is generally absent from these sand-
dunes, and the only cover is that of the bents, which grow plenti-
fully. In bad weather, therefore, the Wrens take shelter in
the rabbit-holes, which honeycomb some portions of the bank
above the beach.

Order PASSERES. Fam. MOTACILLIDA.

WHITE WAGTAIL.
Motacilla alba, Linn.

Whether the White Wagtail visits Westmorland or Furness
on vernal migration I cannot say. It is one of the few points
which still remain to be determined by those who live in the
southern portion of our area. Its presence has not been ascer-
tained as yet by any of my ornithological acquaintances, but its
detection will come in time. I had not the least difficulty in
finding this species resting on vernal migration in Cumberland,
in which county it has repeatedly occurred to our most compe-
tent observers. T. C. Heysham, for example, wrote to Yarrell,
in February 1837, expressing his conviction that Motacilla alba
would be found in the southern counties of England occasionally
as soon as its specific characters became widely known. In a
letter of June Ist, 1842, also addressed to Yarrell, Heysham
states: ‘ About a fortnight ago a fine male White Wagtail of
the Continent (M. alba, Lin.) was killed near Carlisle, and
another was seen in a different locality a week or two previous.
This I believe is only the second instance of the capture of this
bird in England.’ He wrote to Doubleday on July 23d, 1842:
‘In April last I had the pleasure of seeing for the first time a
specimen of the Pied Wagtail of the Continent alive about ten
miles from this place, and soon afterwards another was killed
about a mile from Carlisle, which I saw after it was shot.’ Loose
notes of the same naturalist record that he saw a White Wagtail

BIRDS 111

on the banks of the Ellen, near Maryport, in the last week of
April 1848; and that Dodd, a Carlisle bird-stuffer, shot a speci-
men on the Eden at Carlisle, May 2d, 1848. Of later occurrences,
Mr. Dickinson saw two White Wagtails on the Irthing in the
spring of 1850. Mr. F. D. Power saw two White Wagtails near
~ Cleator Moor on April 11th, 1874. Mr. W. Hodgson identified
a White Wagtail near Hutton John in April 1880. I saw a
White Wagtail on the Caldew in April 1883, and another at
Rose Castle in the following April, I have since seen several
others. Indeed, since the attention of the Messrs. Mann was
called to the distinction between this and the Pied Wagtail,
they have recognised White Wagtails near Allonby almost every
spring. But though the fact that the White Wagtail visits at
least the Cumbrian portion of our area every spring has been
abundantly proved, its appearances are almost exclusively
limited to the vernal passage. The only autumn occurrences
known to me are those of a single bird which I observed on
Burgh Marsh, September 5th, 1885, and of another which
Greenwell shot at Alston in the autumn of 1866.

PIED WAGTAIL

Motacilla lugubris, Temm.

A few Pied Wagtails haunt our river-banks at every season,
but the species is chiefly a summer visitant. The birds which
breed with us only represent a small proportion of the numbers
which visit us en passage in autumn, many of the latter being
young birds. In the spring of the year the old males are the
first to arrive, generally in March, in which month I have
observed their appearance (in fresh, clean plumage) in such out-
lying districts as Shap Fell, Murton, or the skirts of the Bew
castle district, single individuals being the first to penetrate into
these regions. In the fall of the year they are highly gregari-
ous, travelling by day, and often roosting together in consider-
able numbers. For example, on the 10th of September 1890,
a friend and I watched a flight of this Motacilla come in to roost
near Floriston. Shortly before dusk they came up from the
north ; attracted, no doubt, by the neighbourhood of the Esk,

{13 VERTEBRATE FAUNA OF LAKELAND

they dropped with one accord to rest in a small patch of rushy
land. A large proportion of individuals thus migrate across
country, while their fellows follow the western coast-line in their
southern journey.

GREY WAGTAIL.

Motacilla melanope, Pall.

The Grey Wagtail is a common bird in Lakeland, nesting on
the Kent, the Duddon, the Gelt, the Caldew, and most of our
rivers, generally in the haunts of the Water Ouzel. The nest
is constructed in a variety of situations, in a hole in a stone wall,
in a tree root, or in some niche of rock close beside the salmon
pool, Dry stems, a few fine roots, and a little horse hair, with
us generally white, made up the materials of all the nests that
I have myself seen. Anxious and fearful of intrusion are the
old Grey Wagtails, perching with a pretty concern in the nearest
trees, if their eggs be examined in their view. Individuals pass
the winter in the central and western districts of Lakeland, but
this Wagtail is chiefly a summer visitant.

YELLOW WAGTALL.
Motacilla rau (Bp.).

Dr. Gough included this Wagtail as ‘common’ at Kendal, an
error, In my opinion, since Ray’s Wagtail is a decidedly scarce
summer visitant to Lakeland. It is true that Thompson met
with it both at Hawes-water and at Windermere in July 1835,
but Mr. Cordeaux, an equally good observer, never met with the
bird at all during three weeks spent at Grasmere. A few pairs
breed sporadically in Cumberland. One pair nested this year
[1891] at Monkhill Lough, and another reared their young on
a piece of rough ground just outside the Goods Station at Car-
lisle ; but it never occurs in any numbers, not even on migration.
The Messrs. Mann, who are well acquainted with this species,
closely observed a belated Yellow Wagtail in their farm-yard,
on the unusually late date of November 27th. We searched for
it together the fellowing day, but it had left. They were quite

BIRDS iis

certain that it was not a Grey Wagtail—a species constantly
under their observation—but ‘a summer Yellow Wagtail.’
This occurred in 1890.

MEADOW PIPIT.
Anthus pratensis (L.).

The Meadow Pipit is the commonest of birds on our hills
during the summer-time. Whatever fell you choose to cross,
you are equally certain to disturb this restless bird from the
heather or tussocky ground, to watch its jerking flight across
the moor, and to hear its short, squeaking call-note uttered on
the wing. Nor is it confined to the high grounds, since it rears
its young upon the beach of our western seaboard, only a few
feet above high-water mark. A good many pairs breed also on
our mosses and in rough meadows recently reclaimed. On the
coast I have often been pleased to see the activity and grace
with which the Meadow Pipits pursued small flies and other
insects on the tangles deposited on our sea sands after a heavy
gale—so closely does this Pipit approach the Rock Pipit in
some of its habits. The numbers of Meadow Pipits which pass
through Lakeland in March and April on vernal passage appear
to exceed the number that nest on our moors, common as the
species is.

Uy Tig dd id) de dite G0
Anthus trivialis (L.).

The Tree Pipit is not as abundant in the north of Lancashire
or the southern parts of Westmorland as the presence of large
parks full of old timber and sunny slopes would lead us to
expect. In 1891 I found several pairs established at Hevers-
ham, and others at Levens and Rampside, but the species
seemed to be distinctly scarce. I do not think, however, that
the species was up to its usual numbers last season, even in
Cumberland, which includes many favourite haunts of this
arboreal Pipit. It is not in any true sense a bird of the high
fells, but it does breed thinly all along the base of the east fells,
at any rate from Appleby northwards. It was in the hay-fields

H

114 VERTEBRATE FAUNA OF LAKELAND

near Appleby that I first found out that this Pipit sings as
merrily on the ground as when sporting on the wing. It is
pretty to watch a slender Pipit so engaged, threading its way
furtively through the stems of the thin hay crop, while pouring
forth in snatches a volume of sweet melody, 7

RICH AR D'S Pierre

Anthus richardi, Vieill.

Mr. H. P. Senhouse possesses an interleaved copy of Yarrell’s
British Birds, in which the late Mr. W. Dickinson entered a
description of two examples of this Pipit which he had met
with. He has also left on record a statement in print : ‘In the |
spring of 1843, as I was engaged in the enclosure of the exten-
sive commons of Castlerigg and Derwentwater, it was necessary
to travel over and examine every portion of the surface; and
whilst on the upper range of Barrow Side, I noticed a pair of
strange birds wandering about on the stony ground. They
appeared of the size and figure of the Skylarks. By a little
cautious manceuvring I got within about thirty yards, when
they arose and flew off a hundred yards or so. By walking off
and not seeming to notice them, I again came near enough to
see their pink legs and long hind claws, and to know they were
larks of a species I had not seen or heard of. They did not
appear alarmed, and I retired and rounded again. They did not
crouch as our lark does, but stood upright or ran on a little
before flying ; and not wishing to disturb them, I left and saw
them no more. Their general colour was nearly like that of our
Skylark, only a little paler, and their figure was a trifle less
bulky, but longer. No crest was visible, and no note heard.
On since referring to Morris’s Plates, I have no doubt of their
being that very rare British visitant, Richard’s Pipit.’+ There
can be no doubt that this large Pipit occasionally straggles to
Lakeland—indeed, I am satisfied that it has occurred on the fly-
line of the English Solway in three recent instances. In April
1889, Mr. Richard Mann and his brother, Mr. Tom Mann,

1 Rem. West Cumberland, p. 14.

BIRDS 135

closely observed a Richard’s Pipit on their farm at Aigle Gill,
of which they gave me an excellent description both in writing
and orally. They would have shot it at once, had the day not
been a Sunday. . They postponed shooting it until the following
day. Richard Mann rose early on Monday, but could not find
the bird. When at last it was flushed by their dog, it rose wild
and flew out of sight. In October 1889, Mr. Nicol saw a
Richard’s Pipit, as he assured me, on Skinburness Marsh.
Having watched it for some minutes, he was about to fire, when
the bird flew across a large creek and he lost the opportunity.
Again, in September 1891, I flushed one of these Pipits twice
on the coast at Bowness on Solway. It was twice marked down,
and once it rose almost at my feet, so that the Rev. F. O. Pickard-
Cambridge had a good view of it as well as myself. We marked
it down, as we thought a third time, but when the only ‘gun’
in the party came up with us the Richard’s Pipit had disappeared.
It was a very different bird from a Skylark, long and slender in
shape, and much brighter in colour. The tail of this Pipit looks
long in flight. Most likely this Pipit had arrived in a flock of
Wheatears which frequented the same ground. When I worked
over the identical bit of rough marshy ground two days later,
I found that both the Wheatears and the Richard’s Pipit had
disappeared.

KOCK Ser ht:

Anthus obscurus (Lath. ).

There is only one bit of marsh in the English Solway district
that holds a pair of Rock Pipits in the breeding-time, at least
so far as I have been able to discover. This is a little surprising,
because the species is common in the winter-time. You can
hardly visit any of the more extensive saltings between October
and March without noticing a few Rock Pipits flitting about
the creeks. But these birds are winter visitants only, and with-
draw in spring to other breeding haunts. Nor is this Pipit
plentiful on Walney Island in the summer-time. It breeds
there, but only in very small numbers. The chief haunts of our
Rock Pipits in summer must be looked for upon the red sand-

116 VERTEBRATE FAUNA OF LAKELAND

stone cliffs at Sandwith, where it nests on grassy ledges of the
rocks, among the sea-pinks and other wild-flowers. If you
happen to row on a spring morning along the shore from White-
haven to St. Bees, you will find many Rock Pipits darting
actively about the huge and irregular masses of rock which have
become detached from the face of the parent cliff by the action
of frost and rain, and now lie piled together above the beach in
rude and tumultuous disorder.

Order PASSERES. Fam. ORIOLIDA.

GOLDEN ORIOLE
Oriolus galbula, L.

I have failed to trace the Golden Oriole in either Westmor-
land or Furness. It is a far rarer visitor to the north-west of
England than to the southern and south-west counties. Dr.
Parker identified a single specimen in female plumage, shot at
Irton in Cumberland in 1857. Mr. H. P. Senhouse assures me
that several Golden Orioles, probably a small flock en voyage,
made their appearance near Lorton, in the summer of 1878.
A specimen in female or immature dress was killed some years
ago in the Caldbeck district. Apparently only one individual,
in full male livery, has ever been killed in Cumberland. This
last was shot near Penrith, and mounted by the elder Hope, to
whom I am indebted for this information. It was taken to
Hope as a Golden Thrush.

Order PASSERES. Fam. LANIID.

GREAT GREY SHRIKE,

Lanius excubitor, L.

Although locally considered a very uncommon bird, and vary-
ing in degree of scarcity from one season to another, few winters
pass without the occurrence of individual specimens in one or
other part of Lakeland. Content to lead a solitary life in its
winter quarters, this Grey Shrike frequents such hedges as
happen to enclose pasture lands, often remaining within a few
miles’ radius for several weeks together. Its quiet, unobtrusive

BIRDS 117

character at this period of the year forms an amusing contrast
to the animated and even noisy demeanour exhibited upon its
Continental breeding-grounds in the season of love, when its
vehement chuckling and vivacious gestures can hardly escape
the recognition of the most careless. Although suspicious of
danger, it is not a very difficult bird to approach whilst intently
engaged upon the approach of a Mouse, a Shrew, or a small
bird. The temerity which it exhibits, in striking at the decoy
linnets of our bird-catchers, occasionally results in the Shrike
itself being held captive by the treacherous ‘ twigs.’ Its flight
is sometimes lofty and sometimes low, but is always swift and
undulating. As regards distribution, it is least common in the
southern portion of Lakeland.

Dr. Gough stated, in 1861, that this Shrike must be looked
on as a rare visitor in this part of the north [Kendal], only one
specimen having been obtained in his neighbourhood, ie. at
Middleton. Nine years later we find that he had examined
three additional specimens, shot respectively on Barbon Fell,
on Brigsteer Moss, on the 7th October 1870 at Meathop. A
more recent Westmorland bird is the specimen which Woodburn
of Ulverston shot near Oxenholme, on October 13th, 1886. This
has a single white alar bar; the white breast shows very slight
trace of the vermiculations, which are rarely entirely absent from
the Grey Shrikes killed in Lakeland. In January 1887 one
of these Shrikes made its appearance in the Rusland valley.
Having been shot, it was identified by Mr. C. F. Archibald, who
has recently received from the keeper at Rusland Hall another
specimen, shot about the end of November 1891. When we
enter Cumberland the occurrences of this Shrike become rather
more frequent, though chiefly upon the main lines of migration.
Among our dales it is always rare, but the Keswick Museum
contains a fine bird procured in the heart of the Lake district.
In the west of Cumberland the Great Shrike seems to turn up
at pretty frequent intervals. Near Whitefield a Grey Shrike
was killed in October 1865. Captain Johnson possesses a
Grey Shrike killed near Egremont in 1880. The late Mr. W.
Dickinson recorded two specimens killed near Workington.
Several have been taken near Whitehaven. Mr. Harris has

118 VERTEBRATE FAUNA OF LAKELAND

more than once seen living individuals near Cockermouth.
Dickinson of Wright Green showed me two birds procured in
the vicinity. The late George Mawson obtained an example
shot at Dovenby Hall in December 1882. Near Maryport, a
bird-catcher named Fletcher caught a Great Grey Shrike with
his limed twigs in November 1860. At Wigton a handsome
two-barred Shrike was shot on the 14th of April 1866. Time
would fail me if I were to set forth every single occurrence of
this Shrike in the north of Cumberland. One of the finest adult
males that have been secured in Lakeland was shot at Kirklinton
in December 1883, and was shown to me in the flesh by the
late Sam Watson, who stated that two or three others had pre-
viously passed through his hands. I observed a single bird in
the Willow Holme in January 1883; this was unfortunately
shot.

Another very blue example came under observation in
February 1884, when I found the suspended remains of a
Fieldfare which it had impaled in a wood near Carlisle. Dr.
Heysham had met with three or four examples prior to 1796,
and T. C. Heysham knew the species well. The latter wrote
in 1829 that, during the previous five or six years, the Cinereous
Shrike had visited the neighbourhood of Carlisle pretty regularly,
scarcely a winter passing without one or more having been
either seen or obtained. ‘Its arrival,’ he says, ‘ apparently is
very irregular, as it has occurred during the above period in
almost every month from October to April. On the 11th of
April 1828 I saw one near Stainton, and on the 7th of March
it was observed close to Burgh-by-Sands, and pursued nearly
the whole day, but without success.’! In 1844 he notified to
Mr. Gurney the capture of a Grey Shrike in October that year ;
one of his loose notes records another, killed at Etterby in
November 1848. More recently a single-barred bird was shot
by Mr. W. Little in November 1888 near Cotehill, where he
saw another exactly a year later. In the neighbourhood of the
Solway, Mr. Ffloukes killed a Grey Shrike at Rockliffe prior
to 1883. At Burgh, Mr. Tremble’s grandfather shot two of
these Shrikes, which had been compelled by very severe weather

1 Phil. Mag., ii. pp. 110, 111.

BIRDS . 119

to seek for food in a pig-trough. At Skinburness a bird, in
Mackenzie’s collection, was caught in the autumn of 1886, as
was a single-barred bird at Drumburgh in December 1888.
Eastward, Mr. Parkin obtained a Grey Shrike near Brampton
in 1880. A keeper named Crow caught one of these birds in
a pole-trap, in December 1884, near Beweastle. A keeper
named James shot a handsome two-barred male near Slaggyford,
on the early date of September 13, 1884. At Penrith a fine
Shrike, now in Mr. H. Thompson’s collection, was shot in January
1888. Mr. Raine shot a double-barred Shrike on October 9,
1891, near Edenhall. Having thus furnished brief particulars
of numerous Grey Shrikes obtained in Lakeland, I may remark
that a large proportion of these possessed single white alar bars.
Yet only a single bird, retained in the Museum at Keswick,
appears to possess the distinctive characters of the adult male
of Pallas’s Great Grey Shrike.

Although the visits of this Shrike to Lakeland only extend,
under ordinary circumstances, from autumn to spring, yet the
presence of stray specimens in the breeding season, although
strange, is not entirely unheard of. That good naturalist, Dr.
Parker of Gosforth, wrote to me on the 10th of June 1888:
‘I saw the Great Grey Shrike last week on my farm, Brunt
House, near Netherwasdale.’ It is just within the bounds
of possibility that such a bird, seen in summer, in reality
represented the Lesser Grey Shrike, and nof the Great Grey
Shrike.

I have never had the good luck to obtain a Great Grey
Shrike alwe in Lakeland, although a couple of individuals have
entered my possession within recent years. In January 1892,
for example, a very handsome, indeed typical, example of Lanius
excubitor was sent to me from Dover. On its first arrival it
proved to be extremely wild, but, by the end of three weeks, it
had become quite attached to me, flying to the side of the cage
to meet me as soon as I entered the room in the morning, and
pecking playfully at my fingers, fluttering its wings all the time
like a young bird, and eagerly taking a mouse or a bird from
my hand,—showing manifest delight at my company.

120 VERTEBRATE FAUNA OF LAKELAND

RED-BACKED SHRIKE.

Lanius collurio, L.

The Red-backed Shrike is one of those species which would
surprise a south-country naturalist, visiting Lakeland, by their
extreme scarcity at the present time, although formerly not very
uncommon. There is no reason to suppose that this Shrike was a
regular visitor to the north of Lakeland at any recent period. As
long ago as 1835, at any rate, Mr. T. C. Heysham pronounced it to
be very rare near Carlisle, though cognisant of its breeding then
(as now) in the neighbourhood of Keswick. Dr. Gough wrote
in 1861 that this Shrike was a summer visitant to the Kendal
district, but not frequently met with, though partial to the
hedges near the castle. In 1870 the same naturalist observed
in his notes that this bird had formerly been nof uncommon
near Kendal. Mr. Hindson, whose experiences carry us into
the ‘seventies’ at any rate, has left a note describing the
Red-backed Shrike as found ‘about Kirkby-Lonsdale, but not
common. Mr. Murray of Carnforth tells me that, when collect-
ing insects with Mr. J. B. Hodgkinson, near Witherslack, a few
summers ago, they closely observed a pair of these Shrikes
which had evidently a nest close by; that is the only occasion
upon which he has met with the species in Lakeland. Mr.Tom
Duckworth found a nest of this Shrike near Carlisle many years
ago; an incident repeated in 1884, when a nest and eggs of
this species were taken near Scotby.

WOODCHAT.

Lanius pomeranus, Sparrman.

The occurrence of this Shrike in Lakeland rests on the
authority of the late Mr. Dickinson. He states: ‘On April 11th,
1872, 1 saw a Woodchat Shrike near Stainburn tannery. It
sat on the wall several minutes, while I stood within twenty
yards of it, and saw the pure white body, with red-brown back,
very distinct. This was the only one I ever saw. Mr. George
Mawson asserts that a pair had a nest near Braystones a year or

BIRDS 121

two earlier.! The point which Mr. Dickinson mentions, of the
white body, is a very good one. In the spring of 1891, Messrs.
Johnson, Chapman, and myself met with hundreds of these
Shrikes in Spain, and I often pointed out the bird to my com-
panions at such long distances that the Shrike appeared to be
a small white object resting on the outside of a bush. Mr.
Hodgkinson is under the impression that James Cooper once
saw a Woodchat Shrike at Woodside. His memory is so good
that this is probably correct, especially as Cooper must have
seen specimens in T. C. Heysham’s collection.

Order PASSHRES. Fam. AMPELID A.

WAXWING.
Ampelis garrulus, L.

My acquaintance with the Waxwing as a Lakeland bird
extends from the winter 1882-3, in which half-a-dozen examples
were obtained in the north of Cumberland between the 18th of
December and the 26th of February, to the winter of 1891-2,
in which a single bird was killed, on the 3d of February, near
Wetheral. The number obtained during this decade has been
extremely small, scarcely exceeding a dozen specimens in the
whole of Lakeland. This circumstance is not to be accounted
for by the supposition that the Waxwing is a solitary species
by habit, because it is in fact highly gregarious. The true
explanation lies in the fact that it is only once or twice in
every five or six years that a few Waxwings cross our eastern
fells into Lakeland. This was the opinion held by the late
Mr. W. Dickinson, who wrote that ‘flights of the Waxwing have
occasionally visited the vales of Bassenthwaite and Keswick. I
saw one which was shot by Mr. John Crosthwaite, near Thorn-
thwaite. They do not come every year, sometimes at intervals
of severa! years,’?

The species has occurred all over Lakeland during the last
hundred years. The early months of 1787 and 1867 witnessed
the only two important immigrations of the Silktail into Lake-

1 hem. West Cumberland, p. 21. 2 Ibid. p. 23.

122 VERTEBRATE FAUNA OF LAKELAND

land as yet ascertained, the interval of eighty years between
these two dates producing probably a lesser number in the aggre-
gate than the droves which frequented our hedgerows in either
of those two seasons. Dr. Heysham examined some of the
birds shot in 1787. Many of the individuals shot in the winter
of 1867 have come under my own notice, especially in the
Alston district. For example, I distributed among my friends
seven skins of Waxwings shot on that occasion by the late
B. Greenwell, who preserved many others. Mr. J. Walton of
Garrigill still possesses a handsome case of the Waxwings which
fell to his own gun on that occasion. Then, as in most other
seasons, this species occurred chiefly on the favourite fly-lines
from the east coast, yet several were shot near Windermere in
January 1867, when a single bird was killed on Cartmel Fell.
This species is rarer in Westmorland than in Cumberland, but
even in the former county is well known as an occasional winter
visitant. Several were shot in Westmorland in January 1850,
and sent to Newcastle for preservation. Philip Turner mounted
two Waxwings shot near Askham at the same time. Dr. Gough
knew of specimens obtained near Kendal prior to 1861. The
species likewise wanders into the west of Cumberland, as witness
two birds shot near Maryport in December 1859, and December
1863; others have more recently visited Wigton. It is a matter
for regret that nothing has been ascertained regarding the habits
of the Waxwing in Lakeland, further than that it usually appears,
if it comes at all, in small droves or family parties, between the
months of November and February. These frequent the taller
hedgerows, feeding greedily on wild berries (especially the seed-
vessels of wild roses), and sometimes admit of a tolerably close
approach, so that they may be observed raising and depressing
their elegant crests, occasionally uttering the peculiar trilling note
familiar to those of us who in bygone years kept Waxwings in
captivity. The earliest arrival of this species reported to me
was the 12th day of October—in 1884. On that date William
Little (who had shot a couple of specimens the previous winter)
closely observed a single Waxwing near Cotehill. On the other
hand, this bird has not been observed in Lakeland later than
the middle of March. As early as 1803, the author of Observa-

BIRDS 128

tions, chrefly Lithological, found a local specimen of the Waxwing
preserved in Hutton’s museum at Keswick.

Order PASSERES. Fam. MUSCICAPIDA.
SPOTTED FLYCATCHER.

Muscicapa grisola, L.

This species travels to its breeding-grounds more leisurely
than most of the summer visitors. Consequently the majority
of the warblers have commenced the labours of incubation before
the low song of the Spotted Flycatcher enlivens our orchards
and shrubberies. It must be considered rather a scarce bird on
our western coast-line, owing to the paucity of timber. LElse-
where in Lakeland it is generally common, most abundant in
sheltered gardens and low bushy hollows, yet represented in
many remote spots by a single pair. It generally builds its nest
against an ivied wall, in the face of an old quarry-pit or some
kindred situation. The choice of an individual pair occasionally
verges on eccentricity. One of the prettiest nests of this species
that I have seen was built in the interior of a small china cup.
On another occasion a Song Thrush built a nest on a hanging
bough of a spruce fir, where she hatched and brought up four
young ones. When Mr. Tom Duckworth examined the appar-
ently deserted nest a month later, he found that a Flycatcher
had built a beautiful nest inside, where she was sitting on four

eggs.

PLlED PLY CATCH ER,
Musicapa atricapilla, L.

The constancy of purpose with which this little Flycatcher
annually crosses the Mediterranean, hurries across the hot plain
of Spain, threads its way through the mountain passes which
debouch into Southern France, and, skirting that great continent,
boldly steers its course across the Channel, in order to rear a
dusky brood in one of the Lakeland glades, among which the
sweet songs of many generations of Pied Flycatchers have won
the affections of coy helpmates, or roused the passion of envious
rivals,—this same constancy of purpose has been well known to

ve

124 VERTEBRATE FAUNA OF LAKELAND

our ornithologists for about a hundred years. The earliest local
notice of this Flycatcher is furnished by ‘X. Z,’ who, when
visiting Levens Park in 1793, found that the banks of the Kent,
‘as far as we had yet traversed them, were frequented by the
Pied Flycatcher.’ Dovaston tells us that, in 1823, he ‘saw

several [Pied Flycatchers] in Gowbarrow Park, Cumberland, on

the banks of Ulleswater.’ ?

The anonymous ‘G.’ visited Patterdale in May 1830, and
there enjoyed ‘a sight of that beautiful bird, the pied flycatcher
(Musicapa luctuosa, Temm.): it is most plentiful in the moun-
tainous districts of Cumberland, and is often shot in the woods
at Lowther.’? Hewitson, E. T. Booth, and other good naturalists,
now deceased, came to Lakeland to study this Flycatcher. It
was almost the only species worthy of pen and ink that Mr. J.
Cordeaux fell in with during a residence of three weeks in
Westmorland. He found a male Pied Flycatcher in the planta-
tations skirting the foot of Silver-how. ‘A little higher up on
this fell side [I] found a male and female with four young ones:
the parent birds were hard at work catching insects for their
family, perched on the adjoining bushes: one little fellow was
bathing himself in a pool of water below the tall fern fronds,
seemingly deriving intense pleasure from the operation.’ 4

The fact that this Flycatcher was abundant in Levens Park,
in 1793, is important, because it implies that the species has since
changed its breeding-grounds, I searched for it at Levens all one
afternoon, in June 1891, without finding a trace of its presence.
Dr. Gough, as long ago as 1861, included the bird as a rare
summer visitant to Kendal, in which neighbourhood Mr. Hut-
chinson has seen only one nest, 7.¢. at Spindlewood. Dr. Hey-
sham was the earliest of our home naturalists to find the Pied
Flycatcher breeding in Westmorland. His notice of the fact is
unfortunately meagre: ‘The pied flycatcher appears about the
same time as the spotted, but is not so common: they breed at
Lowther. On the 12th of May 1783 I shot there two pair.
They make their nests in the holes of trees.’ The old timber

1 Gentleman’s Magazine, 1794, p. 112.
2 Mag. Natural Hist., vol. v. p. 83. 3 Jb. vol. iv. p. 302.
4 Zoologist, 1867, p. 868.

BIRDS 125

which once attracted the Pied Flycatcher to Lowther no longer
exists; yet, as recently as 1884, I found the species most abun-
dant there, as T. C. Heysham had done fifty-five years earlier.
‘In some parts of Westmoreland,’ he wrote in 1829, ‘it [the Pied
Flycatcher] is very plentiful, especially in the beautiful and ex-
tensive woods surrounding Lowther Castle, the magnificent and
princely residence of the Earl of Lonsdale, where we have seen
it in very great numbers, and where it has bred unmolested and
almost unknown for years. On the contrary, we have reason to
think it has not resorted to the vicinity of Carlisle more than
five or six years, and as far as we have yet been able to ascer-
tain, only to one locality, where it is evidently on the increase.
In this situation the males generally arrive about the middle of
April, the females not until ten or fifteen days afterwards ; they
commence nidification early in May, and the young are excluded
about the first or second week of June. We have hitherto
invariably found their nests in a hole of a tree, sometimes at a
considerable height, occasionally near the surface of the ground,
and for two successive years in the stump of a felled tree. In
texture and formation the nest is very similar to those of the
greater Pettychaffs, Blackcap, and Whitethroat, being only
slightly put together, composed almost entirely of small fibrous
roots and dried grass, always lined with a little hair, and gener-
ally a few decayed leaves on the outer side, but entirely without
moss. Their eggs vary in number: we have found their nests
with five, six, and now and then with seven; their colour [is|
a pale green, and so greatly resemble[s] the eggs of the Redstart
that it is frequently very difficult to distinguish them unless
contrasted together: they are, however, far from being so
elegantly made, of a rounder form, and rather less, weighing
from 23 to 30 grains. The males, soon after their arrival,
should the weather be at all favourable, will frequently sit
for a considerable time on the decayed branch of a tree, con-
stantly repeating their short, little varied, although far from
unpleasing song, every now and then interrupted by the pursuit
and capture of some passing insect. Their alarm-note is not
very unlike the word chuck, which they commonly repeat two or
three times when approached, and which readily leads to their

126 VERTEBRATE FAUNA OF LAKELAND

detection. The manners and habits of the Pied Flycatcher have
considerable affinity to those of the Redstart ; they arrive about
the same time, associate together, and often build in the same
holes, for which they will sometimes contend. On one occasion
we found a dead female Redstart in the nest of a Pied Flycatcher
containing two eggs; and at another time, when both these
species had nests within a few inches of each other, upon the
Redstarts’ [eggs] being removed, the female Redstart took forci-
ble possession of the Flycatchers’ nest, incubated the eggs, and
brought up the young. We have now (August 26th) two young
Pied Flycatchers taken from the nest on the 21st of last June,
and should we succeed in our attempts to domesticate them, we
may, in all probability, on some future occasion, make a remark
or two upon the change of their plumage from youth to maturity.’
Heysham was so well aware of the comparative scarcity of this
Flycatcher in the south of England, that, with a view to its
naturalisation, he sent fresh eggs to his contemporary, Sweet.
Writing from Pomona Place, June 10th, 1829, Mr. Sweet says :
‘I feel much obliged by your kindness in sending me the eggs of
the Musicapa atricapilla, which unluckily met with bad treatment
in their journey ; three of them were broke before they arrived,
the others were so shook that none of them have come to perfec-
tion, though I set them under a Redbreast immediately.’

T. C. Heysham replied to this letter in another of June 19,
1829: ‘I have now two nests of this bird (which I have
inspected since the receipt of your’ letter, although they are
nearly twelve miles from this place) ; one with young which will
be able to leave the nest in a few days, the other with eggs,
which I expect will hatch in a day or two, and I think a pair
of the old birds might be obtained without much difficulty.’
T. C. Heysham certainly antedated the arrival of the Pied Fly-
catcher when he said that it reached Lakeland ‘ about the middle
of April, just as Dr. Gough postdated its arrival when he wrote
that it appeared about the 8th of May. The usual date for its
first appearance with us is the 25th of April, but for the first few
weeks after their arrival many of these Flycatchers appear to be
very unsettled. Heysham apparently only knew of two colonies,
including Lowther. At the present day a few Flycatchers breed

BIRDS 127

on a small stream near Appleby, on the Croglin, on the Petteril,
on the Eden, on the Liddell, and in various wooded nooks
among the Lake mountains, though no longer known in the
neighbourhood of Morecambe Bay.

When I visited Edenhall this year, May 28th [1891], I found
that most of the favourite trees and trunks of the Pied Fly-
catcher had been cut down; hence such few pairs as elected to
breed on the old ground were compelled to nest in tall trees,
owing to the dearth of less ambitious sites. Mr. Carr and I
watched a pair of Flycatchers flitting about the alder-bushes,
full of affection for one another, though not apparently nesting
like their neighbours. A good many pairs nested here in former
years. In 1888, for example, there was one nest in a birch-tree
about seven feet from the ground. Another couple had taken
possession of a hole high up in one of the dead limbs of a tall
Scotch fir; another nest was placed in the base of an oak-tree,
almost level with the ground, slightly raised by the fact of its
having been built on the top of an old nest. The next was in
a birch-tree, and the next in a hollow branch of an ash-tree,
while another was in a dead branch of a second Scotch fir. It
sometimes happens that the fissure into which this Flycatcher
has crept closes, so that the nest must be placed elsewhere.
Otherwise, these Flycatchers often occupy their favourite holes
season after season. Sometimes a decayed thorn-bush holds a
nest of this species for many years. But the birds are not con-
fined to timber for their nesting holes; it frequently happens
that they nest in loose stone walls. The males are jealous little
fellows ; after the flocks have paired off, there are always some
bachelors left unmated, a frequent cause of subsequent commo-
tion. One afternoon last May I chanced to stroll along the
Ladies’ Walk beside the Eden,near Langwathby, and found a pair
of Pied Flycatchers and a single male flitting about the thorn-
bushes which overhang the river. The males sang cheerily,
particularly the young one. Once the old cock came and perched
on a green spray just over my head, as I crouched all but motion-
less on the grass. Several sharp tussles occurred between the
two males; the paired female looked quietly on, admiring the
prowess of her champions. In 1888 a nest of this bird was

128 VERTEBRATE FAUNA OF LAKELAND

required for the National Collection. It was really difficult to
choose a suitable tree. The choice of our party rested eventually
with a small birch, and then the eges had to be watched until
they hatched out on the 11th of June. A week later the nest-
lings proved to be fairly feathered; when we came to saw the
tree in two, the stronger chicks tried to fly. The odd thing
was that the old Flycatchers proved to be rearing a little Red-
start with their own brood. As Heysham has remarked, Red-
starts and Pied Flycatchers (as also Blue Tits) often nest in
similar holes, and the second party to arrive sometimes evicts the
rightful owner, and incubates her own eggs together with those
of the evicted tenant. Whilst this nest was being secured, the
old birds incessantly uttered their alarm-notes, that of the male
suggesting the sound produced by two pebbles being knocked
together. Their young proved upon dissection to have been fed
on caterpillars and small beetles. In 1887 Mr. W. Duckworth
spent several consecutive hours in watching a pair of Pied Fly-
catchers feeding their young. He found that they visited the
nestlings thirteen times in thirty minutes, the female making
nine visits to the male bird’s four visits. ‘By keeping very
quiet,’ he wrote, ‘and moving slowly, I got to within four or five
yards of the nest. The male and female have two quite distinct
alarm-notes. That of the male is exactly like the tit-a-tit of the
male Redstart (when it has young), but is not quite so loud.
The note of the female is identical with the wii-wit of the
Chaffinch.’ The actions of the old birds are at all times sylph-
like and graceful; the males sway their tails amorously when in
full song. One of the nests that I examined on the Ist of June
1889 (and which had been occupied the year previous), was in
the stem of an ash-tree, containing three chipped eggs and three
newly hatched young. Animated by anxiety for the safety of
their progeny, the old birds hovered round with much solicitude,
flitting restlessly from spray to spray, calling incessantly, shuf-
fling their wings and jerking their tails. When I withdrew, the
male flew off, but soon returned with a caterpillar which he
carried to the nest, to the orifice of which both birds made
frequent visits, clinging tenaciously with their claws to the bark
around the nest. |

BIRDS 129

The Pied Flycatcher does not delay the commencement of its
southern journey long, after the young are strong on the wing
and have exchanged the speckled nest-feathers for the incon-
spicuous garb of their first winter. This Flycatcher is almost
unheard of in the neighbourhood of our coast-line. Stragglers
have been obtained near the Solway Firth in a few instances ;
at Silloth, for example, and near Allonby.

Order PASSERES. Fam. HIRUNDINID.
SWALLOW.

Hirundo rustica, L.

The return of the Swallows to Lakeland always affords a
pleasurable interest, just as we feel a pang of regret when they
hawk in busy swarms above the cornfields prior to their departure.
Before telegraph wires were introduced, this Swallow chiefly
roosted in the trees which grew beside our ponds and becks,
indeed there can be little doubt that this species was originally
arboreal in its choice of a breeding site. On September 4, 1888,
I was amused to see a meddling Rook completely routed by a
party of Swallows. The Rook desired to visit the trees in
which the Swallows had gathered; but as often as the Rook
approached, the Swaliows turned out and mobbed him. He
repeated the manceuvre again and again, but always fled from the
attacks of his tiny adversaries, and ultimately flew away in —
sulky discomfiture. ‘The earliest arrival of this species as yet
substantiated in the Lake district was a bird shot near White-
haven on April 2, 1837. Mr. T. C. Heysham wrote to the late
Mr. R. Bell, on April 15, 1852: ‘I have been informed, on
what I consider very good authority, that a House Swallow,
H. rustica, was seen in this neighbourhood [Carlisle] on the 26th
and 27th of March, a very early arrival.’

MARTIN.
Chelidon urbica (L.).

The House Martin appears to have been a special favourite with
Dr. Heysham, who fills near a column with notes on the Martin’s
I

130 VERTEBRATE FAUNA OF LAKELAND

nests which he had examined, pointing out that the species is
double-brooded, and disclaiming against the idea that it ever
hibernated in this country. Although the Sparrow has checked
the increase of this charming bird, many colonies are established
in the neighbourhood of farms and country houses. At Aiglegill
the buildings are full of Martins. In 1888 a pair of these birds
hit upon an ingenious device to exclude the Sparrow. The
nest was not entered by an orifice of the usual kind, but by a
small clay funnel, along which the Martin crept into her nest,
Miss Mann has often reared young Martins. In 1890 Mr.
Richard Mann picked up two late Martins which had fallen out
of their nest. On the 4th of December that year I called to see
them, and found them lively and vivacious. A sharp spell of
frost had set in during the last week of November, but the
Martins had not suffered any inconvenience. House flies and
midges were devoured eagerly as long as they could be procured,
but ‘bluebottles’ were refused unless no other insects were
forthcoming. Though a little shy of a stranger, they liked to
perch on the hand of their mistress, and to nestle on her
shoulders. They were always anxious to wash, fluttering their
tiny wings impatiently whenever they saw water placed on the
table. They were jealous of one another, and had many tiffs.
The male sang early and late, especially when the room was
lighted up at night. They succumbed to the severity of
January 1891.

SAND MARTIN.
Cotile riparia (L.).

The Sand Martin does not seem to visit the wilder dales of
Westmorland ; otherwise its distribution is pretty general
throughout the Lake district. Dunglinson of Cockermouth shot
a Sand Martin on the 25th of March, which is about the time
at which this bird begins to frequent the Eden, near Carlisle and
Rockliffe, where we first observe its return every year. A nice |
colony exists in the sandstone cliffs near Maryport. The nests
which Dr. Heysham used to examine were burrowed in two
banks of sand, formed by Mr. Graham of Edmund Castle, when

BIRDS Tor

making some pieces of water near his house. In 1890 I was
surprised to find one pair nesting in a ridge of sand near the
Carlisle water-works. The bank did not exceed eighteen inches
in height, and was situated on a flat meadow. It would have
been interesting to have seen the little birds rear their young in
such a position, but they were driven away by the public. A
quarry near Castleton, in which these birds nested, was much
infested by stoats in 1889. The nests were placed in a sandy
slope, easy of access to the stoats, which entered them in search
of eggs or young birds. The labourers were anxious to protect
the birds. Their foreman killed no less than four Stoats, being
attracted by the excitement evinced on each occasion by the
Sand Martins. A great number of these birds perished all over
Lakeland in May 1886, in consequence of want of food and sharp
weather. On the 15th of that month Mr. William Duckworth
visited Rockliffe, and ‘beneath the cliffs the ground was thickly
strewn with dead birds, H. rustica, C. urbica, and C. riparia being
in almost equal numbers. Many of the colonies of the Sand
Martin have been cleared out, not a single bird being left.’ ?

Order PASSHRES. Fam. CERTHIDZ.
TREE CREEPER.

Certhia familiaris, L.

The Creeper is fairly common in the woods of Lakeland, and
may often be seen hunting for insects about the larger trees,
both alone and in company with other small species. It gene-
rally nests behind rafters or loose pieces of bark. <A nest
examined on the 28th of May this year [1891] was snugly
stowed away behind the bark of one of the elms at Edenhall.
It was only about twenty-four inches off the ground, and con-
tained two young ones nicely feathered. The space between the
trunk and the bark was so contracted that the nest was closely
compressed ; indeed, the two little birds were tightly packed
into the interior. When we broke off a bit of bark, and took
one of the young birds out, the other attempted to escape.

1 Trans. Cumberland and Westmorland Assoc., No. xi. p. 148.

132 VERTEBRATE FAUNA OF LAKELAND

Tender as its age, it clung to the bark tenaciously with its fine
but strong claws. I have never myself observed this Creeper at
a distance from the woods, Yet it might at any time adapt its
habits to life among the treeless moorlands of our eastern
division. Mr. Heywood Thompson this summer [1891] showed
me a stone wall (bordering one of his plantations) 7m which a pair
of Tree Creepers had reared their young. They nested in this
wall early in spring, but their first nest came to grief. They
were not discouraged, but built a new nest in another interstice
among the loose stones of the dyke, and this second experiment
proved successful. Stone walls on the barest fells shelter so
many spiders and small insects as to afford a plentiful subsistence
for Creepers.

Order PASSHRES, Fam. FPRINGILLIDA.
Sub-Fam. FRINGILLIN 4.

GOL DPIN ¢ iH
Carduelis elegans, Steph.

Fifty, or even thirty years ago, the Goldfinch was com-
paratively common in Cumberland and Westmorland. From
the Solway to the shores of Morecambe Bay, the ‘flinch ’—as
Cumbrian bird-fanciers call it—nested freely in gardens and
orchards, not merely in the east and west of this area, but at
Keswick and other places in the heart of the Lake district.
Men who have passed their lives in their native village and are
hardly grey-haired have frequently assured me that, when they
were young, Goldfinches were plentiful. At the present time the
stronghold of the Goldfinch is the Eden valley. I have not.
met with the species on the S.E. border, but Mr. Hutchinson
considers that it is slightly increasing at Underbarrow. At
Milnthorpe Mr. Bell took a nest of Goldfinch eggs a few years
ago. It was a common bird in the west of Cumberland before
bird-catchers were so numerous. Now it is uniformly a very
scarce bird. Mr. Parker of Skirwith Abbey wrote to me in
December 1888, that whilst riding to the meet, or driving
about, he had often seen flocks of from twenty to a hundred
individuals flying about and feeding in the fields near the road.

BIRDS 133

Such an experience is now very rare. Unfortunately the local
bird-catchers are only too well acquainted with their feeding
grounds, and catch a large proportion of the young during the
first months of autumn. As I contributed lengthened articles
on the habits of the Goldfinch to the Field of 1887 and of 1890,
it may be sufficient for present purposes to describe a single colony
as seen at home. On the 18th of June [1891] I visited a large
walled kitchen-garden to look for Goldfinches. KR. Raine told
me that on June 17 and 18 he had seen eleven young Gold-
finches flying in the gardens together, and flitting about the fir-
trees ; early birds, considering the lateness of the season. The
old birds were already busied with fresh nesting operations, or
at least one pair were, for they had a fresh nest in one of the
higher branches of a standard apple-tree, and flitted about as
though watching over its safety. It was built of moss and
fibres, but was not yet lined. There was another pair in the
garden, and these had pen-feathered young, partly naked, but
invested with a few flakes of white down on the upper parts, so
tiny and withal so brown that a novice would hardly have
guessed that the five chicks that were packed so tightly
together into their nest were Lilliputian Goldfinches. Their
nest, composed of moss and fine fibres, was difficult to dis-
tinguish from the leaves of the apple-tree. The parent birds
were absent when we examined their young, but they soon
returned, and for half-an-hour we had three pairs of old Gold-
finches flitting abont close to us. One of the males sang from
the top of a stake supporting a raspberry cane, in a way that
reminded me of the southern lands, in which Goldfinches often
sing from vine stakes. The males on the present occasion sang in
snatches, swaying from side to side and repeating ‘lippetty-
swippet’ many times. One bird began rather quaveringly ‘ wi,
wi—chiowit, chioweet, kiowitt, while his little mate listened
approvingly. The couple which owned the unfledged young
presently flitted off to their apple-tree, and we soon heard the
male swearing in Goldfinch language as he alighted, probably
because he found a young one, which we had displaced, sprawl-
ing on the top of the rest of the family. The pair nearest to
us perched on the top of an apple-tree just opposite their

134 VERTEBRATE FAUNA OF LAKELAND

unfinished nest. Perhaps they were tired of flying restlessly to
and fro in the adjoining park since the hours of early morning.
At all events they were now so still, that you would hardly
have thought that they could be so near; only their little heads
kept moving to and fro, as they exchanged glances of mutual
endearment. A pretty picture they made, in this quiescent
mood! When they turned away, all that was visible was the
cinnamon back, jetty crown, and wings of gold set in ebony.
Then, as they fidgeted, you could distinguish the crimson
zones and white breasts clouded with cinnamon. Meantime
the third pair alighted on the bare ground, and proceeded to
trip over the garden mould, searching for chickweed and
groundsel. There was another nest in the garden beside the
Hall. Four or five pairs were nesting in the vicinity. R. Raine
says that he saw a single pair of Goldfinches all through the
winter of 1890-1, feeding on ‘horse-knops,’ but that the other
pairs appeared in the month of March. The Goldfinch does not
remove the feces of the young from the outside of her nest, as
some birds do: hence the need of a new nest for the second
brood. The nest that was unlined on June 19 would probably
be completed by June 21. A day or two would probably lapse
before the bird began to lay. Granting that the female Gold-
finch began to sit on June 28, the young would presumably hatch
about July 10, and fly about the 24th of July, which is just the
time when most of the second broods of Goldfinches do leave
their nests; at least in my experience, which is pretty extensive,
but mainly continental.

SISKIN.
Chrysomitris spinus (L.).

The earliest reference to the presence of the Siskin in West-
morland is apparently identical with Bolton’s well-known but
improbable story of Siskins nesting in Westmorland in juniper
bushes. It appears to be at all times a rare visitant to the
Westmorland and Furness portions of Lakeland. Thirty years
ago Dr. Gough included this species among the species of the
Kendal district, but only as an occasional winter visitant. Mr.

BIRDS 135

Metcalfe of Kendal reminds me of the following notice of its
presence, as furnished by Mr. H. E. Dresser: ‘Mr. Metcalfe
informs me that it [the Siskin] is, as a rule, a rare winter
visitant in Westmorland and Cumberland, but that, in November
1872, a cottager at Kendal brought one to him which he had
knocked down with a sod out of a flock which were feeding on
the groundsel in his garden.’+ In Cumberland it is very local,
but one or two localities in the neighbourhood of Carlisle are
frequented by Siskins every winter,—a fact well recognised by
our bird-catchers, who always resort to the most favourite feeding-
grounds of these birds to capture a few of their number. In the
autumn of 1866, extraordinary numbers of Siskins appeared in
the neighbourhood of Allonby, a phenomenon that has never
since been repeated in the experience of Mr. Mann. The greater
part of these large flights passed on westwards, but a few birds
spent the winter near Allonby. Mr. T.C. Heysham wrote that,
‘on the 26th of March [1829] some males [Siskins] were
observed in full song, and repeatedly chasing the females ; so it
is possible a few may occasionally remain and breed. A few
were seen on the 5th of April.’ Though I have seen Siskins in
pairs as late as Heysham did, I have had no better success in
my search for local nests than fell to his share. Yet this species
bred for several years at Netherby. James Plenderleath, the
head keeper on the estate (a bird-fancier as well as a good out-
door observer), informs me that he has not known any Siskins
to spend the summer in the plantations round Longtown since
1885. He believes that the local ‘ breed’ was ‘ caught out’ in
February of that year. But, for several years prior to this, he
had always noticed about three pairs in summer, in different
parts of his woods. Once he watched a female Siskin busily
employed in building a nest at the end of one of the topmost
branches of a Scotch fir. He subsequently sent a boy up the
tree, but the nest was empty, and he thought that the eggs must
have been shaken out by a violent gale. At any rate, the old
birds reared a brood, because, later in the same season, he came
across the male Siskin feeding at the roadside in company with
four newly-fledged birds.

1 Birds of Hurope, vol. iii. p. 543.

136 VERTEBRATE FAUNA OF LAKELAND

GREENFINCH.
Ligurinus chloris (L.).

There are, of course, many parts of Lakeland so wholly
unsuited to the habits of this Finch, that, practically, the bird
rarely or never visits them. I allude to the wild moors of our
eastern fells, especially those of Westmorland. Elsewhere the
‘Greenie, as our bird-catchers call it, is generally a common
vird, nesting in our gardens and in our hawthorn hedges. The
species is especially abundant in Furness and in the open country
round Carnforth, where its numbers are stronger than in most
districts of Cumberland.

HAWFINCH.

Coccothraustes vulgaris, Pall.

The earliest record of this species in Lakeland is furnished
by a letter addressed by T. C. Heysham to Mr. W. C. Aikin,
dated Carlisle, November 19, 1833: ‘ The past season here has
been an extremely barren one with us as regards ornithological
rarities, and the only novelty of any consequence that has come
to my knowledge is a specimen of the Hawfinch, which was
repeatedly seen in the months of Janry. and Feby. last in the
pleasure-grounds of a lady, about four miles from the city, who,
however, would not allow it to be killed. This is the only
instance, that I am aware of, that the Hawfinch has been
observed in Cumberland.’ ‘The lady in question was the accom-
plished Miss Losh of Woodside, who, as a matter of fact, called
Mr. Heysham to task for having sent out Cooper to try to kill
the bird on her property; ‘its able defence seemed to merit it
a secure retreat, but it must either have been shot, or flown to
a distance, as it has never been seen since.’ Strange to say, the
Hawfinch has never to this day become a settled colonist in
Cumberland. No doubt the young one, which Mr. Sutton shot
out of a family party at Bridekirk, in August 1882, had been
bred in the neighbourhood.

There is a specimen in the Keswick Museum, which was caught
in the neighbourhood and kept alive for some years. Some few

BIRDS les “6

years ago a female Hawfinch was shot up on the top of Cross-
fell, migrating across country.

All the other specimens that have been noticed in Cumber-
land occurred in the winter months, and sometimes quite in
the west of the county, as, for example, a Hawfinch shot near
Muncaster in February 1860.

It is stated, in the fourth edition of Yarrell’s British Birds,
that the Hawfinch has been recorded from every county in
England except Westmorland. This is a slight misconception.
Mr. Hindson shot a Hawfinch near Kirkby-Lonsdale in December
1841; while Mr. Rip shot a Hawfinch near Appleby in 1855.
It is still a rare bird in Westmorland, but a pair of Hawfinches
nested at Dallam Tower in 1890, for an unfledged nestling
was caught by the roadside and brought up by hand. When I
saw it, it was in full plumage—a charming tame bird which
fenced with one’s finger, and was full of play. The Hawfinch
again nested at Dallam Tower in 1891. A village boy climbed
a tree and caught the old hen upon her nest. He had caged
her for a week, when she fell a victim to a cat. Two were
killed at Burton, in the same neighbourhood, in the winter,
1890-91. Mr. Murray preserved two more Hawfinches, shot
near Carnforth in the spring of 1891.

HOUSE SPARROW.

Passer domesticus (1. ).

In olden days Sparrows appeared at the tables of ‘ Ja noblesse,’
as well as on the boards of their humble dependants. Thus I find
an entry in the Naworth Accounts of October 1621: ‘Sparrows,
2 dozen, ilijd. In December of the same year there occurs
another note: ‘ Larkes and sparrows, three dozen [and] ten ixd.’
The chief merit of the Sparrow is its extraordinary fondness for
two domestic pests, house flies and ‘black beetles.’ I do not
think that the injury which the Sparrow inflicts on farmers is
compensated for by the quantity of ‘grub’ that it destroys, but
some practical men hold a different opinion. The Rev. C.
Swainson states that the name of ‘ Craff’ applies to the Sparrow

138 VERTEBRATE FAUNA OF LAKELAND

in Lakeland. It may be so, but I confess that I have never
heard it used.

TREE SPARROW.
Passer montanus (L.).

The Tree Sparrow is unaccountably scarce in Lakeland. Of
this Iam quite certain, having searched for it in all parts of
Lakeland. Our portion of Lancashire swarms with Sparrows,
but not a single Tree Sparrow could be detected among the
number examined. Mr. Archibald, Mr. Rawson, Mr. Holds-
worth have all tried in vain to find this species in Westmorland
and Furness, though just as familiar as myself with the habits
and appearance of the bird. <A pair of Tree Sparrows which
Mr. W. Duckworth found nesting near Kirkoswald in 1871, and
another couple which I came across near How Mill in 1888,
are all the birds which I can vouch for as having nested in the
interior of Lakeland. The only local colony that can be con-
sidered permanent exists near Allonby, but this merely consists
of a few pairs. Stray Tree Sparrows are sometimes caught alive
near Carlisle. Three Tree Sparrows were caught among about
five hundred House Sparrows at Warwick Bridge in January
1890. I have seen several others which had been captured
with limed twigs, always in the winter-time.

CHAFFINCH.
Fringilla celebs, L.

This finch is well known in Lakeland under one or other
sobriquet, notably those of Pinkie, Spink, Scoppy, Scobby, Shell-
apple Shiltie. Dickinson furnishes a name, as in use in Cumber-
land, which I for one never heard, namely, ‘ Flecky flocker,’/—
a term apparently suggested by the gregariousness of this bird in
winter. Although most abundant among our plantations, feeding
eagerly at the Pheasant-coops, yet, even where high stone walls
replace the hedgerows of more sheltered districts, the Chaffinch
puts in an appearance; building its nest in one of the ash-trees

1 Provincial Names of British Birds, p. 60.

;

BIRDS 139

that grow beside the fell homestead, and perching on the stone
walls as familiarly as a Redstart or a Wheatear.

BRAMBLING.
Fringilla montifringilla, L.

Bramblings are tolerably regular winter visitors to the Solway
Plain and the Eden valley, but in the south and south-west of
Lakeland they appear to be decidedly uncommon. In frosty
weather their harsh chirrup often serves as the first intimation that
they have joined the yellow Buntings and other small birds that
are seeking food in the court-yard of the roadside farm. During
the daytime these finches forage in the fields and plantations,
returning shortly before dusk to their favourite roost. They
rarely prolong their stay after the middle of April. T. C.
Heysham thought otherwise, boldly stating in print that he
thought there could not be the least doubt that a few Bramb-
lings occasionally remained in England during the summer.
Probably his judgment on this point was warped by the reflec-
tion that ‘ the late ingenious Mr. Bewick states that he had seen
them on the Cumberland hills in the month of August.’ Mr.
Holdsworth tells me that the Brambling lingers in the neigh-
bourhood of Oxenholme until the second week of April, and
that he has heard an individual bird chanting the summer song,
with which he is as familiar as any one, before its departure.

LINNET.

LInnota cannabina.(L.).

Among our local bird-fanciers the Linnet is generally known
as the ‘ Grey,’ occasionally as the ‘ Whin-grey.’ But in the west
of Cumberland the species is ‘nowt’else but a Hemplin’; the
term being identical with that employed to designate the Hedge
Sparrow in the Bewcastle District. This species, of course,
nests plentifully in many parts of Lakeland, and considerable
numbers ‘flight’ upon our coast in autumn. The largest assem-
blage of Linnets that I ever noticed were found clustering on
the telegraph-wires at Port Carlisle, on the 3d of September

140 VERTEBRATE FAUNA OF LAKELAND

1889. <A few Greenfinches accompanied the Linnets, but the
latter species enormously predominated. There must have been
several thousands of them. I never saw such a number together
before.

MEALY REDPOLL.

Linota linaria (L.).

This Redpoll is rare in Lakeland. Indeed, I have never come
across it anywhere in England myself, but others have been more
fortunate. Mr. Holdsworth tells me that some few springs ago
he stumbled across a considerable flock of Mealy Redpolls near
Crummock Water, which permitted of a very close examination,
being devoid of fear. Mr. Holdsworth has such an excellent
knowledge of this finch, obtained during several visits to Norway,
that no one could be more competent to recognise the species.
Dr. Gough mentions, in his private notes, a Mealy Redpoll,
caught on Kendal Fell in November 1861, and still alive in his
possession in May of the ensuing year. He saw another at the
roadside near Scalthwaite in October 1862. The late B. Green-
well gave me a skin of this Redpoll, obtained out of a flock near
Alston.

LESSER REDPOLL.

Linota rufescens (Vieill.).

In the neighbourhood of Morecambe this Redpoll is rather
uncommon ; indeed, I only noticed its presence twice during a
whole week’s hard work in the neighbourhood of Ulverston.
It becomes rather more numerous as you go inland. Mr.
Archibald showed me a lovely nest which he had taken in
the Rusland valley, from which the species extends up into
the heart of Lakeland asa breeding bird. Dr. Gough obtained
young Redpolls from the neighbourhood of Kendal in 1864, and
again in 1866. Mr. G. A. Hutchinson has eggs from Stainton,
Lupton, Hay Fell. I found it breeding near Windermere in July
1890, but failed to observe its presence at Tebay or at Carnforth.
In the Appleby district 1t seems to be scarce, but I found it
breeding at Dufton, Millburn, Newbiggin. On our eastern fells
it is a scarce bird, but a pair nested at Renwick in 1887;

eS Ne

a eae ee ee ae ee em

Sl: naa ags

aera es

t

BIRDS 141

while, if we cross this range of hills, we can find it breeding in
the Alston valley, whence George Borrow sent eggs of this
finch to T. C. Heysham as long ago as 1835.
Elsewhere in Cumberland I have noticed this Redpoll breed-
ing sporadically or gregariously in many places, near Stapleton,
Brampton, Longtown, Bowness, Carlisle, Aspatria, Cockermouth,
-Bassenthwaite, Keswick, and Penrith,— generally, in fact,
throughout the county, with the exception of the neighbour-
hood of our most western sea-board. It does not much affect
moorland districts,— preferring nursery gardens, hedgerows,
and the skirts of woods. The first eggs are laid in May. The .
materials of the nest vary. One which was built in a beech
hedge last summer, near Drumburgh, consisted of fibres of plants,
dry grass, and moss, lined with a little cow’s hair and the down
of the cotton grass. Many of those which breed with us migrate
away in autumn, but large flocks of Redpolls often visit us in
winter. On the lst of December 1890, some friends and I
came across a flock of about a hundred Redpolls in a rough
field near Burgh. I had never seen such a number in a single
flock before. The males of this Redpoll often breed in female
dress, 1.€. previous to acquiring a pink breast.

EWE.
LInnota flavirostris (L.).

The Twite nests thinly on the Pennine range, as also upon
some of the mountains in the centre of Lakeland. Nevertheless,
in wandering over the wildest of our moors, I have often mar-
velled at its absence, missing the lively notes and sprightly
gestures of a species which has elsewhere occurred to most
people in considerable plenty, as for example in the Hebrides.
The Twite does not breed on the Furness Mosses, nor does it
nest generally on the wet ‘floes’ in the vicinity of the English
Solway. Toddles Moss, however, has long been a favourite
breeding station of the Twite, one in which the eggs have often
been taken, a remark which is equally true of the Solway Flow.
In a paper written by the elder Gough, dated from Middleshaw,
Westmorland, on the 21st of February 1812, a passage occurs

142 VERTEBRATE FAUNA OF LAKELAND

relating to the Twite, which, considering that it was written
eighty years ago, deserves a place here: ‘The Twite (fringilla
montium) breeds on the hills of Yorkshire and Westmorland,
but does not remain all the year in its summer habitation. For
Twites congregate in multitudes about the beginning of October,
and disappear; but large flocks of them are seen at that time,
or not long after, in the south of England. Thus are the two
retreats of this migratory finch pretty well ascertained.’ +

BULLFINCH.
Pyrrhula europea, Vieill.

The Bullfinch nests commonly in all our larger woods and
gardens, while single pairs occasionally rear their young in some *
of the more remote dales of Lakeland. Very charming is the
confidence which this bird often displays in nesting close te
human habitation. In June 1891 I saw a hen Bullfinch sitting
upon seven eggs in a thick evergreen that grows close beside a
cottage door. The inmates of the house passed and repassed
many times a day, but the Bullfinch heeded not, faithfully brood-
ing over her precious charges. I have often wondered that none
of the naturalists who live in the eastern parts of England have
detected the presence of Pyrrhula major, the Northern Bullfinch,
as a winter immigrant. It is common enough in Southern
Sweden in the dead season, and as Mr. G. E. Lodge tells me,
the males then fly in large droves. The addition of this species
or sub-species to the British List 1s probably only a question of
time. It should therefore be looked for.

CROSSBILL.

Loxia curvirostra, L.

A small clump of fir-trees, still standing near the village of
Cumwhinton, possesses a local interest for ornithologists. Here
it was that the eggs of the Crossbill were first taken in Lakeland,
the year before T. C. Heysham died. The person who found
the nest of this species was the late James Fell, from whose lips

1 Mem. Manch. Phil. Soc., Second Series, vol. ii. p. 463.

BIRDS 143

I often heard the facts of his discovery in later years. In the
early spring of 1856, Fell happened to be working at his trade
as a slater. While passing to and from his work he frequently
saw a pair of Crossbills flying about the fir-trees in question.
After a short interval, he watched them building. At last, on
the 20th of March, he climbed up to the nest, and found that it
contained four fresh eggs. He took the nest and its contents.
Heysham called at his house soon afterwards and purchased the
nest and two eggs. The other two eggs were disposed of to
Thomas Armstrong, and have remained ever since in his cabinet.
The Crossbill had previously reared its young in Lakeland, near
Brampton, and in the neighbourhood of Alston. In the latter
district a nesting Crossbill was shot with the two parents on
‘April 13, 1839. The elder Hope assured me that eggs of the
Crossbill were taken in the fir woods of Penrith Beacon in 1865.
Not having examined any eggs taken on that occasion, I am un-
able to vouch, of personal knowledge, for the authenticity of
the eggs then ascribed to this species. There can, however, be
little doubt that after large immigrations of this species, a few
pairs have repeatedly bred in the Lake district. At the very
time when Fell took the above-mentioned nest, Mr. T. C. Heys-
ham wrote to Mr. Bell of Cockermouth, under date of February
16, 1856: ‘The Common Crossbill has been unusually abun-
dant in the north of England this winter, great numbers having
been killed in various parts of Cumberland, Westmorland, and
Northumberland.’ As regards Westmorland, Dr. Gough included
the Crossbill as an occasional visitant to Kendal, mentioning
Cowanhead and Crosthwaite as localities in which it had
occurred, and he subsequently recorded in his private notes that
a female was killed out of a flock of eleven at Bisk-lane, July
24,1868. Though there is more abundant evidence of the pre-
sence of Crossbills in Cumberland than in Westmorland or Fur-
ness, there can be little doubt that the Crossbill has occurred as
frequently in the southern portions of our area as in the north.
For example, in 1888, when many Crossbills appeared in such
favourite localities for this species in Cumberland, as the woods
at Cotehill, Edenhall, and Newby Cross, I received information of
birds shot near Grange, Milnthorpe, Barrow in Furness, Kendal,

144 VERTEBRATE FAUNA OF LAKELAND

and Appleby ; showing the general diffusion of the flights of
Crossbills. I have also many notes of Crossbills shot in Furness
and in the heart of the Lake district, as near Keswick and
Windermere ; in the west of Cumberland, as near Gosforth, near
Cockermouth, near Wigton. The species is perhaps least often
met with in the neighbourhood of the Solway, a fact easily
accounted for by the the scarcity of suitable timber; yet even
here a few Crossbills occur from time to time, as I can personally
bear witness. But, scarcely less noteworthy than their arrival in
the Lake district, is the almost complete departure of the birds
within a year or two of their advent. Many of the birds that
appeared in the Lake district in 1888, stayed with us during
the summer of 1889, but scarcely any were seen in 1890, nor
could any be traced in 1891. T. C. Heysham, in a draught
dated March 14, 1840, alluded to ‘the great number of Crossbills
that were observed in the various parts of this [Cumberland] as
well as some of the adjoining counties during the months of
February, March, and April 1839.’ In a letter written to the
late Mr. J. H. Gurney, dated April 1, 1840, he added: ‘ Ihave
every reason to believe that the Crossbill has entirely left the
northern counties this year; at least I have not been able so far
to see or hear of a single specimen in Cumberland, Northumber-
land, or the south of Scotland.’ In an earlier letter written to
John Gould, and dated July 8, 1837, Heysham states: ‘On
the 17th of June last a small flock of Crossbills was seen in a
fir plantation a few miles from this place, which is, I believe,
about the earliest period they have been observed in this
country. But, pace T. C. Heysham, it seems almost certain that
the Crossbill is a resident in the Lake district to a limited extent.
Great irruptions of this species only occur at considerable inter-
vals of time, but a few individuals would seem to be almost
always present in one or other of theirfavourite haunts. These are
long stretches of pine woods, in the depths of which the presence
of the Crossbill might often pass undetected, were it not for the
cheery call-notes and lively actions of this engaging bird, which,
whether occupied in extracting the seeds of fir-cones, while cling-
ing with its strong claws, head downwards, or perching sedately
on a tree-top, singing and preening its bright dress, is usually so

BIRDS 145

devoid of fear as to permit of a close acquaintance. Few species
are more sociable than this Crossbill. Although single stragglers
are not quite unknown among us, in the great majority of
instances this bird appears in large or small droves. It hag
generally been supposed that the well-known red plumage was
peculiar to the male sex, an error due to neglect in dissecting
specimens. On examining an apparent male in red feather, shot
in October 1888, Mr. Tandy found that it contained a very dis-
tinct ovary. The stout-billed Crossbill, generally separated from
the common bird, as the ‘ Parrot Crossbill,’ does not appear to
have been noticed in Westmorland or North Lancashire. The
late Mr. Proud shot two birds identical with this form on the
river Irthing many years ago. James Barnes of Carlisle has two
adults and a young bird of this form, which he shot at Newby
Cross in December 1865. ‘Their distinction from the common
bird was noticed by Mr. J. B. Hodgkinson, who saw them at
the time they were obtained.

TWO-BARRED CROSSBILL.

Loxia bifasciata (Brehm),

The first notification of the appearance of this Crossbill in
Lakeland was transmitted to the late T. C. Heysham in the
following letter :—

‘DEAR Sir,—I take the liberty of addressing these few lines
to you to inform you that I have had the good fortune to fall
in with the whitewinged crossbill on the First Inst. I had for
some time observed about eight or ten Redpoles pass in the direc-
tion of Cambeckhill Woods. Thinking the Mealy Redpole might
be among them, I followed and was fortunate enough to procure
a fine female Whitewinged Crossbill. I did not observe any
more, I think the others were all the lesser Redpole.—I have
the honour to be, sir, in haste, your obt. servant,

‘THOMAS TAYLOR.

‘Hxeapswoop, Nov. 8th, 45.’

This bird appears to have been sent to the late Mr. Hancock.
At all events Mr. Taylor pencilled on the margin of his copy of
Sir W. Jardine’s Birds of Great Britain the note : ‘ Nov. Ist, 1845.

K

146 VERTEBRATE FAUNA OF LAKELAND

—TI have shot the White-winged Crossbill.’ There can be little
doubt that a flock of Two-barred Crossbills had previously
arrived in the neighbourhood of Brampton. At any rate, indi-
viduals of this species were observed by others besides Mr. Taylor
during the winter which ensued.

Mr. Taylor observed two more of these Crossbills on the 10th
of January [1846], on the 19th of which month a gamekeeper
named Proud met with two specimens, one of which he shot, a
bright red male. The other which escaped was in female plumage.
February passed without event, although a watch was main-
tained for additional specimens. On the 25th of March a
gardener named Leslie, lately deceased, observed a flock of these
Crossbills fly into some tall larches at Castlesteads, since cut
down. He fired into them and dropped nine birds; five of
their companions flew away scathless. These lingered a short
time longer in the vicinity, because an MS. note of the late Mr.
Proud chronicles the fact that he heard the note of the White-
winged Crossbill on the 11th of April. It is hardly necessary
perhaps to detail here the subsequent history of all the speci-
mens obtained. I have examined the greater number. Curiously
enough, only two of the eleven specimens preserved had assumed
the red plumage of the adult male. Of these males one is pre-
served at Edenhall. The other, a very beautiful bird, is retained
by the Proud family. James Cooper received from T. C. Hey-
sham two female birds, of which he says, in a letter dated April
6th, 1846, ‘Of course I examined them when skinned, and
they both proved to be females. The one worst mauled was
somewhat indistinct, but the other was quite perfect, though the
germ was very small, not much larger than herring roe. They
had no appearance of having bred lately, nor in my opinion were
they likely to breed for some time.’

Sub-fam. HMBHRIZIN ZA.
CORN BUNTING
Emberiza miliaria, L.

This Bunting was formerly common in many districts, but
has of late years shown a tendency to disappear from its

BIRDS 147

favourite breeding-places, reappearing unexpectedly in unlooked-
for situations. In the neighbourhood of Allonby it has long been
abundant, for the last thirty years at any rate. Two or three
pairs nest annually near Carlisle, Tebay, Kendal, and some
other centres. It has often cheered me by its simple droning
song uttered from a dock-weed, the top of a stone wall, or the
upper branches of a tall tree. I found it nesting on Walney
Island, at St. Bees, on Tyndal Fell, and in a good many other
scattered localities. It is well known as a spring and summer
visitant to the Alston valley, where it is popularly called the
‘Grass Bunting. The Corn Bunting is not an early breeder.
In 1891 I saw more than a hundred individuals flying in com-
pany near Floriston as late as the 13th of May.

YELLOW BUNTING.

Emberiza citrinella, L.

In the meadows round Ulpha, and elsewhere in the north of
Lancashire, the Yellowhammer occurs numerously, nesting in
the hedge-banks and in clumps of furze, upon the edge of mosses
and waste lands. It breeds so late that both eggs and young
are often found in the nest in September. It is as abundant in
the open country about St. Bees as in most parts of the interior
of this region.

REED BUNTING.

Emberiza scheniclus, L.

I have never seen the Reed Bunting in Lakeland in the same
numbers that we used to meet with it on the eyots of the
Thames and its tributaries ten or eleven years ago. Yet it is
not at all an uncommon bird, either on our mosses or beside
the lesser water-courses and small pools of standing water, at
least in the summer-time. The Sark river is one of its most
cherished haunts. In the winter-time its presence with us is
sufficiently familiar at the water-side, but not to the same extent
on the coast. I noticed about a score of Reed Buntings flitting
along the beach near Allonby in January 1890, but smaller
parties are more frequently seen.

148 VERTEBRATE FAUNA OF LAKELAND

LAPLAND BUNTING

Calcarius lapponicus, L.

The late Mr. S. H. Haslam furnished to the Zoologist! the
following ‘ Note on the Occurrence of the Lark Bunting near
Milnthorpe. I am glad to have it in my power to record the
capture of a fine specimen of the Lark Bunting (Plectrophanes
lapponica) near this place, about ten days ago. This very scarce
bird was brought to me by a professional bird-catcher, who,
though he was evidently aware he had fallen in with a rara avis,
knew nothing more about it than that it was a bird he had
never seen before. He described it as having been very wary,
and difficult of approach, but after a whole day spent in the
attempt, was enticed into a trap-cage.... The bird in question
exhibits the sombre plumage of the female, as described by
Selby and Yarrell; but should it ultimately assume the more
varied garb of the male, I shall be only too happy to record it
in the Zoologist.’ The postscript of a letter from Dr. Gough to
T. C. Heysham, dated August 28th, 1843, contains the fortify-
ing remark of the writer: ‘My friend Mr. Haslam has in his
possession a living specimen of the Lapland Bunting, which was
captured somewhere in this neighbourhood by one of our bird-
catchers. I hope to see the bird shortly, which is doing well.’
The only other known instance of this Bunting visiting Lakeland
occurred in the autumn of 1890. Mr. Archibald and I fell in
with a solitary Lapland Bunting on the 17th of October that
year when shooting on Walney Island. I saw the bird alight
upon the beach, coming in from the north-east, and pointed it
out to Mr. Archibald. It was in immature or female dress.
When it rose again Mr. Archibald fired at it. The bird towered,
was caught by a violent gust of wind, and being borne down
the channel, was soon lost to sight.

1 Zoologist, 1843, p. 316.

BIRDS 149

SNOW BUNTING.
Plectrophanes nivalis (L.).

On the 12th of January 1892, Mr. R. Mann wrote to me to
report an immigration of this species quite unprecedented in the
vicinity of the English Solway. ‘It may interest you,’ he says,
‘to know that an immense number of Snow Buntings appeared
in this neighbourhood during the end of last week. None of us
have ever seen anything like the numbers before. Not hundreds,
but thousands!’ This is the more remarkable because the Snow-
flake is by no means a numerous visitor to the north-west coast
of England in ordinary seasons. A few appear in the district in
which Mr. Mann resides every winter, but I have never myself
seen a larger flock on any of our salt marshes than one of
thirty birds, and smaller numbers are the rule. In 1840 this
pretty Bunting appeared on our seaboard in hundreds. James
Irwin reported that at Bowness, in November, he saw ‘ not less
than three hundred in one flock.’ A flock which visited Abbey
in November 1890, was estimated by Mr. Nicol to consist of at
least one hundred and fifty birds. A good many individuals
visited the coast near Ravenglass at this time, and one of the
number was reported to me as being pure white throughout its
plumage. Upon the fells which divide the most northern coun-
ties a few Snow Buntings appear at the beginning of every
winter, and in 1873 large numbers frequented the high grounds
above Renwick. An early straggler appeared on the 26th of
September, in 1886, but the date is a very exceptional one for
the interior of Lakeland. A few individuals of this species
generally appear on the tops of the Lake hills in early winter,
but the species is always much scarcer on the west side of the
Eden valley than on the fells, and in the dales of the Pennine
range. The larger flocks of this Bunting are usually restless and
difficult to approach, but individual birds sometimes evince a
charming disregard of mankind. When visiting Silloth one
winter day, I was amused to see a small urchin endeavouring to
capture a couple of Snow Buntings under his cap. The ‘snow-
birds’ were tripping tamely over the village green, and allowed
their persecutor to approach repeatedly within a few feet.

150 VERTEBRATE FAUNA OF LAKELAND

Order PASSERES. Family STURNID.
STARLING. :

Sturnus vulgaris, L.

Although the Starling was a scarce breeding bird in Lakeland
at the beginning of the present century, and has only grown
enormously numerous during the last thirty years, it is not,
strictly, a modern settler in our midst. An entry occurs in Lord
William Howard’s Household Book, between May 18th and
25th, 1621: ‘A pig, a capon, and young starlins, ij s. 1ij d.”. The
wonderful augmentation in the numbers of this bird is due in
our case to the changes which have been brought about in the
character of the country. So long as dense forests or wild
moorlands prevailed, the Starling had little chance of increasing;
but since skill and capital converted the wet floes and heather-
covered wastes into rough pasture or arable lands (again trans-
formed into grazing land), the increase of insects which feed on
grass crops has been accompanied by a corresponding increase
in the numbers of the Starling. Nowadays the Starling nests
everywhere in the woods, in the hay-stacks, under the eaves, in
loose stone walls, or even in the burrows of Sand Martins, as I
observed at Maryport in 1888. In the month of May the shrill
discordant cries of the unfledged Starlings jar upon a sensitive
ear, but they soon grow strong and flock together, while the old
birds in many cases rear. second broods. While catering for
their young in the nest, Starlings generally fly with their plunder
in a direct bee-line across the fields to their nurselings. Many
birds never breed at all, so far as can be ascertained, but frequent
the salt marshes gregariously during the summer months. Such
birds are probably males which have failed to find mates, and
are thus devoted to an existence of single blessedness. The
finest Starling roost with which I am personally acquainted in
Lakeland is that which has become established at Murrell Hill,
near Carlisle, since 1881. This roost is the resort of Starlings
from all the country round. As early as the second week in
June these birds begin to frequent their favourite rendezvous ;
by the end of July their numbers are reinforced largely, and so
continue until the third week of October, after which the army

BIRDS 151

breaks up and migrates in detachments, until by the lst of
December you listen in vain for the voices of myriads of Star-
lings that babbled of their adventures in the fields with so
strange and vehement an earnestness ; all that you can hear in
winter is the rehearsing concert of the select few which elect to
_ spend the frosty nights beside their summer friends. While
they are with us, it is a wonderful sight to see their evening
flights. At first they assemble in small squads or dense black
columns in the fields a mile or so round, and after practising
drill for a short space, flock after flock crosses the town, coming
in at a considerable height from all the quarters of the wind,
shooting down like showers of parachutes into the trees in which
they intend to pass the night. This return passage is not per-
formed hastily ; if you sit and watch the roost you will see a
constant flow of birds rolling in during an unbroken period of
three hours, drove after drove arriving from outlying and often
treeless districts, to claim the hospitality of their friends, whose
kind toleration permits these birds to indulge their whims
without interference.

ROSE-COLOURED STARLING.

Pastor roseus (1..).

A small ash-tree, which stands alone in a roadside hedge
near Allonby, has often been pointed out to me as the identical
tree out of which Robert Dawson shot a Rose Pastor about the
year 1877. The month of its occurrence is not known, but the
specimen is in the bright, clear rosy plumage of midsummer.
Prior to this the species had not occurred in Lakeland for
twenty years. At least I do not know of a more recent occur-
rence than the bird which the late Mr. Anthony Mason told me
was shot in Cartmell in 1855. It was feeding on elder berries.
Only some half-a-dozen examples had been killed in Lakeland
prior to that. The earliest obtained was shot near Alston in
June 1837. T.C. Heysham tried to buy this bird through
Greenwell the birdstuffer, but the owner retained it.

152 VERTEBRATE FAUNA OF LAKELAND

Order PASSERES. Fam. CORVIDZ.
CHOUGH.

Pyrrhocorax graculus (L.).

Our earliest reference for the existence of this Chough in
Lakeland is furnished by Dr. Stanley, who in 1829 included it
in his local list as ‘rare’ in the neighbourhood of Whitehaven.
Rare it continued to be. Indeed, its existence on the pre-
cipices at Sandwith was known to very few, including M‘Comish
of Stranraer, from whom | learnt that two or three pairs of
Choughs nested near St. Bees until about the year 1860. Possibly
the colony was exterminated by the Peregrines which from time
to time frequented the same range of sandstone cliffs. At any
rate, the younger Heysham can hardly have been aware of the
Chough existing on our coast, or he would not have sent to the
Isle of Man for Chough’s eggs. Sir W. Jardine informed T. C.
Heysham, that when he visited the Isle of Man in 1827, ‘we
were rather late to procure the eggs of the birds, which we
regretted on account of the Red-legged Crows, a most abundant
bird, but all with young.’ Professor Newton included this
Chough as having nested in Cumberland and Westmorland, on
the authority of Mr. A. G. More, who kindly tells me that
he received his information from C. 8. Gregson, who assured him
that this species nested at Whitbarrow, a range of limestone

precipices commanding a fine view of Morecambe Bay. In reply |

to my inquiries, Mr. Gregson has recently written: ‘I have a
Chough in my collection of British Birds obtained at Whit-
barrow. I was not aware there was any doubt about the
Chough being there in the old time. I have not visited the
place for some years.’ The Rev. J. E. Kelsall most kindly
undertook to call in person upon Mr. Gregson. He ascertained
that Mr. Gregson’s Chough was killed at Whitbarrow between
1862 and 1865. This date harmonises perfectly with the time
at which this veteran naturalist informed Mr. A. G. More that
the species bred at Whitbarrow. The only ‘Solway’ Chough
that we know T. C. Heysham to have seen came under his
notice in the Carlisle Market, November 20, 1849. This he

t
;

BIRDS 153

ascertained to have been taken in the neighbourhood of Dum-
fries. In very severe weather, about the year 1870, a single
Cornish Chough was shot by a farmer while feeding out of a
sheep-trough in a field near Longtown. A few years later a
similar fate befell another Chough, killed near Wigton. Both
these birds were obtained within a short distance of the Solway
Firth. There can be little doubt that they had strayed from
the precipices which their race then tenanted on the coast of
the Scottish Solway.

JAY.

Garrulus glandarius (L.).

Though less numerous than formerly, the Jay continues to
maintain its fodting in many of our larger woodlands. You may
often hear this bird screeching in the trees that line the shores
of Ulleswater, nor is it uncommon in the neighbourhood of
Derwentwater or Windermere. On the contrary, a fair number
of Jays nest in the heart of Lakeland, while the numbers of the
residents are often augmented in winter by immigration from
the Continent. Mr. Dickinson was perhaps the first to point
out that flocks of Jays visit Lakeland from abroad: ‘Twice,
with some years intervening, I have known flocks of Jays
moving over the country. ‘Their resting-places may easily be
detected by their droppings, which are of a jet black colour, at
least during their flights.’ ?

MAGPIE.
Pica rustica (Scop.).

The Pie’s adaptiveness of character, which suggested the
popular belief in ‘Bush Magpies’ and ‘Tree Magpies,’ has
enabled this persecuted bird to maintain its footing in greater
or lesser numbers in all parts of Lakeland, from the grasslands
of Lower Furness to the stone walls of the higher fells. The
present deerkeeper in Martindale exterminated all the Magpies
of that dale some twenty years ago, and the species is generally
much scarcer than it used to be. In the seventeenth century

1 Rem, West. Cumberland, p. 13.

154 VERTEBRATE FAUNA OF LAKELAND

this bird appears to have abounded in some Westmorland
parishes. Thus in 1675 the churchwardens of Orton expended
three shillings and sevenpence on the destruction of sixty-two
‘pyots, more than two-thirds of the slain being young birds,
for which a halfpenny was given, a penny a head being given
for the old ones.

JACKDAW.

Corvus monedula, L.

Daws we have in plenty, rearing their young in cliffs, hollow
trees, rabbit-holes, and church belfries. The penchant of the
Daw for nesting in ecclesiastical edifices led to the destruction
of a large portion of the Abbey of Holme Cultram. ‘It so
happened that, upon Wednesday the 18th of April 1604, one
Christopher Harden [or Harding], carrying a live coal and a
candle into the roof of the church, to search for an iron chisel
which his brother had left there, and the wind being exceed-
ingly strong and boisterous, it chanced that the coal blew out
of his hand into a Daw’s nest which was within the roof of the
church, and forthwith kindled the same, which set the roof on fire,
and within less than three hours it consumed and burnt both
the body of the chancel and the whole church, except the south
side of the low church, which was saved by means of a stone
vault,’ ?

CARRION “CERO WW:
Corvus corone, L.

Fairly distributed through Lakeland from Furness to the
border, the Carrion Crow maintains its footing pluckily against
many enemies, Nor is it slow to attack a weaker bird. In the
neighbourhood of Langwathby I once saw a very pretty perform-
ance of this kind. A couple of these black robbers singled a
Peewit out of a flock, and made many ineffectual swoops at the
quarry. At first the Peewit seemed rather dazed by the attack,
which was unexpected, but it soon recovered its self-possession,
and showed some good sport before it rejoined its companions.

1 Hutchinson’s History of Cumberland, vol. ii. p. 333.

BIRDS 15

Or

HOODED CROW.

Corvus cornix, L.

When we remember the astonishing numbers of Hooded
Crows which annually arrive upon the north-eastern coasts of
England, and that this bird breeds commonly in the Isle of
Man, it becomes a little surprising that it is scarce throughout
Lakeland. Dr. Heysharn knew it only as an occasional visitant
to Cumberland, nor did Dr. Gough ever meet with a specimen
in Westmorland until November 1842. Mr. Hutchinson says
that it is as rarely seen near Kendal now as it was fifty
years ago. Mr. Bell showed me an example killed near
Milnthorpe as a rare bird. Mr. Rawson has never seen
the Hooded Crow in Westmorland. Mr. Murray assures me
that the Hoodie is very seldom proeured near Carnforth. It
is evident that no change has taken place in its habits during
the last hundred years, but that, as now, so in the elder
Heysham’s day, it appeared sporadically in different parts of
Lakeland in early winter; never arriving in flocks, but appear-
ing singly or in couples and trios. In recording the presence of
a Hooded Crow [probably a straggler from the Isle of Man] at
St. Bees, on May 24, 1832, ‘G[eorge] W[heatley]’ finds
occasion to remark that this species ‘is said to have been
common in these parts, which it may have been formerly, but
it is not so now; for I remember having seen but three or four ;
one of them several years ago, near the large rookery at Isell
Hall, a seat of Sir Wilfred Lawson, on the banks of the
Derwent.’1 Though almost exclusively met with during the
winter season, a Hooded Crow was sent to me from Silloth as
early as the month of September in 1884.

ROOK.
Corvus frugilegus, L.

In spite of the sentiment which attaches to the Rook in
virtue of the homely associations of a bird which nests
gregariously around our country-houses, which meets the wild-
fowler as an old friend on the sands of Morecambe Bay or the

1 Mag. Nat. Hist., vol. vi. p. 200.

156 VERTEBRATE FAUNA OF LAKELAND

saltings of the Solway, beating across an estuary morning after
morning in the teeth of a head wind, and despite the interest
which attaches to every stage of its domesticity, candour
compels me to confess that the Rook 1s far too numerous in every
part of Lakeland; so numerous as to inflict grave losses on the
long-suffering farmers, and to interfere seriously with the
interests of sportsmen. Its injurious character has long been
recognised, As early, at any rate, as 1620, the Rook was
wisely proscribed at Naworth. An entry occurs in the ‘ Extra-
ordinary Paiments’ of that year: ‘For killing xv crowes, xv d.,
and for powder, ixd.’ (The Rook is commonly known as the
‘Crow’ in Lakeland, the Carrion Crow being distinguished as
the ‘Dope’ or ‘ Corbie’.) Such action has often been repeated.
For instance, in 1807 the farmers of the Penrith district
clubbed together to pay a reward of twopence for the head of
every Rook that should be brought to them, in order to protect
their turnips and seed crops.?

RAVEN.

Corvus corax, L.

The Raven has long been identified in the public mind with
some of the finest precipices in Lakeland. Wordsworth, among
other writers, has placed on record a brief ‘word picture’ of
this bird as seen at Ulleswater: ‘Friday, November 9th [1805 |.
A raven was seen aloft; not hovering like the kite, for that is
not the habit of the bird; but passing onward with a straight-
forward perseverance, and timing the motion of its wings to its
own croaking. The waters were agitated ; and the iron tone of
the raven’s voice, which strikes upon the ear at all times as the
more dolorous from its regularity, was in fine keeping with the
wild scene before our eyes. This carnivorous fowl is a great
enemy to the lambs of these solitudes. I recollect frequently
seeing, when a boy, bunches of unfledged ravens suspended from
the churchyard of H , for which a reward of so much a
head was given to the adventurous destroyer.’? Reflecting that

1 Carlisle Journal, Dec. 26, 1807.
* Description of the Scenery of the Lakes, p. 122.

BIRDS 157

‘H.’ must represent Hawkshead, I wrote to the Vicar, who
kindly furnished a list of the Ravens killed between 1731 and
1784, after which the custom of paying head-money for Ravens
appears to have become obsolete. These notes cover a period
of fifty-three years, but rewards for Ravens are only forthcoming
for twenty-six years out of the fifty-three. The largest number
of Ravens paid for in any year was eighteen, 7.e. in the year
1769, at a cost of six shillings. The next largest numbers pro-
cured were in 1774, when fourteen Ravens were killed, ata cost
of 4s. 8d.; and in 1772, when sixteen were killed, and fetched
5s. 4d. The smallest number ever killed in a year was a single
bird, which happened in 1761, and again in 1762. The total
number paid for in twenty-six years, between 1731 and 1784,
was 174 Ravens, giving an annual average for these years of
rather more than six Ravens. The price is named in 1731,
‘4 Ravens killing, 4d. p. piece, 1s. 4d,’ and this sum appears
to have been closely adopted during the half-century of accounts
audited. But the price varied in different parishes. In Orton,
where the Ravens killed were chiefly old birds, because they
appear singly, or in twos, the price was at one time only a
penny apiece, as in 1636: ‘Ihm for two Raven heads... ijd.,’
and in 1637, ‘Ihm for a Raven head...id.’ Eventually the
price rose, because in 1661 we have an entry of ‘2 Raven heads
—00s. 04d.” and in 1670, ‘to Robert Shepherd for a Raven
head, £00, 00s. 02d... The young fetched a penny when the
old birds fetched twopence, because we have entries in 1649,
‘for 2 Raven heads, £00, 00s. 04d.,’ and ‘to George Wilson for
5 Ravens heades, £00, 00s. 05d.’ The five no doubt belonged
to a brood reared somewhere on Orton Scar.

At the time that Ravens fetched fourpence each in Hawks-
head, the price set upon these proscribed birds was settled in
Cartmel, by an order of the 8th day of April 1751, fixed no
doubt in view of early operations in the field, and entered in
the Second Old Book of Cartmel Priory Church: ‘The Day
abovesaid it was ordered by the 24 and other present that for
the future all ravens killed within this parish, the person who
kills ’em by carrying them to Ch. or Chapell Warden shall have
Twopence for each head, to be paid by sd. Ch. or Chapell

158 VERTEBRATE FAUNA OF LAKELAND

Warden they are to be brought to and allow’d in his the said
Church or Chap] Wardens Accs.’ To this passage Mr. Rigge
appends the comment: ‘There are no ravens now in the parish,
1883. The last I saw was about thirty years ago, flying and
croaking near the foot of Windermere.’! In Patterdale, again,
the head-money given for Ravens was fourpence. Here, as in
Martindale and other parishes, the birds hung up on the old
yew-trees beside the parish church within living memory. Mr.
Jackson, who has not passed middle age, was himself in the
habit of thus suspending the birds killed in Martindale.

Having analysed the records of payments for Ravens in Grey-
stoke parish, I find that a total score of 966 Ravens were
accounted for by the churchwardens during a period of ninety
years, from midsummer 1752 to midsummer 1842. The cost
of killing Ravens during this extended period amounts to
a total of £16, 2s, fourpence having been given for each
Raven head. If we divide the period into nine decades, the
figures stand thus: first decade (1752-61), 154 Ravens ; second
decade (1762-1771), 204; third decade (1772-1781), 135;
fourth decade (1782-1791), 116; fifth decade (1792-1801),
134; sixth decade (1802-1811), 80; seventh decade (1812-
1821), 41; eighth decade (1822-1831), 63; ninth decade
(1832-1841), 39. The largest number of Ravens killed in one
year during the first decade amounted to thirty-six, paid for
between July 5, 1760, and June 20, 1761. The largest
number paid for during one year of the second decade was
forty-eight, paid for between June 26, 1766, and August 15,
1767. It is only in the last three decades that I can find
single years in which no Ravens were paid for by the Greystoke
churchwardens. In the parish of Crosthwaite, Keswick, the
Ravens paid for were nearly always young ones. Thus the dis-
bursements of 1711 include, ‘To Jno. Cass for two old ravens
and 2 young ones, £0, 1s. 0d. To Miles Wilson for 3 young
ravens, £0, Os. 6d.’ In 1751 we read: ‘To Wythburn for 5
Young Ravens, 10d.; and to Borrowdale for 5 Ditto, 10d.—
£0, 1s. 8d. To Crosthwaite and Under Skiddaw for 7 Young
Ravens, £0, ls. 2d. We read in 1754: ‘To St. Johns People

1 Cumberland and Westmorland Arch. Soc., vol. vii. p. 108.

BIRDS 159

and others for 21 young Ravens, £0, 3s. 6d.’ There is an
entry in 1755, ‘For 10 young Ravens and 1 old Raven—
£0, 2s. Od.’ Again, in 1756, ‘For 2 old Ravens, 8d., and for
14 young Ravens, 2s. 4d.—£0, 3s. 0s. Thirty-two Ravens,
young and old, were paid for in Crosthwaite parish in 1791.
Ravens were nothing accounted of in Kendal parish so long as
Brocks and Foxes were plentiful. One entry stands alone in 1766:
‘Paide to Isabel Hurdson for A Ravin head, £00s. 00s. 02d.’
But after 1704 many rewards were paid for Ravens in this
parish.

A curious story about Ravens was once noted by the late
Dr. A. C. Gibson, regarding Kernal Crag, a huge mass of solid
rock, with a fall of broken precipice, on the side of Coniston
Old Man: ‘On this crag, probably for ages, a pair of ravens
have annually had their nest, and though their young have
again and again been destroyed by the shepherds, they always
return to this favourite spot; and frequently when one of the
parents has been shot in the brooding season, the survivor has
immediately been provided with another helpmate. ... It
happened, a year or two since, that both the parent birds were
shot whilst the nest was full of unfledged young, and their
duties were immediately undertaken by a couple of strange
ravens, who attended assiduously to the wants of the orphan
brood, until they were fit to forage for themselves.’! If the
facts are correctly related only two explanations seem possible.
Hither the birds shot were two visitors, which the shepherds
shot in mistake for the breeding birds, and the latter escaped ;
or the second couple may have been a pair which, having just
lost their own young, felt moved by that natural affection which
the Greeks defined as atopy, to relieve the hunger of the
brood left helpless by the loss of their natural protectors.

The foregoing notes refer to the Lake mountains, i.e. to the
central and western portions of Lakeland, which have always
constituted the chief stronghold of the Ravens: Dr. Parker of
Gosforth wrote only a decade ago, ‘ This fine bird is still com-
monly to be seen and heard upon the Fells,’ adding, ‘the nest
is placed on the ledges of rocky cliffs and precipices, generally

1 The Old Man, or Ravings and Ramblings round Coniston, p. 101.

160 VERTEBRATE FAUNA OF LAKELAND

in some most inaccessible spot.’ It would be unhandsome to
jeopardise the safety of the eggs or young of any of our Lake-
land Ravens by publishing the whereabouts of the precipices in
which they rear their young. ‘These are only too well known
already to shepherds and keepers, who sometimes stone the
fledgelings in the nest if they cannot be taken out alive. There
are more Ravens in Westmorland than in Cumberland, if the
whole of our area, from the Yorkshire border, be considered ;
though, when we leave the precipices of the Lake mountains
proper, the cliffs and valleys in which they breed are highly
isolated. Dr. Heysham commented on the tenacity with which
Ravens adhere to their traditional breeding stations, a remark
which is illustrated by a pair which have long bred in the
neighbourhood of Alston. In a letter written to T. C. Heysham
on May 9, 1831, William Dodd volunteers the remark: ‘The
Raven breeds upon Crossfell. 1 could send you a young one
taken out of a nest there a week or so ago, if you request it.’
The Raven has made its mark for all time in the place-names
of Lakeland; not only in those which are self-evident, but in
some that are less obvious. Renwick, for instance, is a con-
traction of Ravens’ wick, Mr. J. A. Harvie-Brown has else-
where drawn attention to the habit which obtains in some
regions, of Ravens assembling numerously to roost together in |
some favourite locality. A single hint that such a rendezvous of
Ravens may formerly have been adopted in Lakeland is supplied
by a remark in Mrs. Howard’s Leminiscences, in the course of
which the lady remarks of Corby, ‘the farthest point is called
the Raven Clint, as Ravens flock there for shelter’ (p. 98). The
allusion recalls the fact that Ravens naturally nested in the
larger trees of the Eden valley, until compelled by persecution to
seek a safer asylum among the lofty crags of our mountain passes.
This is not a mere conjecture. Sandford, writing about 1675,
tells us that Crosbie Ravensworth was so called ‘of the Rauens
Timbring in the Timber Trees ther, but now not a timber Tree
standing.’! The only point of the N.W. coast upon which Ravens
ever nest is identical with the sandstone cliffs of Sandwith.
A pair nested there in 1888; in 1891 they had left the locality.
1 Sandford ms., p. 32.

BIRDS 161

During the spring days, when ewes are lambing, the Ravens
often visit the lower fells; just as in winter they appear on
many of the moors of our eastern border. Their presence in
the Cumbrian plain is rare, and the same may be said of the
lower grounds around Morecambe Bay. I saw a fine Raven
which had been caught alive on Roudsea Moss in the autumn
of 1890, and can vouch for another having been shot some
years ago near Longtown. Both of these individuals had
strayed a considerable distance from their usual haunts. It not
unfrequently happens that young Ravens are taken from their
nests on our precipitous scars, in order to be domesticated. Mr.
J. H. Brown has for some years possessed an extremely fine
Raven, which enjoys the run of a large garden, much affected
by Rooks during the summer. On the 7th of June 1891 the
tenants of the rookery nearly terminated the career of Corvus
coraz. It happened in this wise. Previous to this eventful
day the Raven had given serious offence to his neighbours by
the practice of his latest accomplishment,—a derisive rendering
of their ‘cawing.’ On this particular morning the Raven found
a young Rook dead upon the lawn. He proceeded to bolt the
corpse in view of the sorrowing relatives. About two hours
later a stir was noticed among the Rooks. Suddenly a large
detachment of their number set upon the Raven, which threw
himself on his back and showed a plucky defence. Three times
the Rooks were driven off, and thrice they returned to the fray
as soon as Mr. Brown retired. When rescued for the last time
the Raven was nearly played out, and had help been delayed,
must speedily have succumbed to the fury of his enemies.

Order PASSERES. Fam. ALAUDID.
SUK) eA 1k

Alauda arvensis, L.

If the numbers of individuals sacrificed to the exigencies of
the kitchen can be trusted to supply a criterion, the Sky Lark has
long been a very abundant bird in Lakeland. The Naworth
accounts include many mentions of this Lark being purchased
from local fowlers. Thus, in 1612, there is an entry between

L

162 VERTEBRATE FAUNA OF LAKELAND

October 23 and 30: ‘Larks bought at Carlyle, xx4’ A little
later we read: ‘ Larks, 2 dozen, viii4’ In 1618, between Sep-
tember 12th and 19th, there were booked ‘20 dozen of larkes,
v§.’; and a week later, ‘ 58 dozen of larkes, xiii’. vj4,’ Between
September 26th and October 3d, we have ‘60 dozen of larkes,
xis’; also ‘33 dozen of larkes, vj’. vj*” Again: ‘40 dozen of
larkes, vj’. vj?’ In 1621 we have an entry prior to September
29: ‘Larkes, 39 dozen d., x°. iiij4’ Before October 27 we
read: ‘Larkes, 21 dozens, v*. iiij’’ Under April 8, 1634, we
find entered, ‘8 duzin of land larkes, by Richard Storye,
delivered at Corkby, ij’ This Lark nests as freely on our salt
marshes as in our fields, and the young leave the nest before
they are fully fledged, relying instinctively on their protective
colouration assimilating closely to the ground colour.

WOOD LARK.
Alauda arborea, L.

Some few years ago I found a charming little colony of Wood
Larks established in the neighbourhood of Camerton. Subse-
quently I traced the species as an occasional breeding bird to St.

Bees and Ravenglass. Since then I have seen it near Kendal,
where Dr. Gough considered it to be rare in 1861, though not '
uncommon some years earlier. Mr. F. P. Johnson told me that .

a pair of Wood Larks nested at Castlesteads a few summers ago,
and Mr. W. Hodgson thought that he recognised this species in ‘
Ulleswater. I fancy that it must be a very uncommon bird in ,
Lakeland, otherwise my intimate acquaintance with the species ;
must have produced a good many more localities for its presence.
It is almost equally scarce as a winter visitant. T. C. Heysham
recorded the capture of a Wood Lark taken near Carlisle, in Feb-
ruary 1833. Others have been caught of late years at Raven-
glass and Allonby in the winter-time. The only Wood Lark
which the late B. Greenwell ever saw in Cumberland was shot
by himself near Alston in March 1866. He gave me the skin
of this bird a year or so before his death.

BIRDS 163

SHORE LARK.
Otocorys alpestris (L.).

The Shore Lark is quite unknown in the interior of Lakeland,
but has occurred upon our coast in three or four instances, In
February 1890 three Shore Larks frequented the brow-edge of
Skinburness marsh for some days, until shot in fact for identi-
fication. They were passing wild, and generally flew off to the
fields when disturbed. On the 29th of October that year
Arthur Bolton shot three Shore Larks on his farm in Walney
Island. He sent me one of them that I might identify the
species for him. This was a male, but the two that he re-
tained for himself appear from their plumage to be male and
female. The birds which Mr. Nicol shot on Skinburness Marsh,
as above mentioned, were two males and a female. Other
specimens of the Shore Lark obtained in Lakeland are the
following: one shot near Eskmeals many years ago, in the
collection at Corney; another shot near St. Bees some thirty
years since; and a third killed in the fields near Silloth, pos-
sessed by Mr. Routledge of that place.

Order PICARIZ. Fam. CYPSELID.
SWIFT.

Cypselus apus (L.).

This Swift appears to be more independent of seasons, or
rather of winds, than most of the summer immigrants, always
appearing in Lakeland by the commencement of May, and
generally a day or two earlier. Its passage is extended over a
period of two or three weeks. In 1891 the species did not
become numerous round Carlisle until the 14th of May. Though
these birds are fond of hawking insects above our highest moun-
tain-tops, they are generally noticed rather later on the fells
than in warm and sheltered situations. Swifts do not cluster
together before returning to Africa in August (and September),
quite in Hirundine fashion, but they do congregate in the air
socially before the final start is made. For example, on the
16th of this August [1891], I long watched between thirty and

164 VERTEBRATE FAUNA OF LAKELAND

forty individuals flying round together, rising and falling in
graceful curves, and closely following, though never colliding
with their fellows, evidently preparing to embark upon their
common journey across the sea.

ALPINE SWIFT.
Cypselus melba (L.).

The only occurrence which can be accredited to Lakeland
refers to the year 1842, and is thus recorded in the Carlisle
Patriot of July 8th: ‘On Monday [July 4th], at Low Mill
House, Robert Brisco, Esq., shot a fine specimen of that very
rare bird, the Cypselus alpinus (Alpine Swift).’ T. C. Heysham
heard of it at once, for he wrote to Henry Doubleday on the
23d of July: ‘I have recently been told that a specimen of the
Whitebellied Swift was obtained about ten days ago in the west
of Cumberland, not far from Egremont.’ James Cooper wrote
to Heysham on the 4th of September that year: ‘I had a letter
from Mr. Reeves in which he mentioned the Swift you alluded
to in your note of the 8 Augt., and from what he says I am
inclined to think it may be the Alpine one, as he says it first
attracted their attention from the largeness of its size before
they noticed its white belly.” Mr. Robert Brisco, afterwards
Sir Robert Brisco, Bart., deposited this bird for a time in the
Carlisle Museum, as shown by an entry in the old catalogue.
It is now in the possession of Sir Musgrave Brisco, Bart., of
Crofton.

Order PICARIZ. Fam. CAPRIMULGIDE.
NIGHTJAR.

Caprimulgus europeus, L.

The Nightjar is not perhaps as abundant in Lakeland as in
some of the southern counties of England, but it is known on
most of our fells as the ‘ night hawk,’ and would be a good deal
commoner if spared by keepers. This Goatsucker, like many of
the summer birds, is fond of nesting for several successive years
on the same moss or moorland, usually where trees are thinly

BIRDS 165

planted. The breeding season is often extended into Septem-
ber, even in the north of England, but I have not seen unfledged
young later than September, nor have I seen a full clutch of
eggs earlier than the 26th of May. It breeds throughout our
area, from the mosses which fringe the Solway Firth to the
Westmorland moors that march with Yorkshire.

Order PICARIZ. Fam. PICID.
GREAT SPOTTED WOODPECKER.

Dendrocopus major (L.).

In the southern portions of Lakeland this Woodpecker is
known only as a rare winter visitant from the Continent. Dr.
Gough records in his notes a young bird killed near Gilpin
Bridge, October 31, 1871. Mr. Hutchinson received a specimen
shot on Cartmel Fell on November 29th, 1889. Mr. Duckworth
examined another killed near Ulverston about the same time.
In Cumberland the species occurs as rarely as a winter immi-
grant as in Westmorland ; but a few pairs reside in one or
two localities. Dr. Heysham only met with four local speci-
mens prior to 1796. His son informed Yarrell in a draft of
January 10,1836: ‘A few days ago a very fine specimen of
the Picus major (a female) was shot in the neighbourhood, a bird
seldom met with in the district.’ The species is most firmly
established at Edenhall (where some fine specimens of the boring
of this Dendrocopus can be inspected in situ), but it has bred of
late years near Brampton, Woodside, Corby Castle, and Warwick
Bridge. Keepers are chiefly to blame for its rarity. <A pair
were shot at Corby in 1888, while on the Ist of June in the
following year, I examined another bird from the same property,
a fine old male. That it had taken its share of the duties of
incubation was shown by the bare condition of the breast. The
whereabouts of this Woodpecker is easily ascertained at the
beginning of the breeding season. For instance, on the 25th of
April 1889 I visited Woodside, and soon heard the sharp jarring
sound of quickly repeated blows, followed by the appearance of
the performer; the first tree he alighted in happened to be a

166 VERTEBRATE FAUNA OF LAKELAND

long slender fir; he alighted on a small bough, and proceeded to
sidle down the stem of the tree, twisting round before he reached
the base, and then flew to the next tree. Crossing the meadows,
we soon heard another Woodpecker jarring in a different quarter.
Conspicuous among a few straggling trees, which grew beside a
small water-course, was a fine alder. To this the Woodpecker
directed its undulating course, and proceeded to alight on an
upright stem, clinging to it with tail spread flat against its surface,
and head thrown back, hanging in easy elegance on the perpen-
dicular. It again repeated its jarring, and we had scrutinised
its pied plumage with the glass somewhat closely, before the shy
fellow took alarm and flew away. About 25 feet up there
was an old hole, and, above, two separate borings had been
commenced, about 2 feet apart, the one just above the other.
The early morning and the afternoon are the best times to hear
the jarring of this Woodpecker. How does this Woodpecker obtain
shelter at night in the winter-time ? It roosts in old nesting-holes,
to which it sometimes retires even during the day. On the
26th of January 1889, when wandering through the woods of
Edenhall, we came upon the remains of a Scotch fir, a gaunt giant
which had long survived its prime, and now only cumbered the
ground as a dismembered witness of the past. It contained
three borings of this Woodpecker. On our kicking the bark
twice, a Greater Spotted Woodpecker flew out, and crossing a
small clearing, disappeared in the recesses of the coverts.

LESSER SPOTTED WOODPECKER.

Dendrocopus minor (UL. ).

All endeavours to trace this species in Westmorland or Fur-
ness have hitherto proved futile. A pair nested at Edenhall in
1882, but were unfortunately shot for Shaw of Shrewsbury at
his special request. A single bird was shot near Carlisle in the
‘thirties,’ and another at Paw Park. A pair were reported as
seen at Dalemain in 1847. Blackett Greenwell obtained a
specimen near Alston, but on the Northumberland side. It is
evident that Lakeland lies outside the usual breeding range
of this Woodpecker.

BIRDS 167

GREEN WOODPECKER.
Gecinus viridis (L.).

Dr. Heysham knew this bird as common in Yorkshire, but
only an occasional visitant to Cumberland., Hutton’s Museum
in 1803 contained a local specimen. The late Mr. Dickinson has
left a graphic description of two Green Woodpeckers which he
observed near Lamplugh, the only specimens he ever saw.!
Mr. M‘Comish of Stranraer took a clutch of eggs in Blackwell
Wood near Carlisle in 1840. R. Raine assured me that a pair
nested at Edenhall in 1887. In Westmorland it appears to be
of still more rare occurrence. Mr. Leslie showed me a Green
Woodpecker in nest dress, shot near Appleby shortly prior to
1882. This is the best authenticated specimen that can be
claimed for Westmorland.

Sub fam. JY NGIN A.

WRYNECK.
Lynx torquilla, L.

The Wryneck affords an interesting example of the nearly
complete disappearance of a regular summer visitant to Lake-
land within the memory of a single generation. Dr. Heysham
knew the species well, was familiar with its harsh cry, had taken
a female on the nest, and was accustomed to meet with it every
season, though he did not happen to find it in 1796. T.C.
Heysham noticed its arrival at Carlisle in the ‘thirties’ regularly.
Dr. Gough entered it in 1861 as a not uncommon summer visit-
ant to the neighbourhood of Kendal. Captain Johnson well
remembers that it used to breed about Castlesteads. For the
last twenty-five years the Wryneck has only visited us as a
chance straggler. James Fell took a nest at Rickerby in 1863,
of which he often spoke, but he never met with it after that
year. An odd bird was killed by a boy’s catapult near Mary-
port in August 1888; a few individuals have been seen on
passage in different parts of Lakeland. Probably the species
was always very local. It is now rare.

1 Rem. of West Cumberland, pp. 28, 24.

168 VERTEBRATE FAUNA OF LAKELAND

Order PICARLA. Fam. ALCHDINID.

KINGFISHER.
Alcedo ispida, L.

A few Kingfishers haunt our northern streams and backwaters,
not ascending very frequently to the becks which drain the
“snow-broth’ from the fells; yet appropriating many quiet
nooks on our salmon rivers. Mrs. Howard alludes to the pre-
sence of Kingfishers on the Eden in the first volume of her
Reminiscences (p. 97), remarking that a spot, then called the
‘blackbird’s seat,’ had previously been known as ‘ the halcyon
bower’ from the number of Kingfishers in the vicinity. Our
anglers take a pride in the Kingfishers that share their sport in
miniature. I believe that no men more heartily regret the
Vandalism which destroys so many Kingfishers. But though
the object of relentless persecution on account of its beautiful
plumage, the Kingfisher is not so local as many persons imagine,
a misconception chiefly due to the retiring habits of the bird.
For although the ‘ Icebird’ (as they call this species in Germany)
especially frequents the banks of our larger rivers, yet in sum-
mer it often happens that a pair of Kingfishers withdraw from
their usual haunts to rear their young in more complete retire-
ment ; nesting in the side of some half-dried-up stream, or near
a stagnant unlovely ditch, where no one would suspect their
presence. In the summer of 1890 Mr. W. Duckworth noticed
on the sea-shore near Ulverston a cage containing seven young
Kingfishers, to whose presence he was attracted by their (to
him) familiar cries. Our joint inquiries ascertained that a man
named Baxter had taken them out of a hole in the low cliff
iunmediately above high-tide mark. The parent birds reared their
young for about a week, feeding them chiefly on small shrimps.
The experiment was at last spoilt by some mischievous boys
who made a raid on the young birds. Whatever the attraction
may be (I am not wicked enough to shoot these beautiful birds for
dissection), Kingfishers certainly live for weeks on the creeks of
our salt marshes. Not the least graceful of the actions of the
Kingfisher is its habit of hovering occasionally like a Kestril;
this Dr. Heysham was one of the first to observe.

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BIRDS 169

Order PICARL. Fam. CORACIIDZ.
ROLLER.

Coracias garrula, L.

Pennant records that a Roller was shot at Dalton in Furness,
May 26,1827. Mitchell records another as shot on Walney
Island in June 1860. In the year 1868 two examples occurred
in Lakeland. Mr. Dickinson recorded one of the two as shot
near Thornholm by Mr. J. Dalzell, a brewer of Whitehaven,
who described it as a chattering, noisy bird, and not at all shy.
I subsequently examined this specimen in the collection of Dr.
Lumb. The second bird was shot on the 17th of J uly that year
at Carleton near Carlisle. Sam Watson received it in the flesh,
and found that its body contained beetles and caterpillars, some
of them in a living state. It was subsequently purchased by
J. B. Hodgkinson. :

Order PICARLZE. Fam. UPUPID.
HOOPOE.
Upupa epops, L.

Professor Newton once included Westmorland in a list of
English counties which had not to his knowledge been stained
with the blood of the Hoopoe. But even when he wrote, the
species had occurred in most parts of Lakeland—generally, but
not always, during the autumn. Of vernal occurrences may be
mentioned a bird shot near Selside on May Ist, 1859, and a
brighter-coloured bird killed on Walney Island in the spring of
1884. Specimens were shot at St. Bees in 1877, at Calder
Abbey in 1851, at Middlesceugh in 1831, at Dalston in 1832,
at Nether Denton in 1867, at Allonby and Loweswater. At
Dalston two birds appeared together, but on all other occasions
the Hoopoe seems to have straggled to Lakeland only as a soli-
tary waif. A large flight of Hoopoes visited England in the
autumn of 1889, and one or two individuals strayed to the
north-west region. Bailie Walcot has favoured me with a
printed notice of a Hoopoe which he and some fellow-tourists

170 VERTEBRATE FAUNA OF LAKELAND

observed near Shap Wells on the 14th of September. This bird
happily escaped injury. An individual which Mr. Backhouse
brought to me on the 12th of October had been less fortunate.
The poor bird had been searching for insects in the light soil of
a rabbit-warren at Bowness on Solway, when it entered a steel
trap, which crushed its feet so severely that it was found neces-
sary to kill it. Its plumage was that of a young bird, worn
and frayed, as though the bird had been contending against
adverse elements in its flight across the North Sea.

Order PICA RIA. Fam. CUCULID.,
CUCKOO.

Cuculus canorus, L.

The time-honoured joke against the Borrowdale people,
whom tradition accredits with building a wall to keep in the
‘gowk,’ is itself an illustration of the abundance of the bird
upon the moors of the Lake district. Far up the mountain-side,
where bird-life becomes scarce and little varied, you may gener-
ally hear the Cuckoo practising its song as it wanders in search
of the caterpillars upon which it chiefly subsists. In default of
insect-life, this Cuckoo sometimes swallows strange substances.
Mr. Walton of Garrigill sent to me a quantity of dried grass
which he had found in the stomach of a Cuckoo, swallowed no
doubt to appease the pangs of hunger, and worked up into a
round ball by physiological action. Among the nests in which
the ege of this Cuckoo has been found in Lakeland, I may men-
tion those of the Whinchat, Robin, Pied Wagtail, Reed Bunting,
Chaffinch, Yellow Bunting, Hedge Sparrow, Linnet, and Twite.
Mr. Heysham received from Alston a Twite’s nest containing
three eggs of that species and one of the Cuckoo, in June 1831,
The late William Greenup found a Cuckoo’s egg in a Twite’s
nest in May 1858. James Smith found a Cuckoo's egg”in a
Linnet’s nest at Bowness on Solway in June 1891.

BIRDS 171

Order STRIGES. . Fam. STRIGIDZ.
BARN OWL.
Strix flammea, L.

This Owl was at one time a very common bird in Lakeland,
nesting in such old ruins as those of Cockermouth Castle, in dis-
used chimney-shafts, and occasionally in hollow trees. It has a
penchant for rearing its young in dovecots, as at Corby Castle.
A few pairs of Barn Owls breed in clefts in the red-sandstone
cliffs above the river Eden. An examination of the pellets
beneath one of their nesting-places showed that the birds were
in the habit of feeding on the Water Shrew, the teeth of that
small animal being easily recognised. Even upon Walney Island
the Barn Owl is occasionally taken incidentally in rabbit-traps.
Its visits to that island are doubtless prompted by the experi-
ence that the rats abound in the hedge-banks. Most naturalists
are aware that the Barn Owl breeds almost throughout the year,
but the fact is not equally familiar to the general public ; hence
the following note from Mr. W. H. Doeg of Botcherby, dated
November 14, 1888, deserves reproduction here: ‘The owls
[a pair of wild Barn Owls] sit on my roof every night for hours,
and snore loud enough to be heard in the house. Last night,
at 9.30, I heard an unusual row, and went into the yard. The
old Owls flew away, and a young one fell out of the hole to the
ground. It could only hop and flutter. The old birds had
reared two broods already.’ But, though more prolific than
most nocturnal birds of prey, the Barn Owl has decreased of late
years in many parts of Lakeland, in consequence of the cruel
thoughtlessness which dictates its destruction. In addition to
the benefits which this Owl confers so lavishly on farmers, by
the crusade which it constantly exercises against Muridw, men-
tion should be made of its feeding upon insects. This has been
ascertained both by dissection and by external observations
upon the habits of the bird. Thus, on the 12th of June 1889,
when standing in a garden at Dalston, I watched a Barn Owl
gliding noiselessly along the tops of the hedgerows, and also
flying around the upper branches of the larger trees, evidently
picking off insects. Once to our surprise the Owl alighted on

Le2% VERTEBRATE FAUNA OF LAKELAND

the very top of a tall tree, upon which it contrived to balance
itself for a few moments before resuming the chase. At one
time or another most people have seen this Owl mousing during
the later hours of the afternoon. Mr. W. Hodgson and other
members of the Carlisle Scientific Society were visiting Bew-
castle, on April 29, 1889, when at mid-day they saw a fine
Barn Owl skimming leisurely over the high pastures above
Knorren Lodge on the Cambeck. The Barn Owl exhibits more
determination in private life than might be imagined from its
public appearances, as the following facts will show. Quite
recently, an idle fellow caught a Barn Owl near Carlisle, and
carried it alive to the house of one of my acquaintances. It was
placed in an aviary already tenanted by three Tawny Owls.
These last had lived together peacefully enough, but the arrival
of the stranger introduced an element of discord, and desperate
battles ensued. The Barn Owl fought bravely against its
opponents, but was overpowered by numbers, and soon suc-
cumbed to the ill-treatment it had received. A second Barn
Owl was produced to take the place of the deceased. Quarrels
again broke out, but the new-comer thrashed its three opponents
single-handed, and evicted them from the box in which they
usually spent the day, which was thenceforth reserved for its
sole use.

LONG-EARED OWL.
Asio otus (L.).

Opinions have always differed as to the relative abundance
of the Long-eared Owl. T. C. Heysham states, in a letter of
November 28, 1836, ‘Although this bird breeds in the fir planta-
tions in this neighbourhood, the eggs are exceedingly difficult to
meet with, so much so, that during the last nine or ten years
I have only been able to secure a single nest.’ Dr. Gough,
writing apparently at the end of the ‘ seventies,’ remarks: ‘I am
inclined to think that this species is more abundantly distributed
in this district than we have hitherto regarded. From an
account given me of a large company of Eared Owls, in a wood
of yew-trees on the east side of the [Morecambe] Bay, I came
to the conclusion that they were the long-eared species. He

ae ett. |

BIRDS 173

adds a note of a bird killed in Barrowfield Wood, Kendal, in
1875, and that Mr. H. Arnold saw eight (and shot two) in
Ulpha Wood. Bell of Milnthorpe considers it rather scarce in
South Westmorland, but Mr. Hutchinson has preserved several
specimens killed near Kendal, and kept two examples in cap-
tivity. Durnford recorded the species as plentiful near Barrow
in 1876. For the rest, this Owl occurs sporadically in our
larger plantations up to the very borders of Scotland; as well
in Renwick and other fell districts, as in the large woods of the
lower grounds. It suffers more from pole-traps than any other
species of Owl.

SHORT-EARED OWL.

Asio accipitrinus (Pall.).

Dr. Heysham knew this Owl as a winter visitor to Lakeland,
and as such it has occurred with some irregularity in most parts
of our area. Captain Johnson told me that at one time he
often flushed flights of these Owls in the turnip fields near
Brampton. That this species visited Walney Island abundantly
fifteen or sixteen years ago is evident from the experience of
Mr. W. A. Durnford, who had seen as many as six birds
together, beating the ground for mice between three and four
in the afternoon. He adds that the species visited Walney in
larger numbers than usual in 1876, the first flight arriving with
the Woodcocks on October 28, but that in 1877 this Owl was
as scarce in Walney as it had been abundant the previous
winter. For my own part I have not met with this Owl in Lake-
land except in very limited numbers; a good many appeared on
Walney in the autumn and early winter of 1891. An odd pair
of these Owls occasionally remains to breed in Lakeland. Pro-
bably the first known instance is that recorded without date by
Mr. Hancock, who simply says that the late Mr. R. R. Wingate
picked up a young individual of the Short-eared Owl near
Brampton, Cumberland. Mr. Henry Kerr of Bacup writes in
the Field of November 29, 1879: ‘When on the northern border
of Cumberland, in August last, I was told by an ex-gamekeeper
that he had shot old and young birds of this species on the
Bewcastle fells in Cumberland. My informant, who is a good

‘174 VERTEBRATE FAUNA OF LAKELAND

practical ornithologist, knows the bird well, and he told me he
had found its nest and eggs on two occasions amongst the
heather on the moors. Many years ago I captured a newly
fledged Short-eared Owl in Dumfriesshire, on Lochar Moss.’
Brennan of Ulpha volunteered that he had once found a nest
of young Short-eared Owls on Foulshaw Moss about the year
1880. Mr. Durnford records, but with meagre particulars, an
instance of this Owl breeding on the borders of Lancashire and
Westmorland, in the Field of June 19,1880. The late Jerry
Smith produced a specimen of this Owl, which he had taken
from a nest on Lowmoor, near Aspatria, and reared as a pet. It
was accidentally poisoned, and he bitterly lamented its demise.
James Smith found a nest of the Short-eared Owl containing
two addled eggs and one young bird, in half-down, on the 11th
of May 1889, upon one of the mosses in the neighbourhood of
our coast. I had arranged for him to accompany me over the
‘flow, but the morning proving wet, I waited for the weather
to mend, and my man started off without me. After crossing a
broad expanse of flat moor and short heather, he came to a
narrow strip of old heather, divided by a deep trench from a bed
of bracken. Here his attention was attracted by seeing the old
male Owl hawking on the wing. While watching this bird he saw
his mate join him. The two birds then proceeded to fly around
in great distress, while Smith searched for their nest. This was
a scratching in the ground, measuring about 20 inches across,
surrounded by dwarf willows and tall heather. When I visited
the nest it contained only a few feathers and bones of the
Sky Lark, but we found the remains of two very young rabbits
about forty yards away. The male had evidently been in the
habit of perching on a bare stump which projected from the
summit of a hillock. Numerous pellets attested to the frequency
with which the spot had been visited. About the third week
in June the same year, while I was away in Scotland, a keeper
in the same district happened to find another nest of this Owl.
This fellow shot the old hen at the nest, and killed her six owlets.
They were quite helpless, poor innocents, the youngest being
only a few days old, while the eldest had not begun to exchange
the yellow down, which at first invests the body of this Owl,

BIRDS 175

for feathers. This Owl seems peculiarly unfortunate in the
treatment it receives from farmers and loafing gunners, but the
old type of keeper is its worst enemy. I found no fewer than
six Short-eared Owls all gibbeted upon the same tree near
Cardunock.

TAWNY OWL.

Syrnium aluco (L.).

From Roudsea northwards this Owl endeavours to breed
commonly in hollow trees, and though a good many are killed
by keepers, the birds seem to hold their ground. Instances of
the Tawny Owl nesting in the open are rare—indeed, the only
one that can be recorded from Lakeland refers to a clutch of
egos which Mr. G. A. Hutchinson took on Lupton Moor in
Westmorland, in 1886, having previously disturbed the old
birds. These eggs were submitted to Mr. Bidwell. It is well
known that this Owl nests in rabbit-holes in sloping banks, and
also among rocks; but that it should attempt to rear its young
on an open moor, like the Short-eared Owl, is a little surprising.
The young are often reared as pets, and very charming they
become, sometimes learning to come to be fed in answer to their
owner's whistle. Their diet is naturally varied, including small
mammals, fish, and occasionally small birds. Mr. Johnson has
known a Tawny Owl carry a Willow Wren to her young. They
will feed also on insects, particularly on the so-called ‘ black
beetles,’ to which domesticated birds are very partial. Mr.
Edward Tandy kept a Tawny Owl which he used to supply with
small birds. One day he gave the Owl a Snipe. The Owl,
according to custom, nipped off the head and tried to bolt it.
But the long bill defeated all his efforts to swallow the bonne
bouche. ‘The Owl proved equal to the occasion. He threw up
the head, broke off the long bill, and bolted the cranium, now
freed from its lengthy appendage.

TENGMALM’S OWL.
Nyctala tengmalmi (Gmel.).

Cumbrian ornithologists have long been aware that an example
of this small Owl was obtained in the West of Cumberland in

176 VERTEBRATE FAUNA OF LAKELAND

the year 1876—indeed, the fact was recorded in the Zoologist
by Mr. W. A. Durnford, as well as by Dr. Parker.t But a
slight doubt as to the ezact date upon which the bird was killed
has hitherto existed; Mr. Durnford having referred its capture
to the month of October, while the Gosforth naturalist assigned
the same event to December. JBelieving that the specimen had
always remained in the possession of its original owner, the
Rey. C. Fullerton Smith, I communicated with that gentleman,
and then learnt that the 3d of November 1876 was really the
correct day of its occurrence. It was killed by a man named
James Wright, keeper to the late A. B. Steward, Esq. of Newton
Manor, Gosforth, and was shown to Mr. Fullerton Smith on the
following day at Mill Cottage, then occupied by George Savage,
keeper to Mr. Burns Lindow of Irton Hall. It was Savage who
handed the bird to Mr. Fullerton Smith, in the flesh. Savage
mounted the bird, and subsequently told Mr. Fullerton Smith
that it was a female.

SCOPS OWL.
Scops giu (Scop.).

When visiting Mr. Joseph Whitaker of Rainworth, in June
1887, I examined an example of this small Owl, shot near
Renwick on the 15th of May 1875, and acquired by purchase
as soon as its occurrence was notified in the Field of May 22d.
In June 1889 Mrs. Dryden of Renwick pointed out to me an
ash-tree, standing in the middle of the village, out of which this
poor wanderer was shot. It was Mrs. Dryden who first observed
the bird towards evening, when it was perching in this ash-tree.
She at once told her sons what she had seen. One of them—
not Henry Dryden, but another brother who has since died—ran
out with a gun. He disturbed the ‘bird, which flew out of the
tree, but returned to it after a short flight, and was promptly
shot. Henry Dryden, who was also present, independently con-
firmed the correctness of his mother’s statement.

1 Zoologist, 1877, p. 277; zbid. 1879, p. 117.

BIRDS t77

LITTLE OWL.
Athene noctua (Scop. ).

On a former occasion, Mr. H. P. Senhouse favoured me with
the information that a Little Owl was once killed near Westward,
and shown to his father in the flesh, but he was unable to
furnish the date of its occurrence. Happily, he has since
remedied this defect by forwarding a letter, written by Mr. T.
C. Heysham to his father, which fixes the date.

In this letter of February 16, 1856, Mr. Heysham wrote as
follows: ‘I feel much obliged, and beg to thank you for your
kind attention in sending me a notice of the capture of a speci-
men of Strix passerina at Westward. This bird is certainly a
novelty in the North of England, and I believe the first instance
of its occurrence in this county. I need scarcely tell you
that S. passerina and S. Tengmalmi are so nearly allied, that
frequent mistakes have been made as to their identity. You,
however, are too good an ornithologist to commit an error of
this description. Had it fallen into any other hands, I should
most certainly have preferred an inspection, merely to satisfy
myself as to the species. I fear the body has been thrown away,
otherwise the sternum, etc. of this little nocturnal marauder
would have been acceptable to me by way ofa relic.’ The last
remark shows conclusively that this Owl was killed in 1856,
probably at the beginning of February, a month in which,
according to Mr. Harting, the species has repeatedly occurred
in Great Britain. The specimen became the property of the
late General Wyndham.

Order ACCIPITRES, Fam. FALCONID,
MARSH HARRIER.

Circus eruginosus (L.).

Though long extinct as a breeding bird, the Marsh Harrier
must once have nested quite commonly on the great wastes of
Lakeland. Dr. Heysham seems to have possessed a personal
acquaintance with this Harrier, from the descriptions which he

M

178 VERTEBRATE FAUNA OF LAKELAND

furnishes of the plumage of both old and young birds. He
states explicitly, ‘This bird is very frequent upon our moors.
It lays four or five eggs of a dirty white colour, upon the
ground, among heath or rushes.’ No doubt the gamekeepers had
commenced to decimate its numbers even at the close of the
last century. By the time that the younger Heysham began to
write the Marsh Harrier appears to have become rare. Indeed,
it is quite problematical whether T. C, Heysham ever saw it —
alive in Lakeland. That he received fresh specimens from the
Pennine range is evidenced by the following letters :—

‘ Aston, 22 ov. 1830.
‘Mr. Heysham.

‘Smr,—I have this day sent you two Hawks, which were
brought to me by Mr. Jos. Dickinson, a Gentn. of this place
who has usually taken every pains in trying to procure me any-
thing of the kind which was likely to suit your purpose. It
seems to me that they are what you call the Moor Buzzard, a
bird not often met with here, but you’l have the goodness to
say in your next whether my conjecture is right or not. I hope
you will receive them safe... . I beg to subscribe myself, yours
Respty., ‘Wm. Dopp.’

To this T. C. Heysham replied :

‘CARLISLE, Nov. 24, 1830.
‘Mr. William Dodd.

‘IT have to thank you for the two Moor Buzzards which
reached me safe the evening previous to the receipt of your
letter. They are both young birds, although one is probably a
year older than the other. The very old ones have the head,
neck, and breast entirely yellowish-white. They, as well as the
majority of hawks, vary much in the colour of their plumage,
and it rarely happens that two are taken exactly alike. I beg
you will present my compliments to Mr. Dickinson, and say
that I feel myself greatly obliged to him for his kindness and
trouble in trapping them for me.’

This Harrier probably maintained its footing longest in the
wild border country. The late Mr. Proud recorded in his diary
the capture of two in that district prior to 1846, and Captain

BIRDS 179

Johnson recollects that, when a young man, he himself met with
the Marsh Harrier on several occasions in the same district. It
is possible that a bird of this species, killed at Netherby some
years prior to 1880, and preserved in the collection at Edenhall,
was the last of the Marsh Harriers that had so long frequented
the wild moors of our borders. That the species lingered
longer among the wastes of Westmorland is far from improbable.
Mr. Hindson, who must have been a contemporary of the Marsh
Harrier, does not include this species in the Kirkby-Lonsdale
list. Dr. Gough himself only alludes to it in his list of 1861 as
‘Rare. Hay Fell.’ Mr. Hutchinson believes that at one time
the Marsh Harrier bred regularly on Hay Fell.

HEN HARRIER

Circus cyaneus (L.).

The wild moors around Tebay must always have been well
adapted to this Harrier. Here accordingly we first have infor-
mation of its destruction. The Accompts of the Churchwardens
of Orton given at Easter 1645 include two entries of Harriers:
‘Thm to John Wilson for ringtails’ heads, £00, 00s. 06d. Ihm
to Edward Thornboro for ringtails’ heads, £00, 00s. 04d.’
Richardson of Ulleswater tells us that even a century ago this
Harrier was only too well known in poultry yards by this name
of fing-Tail. His contemporary, Dr. Heysham, devoted nearly
three columns to the Hen Harrier, and his account of the birds
which nested at Newtown, near Carlisle, is infinitely the finest
piece of writing that his pen has bequeathed to us. After dis-
cussing the question as to the disputed identity of the Hen
Harrier and the ‘ Ringtail,’ he goes on to say: ‘In the year
1783, I had at the same time, and within 500 yards of each
other, three nests of the ringtail and henharrier, upon
Newtown-common, about a mile and a half from Carlisle, in
some very young plantations of the late Mr. Davison:—the
first had seven eggs, the second had six eggs, and the third had
four young ones when I found them. A ringtail was upon
each nest; but the henharriers did not appear. I visited them

180 VERTEBRATE FAUNA OF LAKELAND

again, a few days after, in the evening: at the nest with young
ones, the ringtail was upon the nest, and the henharrier soon
after appeared. They both flew about me and darted at my
head ; and particularly the henharrier came within a few inches
of my head, twenty or thirty times, when I was handling the
young.—They were both very clamorous and had the same
note. On the nest which had seven eggs I found the ringtail,
and one young bird was hatched, the henharrier came very
soon, and the same scene took place, as I have described, at the
other nest. A few nights after, Mr. George Blamire accompanied
me. We first went to the nest with young ones: both birds
darted at us with great fury; I desired him to shoot the hen-
harrier ; he fired at him, wounded him, but he got away and we
never saw him more. We then went to the first nest, the ring-
tail was upon it, and there were now six young ones. The hen-
harrier did not appear. When the young of the third nest were
fit for taking, Mr. Blamire shot the ringtail for me. June the
27th, the Rev. Mr. Shaw went with me to the first nest, with
six young, they were of considerable size but not feathered: the
ringtail was upon the nest, and he shot her immediately: the
henharrier did not appear. I left a rat trap near the nest.
Next morning, viz. the 28th, I went again and found the trap
had not been touched, but there were two birds, viz. a lark and
a sparrow, in the nest. While I remained I did not see the
henharrier, but as I was certain, from the small birds in the
nest, that he had been there since the ringtail was killed: I
went again at noon, and found one of the young birds caught by
the neck in the trap. The lark and sparrow were gone, and in
their place were two yellowhammers. I set the trap and
baited it with one of the yellowhammers, and retired into a
small plantation of fir trees, about sixty yards from the nest;
I there lay concealed, and in less than five minutes, I both heard
and saw the henharrier. He soon went to the nest, fed the
young ones with what he had brought, then attempted to seize
the yellowhammer in the trap, and was taken by the leg. I
sent these birds to Mr. Latham. Dr. Heysham does not furnish
any notes on Harriers for 1784, but in June 1785 he ‘had
three nests upon Newtown-common, and had frequent oppor-

BIRDS 181

tunities of seeing both birds; which were henharriers and ring-
tails; and which were almost all shot when flying about us at
the nests. Since that time I have seen several other nests, but
never observed either two ringtails or two henharriers at the
same nest.’ The credit of deciding the identity of the ‘ring-
tail’ has been assigned to Montagu. Not only was he antici-
pated, however, by Dr. Heysham’s personal examination of a
number of Hen Harriers of both sexes, shot at their nests, but
the Doctor also anticipated the Colonel in keeping young
Harriers in confinement to observe the stages through which
they passed. Two of the young birds taken at Newtown
in 1783 lived nearly a year and three-quarters in captivity, and
a change was noticed in the colour of the irides of the male.
Allusion has hitherto been made to small birds only, as forming
the food of this Harrier, but Dr. Heysham also found that it
preyed upon and seemed fond of lizards.

The Hen Harrier must have been extremely common at that
time, for the doctor tells us that by 1796 he had made
‘accurate observations on upwards of twenty nests when filled
with young; and invariably found each nest frequented by the
henharrier and ringtail.’ The Hen Harrier never sat upon
the eggs, but will support the young after the Ringtail has been
killed. Dr. Heysham himself shot a goodly number of Harriers
in the interests of scientific research. The ruthless hand of the
game-preserver pressed on the task of extermination. Already
the Duke of Buccleuch’s gamekeeper had destroyed some
hundreds, and had frequently shot both male and female from
the same nest. Lord Carlisle’s gamekeeper had done the same.
Information is unfortunately wanting as to Westmorland after
Richardson’s time, for both Mr. Hindson and Dr. Gough
observe a discreet silence.

We cannot, however, doubt that this Harrier was then
generally distributed in Westmorland and North Lancashire.
In August 1888 Mr. Richard Mann pointed out to me a long
stretch of gorse and whin called ‘the hards,’ situated between
Allonby and Abbey Town. Here his late father, who was born
in 1808, assured him that, as a boy, he had found the nest of
‘the glead’ for several successive years, no doubt prior to 1825.

182 VERTEBRATE FAUNA OF LAKELAND

The term ‘ glead’ has not been restricted to the present species,
but the local circumstances show conclusively that a Harrier
was the species met with. It has already been remarked that
the younger Heysham was in the habit of applying for specimens
to persons in the Alston district. William Dodd wrote to him
from Alston, on May 22, 1831: ‘The person who chiefly
supplies me with what I send you, while in search of a Dottrel
nest, had the good fortune to meet with the nest of a Hen
Harrier with one egg, which he supposes was laid on Friday
last. Now if you have a particular desire to have the eggs
sent, you must write by return of carrier, but if you want the
cock bird, you must wait till they have young, as it is nearly
impossible, I understand, to get at him before that time.’ On
the 30th of May in the same year Dodd writes again: ‘ With
this day’s carrier I have sent you the female of the Hen Harrier
and the eggs belonging to her, the last of which I suppose
would be laid last Wednesday.’ But the male Harrier was also
secured, as Dodd states in a letter of June 17th: ‘ He last night
brought me the Cock Bird of the Ring Tail, which appeared to
me not to have a wrong feather about him. . . It seems there are
other gentn. collecting birds and eggs in Northumberland and
Durham, who would like to have had both birds and eggs of
the inclosed [ Harrier], but nothing wd. induce him to part with
them, otherwise than to me, though they certainly offered him
more than I thought they were worth. . . . P.S.—The inclosed
was killed yesterday morning.’

The Hen Harrier continued to breed for a few years at any
rate near Alston, because J. Borrow writes from Alston, July 6th,
1835: ‘I have seen both the Merlin and Hen harrier, but have
not been so fortunate as to fall in with either of their nests as
yet. In the west of Cumberland the Harrier was already
scarce. Mr. Hodgson wrote from Corney, Sept. 28, 1844: ‘John
Borrowdale has obtained a Ring-tail hawk, the female to the
Hen Harrier. They were plentiful in this neighbourhood forty
years ago [i.e. about 1804], my uncle has known different nests in
our own woods, yet the last I saw flying in Corney upwards of
twenty years ago. This brings us to a period within the
personal recollection of Captain Johnson, who has repeatedly

BIRDS 183

assured me that, when he was young, both the Hen Harrier and
the Marsh Harrier nested in the Bewcastle country. An old
keeper named Davidson, who had an intimate knowledge of
Harriers, informed Mr. Tremble that he had come across a few
Harriers in Bewcastle, say in the ‘forties’; but that the best
place to find a Harrier’s nest was Solway flow. This is fully
borne out by the fact that eggs in the possession of Mr. F.
Taylor were taken from Solway flow only a few years prior
to 1885. The only other eggs of this species still existing, and
known to have been taken in the Lakeland district, belong to
Mr. Edward Bidwell, and were taken at Newlands. But
though ‘ gone’ from our midst as a breeding species, and totally
unknown to most local residents, an odd bird still appears
occasionally in Lakeland on migration. I examined an adult
female poisoned in the north of Westmorland as lately as April
1891. I had previously obtained from James Smith a fine pair
of Hen Harriers, killed in the early part of 1886 in the neigh-
bourhood of the English Solway. They had constantly
quartered Weddholm and Bowness flows, feeding on Grouse and
other birds. They were adult, and had appeared in the same
locality in previous winters, but had never remained to breed.
Smith noticed the spot in which they roosted in tall heather,
and after watching them for several weeks, killed one, and then
the other. In December 1888, a blue Hen Harrier made its
appearance on Glasson flow. Smith desired to kill it, but
spared it at my desire. It remained a few weeks, but then
departed, and has never since returned to the same ground.
Mr. Murray showed me a fine Hen Harrier in female dress,
killed only a few years since, near Carnforth. Another female
was trapped in Westward parish in January 1892. A fine old
male in full blue dress was killed at Greystoke a few years
since,

MONTAGU’S HARRIER.

Circus cineraceus (Mont. ).
In Lakeland this species has always been the rarest of the

Harriers. Mr. Hodgkinson recollects identifying a bird of this
species killed near Carlisle prior to 1840, and his decision was

184 VERTEBRATE FAUNA OF LAKELAND

confirmed by T. C. Heysham. The collection of the late Sir
R. C. Musgrave includes an adult female, which his Ms. notes
state to have been killed at Edenhall. In Westmorland an
immature Harrier, which Mr. E, G. Waddilove refers to this
species, was killed on a moor near Burgh in September 1890.
Mr. Durnford obtained from Williams, the blacksmith at
Barrow, a specimen which he ascertained to have been shot on
Walney Island in the autumn of 1874.

BUZZARD.

Buteo vulgaris, Leach.

A native of this region even in Pliostocene times, the
Buzzard long held its own in many of the wilder valleys of
Lakeland; at the present time a few pairs rear their young
every year among our mountain solitudes. Alas, I have
examined recent specimens killed over all the western portion
of Lakeland, from Eskdale to the Eden valley, from Skiddaw
to Kirkby-Lonsdale. In the days when a primeval forest
clothed many of the dales with a dense growth of timber, the
Buzzard reared its young in the larger trees, as its habit still is
in Spain and Germany, instead of restricting its eyries to situa-
tions generally difficult of approach. The harmless character of
the Buzzard did not always avail to save it from the persecution
of undiscriminating churchwardens. Even in the wild moorland
parish of Orton, in Westmorland, the Buzzard was an occasional
item of expense to the parishioners. Thus we read in 1639,
‘Thm, for 2 Busard heads—aiiijd.’ Again, in the accounts for
1650-51, ‘ Ihm, ffor killing of a Bussard, £00, 00s. 2d.’ Even
when Clarke wrote, in 1787, the Buzzard’s mournful wail must
have been a characteristic sound on every fell-side, from Cartmel
and the Rusland valley to Borrowdale and even Alston. Some
idea of the numbers of Buzzards that formerly haunted Lakeland
may be gathered from the fact that, as lately as 1841, a man
named Haswell, who was keeper to General Wyndham, destroyed
no fewer than fifty within a short time after his becoming keeper.?

In the year 1827, the storming of a Buzzard’s nest, in a posi-

1 Carlisle Patriot, July 30, 1841.

|

BIRDS 185

tion previously deemed impregnable, was deemed a feat of no
small prowess by the country folk. It was Isaac Colebeck, a
Gosforth man, who scaled the Pillar rock that year, and trium-
phantly destroyed three young Buzzards in their eyrie.!

But the Buzzard does not usually select such impregnable
nesting haunts as the Raven or the Peregrine. There exists in
Westmorland a certain low face of rock, overgrown with parsley
fern and heather ; this the Buzzard occasionally uses as a breed-
ing station. It is so easy of access that even a child could reach
it without incurring any risks, yet the Buzzard has nested there
on two occasions within the last decade.

ROUGH-LEGGED BUZZARD.
Archibuteo lagopus (Gmel.).

Although the large flights of Buteo lagopus, which occasionally
appear on their autumnal migration in Norfolk and other
counties bordering on the German Ocean, are quite unknown
within the confines of Lakeland, yet there can be no question that
we receive occasional visits from single individuals. I cannot
answer for a single specimen having been killed locally during
the last decade; nor is this surprising, if we remember that Dr.
Heysham himself never met with Cumbrian specimens until
towards the close of his long career. Of those which he must
have examined (because their capture was recorded by his son),
the first was killed at Wreay, near Carlisle, in November 1824,
while another was obtained near Bewcastle in February 1829.
These were young birds, and so were two others which Blackett
Greenwell stuffed in 1839. They were shot near Alston, on
the 6th and 26th of November respectively. In recording that
a specimen of this bird had been shot near Bishop-Auckland,
the late Mr. Hancock took occasion to make the remark, that
‘About that time several specimens occurred on both sides of
the Tees and in Westmorland.’ 2

The lightest in colour of such local specimens as I have
examined, not very many, was killed on Shap about a dozen

1 Carlisle Patriot, Sept. 7, 1827.
* Catalogue of the Birds of Northumberland and Durham, p. 5.

186 VERTEBRATE FAUNA OF LAKELAND

years ago. One of the Edenhall keepers trapped a fine Rough-
legged Buzzard in Barrow Wood, in December 1879, The
other local specimen, preserved at Edenhall, is a bird which
James Plenderleath killed on the Solway Flow a few years
earlier. A Silloth gunner killed a Rough-legged Buzzard in
rather an unusual way. He was wending his way home by
moonlight, when he disturbed a large bird at roost. He shot it
as it went away, and, on picking up his prize, found that he had
secured a fine Rough-legged Buzzard.

SPOTTED EAGLE.
Aquila clanga, Pall.

The only occurrence of any form of Spotted Eagle that can
“be cited for Lakeland is that of a bird washed ashore on Walney
Island in 1875. It was found by a fisherman named Richardson,
who took the dead bird to Williams the blacksmith of Barrow.
At his house it was examined by my brother Ibis, Mr. W. A.
Durnford, who referred the specimen to Aquila nevia. Accord-
ingly, he recorded it as such in his ‘List of the Birds found in
the neighbourhood of Walney Island.’ Mr. F. S. Mitchell
included the specimen in his Birds of Lancashire, as he told me
afterwards, on the strength both of Mr. Durnford’s notice, and
of a private communication that passed between them. Mr.
Williams, who mounted the bird, has often repeated to me that
it became the property of a man named Jackson. This indivi-
dual kept the bird for a few years, but eventually got into
difficulties, and was ‘sold up.’ I have never been able to ascer-
tain who purchased this Eagle at Jackson’s sale, though I adver-
tised for information in a Barrow newspaper. The moral of
which is, that all really rare or unique specimens of ‘ British
Birds’ should be deposited from the first in some public
museum.

GOLDEN EAGLE.
Aquila chrysaétus (L.).

The earliest local reference to Eagles as yet discovered appears
in adescription of the ‘ Manor of Lydel’ on our northern border,

BIRDS 187

written between 1272 and 1307. From this we gather that
‘Nichole foreste’ was let, ‘and’they of the forest [the small
tenants] must preserve the nests of sparrowhawks and eagles.’!
This vague allusion states all that can be learnt until the seven-
teenth century, when materials begin to accumulate; very
general in their character, it is true, but abundantly proving
that Eagles then bred among the mountains of central and
western Lakeland, notably in the region of the precipices (includ-
ing Martindale, Patterdale, and Grizedale), at the head of Ulles-
water Lake. On the 26th of March 1677, we find Thomas
Machell writing from Queen’s College, Oxford, to his friend Sir
D. Fleming of Rydal: ‘I am anxious to do what I can towards
a history of Cumberland and Westmoreland. I have sent out
queries in order to ascertain what families possess ancient evi-
dences, and how things stand at this day in each parish’? It
is no doubt to Machell’s efforts to collect materials from all
quarters for his history, that we are indebted for the following
facts. As regards the question of the birds nesting with us,
Machell names two eyries of Eagles. Of Patterdale he says,
‘And two miles further s. from hence (Deepdale) in a huge
Rock w*" is called Ling bone, and stands west from Hartsop
about a mile are large eagles bred.’ Of ‘Grasmere. Eagles
breed in B lea Crag.’? He describes the capture of a couple of
Eagles in the neighbourhood of Patterdale. ‘In 1669 one
William Thomas of Deepdale, Bridge End, being but a youth of
17 years old, encountered an Eagle on the like occasion, but she so
seemeth was not able to flye by reason her feathers were mouted
and spent by hatching her young ones, for it was about midsomer
tide. He chased her several times round a stone; and at last
took her by falling upon her, but not without some loss of blood.

‘Mr. Mounsey, to whom she was brought alive, and who kept
her a week and kild her afterwards by running a penknife into
her heart : and gave the Coat of her to Thomas Smyth, a New-
castle merchant for 3" of Tobacco.’ As to the species, he says
that it was ‘A sort of Eagle called an Iron (or Earne or Erne)
here. In Scotland a Naron, being of a Blackish brown colour,’

1 Documents relating to Scotland, vol. ii. p. 64.
2 Rydal s., p. 135. S10. ps Wane

188 VERTEBRATE FAUNA OF LAKELAND

and gives the following dimensions: ‘From the point of one
wing to the other 6 foot 4 inches. From the end of the Beeke to
the point of ye Tale 3 f. 4 in” A similar capture of an Eagle
occurred in the same country ten years later: ‘ Grisedale. About
the year 1679 one Christopher Daws, 24 years of age, spying
an Eagle in the bottom of this Dale, wh. was feeding on a
sheep ; and either for want of air to waft her, or by haueing
fill’d her belly too full was not able to rise: he struck freely at
her w his fell staff and broake her wing; upon wh. she be-
took herselfe for shelter to a great stone, and thence made her
salleys as she saw occasion, wounding him in the leggs w™ her
Tallons, and beating him briskely with her wings. But at
last when he had no other shift, he fell down upon her w* his
whol body ; and took her alive.’ No further evidence is forth-
coming until Pennant’s visit to the Lakes, when he wrote of
the mountains at the head of Windermere: ‘Among the birds
which possess this exalted tract, the eagles are the first in rank:
they breed in many places. If one is killed, the other gets a new
mate, and retains its ancient aery. Those who take their nests
find in them great numbers of moor game: ? they are besides
very pernicious to the heronries: it is remarked, in the laying
season of the herons, when the eagles terrify them from their
nests, that crows, watching the opportunity, will steal away their
3 Nicolson and Burn recur to the eyrie in Patterdale :
‘In the head of the dale, is a rocky mountain called Eagles Crag ;
and eagles to this day [1777] frequent and breed in the moun-
tains thereabouts.’ The Rev. W. Richardson tells us that ‘ A pair
of the Golden Eagles had an aerie in Martindale two successive
years; the first year the female was shot, and the male, after an
absence of about three weeks, returned with another female.
The next year, 1789, the male was killed, after which the
female disappeared.’

When visiting Martindale, October 28, 1891, I walked to the

?
roe
eggs.

1 The italics are mine.

2 The fact that these Eagles fed on Grouse points almost certainly to the
Golden Eagle, which would be certain to prey largely on Red Grouse in
the absence of blue hares.

3 History and Antiquities of the Counties of Cumberland and Westmorland,
vol. i. p. 410.

BIRDS 189

head of Bannerdale, and Mr. Jackson, junior, pointed out the
former eyrie of a pair of Eagles, situated in the breast of the
precipice known as Buck Crag. A few minutes later we ascended
to the ridge of the ‘Nab,’ and when Fairfield and Helvellyn,
Striding Edge and Matterdale Common stood forth in fine suc-
cession against the sky-line, St. John’s Vale lying to the north,
I thought involuntarily of the lordly birds that a hundred years
earlier swept magnificently over the crests of the mountains,
filling the shepherds with apprehension for the safety of newly
dropped lambs. Subsequently I called on Mr. Jackson, senior,
who for many years acted as deer-stalker to the Hasell family.
Mr. Jackson is in his 86th year, and though in full possession
of all his faculties, has some little difficulty in recognising the
questions of a stranger. I therefore spoke to him through his
son, and reproduce the dialogue which followed, zpsissima verba :
‘Q. Do you mind of any Hagles ?—A. There was Eagles onceover.
They had a nest at Buck Crag. Q. I suppose somebody shot one ?
—A. Old Edward Sisson shot it. @. Did you see him shoot ?
—A.No. It was afore my time. It was when my grandfather
lived at Dale Head—maybe a hundred years sin’. Q. Did they
take the young birds 1—A. They hadn’t brought out. I believe
it was eggs.’ He added in explanation that after Edward Sisson
had shot one of the old birds, another man went over the rocks
with a rope to take the young, but the young had not hatched
out. He further volunteered, ‘I have heard them say they went
across into Gowbarrow and used to worry fawns,’ a probable
enough performance on the part of the Golden Eagle, though
scarcely consistent with what we know of the habits of the Sea
Eagle. He once saw an eagle himself: ‘I yonce saw one that
old Glossop shot at. It passed me at Lyulph’s Tower. Tommy
Yarker Lowther, keeper, followed it a good bit, but what became
of it nabody knew.’ I called the following day on another aged
yet vigorous Dalesman, Mr. Greener, who is in his 85th year.
He told me that he was well acquainted with Edward Sisson,
who lived on his own property at Swarthbeck [nearer Pooley
Bridge], and was ‘a great shooter. Mr. Greener himself was
born in 1807. It is fair to assume, therefore, that his intimacy
as a young man with Edward Sisson carries us down to 1830.

190 VERTEBRATE FAUNA OF LAKELAND

Supposing Edward Sisson to be then about seventy (as he recol- —
lected him as a vigorous sportsman, it is not likely that he was any

more), it appears highly probable that Edward Sisson was the

man who shot one of the identical Eagles mentioned by his con-
tempory Richardson. ‘To return to Mr. Richardson, he further

assures us that a bird of this species was shot ‘ with duck shot,

only one of which went through his head; he measured eight

feet three inches between the tips of the wings. The following

year he shot another also on the wing, considerably less.’

Clarke, a contemporary, states independently that the largest he

ever knew to be shot measured 6 feet 8 inches between the tips

of the extended wings ; adding that he had seen Eagles at every

season of the year, ‘though they are seldomer seen in Summer

than in Winter, when the snow forces them down to the valleys

to seek provisions. Mrs, Radcliffe writes that in Patterdale she

heard of Eagles in 1794: ‘We were told that the eagles had
forsaken their aeries in this neighbourhood [Patterdale] and in
Borrowdale, and are fled to the Isle of Man; but one had been

in Patterdale the day before, which, not being at its full
growth, could not have arrived from a great distance. * Richard-

son definitely expresses this opinion, ‘that most, if not all the

eagles amongst these hills, are of the Falco Chrysctus, or Golden

Eagle species. Mr. Gray says, the Borrowdale Eagles are the

Erne (Falco Albwlla). One has this year (1793) been caught

alive, and is now in the possession of Mr. Thomas Hutton of
Keswick, which is unquestionably the Falco Chrysctos, or Golden :
Eagle.’2 This was no doubt the bird which the author of the
Observations chiefly Lithological, found stuffed in Hutton’s museum
on his visit to Keswick in 1803: ‘This Palco Chrysaetos was a
very young eagle, which Hutton had bred; he said he used to
feed it with rats, cats, etc. The bird killed immediately, and then
sucked their blood ; this was the only drink he would ever take.
The eagles have now [1803] entirely left this country; whether
they are gone to Scotland, Ireland, Snowdon, ora longer journey,
I have no opportunity of ascertaining. At the sale of Cros-
thwaite’s museum at Keswick, there was exposed among miscel-
laneous articles, ‘Lot 258, upper bill and talons of a very large
1 Tour in 1794, p. 423. 2 History of Cumberland, vol. i. p. 450.

BIRDS 191

eagle which was bred at Buttermere, and died at Greystoke
Castle.’ This is quite as likely to have been a Sea Eagle as a
Golden Eagle, but the bill cannot be found by its present owner,
Mr. J. Richmond. We cannot carry the residence of the Golden
Eagle to a later date than the last years of the eighteenth century.
It is highly probable that, as long as the species bred in Southern
Scotland, the birds might from time to tume cross the Solway Firth,
to carry off lambs from the Cumbrian farmers. In the spring
of 1775, an Eagle, believed to have been a Golden Eagle, had
carried off a number of Lambs, but was eventually shot in King
Meadow, Carlisle.

Mr. R. Service kindly writes to me :—

‘The Golden Eagle—so far as my information goes—bred
in 1833 on Gameshope, a farm contiguous to Loch Skene, in
Dfs.shire.

‘In Kirk°*'shire the last nests were towards the end of the
"50s (I cannot be more precise). ‘The Eagle presently kept at
Cairnsmore House was taken at the clints of Dromore in 1850,
and is lively as ever. An Eagle taken at the end of last
century died at Cumloden Lodge in 1855.

‘Definite information about the white-tailed Eagle is wanting,
though doubtless this was the species which bred on Burrow
Head and the Mull. LEyries are pointed out on islets in Lochs
such as Grannoch and Skerrow in the Stewartry and Skene in
Dfs.hire ; but this eagle is so much mixed up with the Osprey
that it is perhaps impossible now to unravel the matter.

‘On Loch Macaterick, on the borders of Galloway and Ayr-
shire, eaglets were taken in 1812 by a young fellow who swam
the loch, and this man was still alive in Dalmellington a couple
of years ago, and may be so yet.’

In 1834, James Harrison, a keeper, wrote to Mr. T. C.
Heysham from Hensel, Kirkcudbright, on the 17th of May :—

‘I have been two journeys of 10 miles after the falken and
Eagle, the Eagles I saw in the mountains, they have left the
place where they had’ bred for these last 30 years until these
last two years. They have gone about 9 or 10 miles further
into one Broughton Murrays of the Kelleys estate. The same

192 VERTEBRATE FAUNA OF LAKELAND

man wrote again on the 26th of May: ‘I am going a day’s
journey into the Wilderness in pursute of the Eagle,’

A Newcastle paper of November 1788 states: ‘Last week a
gentleman fowling on a mountain near Skiddaw perceived a
very large brown eagle dart from a precipice and attack a well-
grown lamb of this season, which he seized in his talons, and
was just going to mount, when the gentleman fired and
wounded him in the pinion of the left wing. He then
approached the magnanimous bird, who held his prey, and,
with a kind of menacing look, stared in his face for some time.
The sportsman, willing to rescue the poor lamb, and equally
loth to destroy so noble a creature, pulled a cord from his
pocket, which he threw with some danger over the head of the
Eagle ;’ and so secured the bird.

The local newspapers have recorded a few other Eagles from
time to time, as, for example, a bird seen by Mr. Dunn of
Leeds, and Wright, a Keswick guide, on Skiddaw, in May
1844.1 Another was seen at Esthwaite in March 1845.2? It
is difficult to credit a statement independently furnished by
Dickinson, that about this very time the late Fletcher Greenip
of Portinscale saw three eagles in company, near the head of
Bassenthwaite lake, during frost. The statement that Joseph
Summers of Castlerigg saw seven eagles in company about the
same period is an obvious invention. More weight attaches, no
doubt, to the experience of Thompson, who wrote : ‘In the more
recent books on British Ornithology, there is not any notice of
eyries, either of the golden or sea eagle, in England at the
present time; but from my having seen two birds of one or
other of these species (though not sufficiently near to be specifi-
cally determined), on the 13th of July 1835, about the English
lakes, they most probably breed in that quarter. One appeared

1 Carlisle Journal, May 11, 1544. Mr. T. Lindsay of Eskdale retains
a vivid recollection of a solitary Eagle which frequented Scawfell for a
period of about two years, 1844-46. It paid almost daily visits to Drigg
Common in search of rabbits, and could often be seen crossing Muncaster
Fell on the return journey to Scawfell. This was the only Eagle that
Lindsay ever saw during a long lifetime spent entirely among our
mountains.

2 Carlisle Patriot, March 14, 1845.

BIRDS 193

near the eastern extremity of the vale of Newlands, not far from
Keswick, and the other at Crummock Water. . . . When visit-
ing all the lakes of Cumberland, Westmorland, and Lancashire,
except Loweswater, Ennerdale, and Wastwater, in the month of
July 1835, I saw Eagles on the one day only.’? In January
1890 I made the acquaintance of an aged native of Keswick,
Mr. Hodgson, then in his 96th year. This old gentleman
assured me that, even when he was grown up, a pair of Eagles
frequented Helvellyn, and he had often seen them, the only
Eagles he ever saw flying wild, though he had seen caged
Eagles, brought no doubt from Scotland. I mentioned the
matter to the Rev. H. D. Rawnsley, who afterwards called on
him and found that he remembered that a couple of Eagles were
flying about Helvellyn for about three months, and the year, as
nearly as Mr. Rawnsley could make it out, was 1836. This
would explain the Eagles which Thompson saw, because there is
not much difference between 1836 and 1835.

In a draught of July 11, 1843, T. C. Heysham inquired of
Mr. John Dodgson of Roantrees what he knew about Eagles,
remarking that a friend, who had passed Christenbury Craigs
in Bewcastle en route for Scotland, had been told that a pair of
Eagles bred there in or about the year 1824; that they reared
their young, and that one of the old birds was captured. He
was informed likewise that the old birds had committed some
havoc among the lambs. Dodgson replied, that at the time
indicated, in the month of either February or March, an Eagle
» had made its appearance in the district, and continued to haunt
Christenbury Craigs and other mountains in the vicinity for
several weeks, when it departed, having successfully eluded all
attempts at its destruction. ‘There was not a pair, and of
course there was no nest or young.’ Between 1833 and 1835,
another Eagle visited the mountains near Christenbury Craigs,
and was shot a few miles north of the Craigs by the keeper of
the Duke of Northumberland, for whom it was preserved. The
bird was ‘one of the large eagles common in Sutherland and
other northern counties in Scotland.’ It was of ‘a brownish
colour.’

1 Natural History of Ireland, vol. i. p. 29.
N

194 VERTEBRATE FAUNA OF LAKELAND

SEA EAGLE.
Haliaétus albicilla (L).

There can be no reasonable doubt that this Eagle tenanted
the precipices of our mountains for many centuries, but the
earliest trustworthy report of any eyrie occupied by this bird is
supplied by John Aubrey. This authority sent his information
to John Ray in a letter, dated London, December 15, 1692:
‘Mr. Gibson of Queens-College, Oxon, of Westmorland, saith that
in Westmorland, Eagles do breed in Willow-Cragg in the Parish
of Bampton.’

Clarke, who wrote in 1787, alludes to the same eyrie, saying,
‘ At the robbing of an eagle’s nest at Wallow Crag near Haws-
water in Westmorland, there were found 35 fish, besides 7
lambs, and other provisions for the young ones.’? He lays
special stress on the fact that ‘some of the eagle species are
fishers, indeed most of them will occasionally catch fish; and,
strange to tell! I have seen them fall quick upon the Lake and
bring out a fish.’

Allusion has been made already to the fact that the Eagles
which bred in Patterdale and Martindale were Golden Eagles,
and that the Golden Eagles sometimes nested near Keswick.
It must be considered extremely doubtful whether more than
one pair of Sea Eagles nested near Keswick in the last century.
Whatever may have been the case earlier, I think we must
infer from the evidence at our disposal that only one pair of Sea
Eagles nested annually in Borrowdale or one of the other eyries
which the birds sometimes used. The Crosthwaite men seem to
have harried the Borrowdale eyrie whenever they had the oppor-
tunity, but there is no reason to suppose that they spared other
eyries, if such were tenanted in their large parish. But the
reader had best form his own conclusions from the data which
the Rev. H. D. Rawnsley has obligingly permitted me to copy
out of his parish book. It will be observed that these entries
run from 1713 to 1765, after which I could find no further

1 Ray’s Correspondence, p. 269. Wallow Crag is really in the Parish
of Shap.
2 Survey of the Lakes, Appendix.

Pa:
«
Ai

nan

EYRIE OF THE SEA EAGLE Al BUCK CRAG.

SS

Nes

War

ee)

sk ya
"Lend ff

n

BIRDS

195

allusion to Eagles. The following entries occur among the dis-

bursements of the Crosthwaite churchwardens :—

{LTS
To John Jackson for Killing an Old Eagle,
To Widdow Harris’ Sons for 3 young ravens,
To Edward Birket for a Young Eagle,
pel 9. |
To Miles Wilson for an Old Eagle,
To John Jackson of Arnboth for an Old Basle!
LLis. |
To Tho. Raven for 2 Young Eagles,
The next entry is—
‘To Tho. Birkett for 1 Young Eagle,
BL 736.]
To John Youdall, Carpenter, for 1 old Fox
& 1 Young Eagle,
‘(1741.]
To Jonathan Braithwaite for a young Eagle,
‘[1743.]
To John Harris for 1 old Eagle,
‘[1744.]
To John Birkett for 1 old Eagle, 2 old Ravens,
and 1 Young Raven,
‘[1745.]
To the Same [Jos. Harris] for 1 old Fox and
1 old Eagle, :
‘[1747.]
To Hugh Workman for 1 young Eagle,
‘[1749. |
James Bowes’ Man for one Old Eagle,

(1759. ]
To James Bows for 2 young Eagles,
‘[1752.]
Pd. for 1 new Spade, 3s., & to William
Wane for 1 old Eagle, 2s., :
To Isaac Gateskel for 2 Young Eagles, .

7 0

0

=)

So =_—

bo Or

10’

(> (=

196 VERTEBRATE FAUNA OF LAKELAND

‘[1755.]

To Isaac Gateskel for a Young Eagle, . . 0:50
ol (erase

For Foxes, 17s. 8d., Ravens, 2s. 4d... . tLe 0

More Foxes, 6s. 8d., One Hage, 1s. 2 old
Ravens, 8d., Bucket, 18d. (?) 1 Fox more,

3s. 4d., . ; : ; .. 0, Fane
“pla
For Foxes, 15s., for Ravens, 3s., for Eagles, 4s. 1 2 07
‘11760. ]
To ale & victuals y® 4th of November, an
Eagle, 1s., : : : - 0 TS 5Gs
*[1762.]
Court Fees and Expences, . : . etoae
Foxes & Ravens, 0, 2s. 6d., . Me helo
Next line comes—
‘2 Eagles, 1s., one Fox, 3s. 4d.,_. » 0 Sa
‘11763. ]
Foxes & Eagles, £1, 6s. 6d., Court fees &
Expences, £1, 19s., . ; . ; . to). ie
‘[1765.]
To Sundry persons for Foxes, Eagles, &
Ravens, . : LL A ee

Only four years after the last charge of Eagles in the Cros-
thwaite accounts, the poet Gray enters this passage in his journal
fon October 3d, 1769]: ‘For me I went no further than the
farmer’s (better than four miles from Keswick) at Grange; his
mother and he brought us butter that Siserah would have
jumped at. Our farmer was himself the man that last year
plundered the eagle’s eyrie ; all the dale are up in arms on such
an occasion, for they lose abundance of lambs yearly, not to
mention hares, partridges, grouse, etc. He was let down from
the cliff in ropes to the shelf of the rock on which the nest was
built, the people above shouting and hollowing to fright the old
birds, which flew screaming round, but did not dare to attack
him. He brought off the Eaglet (for there is rarely more than
one) and an addle egg. The nest was roundish, and more than

BIRDS 197

a yard over, made of twigs twisted together. Seldom a year
passes but they take the brood or eggs, and sometimes they
shoot one, sometimes the other parent; but the survivor has
always found a mate (probably in Ireland), and they breed near
the old place. By his description I learn that this species is
the Erne, the Vulture <Albicilla of Linnzus, in his last edition
(but in yours Falco albacilla), so consult him and Pennant
about it.’ +

Gilpin adds his personal testimony to the harrying of eyries
about 1773, though his work did not appear until 1786: ‘ We
left the Derwent in it’s declivous course between two moun-
tains. One of them, under whose shadow the torrent pours, is
called Eagle’s-cragg, as it’s tremendous rocks are the chief habi-
tation of these birds ; and seem to be considered by them as a
sort of castle, which from time immemorial they have possessed.
It is a common species of traffic in this country to supply the
curious with young eagles ; in the taking of which the inhabi-
tants are very expert. They observe the nests from the bottom ;
and judging of the age of the young birds, they catch the oppor-
tunity when the old eagles are abroad, and let themselves down
by ropes from the summits of the cliffs. We saw one which
had just been taken. It was only six weeks old; and was nearly
of the size of a turkey-hen. It seemed to have acquired already
a full share of ferocity ; and screamed violently, if we offered
to touch it,’?

Hutchinson refers to Eagles at Derwentwater in the follow-
ing passage: ‘In the cliffs in this part of the lake (near Bank
Park) eagles built their nests, far removed from gunshot, and
undisturbed by men ; for no adventurous foot ever dared assail
their lofty habitation. In the sight of the cottager, hither they
bring the spoils of the fold, or the field, to feed their young,
superior to the wrath of the injured.’* Brown follows in the
same strain: ‘On the opposite shore you will find rocks and

1 Works of Thomas Gray, vol. ii. p. 265.

2 Lakes, vol. i. pp. 203, 204.

% An Excursion to the Lakes in Westmorland and Cumberland, in 1773
and 1774, p. 149.

198 VERTEBRATE FAUNA OF LAKELAND

cliffs of stupendous height.’ Again: ‘On these dreadful heights
the eagles build their nests.’

Mr. Clifton Ward’s paper on Jonathan Otley furnishes a note
about the Borrowdale Eagles, written, in 1852, by Mr. J. F.
Miller of Whitehaven: ‘From J. Dixon I learn that the eagles’
nests in Eagle Crag were robbed by W. Walker and W. Youdale
in 1772 or 3, and after that they got out a brood in Wything’s
Crag, above Stonethwaite, which was the last time they were
known to build, probably about 1784, as stated in your account. !
Mr. Ralph Douglas told the late Mr. Dickinson that he went to
live at Thornthwaite in 1783, at fifteen years of age. He
remembered seeing Eagles frequently, and almost daily in the
spring, sailing majestically overhead, and occasionally sweeping
down to the ground, as if seizing prey, and then flying off with
it towards Borrowdale, where they usually had nests. At that
time a long and strong rope was kept in Borrowdale, by sub-
scription, for the purpose of letting down men into the rocks to
take the nests or young of the Eagles. Very many of the inhabi-
tants used to assemble to hold the rope when a nest-robbing was
projected. On one occasion, when the man was drawn up, it
was with fear and trembling, till the man was safely landed with
the prize of young birds, for they discovered that two of the
three strands of the rope were chafed quite through by the
sharp edges of the rocks. The rope was available for Butter-
mere, Langdale, Eskdale, and other dales, but kept in Borrow-
dale, and was in requisition there in nearly every year, and
occasionally in other vales; and the young Eagles were sold for
high prices.2, An unsigned statement, written prior to 1803,
corroborates Dickinson: ‘Among the most gigantic of the fells
that form the great out-line of this astonishing prospect are
Eagle-crag, Glaramara, Bull-crag, and Serjeant-crag. The first
is a tremendous rock at the head of Borrowdale to the east,
where the eagles have commonly made their habitation, and
their nests. The young eagles are occasionally caught by the
adventurous inhabitants of the vale, who, when standing under-
neath, observe the place where the nest is seated, and. afterwards,

1 Trans. Cumberland and Westmorland Assoc., No. ii. p. 140.
2 Cumbriana, p. 168.

BIRDS 199

from the summit of some cliff, let down by ropes one of the
most hardy of their companions, to secure the nest while the old
eagles are abroad.’ *

Writing in 1819, Green comments, ‘ Kagle Crag is a grand
towering rock, or collection of perpendicular rocks connected by
horizontal spaces of variously covered vegetation. Its form is
fine, and it is a majestic background to many pleasing fore-
grounds. On that part of Eagle crag which is opposite Green-
up, the eagles occasionally built their nests. There [sic] birds
were so destructive to the lambs, and consequently injurious to
the interests of the shepherds, that their extermination be-
came absolutely necessary; but their breeding places being
inaccessible, by footsteps, a dangerous experiment was ventured
upon. A man, at the hazard of his life, was lowered by a
rope down the face of the rock, about sixty yards. A piked
staff, such as is used by the shepherds when they travel
the mountains, was the weapon with which this man defender
himself against the attack of the parent bird while he was rob-
bing their nests of the eggs or eaglets. If birds, their posses-
sion was to be his remuneration; but if eggs, every neighbour-
ing shepherd gave five shillings. The nests of these birds were
formed of the tender branches of trees, and lined with a sort of
grass growing upon the bordering rocks, The number of young
taken at one brood is not remembered to have exceeded two;
and when not taken, and capable of flying, they were conducted
by the old birds to a distant country and not seen afterwards.
On the eagles being so frequently robbed of their young, in
Greenup, they removed to the opposite side of the crag. At
this place, they built two years, but left it for Raven Crag,
within the Coom, where, after staying one year only, they
returned to their ancient seat in Eagle Crag, where they built
annually during the remainder of their stay in Borrowdale.
On the loss of its mate, the remaining eagle left the country, but
came back the followjng spring with another. His new consort
was not only of a different species, but considerably smaller than
his former companion. This pair built during fourteen years in

1 The Beauties of England and Wales, vol. iii. p. 64. The writer appears
to have been West. |

200 VERTEBRATE FAUNA OF LAKELAND

Borrowdale ; but thirty four-years ago [say, 1785] they finally
abandoned it for Eskdale. At the last-mentioned place they were
again disturbed, and the larger bird being afterwards shot, the
other fled and never returned.’ The late Mr. Jonathan Otley
used to say that Eagles bred in Cumberland up to 1791. The
incident of the birds establishing themselves in Eskdale is
separately reported by Housman, who states in a note, published
in 1794, ‘On the summits of these mountains [ Wasdale, Nether-
wasdale and Eskdale], are many wild cats, foxes, and martins ;
some eagles. . . . An eagle’s nest was taken about three years
ago, and the eaglets were sent to Muncaster House.’? Green
alludes also to the Eagles killing water-fowl on the Derwent in
winter, to an eagle carrying a shepherd’s dog into the air, and
another Eagle wounded by that dog’s owner near Langthwaite.
Though Dr. Heysham must have been in communication with
many persons who had seen the Eagles of the Lake district, he
contents himself with recording that the ‘ Cinereous or white-
tailed Eagle, Vultwr albiulla, bred ‘among the rocks, in the
neighbourhood of Keswick, almost every year, and feeds, chiefly,
upon land animals, but sometimes on fish. When taken young,
and tamed, the tail does not become white till it is several
years old. Dr. Law, the present bishop of Elphin, when he
resided in Carlisle, received a young one from Borrowdale,
upwards of twenty years ago. The tail did not become white
till it was six years old. When his lordship left Carlisle, he
presented it to Dr. Graham, of Clargill. It died in the year
1793, aged nineteen years. The bird was therefore taken in
1774. If this note of the doctor be held to be disappointing,
considering the ample opportunities he enjoyed for obtaining
exact information, it must be confessed that T. C. Heysham
treats the subject even more curtly than his father. At least,
the only allusion that has come to light in his writings exists in
a letter written to Henry Doubleday in 1833. He says, ‘The
Sea Eagle which used formerly to breed jn the vicinity of the
Cumberland Lakes has, I have every reason to believe, been
extirpated for very many years. Some twenty years later

1 Guide to the Lakes, vol. ii. pp. 142, 143.
* Hutchinson, History of Cumberland, p. 581.

a ee ee ee ee

BIRDS 201

Miss Martineau wrote: ‘ We are unable to ascertain positively,
amidst conflicting testimony, whether any eagles at all remain
in the region. It appears that one has certainly been seen
within ten years; and three gentlemen, two of whom are
travelled men and not likely to be mistaken in such a matter,
declare, that four years ago, they saw one sweep down from
Scaudale Fell into Kirkstone Pass, and rest on a crag in the
vale, some way above Brothers’ Water. There is, however, a
preponderance of disbelief of there being now any nest and
settlement of eagles among the mountains of Westmoreland and
Cumberland.’! Mr. Brown of Carlisle informed me in 1890,
when in his seventy-first year, that as a boy he often heard the
stories current on the country side as to Eagles carrying off
lambs from the farmers in West Cumberland. I can only re-
affirm my belief that such Eagles as visited the mountains of
the Lake district during the first half of the present century
had their eyries in Dumfriesshire and Kirkcudbright. Mr. J.
Fisher Crosthwaite informs me that ‘there was a very fine
living Eagle belonging to the proprietors of Crosthwaite’s
Museum which was caught at Maryport, and was supposed to
have come over from Scotland. The bird died of the moult.
It was sent to a celebrated bird-stuffer, and he never returned
it. The late Mr. Joseph Pockington, who built Barrow House,
near Keswick, saw it in the collection of the person to whom it
was sent. He identified it, and claimed it for the Crosthwaite’s
Museum, but it was never returned.’

Although the available information regarding eyries of Eagles
refers to the central portion of the lake mountains, it is certain
that stragglers have occasionally made their appearance in out-
lying districts.

The map of Westmorland by Robt. Morden, included in
Camden’s Britannia, second edition, vol. ii., 1722, prints an
‘Eagle Scar’ behind Dufton and Murton Pikes, near Appleby.

A keeper named Gill winged a young Sea Eagle near Alston
in 1834. John Borrow reported to T. C. Heysham in April
1844; ‘An eagle was seen at Withamston about 2 months
since, near the place where Mr. Gill killed one a few years

1 English Lakes, pp. 153-155.

902 VERTEBRATE FAUNA OF LAKELAND

since.’ A shepherd captured another Sea Eagle on the top of
Black Combe in 1838, and this is believed to have been-the last
Eagle captured on any of our mountains.

GOS HAWK.
Astur palumbarius (L.).

If Mr. Joseph Bain (the learned editor of the Documents
relating to Scotland, published by the London Record Office) can
be relied upon to distinguish correctly the species of hawks
mentioned in old grants, we must infer that the Goshawk for-
merly nested in Lakeland. Not only is the species mentioned,
FIDE Mr. Bain, in a grant which Aliz de Rumeli gave to the
Abbot and monks of St. Mary in Furness, but an actual eyrie
of the Goshawk is mentioned by the same authority. In the
settlement of a lawsuit in 1256, before the five justices errant,
Alan de Moleton commuted, among other privileges which he
exchanged for an annual rent, his right to the ‘eyry of goshawks’
im ‘Thomas’ Wood in Bastonswayt.’ 4

The only specimen of the Goshawk known to have been
obtained in Cumberland in modern times is an immature bird,
preserved at Edenhall. Mr. Hope, senr., who stuffed it, tells me
that it was shot when striking a Wood Pigeon. It is said that
a Goshawk was shot in a rookery at High House, Stainton,
Kendal, in 1849.’ But whether the bird was rightly dubbed
a ‘Goshawk’ is not known.

SPARROW HAWK.

Accipiter nisus (L.).

Common as this hawk must always have been in the Lakeland
forests, and difficult as it is to train, early falconers appear to
have held it in some estimation. For example, an Inquisition,
held March 22d, 1270, regarding the lands of Hellwysa, widow
of Richard de Vermine, decided that Gilbert de Fraunceys held
of Hellwysa the Manor of Routheclif, and paid yearly 2s. or one
Sparrowhawk. As late as the fourth year of Queen Elizabeth,

1 Documents relating to Scotland, vol. i. p. 398.
> Carlisle Patriot, March 10, 1849.

BIRDS 203

a Kendal jury found that George Middleton, Esquire, owed for
tenements holden by him, a spar-hawk or 12d. Similar instances
might be multiplied. The Sparrowhawk maintains its footing
in our preserves. No fewer than eight nests of the Sparrow-
hawk were robbed of their eggs in the Carlisle district in
1891. Mr. E. W. Parker of Skirwith informs me that on a
recent occasion his keeper shot a female Sparrowhawk off her
nest of six eggs. He took one egg and left five. Three weeks
later the same keeper shot another female Sparrowhawk off the
same nest, which contained ten eggs,—the second hen having
added five eggs to the five which she found in the nest.

The male Sparrowhawk, owing to its light weight, feeds
chiefly on such hedgerow species as the Blackbird. In the
autumn of 1891, Dr. Gibson was shooting on a Westmorland
Moor, when he happened to wing a Grouse, which proved to be
a ‘runner. Down swooped a cock Sparrowhawk, killed his
quarry, and had already plucked some feathers off the back,
when Dr. Gibson reloaded and shot him.

KITE.
Milvus ictinus, Savigny.

The only evidence that the Kite ever bred in the great woods
of the Eden valley, or elsewhere in the eastern part of our faunal
area, is supplied by Dr. Heysham, who says expressly that, in
his time, it bred in the woods near Armathwaite, and was
known in Cumberland as the glead. This refers to 1796.

Among our western mountains it undoubtedly held out until
the early part of the present century. Robinson, as early as
1709, alludes incidentally to its presence. Ulleswater was
certainly one of its strongholds, but it bred near Derwentwater
and near Windermere. Clarke, whose Survey of the Lakes
appeared in 1787, tells us that ‘the Kite (or glead) is a native
of this country and builds in trees, and, like both the afore-
mentioned, has not more than two eggs at a time: they provide
for their young, fish, flesh of any kind they can get, frog-
spawn, snails, etc. They are a dull, heavy, inactive bird, with
longer wings and tail than the Buzzard.’}

1 Survey of the Lakes, p. 190.

204 VERTEBRATE FAUNA OF LAKELAND

About the same time that Clarke made his observations, the
Kite nested in the neighbourhood of Windermere. Words-
worth, in a juvenile poem, ‘An Evening Walk’ (the scene of
which is laid near Rydal), alludes to the presence of the
‘silver’d kite,—an expression suggested, no doubt, by the
grey crown of an old bird. The late Mr. William Pearson of
Crosthwaite stated in 1839, that when Isaac Walker lived at
Sawrey, about 1790, a pair or two of Kites built their nests
among a number of tall trees, near the Ferry Inn, on the west side
of Windermere. Some of these birds were destroyed by idle
fellows, who shot them at their nests. Isaac Walker reared a
young Kite, taken out of a nest which had contained two young
ones; it became very tame, and would sit on its owner's hand.

The late Captain W. Kinsey Dover made close inquiries about
the former presence of Kites near Keswick. He learnt that a
Mr. Gaskett and one John Graves harried a Kite’s nest, built
in some ivy on the west side of Castle Head, in 1809; up to
which date only Mr. Pearson observed the Kite in Crosthwaite
parish. The late Mr. W. Dickinson wrote that, ‘since 1820 I
have not seen a glead. Before then they were not plentiful, but
not many days would pass without my seeing one, and seldom
more, at a time.’ Mr. Sawer of Threlkeld showed me a fine
Kite, which he bought for £2 at a sale. This bird had been
shot by John Pearson at Portinscale near Keswick, in 1840,
and is perhaps the last of the indigenous race of Kites that
inhabited the Lake district from prehistoric times. Joseph
Woof, a native of Watermillock, a yeoman, at whose house Mr.
W. Hodgson lodged from 1840 to 1851, told the latter that the
Glede or ‘swallow-tailed kite’ had, within his recollection,
nested regularly at Priest’s Crag, and occasionally at Birch
Crag, near Gowbarrow.

Mr. Woof died in 1851, aged 88 years, so that his recollection
of the Kite as a boy might date back (and no doubt did) to the
time when Clarke wrote, and when Isaac Walker took the
young Kite from the nest beside Windermere. Mr. Hodgson
met other natives of Watermillock who well remembered the
Kite nesting as described by Mr. Woof, and considers that the

1 Letters, Papers, and Journals of William Pearson, p. 58.

BIRDS 205

bird had only recently become extinct when he went to live at
Watermillock in 1840. Mr. J. W. Harris, whose experience
carries us back as far at any rate as the ‘thirties,’ assures me
that he perfectly remembers seeing Kites, which came down
from the direction of Skiddaw to feed upon offal thrown out
from the tan yards at Cockermouth. He was young at the
time, but describes with wonderful accuracy (to one who has
studied Kites with some care, though not in Britain) the fine
flight of the species, the outspread tail, and general appearance
of this Kite as viewed upon the wing. It is to be regretted that
Richardson, who knew the Kite in Ulleswater at the time that
it bred in Windermere, contented himself with remarking that
it was a resident species. Dr. Heysham apparently took his cue
from Richardson, whose paper he had seen, when he wrote that
the Kite bred in the woods near Ullswater. With regard to the
doctor’s statement, as to the Kite breeding at Armathwaite in
his time, we have no difficulty in accepting his word that it was
so. He does not suggest that he had seen a nest himself, though
possibly he had; but he was well acquainted with its eggs.

In his son’s day the Kite had probably departed from the
great woods which clothe the rocky banks of the Eden, near
Armathwaite ; because T. C. Heysham wrote to Doubleday, on
January 8th, 1853, a letter,in which the accompanying passage
occurs: ‘ As to the Kite, LZ have never seen a recent specimen, not-
withstanding I am very credibly informed that one was killed a
short distance from Carlisle five or six years ago.’ Atno subse-
quent period does the younger Heysham appear to have come
across a local specimen of the Kite; unless, indeed, he may have
seen the bird, recorded by Thomas Armstrong, in the seventh
volume of the Naturalist, as having been killed near Carlisle, on
the 13th of November 1856, a few months before his death.
But no doubt he must have known many persons who knew
the bird, since I have myself heard the species discussed by
other eye-witnesses to its former presence besides Mr. Harris.
In January 1890, Mr. Hodgson of Keswick, being then in his
96th year, told me that he well remembered the Kite as breed-
ing in the district. When he was a young man you could see
a pair (and no more) any day in the neighbourhood of Keswick.

206 VERTEBRATE FAUNA OF LAKELAND

The author of the Observations, chiefly lithological, tells us that he
found an example of ‘ Falco Milvus’ in Hutton’s collection of
stuffed birds at Keswick in 1803. It is not known that any
Kite has been killed in Lakeland during the last five-and-thirty
years. Stragglers do sometimes revisit the hills around which
their ancestors circled, in the good old days, before Wild Cats
and Eagles had gone the way of all flesh.

The Rev. H. H. Slater saw two Kites in Patterdale in the
autumn of 1880. A single bird was seen near Lorton in 1873,
and another near Renwick in 1881.

The late James Fell used to say that the only Kite he ever
saw alive was a bird which he saw flying over Carlisle. Curiously
enough I had myself a similar experience. On the 11th of
September 1891, my eye was caught by a distant speck in the
sky which I knew from experience must be a large bird.
Gradually it drew nearer and nearer, flying out of the north-
east, until at last it descended, gliding down from an immense
height to survey the streets, and affording to my binoculars an
excellent view of as fine a Kite as any that I have seen on the
Continent. But apparently it spied nothing to tempt it to delay
its journey. In a few seconds it rose again to an immense
height, at which it appeared to continue its journey in the
direction of the Lake hills.

HONEY BUZZARD.

Pernis apivorus (L.).

A party of sportsmen were shooting a moor near Tebay in
the autumn of 1879, when a large Hawk came flying overhead
and dropped to one of the guns. It was taken to Mr. Clements,
at whose house I recognised it as a fine Honey Buzzard, in a
brown phase of plumage. This bird is still (1891) in excellent
condition, and is interesting as the only example known to have
been obtained in Westmorland during the present century. Dr.
Heysham was informed that it made its nest in high trees, and
bred in the woods at Lowther. This latter conjecture has never
been confirmed; nor does it appear that the doctor ever met
with any specimen, except a single female, shot near Carlisle in

BIRDS 207

June 1782, and still preserved in the cabinet of his son in 1832,
as T. C. Heysham expressly records. In Cumberland some half-
a-dozen specimens have been obtained, chiefly in the north and
west of the country ; but, with one exception, in autumn only,
The exception was a female Honey Buzzard, which Greenwell
received in June 1857 from the neighbourhood of Alston.

T. Armstrong records that a Honey Buzzard, shot near
Penrith in 1855, proved on dissection to have its stomach filled
with wasp grubs. Sam Watson informed me that a bird which
he received for preservation, from the neighbourhood of Wigton,
had been feeding in the same way. I have not been able to
trace the Honey Buzzard in the neighbourhood of Morecambe
Bay.

GREENLAND FALCON.
Falco candicans (Gmel.).

Mr. J. G. Goodchild has figured in the Transactions of the
Cumberland and Westmorland Association (No. viii) a fine Green-
land Falcon preserved at Edenhall. The Ms. notes of the late
Sir Richard Musgrave observe that this bird was killed by a
blacksmith near Crosby Ravensworth in 1865. Mr. Hugh
Harrison records its history: ‘In February [1865] a fine
specimen of the jerfalcon was shot in the act of devouring a
grouse, at Crosby Ravensworth, near Appleby, Westmoreland.
I made application for it and found it had already been placed
in the collection of Sir George Musgrave of Edenhall.’! Mr.
Raine well remembers the occurrence. A heavy fall of snow
upon the fells had probably driven the grouse down to the
ground on which it was killed. The late Baronet heard of the
bird from Mr. Hope, sen., to whom it had been taken to be
stuffed, and sent a keeper named Sawer to purchase it. It was
subsequently re-stuffed by Shaw of Shrewsbury.

ICELAND FALCON.
Falco islandus (Gmel.).
Some few years ago an example of this Jerfalcon was dis-
covered in a farm-house in Westmorland by Mr. J. G. Goodchild,
1 Zoologist, 1866, p. 30.

208 VERTEBRATE FAUNA OF LAKELAND

who ascertained that it had been shot by Mr. John Dodd of
Harcla, at Winton, near Kirkby-Stephen, about the year 1842.1
Mr. Goodchild obtained possession of the specimen and tried to
remount it, but unsuccessfully. Mr. Hancock pronounced it to
be a female bird of the first year. It has been figured as such,
The skin is preserved in the Carlisle museum. A second female
Iceland Falcon was shot upon our eastern border, near Crossfell,
on Oct. 13, 1860. It was preserved by Blackett Greenwell, on
whose information it was recorded by Mr. Duckworth.2 Mr.
Greenwell subsequently presented me with the sternum and
some feathers of this bird, which had entered the collection of
a Mr. Rothery. Mr. J. W. Harris informed me that an Iceland
Falcon was taken at Deanscale in 1835, but this he thought
was probably an escaped bird.

PEREGRINE FALCON.

Falco peregrinus, Tunstall.

There can be no doubt that the Peregrine Falcon has nested
from time immemorial among the precipices of the Lake
district, but the first distinct record of its presence is that of
Dr. Heysham, and relates to the eastern division of Cumberland,
in which the Falcon has always been a scarce bird. Dr.
Heysham knew of birds which bred annually near Gilsland,
either in a rock near the cascade, or in another locality six
miles distant, on the road between Carlisle and Newcastle? He
shot a female at her nest in the latter locality in May 1781, and
observed that, after the female was shot, the male fed the young
ones in the nest. For all that we know to the contrary, the
doctor’s experience of Peregrines was confined to the Gilsland
birds. At all events, he does not allude to any other individuals.
The younger Heysham had also a limited experience of the

1 Trans. Cumberland and Westmorland Assoc., No. vi. p. 161.

2 Ib. cit., No. viii. p. 206.

3-The Peregrine long continued to breed near Gilsland. Michael
Walton of Greenhead wrote to T. C. Heysham, March 23, 1840, that he
hoped to procure for him eggs of the Peregrine, adding, ‘ There is one
pair comes to breed near Gilsland, and two pairs about five or six miles
from here.’

BIRDS 209

Peregrine. In a letter of January 8, 1833, he wrote to Henry
Doubleday : ‘The Hawk tribe which you appear most anxious
to have are extremely difficult to get here, and several of those
you mention have never to my knowledge been obtained in the
district. Since I have paid any attention to ornithology, I have
only been able to get hold of a single specimen of the Peregrine
falcon, which I presented to a friend.’

After alluding to the local scarcity of the Long-eared Owl, in
a letter of 1836, T. C. Heysham continues: ‘The eggs of the
Peregrine are still more difficult to get hold of in this neigh-
bourhood.’ In a letter of June 19, 1841, the late Blackett
Greenwell informed Heysham that he had failed to obtain for
him any eggs of the Peregrine, to which the latter replied in a
draft of June 26: ‘I regret to find that you have not been
able to procure any eggs of the Peregrine falcon this spring. I
must confess that I am somewhat surprised at this, because I
have some reason to believe that several pairs annually breed
within ten or twelve miles of Alston. At the same time, I must
admit that their nests are often very difficult to get at. I hope,
however, that you will be more successful another year. The
reason for Heysham’s failure to procure Falcon eggs is obvious.
The Pennine range, or that portion which is included in
Cumberland, affords comparatively few suitable breeding-places
for the Peregrine, which has always found its stronghold among
the Lake mountains, though even fifty years ago it was cruelly
persecuted, as appears from the confessions of one who assisted
in its extermination. The Carlisle Patriot of April 3, 1840,
contained an announcement that ‘a fine specimen of that rare
bird, the Falco Peregrinus of Lin., was lately shot at Warlock
Crag,’ and this elicited a further statement from John Yarker
of Swinedale, dated April 7, 1840. The writer states: ‘When
it was known to Mr. Graham and Mr. Cowart, gamekeepers to
the Earl of Lonsdale, that a pair of these destructive birds had
made their appearance in Swinedale, they met at my house on
the 14th of March last, and as they were very anxious to have
them killed, in consequence of their being so destructive amongst
the Grouse, I accompanied them with my gun to assist in trying
to kill them. We went to a rock called Hannah Crag, a short

O

210 VERTEBRATE FAUNA OF LAKELAND

distance from my house, and were so fortunate as to fall in with
both cock and hen. The keepers fired at the hen and killed
her; they both claimed the bird, and I have no doubt but both
hit her. She measured from the bill to the end of the tail
nineteen inches, forty-two inches from tip to tip of the wings, and
weighed 3 lbs. As we had no chance at the cock that evening,
we assembled on the evening of the following Monday. We
stationed ourselves at about half a mile distance from each
other, and then had some boys to beat the rocks, in order to
drive the bird past where we lay in ambush. I had not been
long at my station, till he came flying past me; I gave him the
contents of one barrel, and succeeded in bringing him down.
He measured seventeen inches from the bill to the end of the tail,
thirty-seven inches from tip to tip of the wings, and weighed 14 Ib.
I have had him stuffed by Mr. James Leighton of Shap, who has
had considerable experience in preserving birds, etc., for the
cabinet. A great number of people have been to Mr. Leighton’s
to see him, and allow him to be a most splendid bird. He is
remarkably fine in his plumage, and none damaged by being
shot. The two keepers above named have killed together,
young and old, not less than eighteen of this species, but are of
the opinion that these two are the finest specimens they ever
saw. !

No species could increase in the face of such destructive
measures ; but up to 1878 a few pairs continued to breed in the
east of Cumberland and in East Westmorland, but especially in
the heart of the Lake district. Whitbarrow Scar has occasion-
ally been tenanted by breeding birds. So has a fine headland
near St. Bees, where I studied the actions of a pair of Peregrines
beside their nest in 1885.

A pair of Peregrines always frequented Skiddaw until 1883,
when they were destroyed. It was in Thirlmere that the Rev.
C. F. Smith robbed an eyrie of the Falcon in 1880; plundered
also by other visitors, under the guidance of local men, who
would otherwise have robbed the nest themselves. One pair
nested annually from 1883 to 1889, either at Iron Crag or
Falcon Crag. The Rev. H. D. Rawnsley informed me that in

1 Carlisle Patriot, April 10, 1840.

BIRDS 211

1883 this pair nested at Falcon Crag, and their two young ones
were taken. In 1884 they nested at Iron Crag, and one young one
was taken. In 1885 the old birds returned to Falcon Crag, and
were robbed of their eggs on the 3d of April. They bred in
another locality the year following, but their young were taken.
In 1887 they nested at Iron Crag, and their eggs were taken.
In 1888 they nested in the old place, and the young were
removed. Similar treatment has been meted out to other
pairs. Sometimes the birds have succeeded in bringing off
their young from an eyrie in some inaccessible rock. In 1864
and 1865 a pair bred undisturbed in a precipice flanking
Helvellyn, but in 1866 the nest was stormed by a Grasmere
stone-mason, and the two young ones taken. The destruction of
the old birds in the breeding season is a much greater mis-
fortune than the loss of eggs or of young. The finest pair of
Falcons that I have locally examined in the flesh were trapped in
Eskdale a few springs ago at the nest. There can be no doubt
that the injury done by Falcons to Grouse is far less than keepers
imagine, but the appearance of a falcon on any of the lower
grounds in autumn is sure to challenge measures of destruction.
The punt gunners naturally dislike the Falcons which occasion-
ally visit the shores of the English Solway in winter, because
they disturb the Wigeon and make them wild. The game pre-
server has less reason to complain, because a hungry Falcon is
more likely to strike down a plump Mallard or a passing Gull
than to engage in a stern chase after an old cock Grouse. At
St. Bees the Peregrines fed on Stockdoves and Pigeons when-
ever they could get them. Although most of the Peregrines
that visit our coast-line are immature, I have seen several
beautiful old females among them, as in the autumn of 1890,
when one such bird was killed on Walney Island and another
near Gretna. These no doubt are passage Falcons (‘Wanderfalk’),
shot when following Wildfowl in their annual journey to their
winter-quarters. Hutton of Flookburgh once contrived to
catch a Peregrine in his flight nets. At few years ago the head
keeper at Edenhall winged a young Peregrine, which soon
recovered from its injury and became as docile as could be
1 Zoologist, 1867, p. 866.

JAD VERTEBRATE FAUNA OF LAKELAND

desired, though it has never obtained full power of flight.
Other Falcons have from time to time frequented the same fine
stretch of coverts, probably attracted by the abundance of
Wood pigeons.

HOBBY.

Falco subbuteo, L.

This beautiful little hawk so rarely straggles to the N.W. of
England that I can only recall examining two local specimens.
They are in adult male dress, and were killed in Cumberland.
Mr. Sawer of Threlkeld shot one of them at Castle Rigg in
1864. The second Hobby was shot in the neighbourhood of
Edenhall. The Hobby has not been detected in Westmorland,
nor has it been recorded from Furness.

MERLIN.

Falco esalon, Tunstall.

Within a comparatively recent period the Merlin was still a
common bird on many moors in the centre of Lakeland, as
well as on the equally attractive wastes of the Debateable Land ;
mais nous avons changé tout cela. Hven during the last nine years
the species has lost ground rapidly, for there are few shootings
upon which this high-plucked Falcon is not treated as ‘ vermin.’
Upon Walney Island or the Saltings of the English Solway you
may sometimes see a pretty flight of the Merlin, which in
autumn feeds on Dunlins and the smaller marsh birds. In the
breeding season the birds feed their young almost exclusively on
such moorland species as Yellow Buntings, Wheatears, Meadow
Pipits. They possess a strong attachment for the hereditary
breeding-places of their kind. One small moss used to hold a
pair of Merlins every year. If you went there in March, you
might see them toying playfully together. At the end of May
the female had generally begun to lay her red or orange eggs in
a scratching in the heather, which she usually lined with a few
stems of dry grass. Very picturesque are most of the Merlin’s
haunts. Take, for example, a large moss near the Solway Firth,
on which the Merlin tries to breed every year. Most of the
moss is decorated with Butterfly Orchids; the Cross-leaved

——_ —

BIRDS Ht \ Fi

Heath abounds, growing very pale when overshadowed by a
strong growth of common heather ; but the palm of beauty must
be given to the White Water-Lilies with their broad, buoyant
leaves and gilded centres, floating restfully on the still surface
of the pools, from which the wakeful Mallards rise at your
approach, leaving behind them only the unfledged Gulls that
are skulking among the rushes. The flow is a dead flat of
mossy tussocks, varied by banks of heather, skirted by a thin
line of trees ;—too wet to reclaim remuneratively, therefore pre-
served from the tender mercies of enterprising engineers, The
deep drains, half choked with water-cress, are happy hunting
grounds of water voles, remains of which may be observed with
those of field mice in the pellets thrown up by the owls that
haunt this region. Elsewhere, the bones of fish, heaps of dried
shrimps, remains of the carapaces of small crabs, bear abundant
evidence of the gastronomical predilections of the local gulleries.
Not many small birds are to be seen here; only a few Meadow
Pipits, Skylarks, Linnets, come in view during a morning stroll.
This paucity of commonplace ‘dicky-birds’ may be accounted
for with some fairness by the brood of young Merlins which, at
the time of our visit, have feathered nicely ; two of the number
you may see, perhaps, perching on the bushes which have to do
duty for the ledges or boulders of rock on which the ‘Stone
falcon’ prefers to rest. Here the Merlins are reared from the
time that they hatch out into the world, covered with a scanty
integument of whitey-grey down (which soon expands into a
warm and cosy quilting), until the day arrives when they leave
the moorland home to inaugurate a roving life on their own
account. The Merlin tries to breed on the fells of Coniston, on
Skiddaw, and many of the lake mountains, no less than on
the moorlands of the Pennine range. But alas, unless some
change takes place in game preserving, the Merlin will soon
have ceased to confer a wild charm by its beautiful flight to the
sportsman’s tramps across the hills. It is going more rapidly,
as a breeding species, than most people are at all aware of.
Yet those who systematically destroy our poor Merlins on their
nesting-grounds must know that the damage which the Merlin
inflicts upon a Grouse Moor is infinitesimally small? Surely

214 VERTEBRATE FAUNA OF LAKELAND

future generations will bitterly regret the short-sighted ach
at present in fashion !

KESTREL.

Falco tinnunculus, L.

The sandstone precipices which stretch away westward from
the heights which rise above the town of Whitehaven are con-
stantly tenanted by several pairs of Kestrels, which appear to be
quite as much at home among the clefts of the sea cliffs as when
rearing their young in the wooded valleys of Lakeland. Public
opinion has begun to recognise that the injury which the Kestrel
inflicts on game preserves is exceedingly small. On the other
hand, the farmer gains enormously by the services which the
Kestrel renders in the destruction of field mice.

OSPREY.
Pandion haliaétus (1.).

That the Osprey was always rare in Lakeland, as a breeding
species at any rate, there can be no doubt; but I think that any
one, who will take the pains to consider the chain of evidence
which I propose to supply with anything approaching to
judicial impartiality, should concur in the conclusions at which
I have at last arrived, after many years’ close study of the
raptorial birds of this region. We owe our first information
regarding the bird to Francis Willughby, who stated that ‘the
Sea-Eagle or osprey, Haliztus sive Ossifraga, which preys often
upon our rivers; there is an aery of them in Whinfield-Park,
Westmorland, preserved carefully by the Countess of Pembroke.’
I can find no reference to this in the diary of the Countess, but
she was a woman of fine character, and just the sort of person
to take a pride in caring for the eyrie of a rare bird. Professor
Newton, whose unvarying kindness I gladly acknowledge, has
explained to me very fully his reason for identifying the
Osprey of Whinfield Park with the White-tailed or Sea
Eagle. But Professor Newton had no acquaintance with
the breeding-grounds of this species in Lakeland, nor had

BIRDS 215

he examined the evidence regarding our local Eagles gathered
together in this volume for the first time. Still less had
he considered the physical character of Whinfield Park.
Whinfield Park was originally a wild heath or moss. It is
situated in a low-lying district, between the waters of the
Eamont and the Eden Rivers. It is at least twenty miles, even
in a ‘bee-line, from the nearest haunts of the Cumbrian Eagles,
twelve miles from a former eyrie of the Sea Eagle in Hawswater,
and at least sixteen miles from the former eyries of Eagles in
the Ulleswater district. 71s not, therefore, ‘in an Eagle country ;’
and it is eight or nine miles in a bee-line from the nearest of
our lakes. The rivers in the neighbourhood are comparatively
small, and I am entirely unaware of any evidence that this
Eagle ever supports itself or its young by fishing in the streams
of such moderate dimensions. The park is represented on
Saxton’s map as enclosed in 1576. We know that it had long
been imparked and was full of deer. It is hardly likely that the
Countess of Pembroke would preserve an eyrie of Eagles in her
deer park. The Ulleswater Eagles often lifted fawns from
Gowbarrow Park a century ago. The fact that Willughby
speaks of the Osprey of Whinfield Park as Halivtus sive Ossifraga,
renders it probable that he supposed the species to be really the
Sea Hagle. Is this surprising? I hardly think that it is. Not
only had he never seen a dead specimen of the Whinfield Park
birds in the flesh, but he had not seen them on the wing. He
had not visited the locality. He derived his information from
some Westmorland worthy, who told him from common report
that the Osprey bred at Whinfell and fished in the Eamont and
Kden, as no doubt it did. Willughby knew of no true Ospreys
nesting in any other part of England: hence, relying on oral
information alone, he identified the Whinfell birds with the true
Sea Eagle. Had he taken the trouble to prosecute his inquiries
more thoroughly, he would have learnt that the Sea Eagle only
nested upon the most precipitous ledges in Lakeland. This
view becomes more certain when we remember that Machell, a
contemporary of Willughby, expressly mentions, among the
‘greater rarityes ’ of Westmorland, the species which forms the
subject of this essay. Machell was the vicar of the parish of

216 VERTEBRATE FAUNA OF LAKELAND

Kirkby Thore, which is in the same district as Whinfell, and
only a very few miles away. It is therefore only reasonable to
say that when he wrote of ‘Orspreys’ as distinct from both
‘ Herins’ and ‘ Eagles or Vultures,’ the species which occur in
the same passage, he was clearly thinking of the Ospreys in
Whinfield Park. The birds probably nested in some tall tree,
but possibly on the walls of some dismantled cottage occupied
by a former keeper, because there must have been some one
living on the spot when the park was first enclosed. Clarke,
though not a professed naturalist, and entirely unacquainted
with the writings of Willughby, was a good observer, and
rambled all over Lakeland before completing his folio work, the
Survey of the Lakes, published in 1787. He volunteers a good
deal of information about Eagles. He knew less about the
Osprey, but what he tells us is entirely to the point.

‘The Osprey I have seen,’ says he: ‘there was a nest, a few
years ago, of this bird in Whinfield Park: they seem to be of
the Hawk kind, and are about the size and colour of a Magpye ;
in what manner fish are charmed by them let others tell, for I
cannot: I saw one fly into the rock at the Giant’s Cave, and
on its crossing the river there, the fish sprang to the top and
remained six or eight seconds as if intoxicated.’ }

This is the case, for the Osprey having nested at Whinfield
Park, as separately stated by Willughby’s informant, by Clarke,
and as hinted at by Machell. It is supported by every local
circumstance, and I submit that Willughby having only tenta-
tively identified the bird from the information of one who him-
self called it the ‘Osprey,’ and apparently alluded to its fishing
in the neighbouring rivers, there can be no excuse for adhering
to the original blunder of that excellent naturalist, in the face
of the fact that ows White-tailed Eagles only nested in lofty
cliffs, many miles removed from this eyrie of the Osprey. That the
Osprey frequented Ulleswater, and nested in the precipices over-
hanging the Westmorland side of the lake, is rendered probable
by the fact that Dr. Heysham appears to have heard of it. Dr.
Heysham says, ‘I am not certain whether the Sea Eagle breeds
at present in Cumberland or not, but a few years ago there used

1 Survey of the Lakes, p. 190.

BIRDS QUE

to be an annual nest in the rocks which surround the lake of
Ulleswater, and the great trout of that lake has been taken out
of its nest, upwards of ten pounds weight ; it however frequently
visits this country.’

There is not the least reason to suppose that Dr. Heysham
spoke from personal observation. But he distinguishes the
White-tailed Eagle from the species just referred to, and treats
of them separately. He had kept the White-tailed Eagle in con-
finement from its youth up, and consequently possessed an
accurate knowledge of its changes of plumage. As, according
to Heysham, who treats his Sea Eagle as a distinct species from
the White-tailed, the bird which bred in the Ulleswater district
was not the same species as he had obtained from the Keswick
district, we have no alternative but to believe that the bird
reported to him from Ulleswater was the Osprey. It cannot
have been the Golden Eagle, since fish were found in its
eyrie. This conjecture receives additional support from the
evidence of the Rev. W. Richardson. Richardson was a good
naturalist, a painstaking botanist, and a keen observer of birds.
He was as well acquainted with the ornithological writers of the
day as Dr. Heysham. In his search for rare plants he had
visited many parts of Lakeland, but of course he was best and
most minutely acquainted with Ulleswater, and the notes on
Ulleswater which Dr. Heysham furnishes are generally copied
from Richardson, whose account of the natural history of Ulles-
water was drawn up in 1793, and must have been in Dr. Hey-
sham’s hands in a printed form when he wrote in 1796-1797.
Richardson proves that he had identified the Osprey by quoting
Berkenhout’s description of Falco halictus, the Osprey or Fish-
ing Eagle, to which he adds the result of his own observation
from boyhood: ‘The Osprey, or Fishing Eagle, is frequently
seen fishing; he is very bold, and in pursuit of his prey will
dart down within forty yards of a man. This is my case for
the proposition that the Osprey was formerly resident in Lakeland.
The individual links in the chain of evidence may not be con-
sidered to be final, when any single one is taken alone, but all
legal-minded men will, I believe, admit that, when taken together,
they fairly prove my case. The inherent improbability of the

218 VERTEBRATE FAUNA OF LAKELAND

White-tailed or Sea Eagle having ever nested at Whinfield Park
is self-evident to any one who knows the physical character of
the country. Of ‘present-day’ Ospreys there is not much to
say, because the visits of this fine bird to the former fishing-
grounds of its kind are irregular, and occur chiefly of course at
the seasons of migration. Mrs. Howard tells us, in a little work
written about 1831, ‘that an old oak standing on the banks of the
Eden, in the grounds of Corby Castle, was known as the “ Osprey
Eagle tree,’ so called from having been the resort of these
voracious birds which feed on salmon.’! An Osprey appeared
on the Eden at Rockliffe on September 27, 1883, and was
mobbed by Rooks. Another was trapped in Barron Wood, near
the Eden, in September 1869. It was caught in a pole trap, and
was described in all the local newspapers as ‘ a fine brown eagle.’
Whin’s pond, Edenhall, has on several occasions attracted the
attention of travelling Ospreys, and it was there that a fine
female Osprey was shot in 1848, curiously enough in the middle
of summer. Another Osprey was killed at Clifton, close to the
former eyrie of the Osprey at Whinfell, on the 27th of Septem-
ber 1890. The man who shot it wounded it in one of the
wings ; the maimed bird fought for life so gamely that he had
great difficulty in overpowering the poor thing. In the west of
Cumberland Mr. J. W. Harris obtained an Osprey shot on the
Derwent, and Dr. Parker secured another example at Gosforth
in 1881. I have not traced the Osprey on Windermere or any
of the lakes near Morecambe Bay, but Durnford notes that an
Osprey was shot near Barrow, on the 11th of May 1877, and I
have information of one or two other Ospreys having been killed
on the same part of the coast.

Order STHGANOPODES. Fam. PEHLECANID.
CORMORANT.
Phalacrocorax carbo (L.).

Although the Cormorant does not breed on our coast, it visits
several of the lakes of the interior at frequent intervals, and

1 Reminiscences, vol. i. p. 97.

BIRDS 219

from early autumn until the beginning of summer frequents our
estuaries, from Morecambe Bay and the north end of Walney to
Ravenglass and the flat sands of the Solway Firth. Its food
consists largely of flounders, but it probably consumes some
trout and a good many eels. So familiar is its presence on the
Solway that the fishermen call it the ‘Water crow.’ Sometimes
a score of these birds voluntarily associate together as a fishing
community. You may often see a dozen of them at once, even
in December, sitting bolt up in a long line at the edge of the
ebbing waters, drying their stiffly-extended wings, and looking
for all the world like so many scarecrows. They are methodical
in their habits. Those which haunt the estuary of the Irt and
Mite at Ravenglass fly every evening to St. Bees, to roost upon
one of the lower ledges of the headland, returning to their
fishing ground soon after daybreak. They are strong, if heavy,
fliers, and generally contrive to keep out of shot even when
travelling across country to some favourite pool. Among stories
of this bird, few probably are better known than Dr. Heysham’s
tale of the Cormorant which was sacrilegiously shot upon
Carlisle Cathedral about the year 1766.

SHAG.

Phalacrocorax graculus (L.).

Dr. Heysham pronounced the Shag to be ‘a scarce bird’ in
Cumberland, It is in fact of rare occurrence on the coast of
Lakeland, and does not breed even at Sandwith. Mr. Hindson
records in his Ms. notes a bird killed on the Lune at Kirkby-
Lonsdale. Stragglers have been killed to my knowledge in
Morecambe Bay, but I have only once seen a Shag in the waters
of the English Solway—on January 6, 1885. It has neverthe-
less strayed up our rivers in a few isolated instances. For
example, a young bird was caught upon the Caldew, near
Carlisle, Oct. 2, 1856, its chase affording no little amusement to
the operatives at Holm Head. Mr. R. Service includes the
Green Cormorant as ‘ very scarce’ on the coast of the Scottish
Solway. Mr. Armistead, another excellent Scottish observer,
assured me in conversation that he had only once seen and shot

220 VERTEBRATE FAUNA OF LAKELAND

the Shag on the north side of the Firth prior to 1890, There
is, therefore, little room for surprise that its visits to our waters
should be few and far between.

GANNET.

Sula bassana (L.).

Dr. Heysham had only seen one specimen up to 1796, and
naturally considered it rather an uncommon bird. Bearing in
mind the comparative shortness, to a Gannet, of a flight from
Ailsa Craig to the Cumberland coast, the species is not so often
seen as might be expected ; indeed it is seldom noticed on the
English Solway east of Maryport, though adult birds are
occasionally washed up dead at Silloth. George Bell informed
the younger Heysham in a letter of November 2, 1842, that
Gannets were then common on the Whitehaven coasts, and
frequently taken. The present generation of fishermen tell me
that they have not seen them in any numbers of late years, nor
do they generally fall in with them unless they are fishing a
few miles from land. Immature birds are decidedly in the
minority. Curiously enough, this oceanic species often occurs
far inland. A Gannet was caught asleep in a field between
Hayton and Allonby in November 1874. Mr. Jackson caught
a very handsome three-year-old Gannet when crossing the fells
from Martindale to Mardale in October 1886. A fine adult
bird was captured in a gill near Crossfell in September 1885,
and taken to Joseph Walton of Garrigill. In October 1891 a
young Gannet which had been captured near Curthwaite was
recorded in a Carlisle paper as a ‘Bittern’; while a similar
individual, shot at Arnside about the same time, was chronicled
in a Kendal newspaper as ‘ A fine Great Northern Diver.’

Order HERODIONES. Fam. ARDEID.
HERON.

Ardea cinerea, L.

The Heron has always been numerous, if somewhat local, in
Lakeland, and at one period seems to have been in considerable

ee SS eS a

BIRDS dd |

request for culinary purposes. The Naworth Accounts prove
that it was often served up at the table of Lord William
Howard, its name being variously entered as ‘ hernshew,’
‘hernshow,’ ‘heronsue,’ and ‘heronshew, but never as ‘ Willy
Fisher’; although this latter name can boast probably of equal
antiquity. The Herons supplied to the Naworth kitchen were
usually such as had been snared or shot by the local fowlers,
who could always obtain the sum of sixpence for a
‘heronsue.’ But the practice of fattening wild birds for the
table in captivity was then in vogue; hence batches of young
Herons were sent alive to Naworth from considerable distances.
Some of these came from Chipchase Castle, and others from the
Heronry which, until 1890, existed at Muncaster in the west of
Cumberland. Of course the birds were sent as presents, but it
was customary to bestow a largess on the servant who brought
them to Naworth. Thus in 1612 we find ‘Mr. Lampley’s man
bringing iiij hernshues and a conger eyle, ij8 vj4’; again, ‘ Mr.
Penington’s man bringing 2 fawnes and 6 herns, x.’ In 1620
there occurs on July 7th, ‘to Mr. Heron’s man of Chipchase
bringing xiiij gulls and v hernsues, v’’ A similar supply was
despatched from Muncaster in 1621, for on the 16th of July
was paid, ‘To My Lady Savell’s man bringing 7 hernsues and 9
gulls, 1ij8 vit.’ A special house or aviary had to be constructed
to cage the seventeen young Herons received in 1620, and the
outlay was entered among the Extraordinary Paiments :
‘July 1°. To Andrew Creake making the room for the hernsues,
many,”

Of Lakeland Heronries, the most classical perhaps is that of
the birds at Dallam Tower, whose contests with their neighbours
the Rooks furnished subject for comment to Bewick, and still
earlier to Dr. Heysham. There, and probably there only, in the
Lake district, the name of ‘Crane’ is constantly applied to this
Heron; a fact well known to Dr. Gough, who pertinently
remarked that ‘Croneywood’ was the original name of their
stronghold. ‘The trees,’ he wrote, ‘occupied by the Herons are
situated in the most elevated part of the wood, sloping north-
westward towards the upper reach of Morecambe Bay. The

pias VERTEBRATE FAUNA OF LAKELAND 4

nests are built in the highest trees, a few feet only between the
extreme points of the uppermost branches. The trees are of
three kinds, beech, ash, and elm—the first being the favourite.

. We counted twenty-seven nests. About sixty years ago the
number was eleven. In course of time the increase reached
thirty-two. But of late years there has been a decrease.’! I
inspected this Heronry in 1888 and 1891, and can therefore
testify to the accuracy of the remarks just cited. Almost
equally well known, at any rate to a former generation, was the
now extinct Heronry of Rydal Water. It was not an ancient
establishment. Whence the first colonies had migrated can
hardly be considered quite certain. Canon Tristram informs
me that between the years 1850-55 he was told by the late
Earl of Ravensworth that his father had at an earlier period cut
down one or two trees in the Heronry at Ravensworth, ‘ that
the herons at once deserted and went the same year to West-
moreland, where they bred on some small islets in one of the
west country lakes.’ It is possible that this was the origin of
the Rydal Heronry. At all events, the colony was founded
between sixty and seventy years ago, because Parsons and
White describe this Heronry as ‘recently established’ in the
Directory of Cumberland which they published in the year 1829.

It was a favoured Heronry, one that afforded pleasure to
Christopher North, who noticed that ‘the heronry on the high
pine-trees of the only island connects the scene with the ancient
park of Rydal.’? Miss Martineau recorded her impression of
‘the grey bird’ as it appeared ‘perched upon a tree near its
nest, or fishing in the shallows of its island home.’ That
pleasant fisherman-author, Dr. Davy, wrote that, ‘under protec-
tion a few herons, here secure from molestation, yearly build
their nests in those Scotch firs.’

The subsequent history of this Heronry is best told in the
words of Mr. Jones of Hesketh How, who, writing to Dr. Gough
on December 26, 1876, furnished the following statement:
‘I find the Herons have not built upon Rydal for three or four
years. When they did build there, they built in rather old

1 The Heronry of Dallam Tower, p. 15.
2 Recreations, vol. iii. p. 370.

:
H
i

BIRDS 22a

Scotch and silver firs of late years; but I am told that some
twenty years ago they built in other kinds of trees, oaks
especially. And when at one time they were disturbed at
building time by some people living at Nab Cottage, they left
the island and built in larch trees, in a plantation in the
side of Loughrigg, west of the Lake. I well remember three
or four nests a year within the last fifteen years, but I
understand they were much more abundant about twenty
years ago. The birds often come over to feed, and are seen
about the rivers and the lake; but they have, I fear, altogether
ceased to build there.’?

Until quite recently, an unrecorded colony of ten or twelve
pairs of Herons nested in Roudsea Wood, shifting their quarters
in 1886, in consequence of some of the trees in which they
built being cut down. Whither they migrated I have not been
able to learn ; but, as we saw several young Herons on Roudsea
Moss in the summer of 1891, a new nursery must exist in the
neighbourhood. Another unrecorded Lancashire Heronry is
that of Rusland, regarding which Mr. C. F. Archibald wrote to me
in April 1890: ‘There is an old established Heronry in the
Rusland valley, not on our land but adjoining; to the best of
my belief there are about 8-10 nests annually; they used to
build in very tall larches. When these were cut down, they
migrated to some neighbouring Scotch firs, where they are inac-
cessible. But on April 5th I had a great treat. I heard a good
deal of “ talking” going on in some other Scotch firs, at some
considerable distance from the Heronry, and led thereby I dis-
covered that a solitary pair were breeding there. I climbed up
and inspected the eggs, three, slightly incubated. It was a great
treat to see the big blue eggs on the great platform of sticks
lying on a cradle of hay, about the size of a dinner plate; the
old birds kept to the same place for the next few days, when I
left home.’ In the following October Mr. Archibald introduced
me to the Rusland Heronry. The ground beneath the nests
was strewn with fragments of broken shells, showing that most
of the young had hatched out safely. At Whittington, not very
far from Kirkby-Lonsdale, there exists a Heronry, which Mr.

' The Heronry at Dallam Tower, p. 13.

224 VERTEBRATE FAUNA OF LAKELAND

Hutchinson found to be tenanted by seven pairs of birds in
1888. The same gentleman tells me that six pairs was the
complement of birds occupying the Heronry at Killington
Reservoir in 1886. The Ingmire Hall Heronry is situated on
the borders of Westmorland and Yorkshire, near Sedburgh.
This was occupied by Herons quite recently, but I am given to
understand that it has been much harried. In Cumberland,
from sixteen to twenty pairs of Herons used to nest until
recently at Muncaster, obtaining no doubt a plentiful supply of
food in the estuary and neighbouring streams. I have known
for some years a nice Heronry in the Wythop Woods, close to
Bassenthwaite Lake. Of late a few Herons have nested at
Crofton Park, where Mr. W. Storrs Fox ascertained for me
that eight nests were occupied in 1888. Other small Heronries
exist at Netherby, at Floriston, and near Greystoke; in addi-
tion to which, one or two solitary pairs of Herons generally nest
on the Eden and the Gelt. By far the finest of local Heronries
is that preserved at Edenhall. Most of the trees in which the
nests are placed are inaccessible to the majority of climbers,
while an unlimited supply of food can be obtained from the
Eden and the Eamont with their tributaries, but especially from
the fine piece of water, shaped like a horse-shoe, known as
Whin’s Pond.

This abounds in trout, notwithstanding the fact that it is
sadly over-stocked with voracious pike. Here, accordingly, the
Heron is to be seen at all times of the year, especially in July,
when the young birds flock together on the grassy slopes of the
lake. The birds are then performing their annual moult. Con-
sequently, such spots as these birds frequent are often strewn
with blue feathers of all shapes and sizes. When a spell of
sharp weather freezes the sheets of water inland, and our rivers
are also choked with floating ice, the Herons often appear in
flocks upon the saltings. But I never could ascertain that the
poor birds secured any kind of prey upon the surface of the
marsh under such disadvantageous circumstances,

¢

BIRDS 225

PURPLE HERON.
Ardea purpurea, L.

Our knowledge that this Heron has once occurred in Lakeland
_ rests upon the authority of the late John Gould. The informa-
tion given by that eminent naturalist is the following: ‘ Mr. R.
C. Musgrave, in a note, dated Eden Hall, Penrith, November
21, 1870, says, “the Purple Heron in my father’s collection was
shot near Alston in Cumberland about twenty years ago.”’1 A
full-dressed bird of the species still exists at Edenhall, and I
believe this to be the identical bird to which Gould made
reference.

SQUACCO HERON.
Ardea ralloides, Scop.

Writing to T. C. Heysham, on September 7, 1845, Yarrell
states: ‘I heard also in July, by a communication from Sir
George Musgrave to Mr. Jesse, that a specimen of the Squacco
Heron was shot during the second week near Kirkoswald, a
village on Eden, The bird was observed in a meadow close to
the river. Heysham replied, on September 9: ‘I owe you
many thanks for your kind communication relative to the capture
of a specimen of the Squacco Heron near the village of Kirk-
oswald in July last. ... Sir George Musgrave .. . has, I
understand, a small collection of Cumberland birds, chiefly
mounted by Philip Turner, a bird-stuffer residing at Penrith.’

Sir George Musgrave wrote to Heysham on the 26th of
November that year: ‘I amuse myself in making a little
collection of British Birds which have been taken in the neigh-
bourhoed ; but I have no particularly rare birds, except a
Squacco Heron, which a farmer at Lazonby shot for me in the
summer. Mr. Gould furnishes a note regarding the same bird:
‘Mr. R. C. Musgrave informs me that a specimen in his father’s,
Sir George Musgrave’s, possession, was shot by one of his game-
keepers in June 1845, while perching on a tree at Lazonby in
Cumberland.’?

1 Birds of Great Britain, vol. iv., not paged.
2 Ibid. vol. iv., not paged.
P

226 VERTEBRATE FAUNA OF LAKELAND

LIT TEEQBITTERN
Ardetta minuta (L.).

The late Mr. John Hancock informed me that a specimen of
the Little Bittern preserved in the Newcastle Museum was
captured on the river Petteril in the year 1850. A stray note
of T. C. Heysham, dated March 27, 1850, corroborates this,
while assigning a rather earlier occurrence to the bird. The
note says: ‘ Little Bittern. Mr. Losh this day informed me
that a specimen of this bird was caught close to the river
Petteril near Carlisle, about 3 years ago, in July, and in female
dress. He sent it to Mr. John Hancock of Newcastle, in whose
possession it now is.’ I cannot vouch for any other specimen
having been killed at any time in Lakeland. I have however
identified a full-dressed male Little Bittern, which a man named
Steel shot on the Kirtle Water, between Kirkpatrick and Kirtle-
bridge, in June 1874. This specimen was obtained about six
miles north of our faunal limits. It is still in Mr, Steel’s
possession.

NIGHT HERO:

Nycticorax griseus (L.).

In the north-west of England the Night Heron ranks as one
of our rarest birds, the species having been met with only singly
and at long intervals. Mr. Brennan, the head keeper on Foul-
shaw Moss, once shot a fine Night Heron near Milnthorpe.
This is no doubt identical with the bird which the late Mr.
Anthony Mason reported to Mr. Mitchell as killed near Grange
in May 1848. A loose note in the handwriting of T. C. Hey-
sham records of this species that ‘a young bird was shot on the
Petteril near the village of Carleton by a young man in Oct. or
November 1847.’ A fine adult is preserved in the collection of
the late Mr. Proud; if his son’s memory can be relied upon,
after a lapse of forty years, this bird was shot at Beckfoot,
Brampton, about 1850. At all events, a young Night Heron
was killed in the Abbey Holme in 1866, and has remained ever
since in the possession of the Mann family, at whose house I

have often seen it.

i
4
»
;

BIRDS I27

BITTERN.
Botaurus stellaris (L.).

Our first local references to the Bittern occur as early as 1610
in the Denton Ms., and were therefore penned in days when
extensive morasses covered a large area of Lakeland, and quaking
bogs defied the most adventurous spirits to traverse on foot their
treacherous surface. Probably the Bittern was always more of
a winter visitant than a resident in our mosses, but that odd
pairs occasionally spent the breeding season with us can hardly
be questioned. Denton writes of ‘Drumleyning,’ in the north-
west of Cumberland: ‘ All Parton is in the parish of Thursby
saving that of Drumleyning, which is in the parish of Aikton,
and now doth service to the mannor of Aikton. It is called
corruptly Drumleyning, the right name thereof is the Myre-
Dromble-Heyning ; Wee call a bittern a Myre Dromble because
she haunteth myres, boggs, fens and carrs, and for that she hath
a thundering voice which we callrumbling. Heyning is the fryth
or freed spring of the place. A wood new cut for springing a
fryth and spring we call a Heyning of the word Heyned, which
signifies freed or spared or forborn.’! Of Drumbugh [=Drum-
burgh] the same writer observes: ‘It is called Drumbugh of
that fenny mire or bog, then full of shrubs and haunted with
bitterns, which the people call myre drombles or mire drummles,
so as that Drumbogh signifies the bittern’s fen.’? That the
name of Miredrum was colloquially attached to the Bittern in
Lakeland appears probable from its occurrence in a curious
sermon written by a well-known character, ‘ William de Worfitt,’
in the early part of the last century.2 This homily was pro-
fessedly written in the vernacular tongue of the peasants resid-
ing in the neighbourhood of Morecambe Bay. As the parson
was ‘stalking hameward’ (so runs his‘ tale ’) ‘ across Blackwater-
mosses, on a winter evening, with ‘nought in view but dreary
dykes and dusky ling,’ the ‘awful silence’ of the waste ‘was
sean brokken by a skirling hullet ; sure nivver did hullet, herren-
sue or miredrum mak sic a noise before.’ ‘ Miredrum’ was not,
however, the only name applied to our Lakeland Bitterns. On

? Denton ms. p. 74. 2PON Cit. ps 1S:
° This sermon was kindly lent to me by Mr. Harry Arnold of Arnbarrow.

228 VERTEBRATE FAUNA OF LAKELAND

the contrary, the name is entirely absent from the Howard House-
hold Book, in which the Bittern is uniformly styled the ‘Bitter’ on
the few occasions upon which it is mentioned at all. Scanty as
the information gleaned from this source must be admitted to
be, its value is augmented by the season of the year at which it
proves that Bitterns were occasionally obtained. The birds
purchased for the Naworth table during the first week of August
1618, included ‘36 mallards, iijs., 2 bitters and a curlue, xxijd.’
Among the fowl brought in on the first of August 1634 (and
therefore procured in the month of July), we read of ‘ one duck,
vjd., one bztter, vjd., and two plovers, iiijd.’

Most unfortunately the eighteenth century is almost a blank
as regards information regarding the Bitterns which still
lingered on our mires. Richardson was the first to break
silence, and even he was content to say that this bird ‘some-
times, though rarely, breeds by the side of Eamont, on the low
grounds ’—7z.e. on such amoss as Honipot, which is still adapted
to its habits. Dr. Heysham three years later added this note:
‘The Bittern is not so numerous as the Heron, and is always
solitary. It breeds in bogs and makes its nest upon the ground.
In the spring it makes a loud bellowing kind of noise, from
which it is called in Cumberland Miredrum.’ This allusion to
the cry of the Bittern is borne out by a remark of the late Mr.
W. Dickinson, who says in his glossary: ‘ Bitter-bump, Mire-
drum, c. the bittern. This bird is now a very rare visitor [1878],
and is not known to breed here. The writer has a recollection
of being called to listen to the booming of a bittern in a mild
spring evening, about the year 1804, in the mosses of Arlecdon.’ !
The Rev. R. Wood informs me that his late father, long the
vicar of Westward, remembered the Bittern as frequenting
Cardew Mire, where it was supposed to breed. He was born in
1796, and might therefore have heard the Bittern’s cry when a
boy, as well as his contemporary, Mr. Dickinson. It is therefore
quite possible that Dr. Heysham, who came to Carlisle in 1778,
had a personal knowledge of the Bittern in the Lake district.
But if a stray Bittern lingered among our bogs and flows during
the early summers of the present century, the energy of the

1 Cumberland Glossary, pp. 7, 8.

BIRDS 229

engineers who converted pools of standing water into valuable
corn-fields, soon banished the poor ‘ Miredrum’ from the ancient
home of its race, and forced it to seek a safer asylum in the
great reed beds of Denmark or the Dutch coast. Thence-
forward the Bittern was destined to return to Lakeland only
when the frosts of the Baltic urged it to seek for food and
shelter in our milder climate. Nor did it return to Lake-
land in the same abundance which more southern counties
experience. T. C. Heysham remarked that the occurrence of
eight Bitterns in the neighbourhood of the Solway, between
December 1831 and February 1832, was the more remarkable
because only a single specimen had been met with in the same
district during the previous ten or twelve years. Two of the
Bitterns in question were killed near Burgh, two near Brow-
houses, two in the Abbey Holme, one at Cumwhitton, and the
eighth at Hayton. Most probably these birds had arrived in
company. Dr. Gough, in recording the occurrence of four
Bitterns in the peat-mosses of Westmorland in December 1834,
offers the comment that ‘ Bitterns are by no means annual visi-
tors, nor is their appearance among us indicative at all of a severe
winter ; but when we are favoured with the company of this
bog-hunter, a flock of eight or ten is generally scattered over the
mosses and adjoining country. We may safely infer that fifty
years ago the Bittern, when it visited Lakeland at all, appeared
in larger numbers than has been the case recently. My notes
embrace records of Bitterns killed nearly all over Lakeland,
from Selside and Cark to the Solway Firth ; but they only in-
clude one note of a Bittern killed in Hast Westmorland, viz., a
bird shot at Sandford Mire near Appleby in 1862. The greater
number have occurred within a short distance of the coast,
though a few must be accredited to the heart of the Lake dis-
trict, ¢.g., two birds shot at Esthwaite and Bampton in January
1867. The late Sam Watson of Carlisle told me that he stuffed
ten or twelve local examples of the Bittern during his long
practice as a taxidermist. One of these was shot in the Eden
near Rickerby in February 1865, by a keeper, who killed a
second Bittern in the same locality at daybreak on the Ist of
December 1868, The first-named bird had swallowed a water-

230 VERTEBRATE FAUNA OF LAKELAND

rat. The last Bitterns reported to me as procured in the centre
of Lakeland were shot near Ambleside; one in January and
the other in December of 1889. My most recent notes of
Lakeland Bitterns refer to two specimens killed near Ambleside
in 1889, in the months of January and December ; to a third,
which appeared in the neighbourhood of Cardew Mire in the
autumn of 1891, and attracted the attention of the countryside
by its drumming, which was described to me with great correct-
ness by those who were fortunate enough to hear it on several
different occasions; lastly, to a fine Bittern which a farmer,
named Dixon, killed on Cumwhitton Moss, on January 1, 1892;
a fifth specimen shot about ten days later near Penrith, and a
sixth shot at the same time on Weddholm Flow.

Order HERODIONES. Fam. CICONIID.

WHitt STORE:

Ciconia alba, Bechst.

By the kindness of Colonel Macdougall, I am able to state
positively that a White Stork was killed in Westmorland early
in the year 1867. A local paper reported the occurrence of
this bird in the following words: ‘A large and _ beautiful
specimen of the Stork, in fine plumage, was recently shot on
Windermere Lake by Mr. Thomas Fleming of Kcclerigg. It
measured 4 ft. 4 in. in height, 5 ft. 54 inches across the wings,
weight 44 lbs.’?

To this information another journal adds: ‘The bird was
purchased by J. M. Gresley, Esq., Bradford, and is now in the
skillful hands of Mr. W. Raws, Rydal, for preservation.2, The
late Thomas Fleming has been dead for some years. He was a
keen sportsman and a good shot. Colonel Macdougall knew
him well, and has interviewed his son and many other local
residents. This gentleman finally summarises the result of his
inquiries in a single sentence: ‘ There can be no doubt about the
shooting of the White Stork at Windermere Lake.’ The fact

1 Carlisle Journal, Feb. 1, 1867.
2 Westmorland Gazette, Feb. 2, 1867.

BIRDS Zou

is that a great many people saw the bird, because it was exposed
in the flesh in the shop of a man named Green, then a butcher
in Windermere.

Order HERODIONES. Fam. PLATALEIDZ.

SPOONBILL.
Platalea leucorodia (L.).

The earliest Spoonbill authenticated in Lakeland is a specimen
preserved in the Newcastle Museum. This, Mr. Hancock
assured me, was killed on Dalton Sands in 1833. The next
supposed occurrence in point of time is that of a bird which
frequented the Solway in the winter 1840-41, and was recorded
as a Great White Heron by the newspapers. James Irwin (the
man who furnished the first intelligence of the bird to the local
press) wrote the following letter to T. C. Heysham, dated
Bowness, 8th January 1841: ‘With reference to the “ Heron,”
I beg to inform you that it was perfectly white in every part of
its body and wings; on looking at the bird through a spying
glass of large dimensions, I ascertained that the throat and the
long feathers on the rump were of a dusky white, almost
approaching to a light fawn colour. I must however add that
my observations with the glass were not as satisfactory as I
could have wished, in consequence of the dazzling rays of the
sun. The bill and legs were a light ash colour, and its size
about that of the common Heron. It would measure about
4 feet 10 from tip to tip of the wings, and weigh from 3 to 34
Ibs. The first time I observed it was about the middle of
November, it was fishing in some shallow water near the new
wall about 200 yards from the wooden jetty. Its second visit
to the same place was about a week subsequent to its first appear-
ance. In the autumn of 1859 a couple of Spoonbills made
their appearance in the north of Cumberland within a few days
of one another. George Bowman shot the earliest of the two
on Scaleby meadows upon the 7th of November. Sam Watson
stuffed this bird. A little later in the same year a Spoonbill
was shot on the river Irthing near the village of Irthington,

e

232 VERTEBRATE FAUNA OF LAKELAND

William Graham of Brampton stuffed this bird. Where it
exists at present I am unable to say, but Mr. H. P. Senhouse
found the Scaleby bird in the little inn at Kirkstyle, Lowes-
water. Mr. Wallace of Distington possesses an immature
Spoonbill, which enjoys the peculiarity of being the only
example authenticated hitherto from the west coast of Cumber-
land. It was killed by John Parker of the Tarn, Bootle, on the
22d of October 1864.

Order ANSERES. Fam. ANATID.
GREY LAG GOOSE.

Anser cinereus, Meyer.

The Grey Lag Goose does not appear to have been a common
bird in Lakeland at any time, nor is there early evidence that it
nested with us. Had it done so at all freely, we should have
expected to find frequent notices of wild Geese among the birds
used for the table at Naworth. The only entries of this kind
refer to Geese shot in autumn, when migratory wildfowl could
be obtained as easily as home-bred birds. Thus, in 1620, we
have an entry between September 23 and 29: ‘A wildgoose,
xij? In 1634 there occur similar ones; on Sept. 27 they
purchased one wilde gouse, viij“.,’ and on the 4th of October,
‘2 willd gesse, xvj*’ These birds, shot in the neighbourhood of
Brampton, are quite as likely to have been Pinkfooted Geese as
Grey Lags. Richardson says that the Geese which used to
visit Ulleswater seldom stayed longer than a day or two except
during severe frost. Dr. Heysham says, ‘The grey goose is only
seen here in the winter, but breeds in many of the fens in
England.’ It is evident that neither of these worthies had any
knowledge of the Grey Lag nesting in their districts, but it
must be remembered that in their time it was difficult to visit
the outlying parts of this wild faunal area. Hence their know-
ledge of local natural history was almost exclusively limited to
their own immediate neighbourhood. Dr. Heysham knew the
Carlisle district extremely well, but there is no evidence to
suggest that he had much acquaintance with the more remote

a eS ee

——— a SO a

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BIRDS DaeP

moors and mosses of Westmorland. It is therefore probable
that, in spite of the silence of contemporary witnesses, local
tradition may be right in asserting, as it undoubtedly does, that
a few Geese used to breed in the wild country about the head-
waters of the Eden in Westmorland. Yarrell wrote of the Bean
Goose in the first edition of his British Birds, published in 1843:
‘A few pairs, it is said, breed annually in Sunbiggin Tarn, near
Orton in Westmorland.’! There can be no doubt that this
statement should have referred to the Grey Lag Goose and not
to the Bean Goose.

Dr. Gough included the ‘ Grey-legged Goose (Anser palustris) ’
as an occasional winter visitant to the Kendal district in 1861.
A few years afterwards he informed Mr. A. G. More that the
Grey Lag Goose had ceased to breed in Westmorland. Sun-
biggin Tarn is a lonely sheet of water, lying in a hollow of the
wild moors beneath Orton Scar; there the Grey Lag Goose
probably bred on islands which, as the tarn has filled up, are no
longer distinct from the sedge and bogbean with which they
have become closely incorporated. As lately as July last, two
local farmers separately told: me that Wild Geese visit the tarn
in winter; nor could there be any doubt about it, for one had
shot a couple, and the other a single bird. The description
given by one of them pointed to the Grey Lag, as he emphasised
the blue shoulders. The same man, a native of Asby, had ‘heard
tell of’ a Goose’s nest being found on Eamont.

But admitting that Yarrell was right in saying that a few
Geese really bred beside this lonely tarn prior to 1843, there
can be no doubt that T. C. Heysham considered the Grey Lag
Goose a rare bird in Cumberland. He says, in a draft of a
letter to B. Greenwell, dated June 11, 1840: ‘I have also at
present some doubt as to whether the bird you call the Grey
Lag Goose is really this species, not having seen one in this
neighbourhood for many years.’ The birds obtained by Green-
well turned out to be Bean Geese, as I heard from his own
lips many years later. In another draft, T. C. Heysham spoke
of a local ‘Grey Lag’; but it was by an inadvertence, for he
crossed his pen through it, and wrote above, ‘Bean Goose.’

1 British Birds, 1st ed. vol. iii. p. 61.

234 VERTEBRATE FAUNA OF LAKELAND

Since Heysham’s time, the Grey Lag has continued to be the
rarest of the Grey Geese which visit Lakeland. Of course such
Geese as were shot in the neighbourhood of the Solway were
eaten or sent to distant markets, in most instances, until I came
to Cumberland ; not that my exertions have always averted the
recurrence of this unfortunate event. But the Messrs. Mann
preserved two fine Grey Lags shot near Allonby prior to 1883,
and Mr. Coulthard of Blackwell purchased another local specimen
in the Carlisle market. Mr. Edward Tandy called my attention
to a Grey Lag Goose shot in a field near the Eden at Lang-
wathby, on March 29, 1889: this he afterwards presented to
me. It was one of a pair, and several others were seen in the
neighbourhood by Mr. Tandy and R. Raine during the early
part of the summer. Geese of different species so notoriously
linger late in their winter haunts, if not breeding birds, that it
would be unsafe to infer that the presence of the Grey Lags in
question indicated any desire on their part to nest. But the
presence of the Grey Lag in the Lake district at any season of
the year is interesting. Mr. A. Smith of Rockliffe, who has
probably a better knowledge of the Geese which frequent the
Solway salt marshes than any one except Mr. W. Nicol, has
on several occasions observed the Grey Lag Goose on Rockliffe
marsh, but has very rarely known of a specimen being killed,
either by himself or the numerous gunners of the neighbouring
villages. In the winter of 1888-89 he observed a gaggle of six
Grey Lag Geese frequenting Rockliffe marsh, but they were wild
and unapproachable. In the following December Mr. Smith
observed a couple of Grey Lag Geese on Rockliffe marsh. On
the 8th of that month he was hiding up among some rushes and
rough grass at flight time, when, just as the light of the winter
afternoon began to wane, he saw two Grey Geese rise off the
marsh, and fly noisily to the sand at the water edge; he thought
that they alighted there, and was not a little astonished when,
looking up, he saw the two great birds flighting silently over-
head. He had number one shot in one barrel, and number six
in the other, but, being rather flustered, he fired the barrel con-
taining number six, and jumped up as one of the birds fell in a
dub of water with a heavy splash. It began to rise, and he

BIRDS 235

stopped it effectually with the second barrel. In the dusk the
blue portion of the wings appeared to be nearly white. I called
to see the bird at his house next day, and found it to be in first-
rate condition, a very handsome old gander, having many black
feathers on the belly. Its companion escaped uninjured. In
1891 a gaggle of seven Grey Lag Geese made their appearance
upon Newton salt marsh on February 26, and on the following
day my friend Bob Law had a shot at them and killed one of
the number. He carried it to Nicol, who told him that it was
the first Grey Lag that he had ever seen in the flesh: a splendid
bird (as he described it), with flesh-coloured feet and very light
shoulders. Unfortunately, Law thought it was too big for a
cabinet specimen, and therefore sent it off with other wildfowl
to a game-dealer at Wigton. Nicol, having previously shot the
Bean, Pink-footed, and White-fronted Geese, was anxious as a
sportsman to add the Grey Lag Goose to his list of ‘kills,’ but
their wariness secured their safety. If disturbed on the marshes
they flew to a neighbouring moss. He could always distinguish
them from Bean Geese by their light shoulders and compara-
tively light-coloured breasts. He saw them for the last time on
March 6, flying high in an easterly direction. With regard to
weight, we found that the bird killed by Smith just turned the
scale at 8 lbs. Those shot by the Messrs. Mann weighed 94
and 10 lbs., while the female shot near Langwathby weighed
6 lbs. The occurrence of this species in the west of Cumber-
land has been ascertained by Dr. Parker, who tells me that a
neighbour of his shot a goose of this species near Gosforth in
November 1889. Mr. Heywood Thompson has met with it in
the Morecambe Bay ; but I fancy that it is rare there.

BEAN GOOSE

Anser segetum (Gmel.).

Dr. Heysham knew the Bean Goose as very frequent in Cum-
berland in severe winters. Hitherto it has been the common
Grey Goose of our faunal area, or at least of that portion of
Lakeland which is much visited by any kind of Grey Geese.
During the last eight winters, excepting those of 1885-86,

236 VERTEBRATE FAUNA OF LAKELAND

1886-87, when I was absent from Cumberland, the Bean Goose
has constantly come under my notice. Indeed I have rarely
visited the Upper Solway without observing the’Bean Geese,
which usually spend the day upon the most exposed portions of
the marsh and sands of the estuary. They are, of course, highly
sociable. At the beginning of winter it is not unusual to see
an odd bird, but they generally pack and, live gregariously in
larger or smaller flocks. On a recent occasion Mr. Thorpe and
I were waiting for duck at the edge of Burgh marsh, when a
Bean Goose flew up and alighted within a hundred or a hundred
and twenty yards of us, and there remained on the open marsh
until a chance movement roused its suspicions. Ihave occasion-
ally known single birds to fly overhead within shot, but only
when our party happened to be without a gun. As a rule they
are very wary. They scarcely ever allow a punt to work up to
them, and are chiefly shot when they are feeding in the evening
or early morning. Much of their food consists of the marsh
grasses, but they feed also in stubble-fields and marshy meadows,
as, for example, in the neighbourhood of Allonby. Bean Geese
were never more strongly represented with us than during the
winter 1890-91, when intense frost prevailed in the south of
England and on the Continent. In J anuary we visited the
meadows frequented by these Geese near Allonby, and found
plenty of evidence of their presence in the shape of feathers
and of the droppings which so often reveal their being in the
vicinity, even when not seen. The spots which they chiefly
frequent are rushy and wet; in fact, they like the swampiest
portions of reclaimed lands and the edges of open drains; they
feed chiefly in the evening and early morning, resting during the
day on quiet mosses where they are not pursued, or on the salt
marshes, They show a strong affection for particular spots. In
the winter 1890-91, many Bean Geese haunted some rough and
wet ground on the Eden a short distance from Carlisle; we
examined two that were shot, so that there could be no question
as to the species. As a rule, those which frequent our marshes
seldom seem to wander more than five or six miles inland, They
are more often shot by the farmers than by regular gunners, and
from their habit of feeding together, it often happens that more

BIRDS ye if

than one are killed at a shot. Upon Rockliffe marsh I have
seen a hundred birds together, but they chiefly consort in
gageles of from five or six to thirty; sometimes an odd bird,
perhaps one that has been pricked with shot, frequents a parti-
cular spot in self-chosen isolation for several weeks. They are
birds of powerful flight, and any one who compares the sternum
of the wild Bean Goose with that of a farm-yard bird, cannot
fail to be impressed by the degeneration of the latter. The
plumage of Bean Geese is very dense, and even when hard hit
they often fly considerable distances before they fall. They often
prolong their sojourn upon the Solway marshes into the begin-
ning of summer, It is not known whether the flocks of Geese
which visit the centre and west of the Lake district belong ex-
clusively to this species; but I am strongly of opinion that most
of the numerous notices of Geese seen in the interior of Lakeland
relate to Bean Geese. Atall events, this species has been identi-
fied at Alston, near Keswick, Cockermouth, and as far south on
our coast as Bootle. But the comparative abundance of these
Geese in the neighbourhood of the Solway is probably to be
accounted for by the fact that this district les in the line of their
migration. Journeying from Eastern Europe to winter in Ireland,
which is understood to be a great stronghold of this species, the
Geese pass over the Lake district, some visiting Windermere and
other lakes in their journey westward, and the larger proportion
passing through the west of Cumberland to reach the Irish
Channel, The Messrs. Mann have for many years noticed the
passage of these birds in late autumn and early spring, the
Geese travelling westward in November, to return in spring in
an easterly direction. I have often seen them coming from
across the Pennine fells at the former season. The Carlisle
Patriot of March 11, 1842, tells us that on the 8th of that month
a very large flock of wild Geese were seen passing over Cocker-
mouth, making a tremendous noise, and that another large party
passed over Bootle on the morning of the 6th, ‘making in an
easterly direction.’ The same journal records that a flock of sixty
wild Geese passed over Stainton and Stanwix, ‘ taking an easterly
direction, on March 21,1843. The Carlisle Journal of December
30, 1870, alludes to large flocks of Geese seen on the west coast

238 VERTEBRATE FAUNA OF LAKELAND

of Cumberland the previous week, adding that in the winter of
1864-65, which was unusually severe, many wild Geese were
shot in the west of Cumberland. The Patriot of January 21, |
1842, chronicles that ‘ during the last few days a great number
of wild Geese have been vegetating both in Bassenthwaite Water

and in Keswick Lake.’

PINK-FOOTED GOOSE
Anser brachyrhynchus, Baill.

The earliest reference to this species in Lakeland that I have
as yet discovered appears in a note which T. C. Heysham directed
to the late Mr. J. H. Gurney, dated February 23, 1842. In
this he says, ‘I feel myself extremely obliged to you for your
kind offer to send me a specimen of the Pink-footed Goose,
should you at any time have the chance to meet with it again,
and I beg to say that such a thing will be very acceptable, as it
is a rare bird in our market, as nearly all the wildfowl now taken
in the west of Cumberland are sent to Liverpool by steam.’
Mr. J. B. Hodgkinson is under the impression that this bird
was not uncommon on the Solway marshes at the time that
T. C. Heysham wrote this letter, and certainly the letter contains
a hint that Heysham knew that the bird had occurred locally.
Mr. A. Smith first met with this species on Rockliffe marsh in
1871. On the 6th of November that year he shot a solitary
bird, which he says had been about for some time, and had all
the appearance of having been wounded previously. He never
secured another specimen until the 16th of February 1888, when
he shot a fine bird out of a gaggle of thirty-four individuals,
which had frequented Rockliffe marsh for the previous two
months. On the 26th of December 1889 another Pink-footed
Goose was shot on Rockliffe marsh out of a gaggle estimated to
consist of forty birds. The head was duly forwarded to me for
identification. On the 8th of March 18921 received a note
from Mr. Smith, in which he says, ‘ There are at present a large
number of geese on the marsh, and at least three varieties,
namely, Barnacle, Pink-foot, and Bean Geese. They are likely
to remain for a short time while this hard weather continues. If

BIRDS 239

your friend Mr. Thorpe and yourself can find it convenient to
come out during the day, you might get a good look at them with
the glass, as they are generally feeding at that time.’ It is
scarcely necessary to say that we accepted the suggestion gladly,
and were rewarded for our trouble by disturbing a large flock of
Pink-footed Geese from the open surface of the marsh. Although
the weather was severe, and the cloud-capped hills that bounded
the horizon were robed in snow-drifts, the Geese were too wide-
awake to allow a close inspection. For once they were content
to pitch ina long line upon the grass, but when we attempted
to approach them by strategy, they lifted and joined the other
geese that were sitting out upon the sands. The ground upon
which these birds had been feeding for some weeks proved to
have been eaten very bare. It was covered with their droppings,
and many of their feathers strewed the ground; indeed this
last feature was so marked as to make us wonder whether the
Pink-footed Goose performs a partial moult in the spring of
the year. A few nights after our visit Mr. Smith shot one of
the Pink-footed Geese, and sent it to Mr. Thorpe. He had
previously had one successful evening with the same birds, and
assures me that the heaviest of the four turned the scales at 84
Ibs. The other three Pink-footed Geese killed the same evening
weighed 5 lbs., 6 lbs., and 74 lbs. The heaviest Bean Goose
that Smith ever scaled weighed 94 lbs. On the other hand,
a Pink-footed Goose which Nicol shot on the 22d of January
1891, only weighed 4 lbs. 14 oz., at the end of a spell of sharp
frost. The finest Grey Lag Gander I ever handled weighed just
8 lbs. Of nine White-fronted Geese shot together, the smallest
scaled 4 lbs., and the finest bird weighed just 6 lbs. The
heaviest White-fronted Goose that I ever weighed was shot in
Ireland in February 1887. It weighed 64 lbs; other birds of
the same species weighed 54 lbs., 5 lbs., 43 lbs.

Very few Grey Geese are shot on the marshes of the English
Solway at any time, but Story has a bird which he shot near
Kirkbride in the winter 1888-89. This is a Pink-footed Goose,
as was a local bird which I bought for Mr. Tandy in November
1889. Mr. W. Nicol has met with a few of these Geese near
Silloth, and he tells me that when feeding they generally keep

240 VERTEBRATE FAUNA OF LAKELAND

close together, feeding on the extreme edge of the marsh. He
correctly remarks that their call-note is shorter and more fre-
quently uttered than that of the Bean Goose, a remark which

will be borne out by any one who has a practical knowledge of

the notes of the two species. Grey Geese are rarely shot in the
interior of Lakeland, which they chiefly cross in their great
migratory journeys. Mr. Johnson is disposed, however, to think
that this species occurs not unfrequently in the neighbourhood
of Brampton ; certainly they appear on our eastern fells occasion-
ally. On the 8th of January 1887, Mr. Goodenough, a visitor at
Naworth, was out shooting on Townfoot Farm, Brampton, with
Brown, the keeper, when they came across a gaggle of sixty-nine
geese sitting in the middle of a stubble-field. They concealed
themselves behind some oat stacks, and sent some men round to
drive the Geese, which rose to a considerable height before reach-
ing the stacks. The guns brought down one Goose apiece, birds
in fine condition, which turned the scales at 8 lbs. Upon in-
vestigation the birds proved to be Pink-footed Geese; one of
them was sent to Duncan of Newcastle for preservation. My
present information, received from several gentlemen intimately
acquainted with Morecambe Bay, seems to negative the suppo-
sition that the Pink-footed Goose is at all abundant in the neigh-
bourhood of that estuary, although all my informants have shot
Pink-footed Geese on the marshes of the Ribble. Mr. Sharpe
kindly tells me that he shot a Pink-footed Goose in Morecambe
Bay in January 1891, on the only occasion that he has been
able to positively identify the bird in that portion of our faunal
area.

WHITE-FRONTED GOOSE.
Anser albifrons (Scop.).

Richardson includes the White-fronted Goose in his fauna of
Ulleswater. Dr. Heysham also states that ‘this species is
pretty common in the winter;’ so that the species has been
recognised for a hundred years as visiting Lakeland, It is,
however, a very uncommon bird, even in the neighbourhood of
the English Solway, nor has it ever been known to make its
appearance in numbers at all comparable to those of either the

y
i

BIRDS 241

Bean or the Pink-footed Geese. The late Sam Watson of Carlisle
told me that he stuffed several local specimens during his
extended residence in that city. The late Sir W. Jardine
obtained specimens on the Scottish side of the Solway which I
examined at his sale. On the English side Messrs. Mann shot
two beautiful birds out of a gaggle of five which visited the
neighbourhood of Allonby in November 1882. They also
identified the remains of a single individual, which a farmer in
their neighbourhood shot in November 1884. The bird itself
was eaten. I never heard of any others until Mr. Nicol shot an
adult near Skinburness, January 16, 1889, in quite open weather.
It was regarding this bird, the first which he had ever seen, that
Mr. Nicol wrote to me: ‘ The bird I sent you was an old bird ;
but it took in with the four Pink-footed Geese that I had seen
for some days, and when they were feeding it kept to the outside.
Had it not done so, I should most likely not have got it, as it
was nearest me when I shot at them, and I missed the other
four. Upon the 6th of January 1890 the same observer was
standing at his cottage door at Skinburness when he observed a
party of nine Grey Geese fly up from the sea. Circling round,
they alighted upon a somewhat elevated part of the marsh,
which was rapidly being submerged by the flowing tide. Run-
ning to his punt, which lay moored in a neighbouring creek, he
put off, and after paddling through some rough water in the
teeth of the wind, succeeded in working up to within fifty yards
of the birds. He fired, and to his astonishment all the birds
stayed. Eight were shot dead, and the ninth was mortally
wounded. It was the first shot that he had ever been able to
get at Grey Geese of any kind with a punt gun, and only the
second time in his life that he had met with the White-fronted
Goose, to which his whole bag belonged. They exhibited a
beautiful series of all sizes and ages, from the youngest bird
which had not a white feather, or the bird in which one or two
black feathers were just beginning to show, to the richly varie-
gated veterans of the flock.

Piled together on a cottage table, as I saw them next morning,
they made a very striking wild-fowler’s ‘trophy,;—the orange
colour of their feet embellishing the general effect produced by

Q

242 VERTEBRATE FAUNA OF LAKELAND

their handsome plumage. But the White-fronted Goose, though
an infrequent visitant, is not limited in its appearances to our
salt marshes. In January 1891 I handled a couple of adult
birds which had been shot near Plumpton the previous day.

Another specimen had been shot some years earlier in the same .

district, viz., at Edenhall, where it is preserved. I have not
heard of any examples being obtained in East Westmorland,
but the late Mr. Hindson shot a White-fronted Goose at Burton-
in-Lonsdale, just outside our southern limits, in 1830. I am
indebted to Mr. Edmund Sharpe, one of the enthusiastic ama-
teur punt-gunners of Morecambe Bay, for a notice of the recent
occurrence of this Goose upon that part of our coast. Referring
to his experiences of the winter 1890-91, when he was shooting
upon the Kent near Arnside, Mr. Sharpe makes the following
remarks : ‘ With regard to the geese, J never saw geese myself
before at the head of the bay, they only come in very hard
winters, there is no proper food for them. In the estuary of the
Ribble it is different, they are there every winter, and in con-
siderable numbers, but there are some good marshes there which
accounts for it. There were only 10 geese in the flock I saw in
January last, I got 3 of them, the other 7 have been seen several
times since [February 7th, 1891], but no one has succeeded in
shooting one. Two of those I got are unmistakeably “ white-
fronted geese””—a bar of white across the base of the bill, or
rather the “foot of the forehead,” if I may use such a term, and
barred on the breast, with orange feet. The third goose was a
very heavy bird indeed, not unlike the others in colouring, but
no sign of a white “front” nor bars on breast, and the feet a real
chill beet-root colour. These were the only geese I have ever
seen, or shot at in all the years I have used a duck punt on
the Lune, and now at the head of the bay (some 22 years).’
The fact of this species being observed (both by Mr. Sharpe and
W. Nicol) to associate with Pink-footed Geese is interesting. The
White-fronted Goose is never as heavy a bird as the other Grey
Geese. It seems to lose condition more rapidly than they do in
continued frost. But six pounds is a heavy weight for even an
old gander of the White-fronted Goose. Whereas it would be a
very light weight for any of the other Great Geese that visit us.

:
/

BIRDS 243

SNOW GOOSE.
Chen hyperboreus (Pall. ).

Although well authenticated as an occasional visitant to
Ireland, thanks to the researches of Mr. Howard Saunders and
Mr. J. E. Harting, and reported by Mr. Gaetke as having been
identified at Heligoland, this Goose was only ascertained to have
strayed to Great Britain in 1884. It was on the 22d of August
in that year that a single Snow Goose made its appearance on
the shores of the English Solway, near Allonby.

Starting for the coast by an early train, my companion and I
reached the beach about 9 A.M., the morning being fine and
calm, with a haze at sea. My astonishment may be imagined,
when a Snow Goose came flying along the edge of the water,
coming out of the west. It flew so leisurely that we felt sure
it must soon alight to rest, so, instead of trying a long shot at
it with small shot, which was all we had, I contented myself
with pointing out to William Railton, who accompanied me, the
salient points in the Goose, which I had of course no difficulty
in recognising. The bird never alighted ; all inquiries on the
Scottish and English sides of the firth failed to elicit any
detailed information. There can be no doubt that it flew up
the whole length of the Solway, and was last seen by a punt
gunner making for the Esk. Ata later date a Scotch fisherman
supplied Mr. R. Service with a description of such a bird, which
he said that he had found washed up dead. His employer, to
whom he professed to have shown the bird, disowned any such
proceeding. I have no doubt that he obtained his description
of it from one of the Scotch fowlers, to whom I had written to
describe the bird and say that it was ‘ wanted.’

Curiously enough, the species reappeared in January 1891,
almost in the same identical neighbourhood in which it had first
occurred to us. <A party of four birds were seen in a grass field
near Mowbray, by a young farmer, who was positive that they
were ‘white geese.’ His dog rose them, and he had an excellent
view of them at comparatively close quarters. Mr. R. Mann
cross-examined another man who had seen them, and was posi-
tive they were White Geese and not Swans.

244 VERTEBRATE FAUNA OF LAKELAND

Mr. J. N. Robinson received a good description of the same
birds from one of the fishermen on the Eden. We ourselves
searched for them unsuccessfully until the 22d of January. On
that day I walked beside the Eden with Mr. Thorpe, hoping
to fall in with some Smews, and to our surprise obtained a fine
view of four Snow Geese flighting down the Eden valley at a
good height. ‘The atmosphere was fortunately clear, and we thus
secured a good opportunity of watching the birds as they swung
round a bend of the river. Their anserine flight, and compara-
tively short necks (as compared with swans) were as convincing
to our incredulity as the contrast of the black flights to the
snowy body plumage. Mr. Thorpe is quite as experienced in
the flight of wild-fowl as myself, and having a cosmopolitan
acquaintance with birds, his opinion was perhaps worth more
than that of one who has perforce confined his attention hitherto
to the birds of Western Europe. We tried to mark down these
Geese. They disappeared from view behind a distant clump of
trees on the other side of the river. We searched for them
diligently on the following day, but never saw them again. Mr.
Thorpe, however, secured his revenge, for these birds having
outwitted us, in November of the same year, when he stalked
another party of Snow Geese on a creek in the North-west
Territory, eventually securing a fine old gander.

BRENT GOOSE.
Bernicla brenta (Pall.).

The earliest mention of this species, as frequenting the north-
west coast of England, appears to be that of John Denton, who,
writing in 1610, derives the name of the township of Rotington,
near Whitehaven, from the ‘ Rotgeese,’ i.e. ‘Root Geese,’ refer-
ring to the habits of the bird. He says, ‘ Rotington, willa ad
Prata Rotinge, so called because it was usually haunted with
Barnacles, Rotgeese, and wild-fowl before it was inhabited.’!
This local name has latterly become entirely obsolete.

Coming to more recent times, Dr. Heysham included the

1 Denton’s Account of Cumberland, p. 25.

BIRDS : 245

Brent Goose in his Catalogue, and as his list was almost entirely
restricted to the species represented by specimens preserved in
his own collection, the probability that he met with it himself
is a strong one, especially as T. C. Heysham undoubtedly did so.
But though this Black Goose has probably always paid more or
less annual visits to our coast, there can be no doubt that its
appearances are irregular, and that, in the absence of any feed-
ing-grounds adapted to its peculiar retirements, it never stays
long with us. Both dark and light-breasted birds occur on our
estuaries. During the winter 1885-86, some fifteen individuals
were shot on the English Solway, and these were dark-bellied.
On the 11th of January 1861 the late W. T. Mackenzie had
‘the remarkable good fortune to kill four Brent Geese at one
shot, on the Eden near Carlisle, with a gun built by Wallace of
Wigton; these were dark-breasted. A bird which I found
washed up dead on the beach near Maryport, in March 1888,
belonged to the same race as those just mentioned. I am dis-
posed to think that the light-breasted birds really occur rather
the most frequently on our coast, where we should naturally
look for the Atlantic type to predominate. The species usually
occurs with us in small bunches. Mr. W. Nicol, whose life is
spent on the Solway, and has therefore exceptional opportunities
of observing such a species as the present, shot a single Brent
near Silloth on November 11, 1888, saw five others in December,
and a flock of these Geese below Silloth in March 1889. While
shrimping on the coast west of Silloth, on August 25, 1889,
Mr. Nicol obtained a close view of a solitary, white-breasted
Brent, which twice flew round him. It came from the Scottish
side, and had perhaps passed the summer on the estuary of the
Nith. He saw a party of five Brent Geese on the Wampool in
October that year, but they only stayed a few days. He shot,
and sent to Mr. Tandy, a light-breasted Brent in January 1890.
In the severe winter of 1880-81, when the Solway Viaduct was
broken by the masses of drift-ice piled against its supports, Mr.
Nicol saw a flock of more than a hundred of these Geese flying
up the Solway Firth in an easterly direction. Bryson, another
gunner of long standing, tells me that he once worked up to a
lot of about sixty Brent Geese in the Solway, in the spring of

246 VERTEBRATE FAUNA OF LAKELAND

the year. He expected to ‘rake’ the birds, but his gun missed
fire. Brent Geese occasionally visit the salt marshes of the
upper Solway—stragglers have been shot at Rockliffe—as well
as the estuaries of Ravenglass, where Dr. Parker has obtained
examples, and of Morecambe Bay, but their favourite algw are
either absent, or too scarce to induce them to stay more than a
day or two on passage. Otherwise, they are compelled to graze
on the common grass of the marshes, as was the case in 1886,
when I dissected a fine old gander which had glutted itself with
fine wiry grass, mixed in its stomach with a quantity of fine
sand. This bird had been killed on the Solway near Glasson,
and weighed 3 lbs. 1 oz., the weather being severe. The Brent
Goose rarely occurs in the interior of Lakeland. Mr. Hutchin-
son recently showed me a fine specimen obtained inland near
Kendal, a light-breasted bird. It had probably strayed up the
Kent from Morecambe Bay.

BARNACLE GOOSE.

Bernicla leucopsis (Bechst.).

The Barnacle Goose has long been recognised as a winter
visitant to the north-west coast of England. John Ray observes
of this species ‘Maritima Lancastrize frequentat.’! Dr. Leigh
describes the bird as very common on the Lancashire coast.

Gerard quotes the myth of the development of this Goose
from a shellfish, and states that the bird fetched threepence in the
market, and was called a ‘tree Goose’ by the Lancashire folk
in his day.2, Dr. Heysham writes that Barnacle Geese ‘ are very
frequent upon our coasts in the winter,’ referring, no doubt, to
his experiences of Rockliffe salt marsh.

T. C. Heysham remarks, in a draft letter to the late Mr.
Gurney, of July 22, 1833: ‘The Barnacle is one of the most
regular winter visitors to this district, seldom varying more than
10 or 12 days either in its arrival or departure,’ another allu-
sion to Rockliffe marsh. Whatever may have been the case
before the marsh lands in the neighbourhood of Morecambe Bay

1 Syn. Meth. Av., p. 137. 2 Herball, pp. 1391, 1392.

BIRDS 247

were reclaimed, there can be no doubt that the Barnacle Goose
is only an irregular visitant to that portion of our coast-line at
the present day. The late Mr. Kirkby of Ulverston assured
Mr. Duckworth that a Barnacle shot in their neighbourhood in
November 1888 was the first that he had stuffed during a long
experience. Mr. Durnford records that several were shot near
Barrow in December 1879.1 The bird no doubt visits the dis-
trict in most winters, but only irregularly, and when travelling
between more favourite haunts. It is well known at Ravenglass,
where Dr. Parker obtained an example in November 1878, and
heard of others.? ,

Dr. Stanley, in 1829, included it in his Whitehaven list as
‘rare’ in his neighbourhood, no doubt with justice; for, though
the species is well known on our coast-line, it is only abundant
on certain salt marshes between Silloth and Floriston. It has
occasionally been observed when crossing the Pennine hills
on passage, but has very seldom been shot in the interior of
Lakeland. A specimen preserved at Edenhall was shot in that
neighbourhood, and stragglers occasionally fly up the Kden.
Richardson, who knew the species to be common on our coast, says
that, in his day, Barnacle Geese sometimes spent a few days on
Ulleswater. I have not heard of any being killed on that lake
recently ; but, in the winter of 1889-90, two Barnacle Geese
made their appearance on Windermere Lake. One bird of the
couple was shot, and is preserved by a local resident, as I learn
from Mr. H. E. Rawson. Among the dales of our eastern limits
the Barnacle is little known. It has occurred near Alston.
William Dodd wrote to T. C. Heysham, on December 8, 1834:
‘Mr. Heysham,—Sir, I have, per this day’s carrier, sent you a
Bernacle goose for which I paid 5s., not knowing whether it
might be useful to you or not, I thought it was best to name the
price that I had given for it, so that, if you keep it, you know
the price, and if you do not you would oblige me greatly by
getting it stuffed for me and returning it again when done, It
is considered a rare bird in this part.’ The late George Mawson
recorded that a flock of Barnacle Geese appeared in the neigh-
bourhood of Cockermouth in the month of January 1865, during

1 Zoologist, 1880, p. 246. 2 Ibid. 1879, p. 118.

248 VERTEBRATE FAUNA OF LAKELAND

a severe frost. Johannes Caius, to whom we probably owe our
earliest account of the Barnacle Goose as a British bird, tells us: {
‘Gregalis avis est et garrula. Ex pisce vivit, frequens apud
nos per littora in Britannia.’! Though this early author was
incorrectly informed as to the food of this Goose, his description
of the bird as noisy and as gregarious is very apt. Single birds
are rarely seen, and the chorus of a flock of Barnacles in full
cry can be heard at a surprising distance. These Geese frequent
the salt marshes of the English Solway during at least seven
months of the year, but they are very local in their choice of
feeding-grounds. Two conditions are necessary to secure their
constantly frequenting any locality, viz., a supply of young grass,
such as grows on newly-forming marsh land, and a fair security
that they will not be much interfered with during the hours of
daylight. Rockliffe marsh was formerly their most favourite
haunt, but, since 1888, they have preferred the salt marshes of
the Wampool and Waver estuary, where they are rather less
disturbed. Probably they would feed during the day, if it were
possible to do so with absolute safety—indeed, they do feed a
good deal during daylight upon their first arrival in autumn,
after which, most of their food is obtained between the evening
and early morning. Their arrival varies rather more than might
be expected from T. C. Heysham’s remark. In 1885 the first
Barnacles were seen on our coast near Allonby upon the Ist of
October. In 1886 a party of them arrived at Rockliffe on the
11th of October, which station was visited by the same birds on
the 24th of September 1887. In 1888 the first Barnacles were
shot on the 22d of October. In 1889 they arrived on September
27th, though I did not meet with them myself until a fortnight
later. In 1890 Mr. H. Leavers and two friends saw an odd
‘ Barnacle on the Esk on the 25th of September, but it was only
on the 9th of October that Mr. Nicol shot his first Barnacles of
the season out of a flock of several hundred birds newly arrived
on the Wampool and Waver estuary. In 1891, between two and
five hundred birds arrived on Long Newton Marsh on September |
28. Two were shot near Allonby on the 30th. About the
10th of October 1890 Mr. Tom Duckworth saw a flock of these

1 De rariorum animalium et avium stirpibus, 1570.

BIRDS 249

geese flying from Croglin to the Solway, travelling to the
estuary out of the east. My first opportunity of studying these
birds in October 1890, occurred on the 24th of that month, a
rough, squally day, with a strong N.W. to W. wind, and
occasional showers of sleet. On reaching Newton marsh at
10.30 A.M. we found the Barnacles assembled on the opposite
side of the Wampool. They rose and pitched again in a great
herd under the brow of the marsh, ‘clanging’ noisily. They
appeared to be unsettled. In a few minutes the assemblage
split up into two great flocks, the first flighting in a broadly
extended file to the N.E., probably to Rockliffe, while the second
lot flew in a swarm up and down Wampool, and a few went off
in threes and fours. Presently they reunited, and pitched in a
long column, many ranks deep, upon the open sand beside the
Wampool. The herd was densest in the ‘centre, the birds not
being so closely crowded together on the right and left wings.
We crept cautiously to the nearest view of the birds that could
be obtained, and enjoyed a careful study of their serried ranks,
the black jugulum and white belly of every individual showing
up to the glass with good effect. Often as I had viewed them
before, one could not contemplate a phalanx of a thousand
Barnacles without feelings of admiration. After a quarter of an
hour’s rest, the geese rose again and swept restlessly backwards
and forwards as though undecided where to alight, flying now
in long extended lines, now many abreast, always crying loudly.
At last about half of the number pitched upon the grass of
Newton marsh. We approached them cautiously. While still
a long way off, one of their sentinels left his companions and
flew slowly over the marsh, giving tongue lustily. He circled
back to his fellows. They rose again and departed en masse, at
least with the exception of four, which settled on the sands
still further away. On examining the part of the marsh in
which they had most recently been feeding, we found numerous
fresh droppings, with here and there a grey body feather. On
the 7th of the following November we were walking near the
Solway Viaduct at Bowness, when we heard the Barnacles call-
ing lustily. In another minute a lot of about fifty passed over
us in full cry, flying in a V formation, with a few stragglers

250 VERTEBRATE FAUNA OF LAKELAND

outside the figure. They were taking a short cut across the
fields from the Wampool to the Solway, making for Rockliffe
marsh. They flew with their necks moderately outstretched.
This was at 11 A.M., tide ebbing rapidly. On the 12th of
December that year we revisited Newton marsh, and soon dis-
turbed the Barnacles, which rose in a sort of loose skein. Some
of them formed a V formation, Others flew off in a long wavy
line to the sands, and others fell into two squads and pitched on
the grass again. I made a long détour to drive them, if
possible, past Mr. Thorpe, whe was hiding up on the nearest
bank of Wampool. They awaited our nearing approach with a
forest of outstretched necks, and when only three hundred yards
lay between us they rose and flew off to join the members of
their fraternity already sitting out on the far sands.

Hoping to turn the flank of the tuneful company I fired a
cartridge, and of course they lifted, but instead of wheeling up
the Wampool, and affording the sportsman of the party the coveted
privilege of offering a salute, they crossed the Waver and
pitched in the middle of Skinburness marsh. Four only dropped
away from the host,‘ and flighted towards Mr. Thorpe; these
detected him in time to swing sharp round, and thus to save
themselves from a hot reception. Early in the following
January, during frost, these Barnacles left Newton marsh for
the Scottish Solway, but returned after an absence of several
days, and frequented the Wampool and Waver until the middle of
April,when they migrated, presumably to the Arctic circle. A good
many Barnacle Geese are killed on Rockliffe and Skinburness
marshes in most winters, almost always with shoulder guns,
for they have only been known to sit to punt guns in isolated
instances. Those who kill them either wait for them at dusk or
in moonlight when the geese are on the feed, or drop on to them
in the grey light of a winter morning. Wounded Barnacles
are generally killed by the great black-backed gulls, but birds
which have only been crippled are sometimes captured out on
the sands at low water. The speed at which a Barnacle can
run recalls an amusing incident witnessed in St. James’s Park
in September 1887. An old mallard found a large crust of
bread, and waddled off with its prize in ostentatious haste. A

BIRDS 251

cry arose among the water-fowl, ‘ Heigh! stop that fellow !’ and
every bird rushed pell-mell after the fugitive. A Barnacle ran
like a lurcher, and caught up the duck, which dropped the
crust in alarm. The Barnacle stood triumphantly over the
coveted morsel. Some herring-gulls tripped up and disputed
the crust with the goose. The old duck pecked about the
grass, suddenly ran in, picked up the crust from between the
disputing parties, and rushed away across the turf. The Barnacle
pursued, and just as he was about to overhaul the mallard, the
latter dropped the crust and tore a big piece out of it, leaving
only a moiety to the bully.

When the tide of the Solway begins to ebb, and isolated sand-
banks appear above a wild waste of waters, Barnacles often rise
off Rockliffe marsh, and alight again on the first bars exposed,
there to linger until another and more extended sand-bank
becomes dry. Other variations occur in their daily routine,
such as alighting in the shallows of the estuary, and marching
in a line to the brow of the marsh opposite, which gained,
they range themselves along the edge of the loose turfs of
the saltings; or again, they alight in the water and swim a
short distance. They are never long silent, neither do they
associate with other fowl. They generally leave the Solway in
March and April, but sometimes a few linger into May. At
that season, pinioned Barnacles exhibit much restlessness and
display symptoms of the migratory impulse by their loud calls.
Those shot in open weather are considered to be good eating,
but they only bring about eighteenpence apiece to the poor
fishermen who kill them for the market. The ganders are
the largest birds, and can be distinguished externally from
females by the shape of their cranium.

MUTE SWAN.
Cygnus olor (Gmel.).

We have no evidence to show at what date the Mute Swan
was first placed upon our private waters. Certainly not later
than the seventeenth century, because Machel alludes to the fact
as already complete : ‘There were swanes formerly kept on the

252 VERTEBRATE FAUNA OF LAKELAND

foot of Deepthwaite [in Kendal Ward] wh. sat and bread
there. But I cannot find any subsequent allusion to the
presence of this swan prior to Clarke’s remark in 1787, that
Miles Sandy kept a few swans on Esthwaite, ‘which added
greatly to the beauty of that lake.’ During the first half of
our century an advance was witnessed in the domestication of
these birds. Our local newspapers of the ‘forties’ and the
‘fifties’ contain many protests against the then prevailing
custom among sportsmen to shoot the Mute Swans which had
strayed from private ponds. Probably the swan which was
shot on Bassenthwaite, ‘converted into soup, and distributed to
the poor of Keswick,’? was a stray Mute Swan.

POLISH SW AN:
Cygnus immutabilis, Yarrell.

Having already explained (vide Prolegomena) the grounds upon
which I have felt it my duty to risk unfavourable criticism by
admitting this Swan to specific rank, it only remains that I
should supply the needful particulars of the four Polish Swans
which have heen taken in Lakeland. Early in January 1892
information reached me that a small herd of wild swans had
appeared on the English Solway, in the neighbourhood of Car-
dunock. Their presence was soon ascertained by the local punt-
gunners, who however found them so wild that it was almost
impossible to work up to them. On the 14th of January,
R. Law secured one of the three swans then frequenting the
Waver. He forwarded it to me the same day. It proved to be
a typical Polish Swan, with a feathered, suppressed frontal
tubercle, and the narrow, lean, snake-like head, characteristic of
the true wild-bred Cygnus wmmutabilis. Mr. Nicol shot one of
the two survivors on the following day. Story shot the third
bird on the Wampool on January 16th, after a severe chase, for
at first it was only crippled. A fourth specimen was shot in
the Solway off Burgh Marsh on the 18th of January. The birds,
taken in the chronological order just mentioned, weighed (a
female) 17 lbs. 2 oz.; (a male) 18 lbs.; (a male) 20 lbs.;

1 Machel ms. vol. ii. p. 173. 2 Carlisle Patriot, Jan. 24, 1852.

BIRDS 253

(a female) 16 lbs. Mr. Thorpe and I carefully dissected the
bodies of the first and third. The female bird shot by Law
measured 4 feet 114 inches across the wings, measured carefully
from tip to tip. The stomach of this bird contained remains of
vegetable fibres mixed with much fine sand. The bird shot off
Burgh marsh was pure white, and appeared to be an old female.
The other three birds retained some cinnamon-tipped feathers
on the upper parts, very distinct indeed in appearance from the
grey feathers of the cygnets of Mute Swans, and affording a
grateful contrast to the blanched white body-colour. The four
birds all agreed exactly in the peculiar characters of the head
and bill.

WHOOPER SWAN.

Cygnus musicus, Bechst.

The earliest hints that I can find, that wild Swans frequented
our lakes two centuries ago, are supplied by entries in the Rydal
and Naworth Accounts. The Naworth Accounts for 1622 include
an entry, ‘Janu... 3. To Mr. John Skelton’s man of Arma-
thwate bringing a swan, ij’. vj°.’ There is another entry in 1624:
‘Decembr. 3. To one bringing a Swan, xviij®.’ Similarly Sir
Daniel Fleming enters in his expenses for 1661, ‘Dec. 1. Given
unto Parcivall Corratt’s son, who brought hither a swan, £00,
Ols. 00d.’ A similar item appears on the 27th of the following
January: ‘Given yesterday by my wife to Hird’s daughter, who
brought a swan, £00, Ols. 00d.’ The fact that these and other
swans were invariably supplied in the dead of winter, renders it
tolerably certain that they were wild birds. The statement
which Robinson made in 1709 probably represents an admix-
ture of truth and fiction. If it relates to wild swans, the first
sentence may be accepted, but the portion bracketed here must
be rejected: ‘There come every year a number of Swans to winter
upon this water [and in the spring they breed on the little
islands in the water, or in the sedge growing by the sides of it];
and as soon as the young brood gets wing, the old ones carry
them into the southern rivers.’ !

Richardson writes in 1793, of Anas cygnus, Wild Swan :

1 Essay toward the Nat, History of Westmorland and Cumberland, p. 60.

254 VERTEBRATE FAUNA OF LAKELAND

‘This bird visits the lake [Ulleswater] only preceding or during
severe frosts: his appearance is looked upon as the prognostic of
a hard winter.’ Dr. Heysham wrote too early to discriminate
between the Whooper and Bewick’s Swans, but the species that
he was acquainted with was probably the Whooper ; he explains
that its trachea distinguishes it from the Mute Swan. We can
hardly doubt that such an acute observer would have noticed as
new the sternum of Bewick’s Swan, had any adult examples .
of that small swan come under his personal observation.

Dr. Heysham remarks : ‘A flock or two of wild Swans gener-
ally visit Cumberland every severe winter. Last winter [1794-
1795, which proved severe] a flock frequented the Esk near
Netherby, three of which were shot [i.e. by Sir James Graham
and his gamekeeper].’ The winter 1795-96 ‘ was remarkably
mild,’ consequently ‘ neither wild geese nor Swans were seen’ at
Netherby. The Carlisle Journal of Feb. 19, 1803, records the
death of a bird which from the measurements given was no
doubt a Whooper: ‘On the 9th, William Scott, groom to the
Right Hon. Thomas Wallace of Carleton-hall, shot a swan in the
river Eamont which measured five feet six inches from the beak
to the end of the tail, and seven feet six inches across, from the
tips of the wings.’ On the 5th of March the same year, the
Carlisle Journal adds the information: ‘On Sunday the 13th
ult. upwards of 30 Swans were seen upon Bassenthwaite water:
they made a most beautiful appearance. Three Swans have been
shot in that neighbourhood.’ Writing in 1828, Dr. Stanley of
Whitehaven states: ‘Anas Cygnus, the Wild Swan.—In hard
winters small flocks are seen ; several were shot near Ennerdale
Lake two or three years ago.! Under the nom de plume of
‘Philagros, an unknown individual records, on January 31,
1830, that a herd of about thirty swans, Whoopers, from the
measurements given of one shot, had recently visited Winder-
mere, Esthwaite, and Coniston. 2

Mr. T. C. Heysham had already made the personal acquaint-
ance of the Whooper, since he states in the sixth volume of the
Philosophical Magazine: ‘Small flocks of wild Swans are seen
almost every winter in Solway Firth, and generally one or two

1 Mag. Nat. Hist. 1829, p. 276. 2 Ib. 1830, p. 439.

Nii

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ie

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MONKHILL

BIRDS 255

procured. On the 20th of February [1829] two were killed
out of a flock of five on Burgh Marsh.’ In a draft letter of
October 14, 1831, Heysham says, ‘Two or three good things
have lately been met with in this neighbourhood [1.e. in the early
months of the year], including a specimen of the Whooper
Swan, two of the Great Snipe, and a pair of the Bohemian
Chatterer. An undated letter, probably draughted in 1838,
runs thus: ‘ Mr. Heysham presents his compliments to Miss Gar-
forth, and has taken the liberty to ask her if she thinks a wild
Swan would be at all acceptable to Mr. and Mrs. Lawson at
Brayton. He makes this enquiry at the request of a poor
industrious man of the name of Musgrave, who has now one
alive in his possession, and which he intends to keep until
Saturday. He states that Mr. Lawson has at present a very
considerable number of Water Birds in his Park, and provided
that he has not already a Wild Swan, it may perhaps be an
acquisition, as it very rarely happens that one is captured alive.
Wednesday evening.’ Whether this was a Whooper I cannot
positively say, but I have little doubt that it was. Heysham
writes to the late Mr. Gurney on February 14, 1838: ‘Many
thanks to you for your valuable present of a young specimen of
Cygnus Bewickw, which reached me in excellent order on Monday
last. This is by much the smallest specimen of that species I
have yet examined, but the young birds, not only of C. Bewickii,
but also of C. ferus, vary very much in size, etc. Large flocks
of Swans during the last ten days have been seen in various
parts of this country, but very few hitherto have been obtained.
I have only seen one, which however was a most magnificent
specimen of C. ferus.’ It may be remarked, a propos of this, that
a specimen of the Whooper preserved in the Newcastle Museum
is labelled ‘mature female, shot near Carlisle, winter of 1838.
Presented by Mr. Wm. Green.’ Heysham adds to the above
letter, ‘The frost returned again on Saturday last, and has
gradually increased in intensity ever since, and so far there is
not the slightest indication of any change.’ Mr. Hindson re-
marks of the Whooper in his Ms.: ‘In 1838 several were killed
in the Lake district. Dr. Cockburn shot two in the Lowther
river, near Bampton, Westmorland. Mr. Peter Wilman and

256 VERTEBRATE FAUNA OF LAKELAND

myself were standing on Leckbeck Bridge, in December of the
above year, when four of these Swans passed over our heads,
not more than twenty feet above us. Unfortunately we neither
of us had a gun, although we had been out shooting a short time
before.’

A loose note of T. C. Heysham runs thus: ‘The Hooper, or
Whistling Swan.—Jan. 27, 1848.—Three birds of this species
were in the Market this day shot on Burgh and Rockliffe marshes,
an old bird and two young ones. Four were seen flying over
the town in Decr. 1847, and during the same winter three were
shot in the neighbourhood of Carlisle. Jan. 29, 1848.—I was
informed this day that seven Wild Swans were seen on Burgh
marsh, six of which were shot a few days ago and forwarded to
London for sale.’ A specimen of the Whooper preserved at
Edenhall is recorded in the Carlisle Patriot of January 14, 1865,
as having been recently shot ‘by R. C. Musgrave, Esq. of Edenhall,
on the banks of the Eden near Udford.’ Another adult Whooper,
which had for some days frequented the middle reach of Ulles-
water lake, quite alone, was shot there by one John Simpson, on
the 21st of January 1867 ; as recorded in the Carlisle Journal of
February 1, 1867. A few other specimens have been seen, if
not actually obtained, in subsequent years upon our lakes, in the
Eden valley, and the neighbourhood of the Solway Firth.
Though wild swans are popularly considered very rare in Lake-
land, the more experienced and aged gunners of the Solway have
at one time or another met with, and even shot, a few wild swans.
Bryson says that once, early in the seventies, he saw a herd of
thirty-six wild swans on the Solway. He has since met with a
few others while punt-shooting, but only in very small numbers.

It does not appear that any Lakeland naturalist has hitherto
attempted to describe the habits of wild Whoopers. I shall
therefore endeavour to supply the deficiency, even at the risk of
being voted prolix. It was on the 7th of February 1891, that,
visiting Monkhill Lough, I found four wild swans swimming
on the edge of the sedge. Hearing them ‘clanging, I at once
conjectured that they must be Whoopers. Soon after my arrival
I had irrefutable evidence of their specific identity in their
well-defined ‘hooping,’ the action which accompanied this call

BIRDS 257

being already familiar to me, as studied in a pinioned bird at
the Zoological Gardens. They were feeding in company, and
all four necks were sometimes straightened or bent forward at
the same instant. For a few moments they would observe
silence ; then they ‘hooped, and vociferating their peculiar clang,
they all fell to feeding again. So closely did they herd together
that two birds might often be mistaken for one. They appeared
to be well contented with their new quarters, paying no atten-
tion to the barking of a dog. Once, indeed, one of the Whoopers
seemed to be rather startled by the action of a Coot, which
suddenly bobbed up beside it ; the Swan flapped its wings un-
easily, but did not attempt to fly. These Whoopers swam rapidly
through the water, the head and neck slightly thrown back, and
the black butt of the tarsus standing out in bold relief against
the white body-colour. Their necks were supple and arched
sinuously, held erect when the birds were at ‘attention, arched
when they fed, but twisted in various forms to rearrange the
plumage. Watching the four birds, you could see at the same
moment one fellow resting with neck erect, its next neighbour
arching its neck, a third shooting its neck forward in the shape
of the letter S. On the whole there existed a wonderful spon-
taneity of action between these birds. On the 9th of February
I called out Mr. J. N. Robinson to visit the lough. The two
old Mute Swans and their three cygnets were swimming near
the mill. The four Whoopers were browsing in the sedge beds
in the centre of the lough. A solitary Mute Swan was feeding
alone, not as yet daring to associate with the distinguished
strangers. It was pleasant to contrast the long-drawn, flat bodies
of the Whoopers with the more rounded outline of Cygnus olor.
The wild fellows swam together ; one and another arched their
necks backwards in a loop, dipped gracefully forward, and then,
raising their necks, allowed the water to trickle over their
shoulders. This was their method of bathing, but there was
nothing violent about it. On the contrary, the action was easy
and majestic, as became such lordly fowl. When they caught
sight of us they became metamorphosed at once into a ‘ stiff-
necked generation, and hurried off in line through the sedge.
Reaching open water on the other side they became somnolent;
R

258 VERTEBRATE FAUNA OF LAKELAND

first one, and then another, gracefully reclined at ease, floating idly
on the water, and burying their long and supple necks in the
dense feathering of their dorsal plumage, while on either side their
two companions kept vigilant watch with necks uplifted, and
intent to detect any signs of renewed danger. It was noontide,
and the winter sun shone out upon the still waters of the lough;
before us, on the further margin of the bank of sedge, floated
the strange voyageurs ; behind the birds was a tiny sea of glitter-
ing waters, against which the forms of these beautiful strangers
looked dark by force of contrast. Only when we showed our-
selves more openly did the Whoopers forego their attitude of
disengaged ease; hitherto they had contented themselves with
occasionally uttering their trumpet-call, but now a bird ‘ hooped,
and again they crossed the sedge, this time in a fresh direction.
So strongly matted together was the aquatic vegetation, at least
in one place, that, instead of swimming through it, the swans
lifted their legs over the submerged plants which barred their
progress ; they swayed their bodies heavily as they crossed the
barrier and regained an open track through the sedge. All at
once the leader sounded his bugle-call, slightly throwing up the
head when expelling the sound. A second bird passed, and the
leader fell back in the file, but continued to sound his musical
refrain at intervals. On the following day I introduced Mr. F.
P. Johnson to these Swans, which on seeing us sounded the
bugle-call for retreat, and leaving the bed of sedge in which they
were browsing, paddled with stiffly-held necks towards the other
side. There at first they maintained an attitude of watchfulness,
but their feeling of uneasiness gradually wore off ; presently two
of them lazily twined their long necks across their backs, their
companions alone maintaining a careful outlook. Having secured
a good position, we could minutely scrutinise their yellow and
black bills, and even their eyes, through a very powerful field-
glass ; sometimes the sentinels flapped their great snowy pinions,
but not with any intention of deserting us. We found it diffi-
cult to describe their ‘clang’ on paper. When we showed our-
selves we heard distinctly, ‘ hoop—hooper—hoop’; then came a
‘clang’ followed by another ‘hoop.’ When a bird hoops the
neck is stiffened; this exercise is generally followed by a slight

BIRDS 259

pause. On the 20th of February I spent a whole afternoon
with these birds in company with Mr. Thorpe, who was most
kindly trying to photograph them for me, though the experiment
was defeated by distance. It was in vain that we drove them
about the lough, but they never attempted to take wing until a
pinioned Mute Swan took fright at our manceuvres, and flapped
heavily across the water in a vain attempt to fly. This was
more than the nerves of the Whoopers could stand. Though
manifestly unwilling to quit their sanctuary, the wild Swans rose
heavily, beating the water with their feet and long wings until
they got fairly under weigh, when, wheeling round, they crossed
the lough in single file, and passing close to us sped across the
ploughed fields in a bee-line to the Solway, looking immense as
they loomed past with long outstretched necks. On subsequent
inquiry it turned out that these Swans were in the habit of
taking occasional flights to the estuary as well as to Thruston-
field Lough. I continued to study them until the 17th of
March, when Messrs. Heywood Thompson and Hugh Hornby
accompanied me to inspect them. We found them swimming in
the sedge, considerably less timid than when we originally made
their acquaintance, for all four Swans simultaneously reclined
their necks in a posture of rest, and so continued until, disliking
our scrutiny, they retreated further into the sedge. Desiring to
drive them towards my friends, I stood out in the open at the
head of the runner and heard the Swans hooping. One fellow
flapped his great wings as he sat on the sedge, before re-adjusting
them under cover of the flank feathers. Another looked very
picturesque as it lazily extended the right wing, lifting it up in
order to trim the under-coverts, evidently proud of its white
array. This was the last occasion upon which we saw these four
Whoopers, although the birds lingered in the district until the
end of the month before commencing their journey northward.

BEWICK’S SWAN.

Cygnus bewicki, Yarr.

The first specimen of Bewick’s Swan known to have been
killed in Lakeland was shot in the neighbourhood of Castle-

960 VERTEBRATE FAUNA OF LAKELAND

steads. This I learn from Captain Johnson, who well remem-
bers seeing the birds flying about the river. Of specimens that
I have examined, the earliest is an adult killed in December
1879, at Edenhall, where it is preserved. Mr. Raine has a
second adult, killed in the same neighbourhood a little later.
Mr. W. Duckworth observed a Swan of this species alight upon
the frozen surface of Monkhill Lough on November 23, 1884.
Three years later, on December 31, 1887, a single bird in very
poor condition was shot near Skinburness by a fisherman. This
was eaten by his family. A herd of Bewick’s Swans visited
Ulleswater a short time afterwards, as described in the following
‘Extract from the Note-Book of W. H. Parkin, Esq.,’ kindly
supplied through Mr. Edward Tandy: ‘Jany. 2nd, 1888.—Saw
three Swans opposite Terrace. W.H. Parkin, Junr., and I went
after them, got a long shot—no result; followed them up to
Glencoine. Did not get a shot. They lit again opposite Sand-
wike Beckfoot. W. H. Parkin, Junr., did not see them next
day. Janry. 4th—Saw 15 in Rampsbeck Bay; fired two long
shots at them. They rose and lit again just opposite Beauthorn.
W. Parkin, Junr., fired rook rifle at them. No result. They flew
up the lake. So rough and stormy, he could not see any more of
them. They were seen next day at Patterdale on the land, and
were shot at. Janry. 7th—W. F. Winn and I went all round
the Lake, but could not see anything of them. When seen at
Patterdale there were 20 of them. Here last seen on Thursday
evening, flying over the hills in the direction of Wythburn.
Jan. 23rd.—I and 8. W. L. Sanderson went up to Brotherswater,
hearing that 4 Swans were there. We each shot one and
wounded another, which my keeper killed next day in Table
Bay, Ulleswater. Respective weights are: 12 lbs., 12 Ibs.,
10 lbs.’

‘I may add to the above, that the birds were very shy, but
did not take flight till shot at; and it was only with patient
stalking and waiting that we got near them on the 23rd inst.
The 4th bird was not seen again.’ I examined one of these
birds, and another killed during the same month on the decoy
pond at Lowther, Westmorland.

On the 25th of December 1888 Bryson fell in with three

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BIRDS 261

Bewick’s Swans upon the Solway, one being adult. The other
two were Cygnets, and were in the act of swimming up to their
companion for protection from a Great Black-backed Gull, when
the punt gunner killed all three at a shot. The Cygnets were
afterwards staked at cards, and changed hands in consequence.
I traced the gamesters in time to find one of the Cygnets
plucked and headless. The old bird proved to be a male, and
in finer condition than any other example of this Swan which I
have had the pleasure of examining. Some parts of the body,
especially the intestines, were thickly invested with fat, and the
bird weighed 16 lbs., in our experience a heavy weight for this
Swan. The weather was open, and the birds had probably been
in the vicinity for a few weeks. The Cygnet which I dissected
was in fair condition, but internal fat was entirely absent.
Its stomach contained some fine grit, together with three blades
of grass and a small piece of green seaweed. The gizzard of
the adult contained a little grass, together with a quantity of
estuary sand. The plumage of these fine birds proved to be
infested with many white parasites which showed considerable
activity, and clung tenaciously to the feathers. In January 1889
I discovered that a pair of these beautiful birds had availed
themselves of the protection afforded to wild-fowl on Monkhill
Lough by taking up their quarters on that sheet of water.

A pair of Mute Swans, pinioned birds, belonging to the
Corporation of Carlisle, had been placed upon the lough some
time previously, and we were thus able to compare the two
species. Not that the tame Swans relished the presence of the
strangers; on the contrary, they desired to drive them off the
water, but their efforts in this direction were thwarted by the
pertinacity with which the rare birds haunted their safe retreat.
When comparing the two species side by side, we came to the
conclusion that Bewick’s Swan carries its neck more erect than
the Mute Swan. The strangers were of course much inferior in
size to the domesticated birds. Though pure white, excepting
some rusty colour about the head, they were not of such a
snowy whiteness as the Mute Swan: they generally carried the
neck perpendicular to the water when swimming, the lower neck
indeed partly submerged ; they arched their necks occasionally,

262 VERTEBRATE FAUNA OF LAKELAND

- but with less frequency than the Mute Swans; they swam
lower in the water, their sterns being nearly in a plane with the
water, not arching upwards, but carried a few inches only above
the water. On their first arrival the Bewick’s Swans were shy
and apprehensive of danger, but finding that they were entirely
unmolested, they became less retiring, though through the day
they were almost always to be seen in the centre of the water.
One morning Mr. Halton and I started early, and arrived at the
lough long before sunrise, hoping to see the wild Swans flighting
high in the air when the day broke. Happening to strike a
match to light my pipe, as we crouched behind a hedge above
the water, I alarmed the ever-vigilant Coots, and they sang out
‘danger’ so lustily as to disturb all the other birds. The wild
Swans proved to have been sleeping at the edge of the lough,
but when thus awakened they sheered off from the bank, and
paddled out into the centre of the lough. They seemed to obtain
all their food in the lough, and fed during the day in a bed of
sedge. On their first arrival they were cautious, and one bird
would act as sentinel while its companion leant forward to
browse with neck submerged upon the water-weeds. But when
their first suspicions had been lulled to rest they often fed
together, submerging their heads simultaneously for from eight
to seventeen seconds. In deep water they solved the difficulty
of reaching the bottom by feeding stern uppermost, thus im-
mersing the fore part of the body as well as the head and neck.
They manifested no intolerance of smaller birds. Once when
the Swans were swimming side by side, a Goldeneye swam boldly
between the two; a Wigeon brushed rudely past them, but its
impertinence remained unnoticed. The wild birds always fed
with a keen appetite, occasionally arching their necks and
shaking their bills laterally, ceasing at once to feed if any signs
of danger appeared, and gazing with stiffened necks in the
direction from which they apprehended danger. They appeared
to be very active birds, inured to the vicissitudes of a hard,
roving life. They never took long flight in our presence, but
we were assured by others that they occasionally left the lough
at dark in order to repair to the river Eden. The only flights
that we saw performed were undertaken in order to proceed

*

BIRDS 263

from one end of the lough to the other. Nor did we hear any
cry, except that of the male calling to his mate, to whom he
was devotedly attached. As spring advanced the wild Swans
seemed to become more shy and restless, and on March 26 we
found that they had forsaken us, No Swans were shot in Lake-
land to my knowledge in the winter 1889-90 ; but in December
1890 a few Bewick’s Swans visited the neighbourhood of the
Solway. It is probable that some of the number visited More-
cambe Bay, where Mr. Sharpe saw some Swans in January 1891,
though their specific identity remained undecided. Between
the 7th and 14th of December 1890 six wild Swans were seen on
a piece of water at Crookhurst, near Allonby. Two wild Swans
made their appearance at Ravenglass on December 9, Joseph
Farren the fisherman approached a herd of ten while they were
resting on the sea-beach the following day. The same man met
with a much larger herd of Swans in the spring of 1888. On
the 5th of March that year he saw a party of twenty-six Swans
circling over the Ravenglass estuary, evidently anxious to alight,
a wish frustrated by there being a good many people about, in
consequence of which they headed off in a N.W. direction, as
though making for the Isle of Man. He described them as ‘a
good bit less in size than the tame Swans, so that they were
almost certainly a party of Bewick’s Swans. A solitary bird
was noticed at the same time by Mr. Ross. Mr. Nicol reported
that six Swans were seen near Skinburness on Dec. 4, 1890;
that he shot one (which he sent to me) on December 13; a
second being secured about the same time and sent to Mr.
Barker by John Bell. The bird which reached me was an adult
female, in very poor condition, only weighing 94 lbs. Mr.
Barker and I weighed his bird in the flesh at his house, and
found that it turned the scales at 10% lbs. It proved on dis-
section to be a male. When shooting on Burgh marsh on
December 15, 1890, I happened to observe a large white bird
sitting alone upon the open marsh. All at once it rose, and
speedily revealed its identity as its long outstretched neck came
within the field of the glasses. Fortunately for my companion,
Mr. Thorpe, who, as a sportsman, was anxious to bag a Swan, the
bird took a long low flight across the marsh, and alighted in a

264 VERTEBRATE FAUNA OF LAKELAND

wide, open creek, where it began to feed, occasionally raising its
long neck in order to watch our movements. After making a
careful circuit, we decided that it was a useless risk for the two of
us to try to stalk the bird; consequently I ceded to the sports-
man the honour of a tedious and painful creep to the creek in
which the bird was feeding, lying flat whenever he saw the bird
raise its head, and crawling forward whenever it grazed upon
the grass. Meanwhile I watched CyGNus from a distance, saw
it leave the water, and begin to move about the marsh, uttering
a loud clattering, such as might be compared to the sound of
two large pebbles being knocked together. Mr. Thorpe heard
this at a very short distance, and thought that it was answered
by another Swan far away; but, as the Swan turned away from
him while vociferating this ‘ klack—klack, he could not see what
action accompanied the production of this sound. Eventually
he succeeded in shooting the bird, which proved to be a young
Bewick’s Swan in change. ‘The delicate cinnamon dress of im-
maturity had already been in part replaced by the snow-white
plumage of the full-dressed bird. Though in fair condition,
this example only weighed 8 lbs. A few blades of marsh grass
were all the food that it contained.

»HELD DUCK
Tadorna cornuta (S. G. Gmel.).

The sandy estuaries which indent the coast of the north-
west of England have been the haunt of the Sheldrake from
time immemorial. Between 1612 and 1634 these birds were
often purchased for the table of Lord William Howard, being
variously entered in that nobleman’s accounts as ‘Shelldrake,’
‘Skeldrake ’ and ‘Shelfoule,’ the supply being no doubt obtained
from the Solway Firth. Dr. Heysham knew the species as a
resident on the coast, and T. C. Heysham furnished Cumbrian
specimens for the collection of Henry Doubleday. Unlike most
of our wild-fowl, the Sheldrake or ‘ Shellduck,’ as itis most often
called, shows little or no diminution of its numbers in conse-
quence of modern innovations. Many pairs nest among the
sandhills of the Ravenglass estuary, and others on the Duddon,

BIRDS 265

at the south end of Walney, and on the Solway Firth between
Mowbray and Longtown. The majority of birds nestle in
rabbit-holes, which are variously selected, some being burrows
in hedge-bottoms, in preserved warrens, on mosses, and on salt-
marshes, but most frequently either in the sand-dunes blown
together by winter storms or in sandy banks. Mr. J. Cairns
tells me that he has watched house-hunting Sheldrakes on
several occasions, and found that, in the very early hours of the
morning, these birds examined the holes in a sandy bank beside
the Sark near Gretna. The male usually remained outside
and on the alert, while his mate rambled in and out of the
holes, trying first one burrow and then another. The Shel-
drake sometimes nestles at a very slight depth, so that a long
arm can easily reach the nest, but more frequently at a depth
of several feet. But it would be a mistake to imagine that
these birds nested exclusively in burrows. Every year or so
one or two nests are found well concealed under a dense growth
of gorse or old heather. As lately as June 1891 James Smith
showed me a beautiful Sheldrake’s nest in situ, 2.¢e. under a
thick furze covert, on an open and much frequented common,
about a mile from the estuary of the Solway. When returning
home from the haaf-net fishing in the early morning, Smith
had to cross this common, and used to see several pairs of
Sheldrakes at that time, which from their actions appeared to
be nesting. On June 12th he marked a Sheldrake drop into
the middle of a long strip of furze, and, cutting his way with
much difficulty through the cover, found that the old bird had
made a regular run from the spot where she dropped into the
furze to her nest, which consisted of a depression in the soil
where the furze was very thick, and contained nine eggs, to-
gether with a more copious furnishing of down than in any
other nest which has come under my notice. The old bird
had to thread her way through the roots of the furze for. about
fifty yards from the spot into which she first dropped, but the
two runs which she had made from the nest to the outside of
the cover were very short. It seems probable that Sheldrakes
originally nested chiefly among rocks and in such thick cover as
that now described, and that their object in taking possession

266 VERTEBRATE FAUNA OF LAKELAND

of rabbit-holes, a traditional use from which they now rarely
depart, was in its first initiation a device to secure the sitting
female from being snapped by a prowling fox or other ‘ground
vermin’ during the period of incubation. Sheldrakes pair in
February and March, and many birds nest in May, a few even
earlier, but very few young ones hatch before the middle of
June, and there are always late broods, the progeny of birds
robbed of their first nests at the beginning of the season. The
earliest full clutch of Sheldrake eggs that I can vouch for,
consisted of a clutch of nine, taken near Bowness-on-Solway on
the 4th of May 1889, but many birds delay laying until the
first days of June, especially in cold springs, and one or two
of the first eggs are often dropped on the marsh or on the sand-
hills. I was formerly under the impression that these dropped
eggs always proved unfertile, but have since learnt that such is
not necessarily the case. The number of eggs constituting a
full clutch in my experience varies from seven to eleven. The
Sheldrake flies into her burrow so as to leave little or no track,
but footprints can sometimes be detected if a shower of rain
has fallen shortly before the return of the bird. Occasionally
a few flakes of down adhere to the heather or sandbents near
the nesting hole, and thus afford a clue to the whereabouts of
the nest. When the young are hatched, the parent birds
conduct their brood to the estuary sands, which often entails
the young birds travelling a mile or half a mile through the
fields. Even when the wide sands are reached, the young are
exposed to a good many dangers, many of them being run down
and captured alive by the fishermen, in spite of the pace at
which they hurry over the sands, the distance they traverse,
and the pitiful devices adopted by the old birds to divert the
attention of their pursuers from their tender young to them-
selves. Few of the young so captured are reared successfully.
Every year a number of nests are robbed, and a large percentage
of young birds secured, but only a very small number are ever
reared, though if the ducklings are brought up beside the sea-
shore they seldom disappoint their owners, maturing rapidly
when they obtain a sufficient supply of their natural dietary.
James Smith of Drumburgh has had a considerable share of

BIRDS 267

success in rearing young Sheldrakes on a small pond beside his
cottage, and showed us that their sexes can early be distin-
guished by size, but especially by the fact that the males have
the bill of a pure yellowish red, when feathered, while the
ridge of the bill is long and dusky in the young female. An
adult wild male Sheldrake in good condition weighs about three
pounds, but pinioned birds vary much in size, and to some
extent in the time which they require to assume full plumage.
A young male, reared in 1888, refused to breed in 1889, though
confined with an old and amatory female, but it voluntarily
mounted guard over some flappers of its own kind, introduced
upon the same pond. A four-year-old male paired with a
female aged seven years in 1890, and the latter nested under a
stack in a farmyard at Whitrigg. Seven young ones hatched
out, but four of the number were killed by rats while still very
small. The three survivors grew up fine vigorous birds, and
had feathered nicely when I saw them swimming on the
farmyard pond with their parents on the 19th July. Not
being pinioned, however, they took French leave one day and
never returned, to the chagrin of the farmer. Smith hada
pair of pinioned Sheldrakes on his own pond in the spring of
1890. Two pairs of wild Sheldrakes came to the same pond,
and, as their custom is, fought so much, disturbing their tame
brethren, that he shot one of them to scare the others away. Even
the pinioned birds became very amatory in March. The drake
engaged in many encounters, particularly with a gamecock,
which he thrashed soundly. On bright spring mornings the
male often whistled, and the female uttered the curious laugh to
which I have often listened when watching a pair of Sheldrakes
flighting restlessly around the point of Rockliffe marsh in the
spring-time. The whistle of the drake is quite distinct from
the deep ‘kuk’ which I have heard uttered by an old male
when covering the retreat of his young, which were crossing
the Ravenglass estuary under the espionage of the mother bird.
Though rarely breeding in captivity, either with its own kind,
or by crossing with the domesticated mallard, the Sheldrake in
some instances becomes very tame and domesticated. We often
saw an old duck Sheldrake at home in Smith’s cottage, and

268 VERTEBRATE FAUNA OF LAKELAND

during the winter months this veteran used to tap with her
bill at the front door to be let in for her evening meal, which
having been consumed, she made her way to a favourite corner
in the fowl-house. But the wild Sheldrake is eminently of a
cautious disposition, even in the breeding time when most birds
forego a large share of their dread of man. During the summer
of 1890, Mr. Farren, the Ravenglass fisherman, was able to
watch the movements of one of these shy birds with a telescope,
since she nested among some sandhills within full view of his
cottage door. . He assured me that this bird, when sitting on
her eggs, usually left her nest for two periods of about half an
hour each in the morning and in the evening; that she rejoined
her male companion, and that they flew off and fed together.
When the female had satisfied her hunger, she invariably re-
turned to her charge. I have sailed close up to a brood of
well-feathered Sheldrakes, off Bowness, and though an old bird
in the company took wing and settled out of gunshot, the
young only swam into a wedge formation, sinking rather deep
in the water, their necks appearing in consequence rather long
and snake-like. But try to approach Sheldrakes in the open,
even when on the feed, and you will find that they will not
often allow themselves to be endangered. They prefer to feed
with an ebbing tide, and avoiding the higher ridges of sand,
which the wind soon dries, obtain their shell-fish chiefly on the
lower stretches of sand which are well watered, and being of a
more firm and clay-like composition than the rest, retain
perhaps half an inch of water on their surface. They feed in
little parties, but by preference in flocks of twenty or thirty
birds, running eagerly hither and thither, with necks eagerly
outstretched, and bodies arching into sinuous curves. If
satisfied, and clustering together on the sands or at the marsh
edge, they appear at a distance and to the naked eye to be
nearly as white as Sea-gulls, and very white in flight. When
the tides are running high and the Sheldrakes find their
favourite resting-places covered, they may usually be seen
flighting briskly, and at a considerable height, above their
favourite estuary. In boisterous weather they often shift from
exposed situations to more sheltered feeding-grounds, and at

BIRDS 269

such times appear on sand beds which at other times they rarely
visit. Many of the young birds leave our coast in autumn.
Stragglers have been shot as far inland as Penrith, generally in
immature plumage.

MALLARD.
Anas boscas, L.

The Wild Duck breeds freely on our Lakeland mosses, but
more numerously in the vicinity of Bassenthwaite, Derwent-
water, Esthwaite, and such other sheets of inland waters as
provide suitable cover for nesting purposes. Wild Duck pair
early, often in January, and those which remain to breed with
us nest from March to July. While the females are sitting the
males congregate together. Ifa female loses her eggs she again
seeks the companionship of the male, until such time as she
begins to incubate a second clutch. I have never observed a
Mallard drake taking any charge of the young, which appear to
be protected by the female exclusively. It is pretty to see the
proud solicitude which a female Wild Duck displays towards
her brood even when they have attained nearly full growth and
are capable of taking care of themselves ; remaining a couple of
yards from the young birds, with neck erect, prepared to give a
signal for instant flight should an enemy appear. The young
birds live in a family party for some weeks at least, nor do they
separate until they have acquired vigorous powers of flight. I
have examined some young Wild Duck which had been caught
in the ditches near Allonby as fiappers, and found no difficulty
in distinguishing the males by their superior size, longer bodies,
and smarter appearance. Half-bred birds are often kept by the
farmers, but require to be pinioned if they are to stay at home.
The old drakes don eclipse dress in May, and only resume full
plumage in September and October, rather later than the young
drakes. Mr. J. N. Robinson showed me a brood of eleven
young Wild Duck on July 8, 1890; the drakes were already
commencing to sport the curled tail-feathers, and showed a few
white feathers upon the neck, forming an incipient ring. The
bills of these young drakes were already becoming green, while

270 VERTEBRATE FAUNA OF LAKELAND

the mandibles of the females were dark brown, edged with
yellow. Two couples of these young birds paired off in the
following spring, and went to nest at the beginning of March, one
of the ducks dropping a couple of eggs before she made a nest,
and laid a complete clutch, which she was incubating when a
fox carried her off. In autumn the Wild Duck bred with us
resort to our estuaries to feed in the ‘dubs’ and ‘gutters’ of
the salt marshes, their numbers being largely reinforced by im-
migrants, which are generally held to be rather smaller and
darker than the home-breed.

Mallard, or ‘Grey Duck,’ as they are chiefly called in North
Cumberland, are more sought after by flight shooters than any
other species, partly from the frequency with which these birds
return to feed in favourite creeks and muddy bottoms, such as
that near ‘the grey stone’ on Burgh marsh. ‘They are also the
favourite game of punt gunners. More were shot by both
shoulder and shot guns during the winter 1890-91 than the
sportsmen of Lakeland had obtained for a good many seasons.
Mallard like to haunt fresh-water lakes by day, and to repair
to the sea marshes at night. There is a regular flight line,
adopted by this species, between Morecambe Bay and Winder-
mere. The birds feed on the coast chiefly and rest inland upon
the lake. Hearing that a large number of ducks had assembled
on the ‘outdubs,’ a continuation of Esthwaite Lake, Mr.
Archibald visited the spot on January 4, 1891, and saw about
a hundred and twenty Mallard there collected, in addition to
thirty Teal. Mr. Sharpe shot thirty-one Mallard in Morecambe
Bay one day in January, and had nearly as good bags some
other days. Mr. H. Threfall tells me that the Mallard is
always numerous in Morecambe Bay. Mr. Batson writes that
‘the commonest fowl on all of these estuaries is the “grey” duck.’

In East Westmorland Mallard are not so numerous as might
be expected, but during winter a few birds resort to Sunbiggin
Tarn and Great Rundle Tarn near Appleby. Many frequent
Hawswater, Ulleswater, and other lakes, as well as our rivers,
particularly the Eden. Many frequented the Eden near Lang-
wathby in the winter of 1890-91. It was rather sad to see the
half-starved birds sitting in bunches upon the edge of the ice.

BIRDS at (a |

One or two were picked up dead, and from their emaciated cone
dition had evidently succumbed to their prolonged hardships ;
others obtained a supply of food about such few springs as had
not frozen. In open weather you can generally see a nice
‘sprinkling’ of Mallard at Edenhall pond, and enjoy their noisy
| quacking as they rise wild and circle round above the tops of
the trees, while the Coots and Dabchicks dive unconcernedly in
these retired waters. The males of this species probably
average five to every female Wild Duck. Nicol killed twelve
Mallard at one shot, all of them drakes. The females are not
only less numerous, but they are more difficult to retrieve if
wounded, as they show great craft in hiding up in cover when
they have been winged. |

Old birds of either sex are always shy during the day, and
love to rest in pairs and in bachelor parties in the middle of the
thickest covert of sedge available. In open weather it may be
difficult to obtain a clear view of them under such circum-
stances; but when a slight film of ice covers the lough, the
Mallard can no longer skulk in the aquatic herbage, but are
compelled to become clearly visible. When a sharp frost
begins to break up, and the thaw loosens the surface of our
salt marshes, ‘Grey Duck’ often alight openly in such soft
spots as are likely to afford them food, just as in autumn they
resort to the stubble-fields.

GADWALL.

Anas streperus, L.

The Gadwall is the rarest of all the wild-fowl that can be con-
sidered irregular winter visitants to Lakeland, but I have no
doubt whatever that at one time such birds of this species as
were shot went into the pot, or were sent to market un-
identified. Probably the first specimen obtained in Cumberland
of recent years is the full-dressed drake preserved at Hdenhall,
where it was shot during the lifetime of the late Sir Rk. C.
Musgrave, Bart. Mr. Tandy, R. Raine, and myself observed
another Gadwall on Whin’s pond, Edenhall, in November 1889.
It appeared to be a very shy bird. An immature drake was

272 VERTEBRATE FAUNA OF LAKELAND

shot upon the Lyne near Heathersgill on the 3d of January
1885. The foregoing are the only examples known to have
visited the interior of Lakeland. A drake in change was killed
on the Eden, October 21, 1884. A male and female Gadwall
frequented a marsh near Silloth in March 1886, and I am sorry
to say that the female bird was shot.

On the 8th of January 1892 W. Nicol was shooting on the
Solway Firth, when he fell in with a nice lot of Wigeon, and
fired at the bunch. On paddling up to the birds, which the
discharge of the cannon left floating on the water, he found a
fine Gadwall drake among the slain. It was in full nuptial
livery, indeed I never saw a bird in which the chestnut wing
coverts were better developed. I have no doubt that this indi-
vidual, like all the other Gadwall that have been killed in
Lakeland, was a passing migrant. The collection of Mr. J.
Whitaker includes a Gadwall from the neighbourhood of More-
cambe Bay. I do not at present know of any other specimens
that can be accredited to the score of those shot in Lakeland.

SHOVELLER.
Spatula clypeata (L.).

The Shoveller is an extremely local bird in the Lake district,
especially in the southern portion of this province. Dr. Gough
included the Shoveller in 1861 as an occasional visitant in
winter to Brigster moss. I have not heard of any Shovellers
being killed either there or elsewhere in the neighbourhood of
Morecambe Bay at that season. The species is not reported
by Mr. Threfall, nor is it in Mr. Sharpe’s list of the fowl that
he has shot on Morecambe Bay ; nor yet in that of Mr. Hindson.
But it is quite possible that the Shoveller may occasionally
breed in the neighbourhood of this great estuary, since the con-
ditions offered by extensive mosses are highly favourable. As
a matter of fact, the only Shoveller that I have heard of as
obtained there was shot on the 30th of May 1889, at Ayside,
near Grange, and mounted by F. R. Kirby of Ulverston, at
whose house Mr. W. Duckworth saw it, a male bird. Dr.
Heysham did not include either the Shoveller or the Pintail in

BIRDS 273

his catalogue of the animals of Cumberland—but T. C. Hey-
sham knew the bird. He recorded two female Shovellers shot
near Sebergham in September 1831, and a male shot on Burgh
marsh the same year, with the comment: ‘The Shoveller is a
very rare bird in this part of the county.’ He afterwards met
with additional specimens, but his contemporary, Dr. Stanley,
could not include this duck in his list of birds found in the
neighbourhood of Whitehaven, though he had met with the
Pintail, which he described as rare. ‘The late Captain Kinsey
Dover informed me that he had known the Shoveller to occur
as a winter visitant in the Derwentwater district. It occurs
from time to time near Edenhall, where specimens were obtained
in former years by the late baronet, just as R. Raine shot a
drake in change in October 1886, and a bird in female plumage
in October 1888. A full dressed drake shot near Allonby some
years ago is preserved by John Dawson, but the species is rare
west of Silloth, occurring regularly only between Silloth and
Gretna, and seldom at any distance from the coast-line. To
this district the Shoveller is principally a spring visitant on —
passage to its breeding grounds. In March and April the
Shoveller appears annually either on one of the loughs or on
the salt marshes, when a few pairs linger with us until the end
of April, and then take leave, returning in early autumn and
frequenting our creeks and salt marshes, in some cases delaying
their final departure until the first break of frost. It is very
delightful to study the actions of this graceful bird ; indeed a
constant pleasure attaches to the renewal of our acquaintance-
ship on its return from the south in the spring of the year. In
1890 I saw a pair of Shovellers newly arrived on Monkhill
Lough on the 13th of April, when the drake was in almost
perfect nuptial dress, a very white bird and a real beauty.
Merrily they wheeled aloft, easily out-distancing the Wigeon
with their short rapid wing-strokes and buoyant flight. After-
wards they dropped quietly into the sedge beds, and there
remained undisturbed save for pugnacious and noisy Coots. I
have never seen the Shoveller here in pairs before the com-
mencement of March, nor have I ever seen a greater number
than half-a-dozen pairs swimming on the water at one time,
s

274 VERTEBRATE FAUNA OF LAKELAND

snapping at flies, pruning their plumage, and skimming the
surface of the water with their spoonbills. Neither have I
known them stay in a party later than the end of April, though
one or two pairs nest in the neighbourhood of the Solway, or
at least have done so since 1886 to our certain knowledge.
On the 8th of May in that year James Smith succeeded in
tracing a female Shoveller to her nest after much careful watch-
ing. It was found in a tussock of rushes on one of the salt
marshes of the Solway, and the cattle had munched the tops of
the rushes, so that the position was a bare one. The nest con-
tained eight eggs, six of which were hatched out, one of the
ducklings breaking through the eggshell in the presence of Mr.
W. Duckworth, through whose kindness I received two of the
number as well as a specimen of the down, which was further
identified by Mr. Seebohm. In 1887,Smith found a Shoveller’s
nest, probably belonging to the same bird in the old locality,
placed in a slight depression of the soil and covered by long
grass. He took the eggs, and again hatched them under a
‘clucker, but failed, as in 1886, to bring the young birds to
maturity. I have not succeeded in finding a nest since ; nor is
this surprising, when we consider the large extent of the
ground, much of it preserved, within which a pair or two pairs
of these birds try to nest with us. In July 1889 I saw a pair
of Shovellers, which, from their actions, had evidently a brood
of young in the sedge at Monkhill Lough. In 1890 I met with
a pair of breeding Shovellers on a flow near the Solway in July,
and examined a very young bird shot out of a family party at
the beginning of August. The male Shoveller never entirely
deserts its mate. Single males are of course to be seen at any
time during the summer, but they are either bachelors or have
a mate in charge of eggs or young somewhere near. Such birds
will cften take a flight in company with Mallard, but after a
few turns they generally drop out and return to some favourite
pool. They are shy birds, much more intolerant of interference
than the Mallard or Teal; their flight also is more graceful.
On the 16th of May 1891 I flushed a drake Shoveller along
with six Mallards from the edge of Monkhill Lough. The

Shoveller was easily distinguished during their aerial evolutions

BIRDS 275

by his inferior bulk and faster and short wing-strokes. Round
and round the fowl careered, sometimes in a V, their figures
often changing, until at last the Shoveller wearied of the
exercise and desired to descend. Down it came in a beautiful
curve, shooting through the air on expanded wings, now elevat-
ing one shoulder and now the other, the better to preserve its
balance. But it could not somehow quite make up its mind to
alight, so gave a few sharp strokes and rose rapidly; this was
repeated many times, the bird gliding gracefully round the
western corner of the lough, giving a few quick wing-strokes,
and thus rising, to descend again in the same way as before.
Round and round it glided, a perfect embodiment of beauty.
After watching it thus sailing through the air for many minutes,
at last I had the satisfaction of seeing it alight on the water at
the edge of the bank of sedge, where I left it swimming into
cover. When visiting the same lough on the 23d of November
1889, we disturbed a party of nine Shovellers, which rose out
of the sedge and went aloft, where they circled round with
many a graceful turn, flying at first in a V formation, which
soon altered to a string; the males wore the plumage of change,
having many white feathers on their breasts. Shovellers do
not fly in very close line; each bird seems to choose its own
course, and when the nine just mentioned descended, they did
not alight together, but one dropped here and another over
yonder, a pair alighted somewhere else, so that they were fairly
scattered over the surface of the lough. Soon they settled down
to feed, swimming a few strokes and then half submerging the
body, stern thrown up, and the balance preserved by the slightly
extended wings. When a Shoveller is only resting on the
water, the breast is depressed and the stern and back are com-
paratively high, the neck moderately erect. When the bird
feeds, the wings are brought well forward. The Shoveller has
only a very small body, and looks larger than is really the case.
The broad bill can almost always be seen in flight, besides
which they fly higher and more buoyantly than Mallard ; they
have a knack of rising wild, which serves them in useful stay.
Shovellers usually remain with us until the first spin of frost
warns them to seek a more temperate climate; it is only ina

276 VERTEBRATE FAUNA OF LAKELAND

few exceptional instances that these birds have been shot in
Lakeland, during severe frost. The latest date in the year
on which I have myself met with Shovellers was the 11th of
December 1890, when I found a party of five birds at Monkhill
Lough. The leader of the party was a very white bird, already
in the first courting dress ; of the remainder two were females, and
two drakes in change, the white feathers fast breaking through
upon the breast. When disturbed, they wheeled gracefully round,
and alighted in the middle of the water under cover of the sedge
banks. Their rapid yet hovering flight was very beautiful. The
food of the Shoveller consists of the insects which it obtains in
skimming the surface of the water or in the creeks and wet places
of the salt marshes, but especially of minute shells, together
with a small amount of vegetable matter. T. C. Heysham
found a female Shoveller which had been shot at Thrustonfield
Lough, to contain an immense number of fresh-water shells
recently swallowed, including the glutinous mud-shell (Limneus
glutinosus) and the crested valve-shell (Valvata spirorbis). I
dissected two Shovellers, shot in April 1889, and sent to Mr.
Mackenzie. They proved to be full of minute shells, together
with fibres of a vegetable character. The Rev. Hilderic
Friend, F.L.S., kindly examined these shells for me. He
decided that they were referable to Hydrobia ulve, mixed with
two species of Foraminifera, viz., Polystomella crispa, and P.
umbellicata. A young Shoveller, shot at the beginning of
August, had dieted in the same way. I extracted from its
throat several shells and some fragments of pond-weed.

PINT Ate
Dafila acuta (L.).

The Pintail is a decidedly uncommon duck in Lakeland,
though a few specimens visit our estuaries every winter. Mr.
Threfall writes: ‘I never shot a Pintail at Morecambe, although
I did so every year on Ribble.’ Nor does Mr. Sharpe include
this species among the fowl which he has shot, during a long
experience, in Morecambe Bay; a pair, however, were shot
there in the early spring of 1884. Moreover, Hutton, the old

BIRDS eh

Flookburgh fowler, has two stuffed Pintail, which, as his better
half informed me, are ‘rather partikler.’ She could not
remember having ever seen any others brought in by her
husband or sons. A male in female dress is preserved in the
Kendal Museum, labelled ‘from Arnside, presented by Mr J.
Alexander.’ Mrs. Arnold tells me that the late Dr. Gough paid
considerable attention to the wild-fowl of Arnside, and that he
was much pleased in observing occasional Pintail; though, as
the lady added, ‘they are rare of course, and not often met
with. A few Pintail have been killed on the 8.W. coast of
Cumberland, whence the late Grayson of Whitehaven received
specimens. I picked up the wing of a female Pintail near
Ravenglass in June 1889. Stragglers visit the Solway Firth
irregularly, and most of the older gunners on the Solway have
at one time or another secured a couple or an odd bird of this
species in some state of plumage.

Mr. R. Mann reported to me a fine drake seen near Mow-
bray, Allonby, in January 1887, and others have visited that
neighbourhood. Mr. Nicol meets with the Pintail almost every
year, on the Wampool and Waver estuary, either as young birds
migrating in autumn, or in January and February as hard-
weather fowl, or as spring visitors from the middle of March to
the middle of April. In 1886 he shot a single young bird out
of a flock of Wigeon on October 28. In 1887 he saw a
pair at Skinburness as early as September 8, and in 1888 saw
three Pintail on the 29th of that month, shooting one of them
a few days later. In 1889 he saw a male Pintail in January,
and saw five males and two females in April, when one or two
others were killed. In 1890 he saw a pair of Pintail on the
last day of March, and shot another on October 20. At the
end of 1890, and beginning of 1891, he saw two drakes con-
sorting with four Mallard, and in the last week of Feb. 1891 he
shot a beautiful drake out of a flock of Wigeon, and two others
in October 1891; making a total of 20, observed between the
autumn of 1886 and the autumn of 1891, both inclusive. I
have extracted these dates from his letters, because they show
the experience of a first-rate wild-fowler, who knows his birds
really well, and is out daily in all weathers in a most favourable

278 VERTEBRATE FAUNA OF LAKELAND

locality for wild-fowl. I have occasionally observed a Pintail
at Monkhill Lough, and there saw two birds in December 1890,
flying together, and easily recognised by their long necks and
fine shape. Mr. Thorpe observed a single drake Pintail on the
same lough in the following February. A few Pintail have
been shot from time to time by flight-shooters on Rockliffe
marsh, and there one of the handsomest male Pintail that I
have seen was shot in January 1891 by Mr. Mason, These
birds fly up the Eden also, as far at any rate as Edenhall (in
which district birds of this species were observed last winter
and previously), as well as on the mosses of the Eden valley,
whence two, shot near Armathwaite on October 9, 1890. In
Westmorland a fine male was shot some years ago near Shap;
again returning to the neighbourhood of Morecambe Bay, I may
say that Mr. C. F. Archibald shot a female Pintail in the
Rusland valley early in January 1891. It will be seen from
the foregoing notes that Pintail do not visit Lakeland numer-
ously, although odd specimens are obtained either in company
with a few examples of their own species, or when associating
with either Mallard or Wigeon. Those that I have examined
in the flesh were generally immature or full-dressed; but a
male in eclipse was brought to us from the Solway in December
1888. My friend, Mr. Backhouse, drew attention to a pair of
Pintail, kept in a pinioned state at Low Wood, near Ambleside,
by Miss Meyer, from whom we learnt that her old birds bred
successfully from 1877 to 1881, when she parted with them.
A pair of Pintail frequented Bowness Flow during the summer
of 1890, and were often seen flighting on the coast by the
fishermen of Bowness, and by James Smith, in whose company
I searched long but unsuccessfully for any proof of their nesting
on the moss they chiefly haunted.

Since the foregoing lines were penned I received from W.
Nicol a singularly handsome pair of Pintails, shot by himself on
the Solway. They reached me not inappropriately on Christ-
mas Eve, 1891. These are the last he has shot up to date of
going to press.

BIRDS 279

TEAL.

Querquedula crecca (L.).

In former days, before so many of our flows had been
reclaimed, the Teal appears to have bred very generally in
Lakeland, although always more local in its preferences than
the Mallard. It still nests in reduced numbers on Foulshaw
moss; near Bassenthwaite, Derwentwater, Edenhall, Thruston-
field, Salta moss, near Alston, in fact pretty generally. Dr.
Gough considered it not uncommon near Kendal, and obtained
young birds in Dubbs moss, Lambrigg, in 1874. We visited
Solway Flow on June 5, 1890, but saw no ducks until we
reached some small pools of water, thickly studded with rushes.
A Teal in female dress rose from a small ‘dub,’ at the edge of
which we found three flappers skulking. Another female Teal
got up and flew around anxiously. Once she settled to watch
our movements from a knoll of heather, but soon recommenced
her restless flights. The cause of her disquietude was speedily
revealed in seven dusky ducklings, piping shrilly among the
reeds. Having examined one of these chicks, we released him
on the surface of a small pond, when, though only two or three
days old, he shot away in hot haste to the nearest cover,
travelling with greater speed than a young Mallard of the same
age would have done. The male parent was not noticed on this
occasion, but I have observed male and female parents taking
joint charge of the young. Monkhill Lough is a frequent rendez-
vous of the birds. On the 12th of August 1889 we there saw
some fifty to sixty Teal ina bunch. They prefer the shallow
parts of the lough, where there is some cover on the bank, to
which fact we have owed some of our pleasantest close studies
of Teal. For instance, on the 17th of February 1890, I was
lying in cover at the lough edge, when three Teal drakes and a
duck came flighting up, pitched immediately in front of me, and
commenced to bathe and frolic. First one lifted itself half up
in the water and flapped its wings; then a companion dipped
its neck under water and allowed the water to run down upon
its back and wings, seeming to enjoy the process amazingly.

280 VERTEBRATE FAUNA OF LAKELAND

Then the three drakes swam around the female, reiterating
their call-note—tkrek, krek ; finally all four flew off together and
joined their brethren in the sedge beds. Teal are partial to
many inland waters, among others to Whin’s Pond, Edenhall.
In August perhaps their most favourite haunt is the salt marsh.
Many of the young are very fearless. I have flushed a Teal
three consecutive times in the course of half-an-hour without
inducing the bird to leave the spot, but this was in the gloam-
ing, when the bird was no doubt anxious to feed.

GARGANEY.

Querquedula circia (L.).

Our first record of the appearance of the Garganey, as a rare
spring visitant to Lakeland, is furnished by a loose note of
T. C. Heysham, dated the 18th of August 1848. This states:
‘Story the birdstuffer this day informs me that in the spring
two pair of Garganey were seen near Carlisle, viz., one pair on
the Eden near the Swifts, which were killed and brought to
him. These went to Newcastle. The other pair was seen near
Drumburgh ; the male was killed and the female escaped.’ The
elder Hope stuffed two drakes, shot at Tarn Wadling before it
was drained (in 1858), by Lord Lonsdale. Thomas Armstrong
recorded a drake Garganey shot near Carlisle in 1857. A
keeper named Pearson shot a beautiful male near Gilsland in the
spring of 1882. William Sharp stuffed a male, shot near Bow-
ness on Solway the same autumn. Richard Moore reported
that he shot a Garganey on Millom salt marshes in December
1884. In the autumn of the same year I examined a locally-
killed Blue-winged Teal, but too late to preserve the specimen.
On the 15th day of August 1890 a man named Sharp shot an
adult female Garganey near Glasson. This I examined the
following day. Whether it was a recent arrival, or had bred
in this region, could not be decided; but the wing quills were
much worn, and it showed a hatching spot. The Kendal
Museum contains a mounted Garganey drake, which Mr.
Hutchinson believes to have been a local specimen, but its
antecedents are not vouched for by any label.

BIRDS 281

WIGEON.
Mareca penelope (L.).

Wigeon constitute a large proportion of the wild-fowl which
visit Lakeland. Consequently, we find many entries of these
birds being purchased for the table of Lord William Howard,
though both Teal and Mallard were more often procured.
Sometimes these birds are entered as ‘wigeons’ and ‘widgeons,
sometimes as ‘wiggen. At the present day Wigeon are con-
stantly called ‘lough ducks’ and ‘loughs’ in North Cumberland.
That this is an old name appears from such entries as ‘one
lough,—‘6 lough mallerds, ‘4 lough foole, xvjd. They
frequent our lJowghs and lakes inland during the winter time,
especially such sheets of fresh water as Thrustonfield and Monkhill
Loughs, from which a short flight carries them to their favourite
salt marshes, or even to the more retired mosses of the Scottish
Solway. But they are best known as winter visitants to our
sea-coast, occurring most plentifully in severe weather in More-
cambe Bay and on the estuary of the Duddon. Some large
flocks of Wigeon always winter upon the estuary of the Itt,
Mite, and Esk at Muncaster, where on various occasions I have
seen them flighting from the quieter portions of those rivers
down to the sea bar, where they are unapproachable. Their
stay in Lakeland extends chiefly from October until April. By
far the largest number are shot when on passage in October
and November, and again in February. They are most
numerous in the month of March, after the close-time has
arrived. Stragglers have been shot in August, and we usually
observe a few early in September. The old drakes arrive first,
in eclipse plumage, followed by larger contingents of young
birds. In November old males again arrive numerously. It is
charming to watch the Wigeon at Monkhill Lough on a fine
spring morning, when the larks are singing in the fields, and
the male Wigeon paddles around the edge of the sedge beds
in close attendance upon the female, whose affections are still
sought for by the rejected suitor, which hangs about the skirts
of the paired couple. But though some of the old birds pair off
in February, the late frosts induce the greater number to delay

282 VERTEBRATE FAUNA OF LAKELAND

their nuptial arrangements, and there are always a number of
grey-shouldered bachelors which congregate together. I have
spent many pleasant hours in studying the habits of the
Wigeon in this locality, which is the favourite rendezvous of
those birds which feed upon the grass of Rockliffe salt marsh
in the night-time. I visited this lough on the 3d of March
1890, when the snow which had fallen the previous day was
lying in wreaths on the fellsides which bounded the western
horizon. Long before the highroad was left behind, we heard
the shrill whistle of the ‘lough ducks,’ and on crossing the
fields which lay ,between us and the lough, it was soon apparent
that the Wigeon were abundantly represented. The surface of
the lough was partly invested with a thin covering of ice, upon
which a few couples of Wild Duck were resting, looking rather
disconsolate. A few square yards of open water were crowded
with Wild-fowl, Goldeneyes, Tufted Ducks, Pochards, but
principally Wigeon. Males in full dress made up the greater
portion of the company, but a good many were females. As we
watched them, they were joined by a flock of Black-headed
Gulls, whose spotless dress formed a striking contrast to the
Carrion Crow which just then croaked across the lough. Many
of the Gulls had already donned their dark hoods, owing to the
mildness of the previous fortnight. The Mallard were dotted
up and down the ice, the glossy heads and white rings of the
males distinguishing them easily from their brown companions.
All this time the Wigeon were whistling shrilly in the open
water, and when I crossed the little ‘runner’ which feeds
the lough, I disturbed another lot of Wigeon, chiefly grey-
shouldered drakes: some of them were resting in a ploughed
field, and others on the grass at the lough edge. They rose and
again alighted on the ice, but their movement startled the
Mallard, and away they went with many a ‘ quaark’ and many
a responsive quack. The Wigeon nearest to us lifted, another
flock followed their example, and then another; the Diving
Ducks followed suit. Soon the only Duck left upon the water
was a Tufted Drake: it swam steadily towards the opposite
shore; but before the bank was gained a fresh sense of in-
security smote upon him, and he too lifted and wheeled round

BIRDS 283

the lough uneasily. The Wigeon soon returned and pitched
here and there upon the ice, or alighted 4mong the frozen tops
of the sedge, the cover in which, at other times, they revel all the
day, their mellow whistle adding a relish to the scene before us,
When Wigeon are frozen out of their fresh-water resorts, they
are compelled to stay upon the estuaries. On the 15th of
December 1890 Mr. Thorpe and I walked for hours along the
brow of Burgh marsh. The tide had ebbed, the channel was full
of ice, and the shore was strewn with the débris of ice that had
come down the Eden. Several flocks of Wigeon swam in the
tideway, while others spread out in thin lines along the edge of
the mud. We saw two or three birds waddling about the open
surface of the sands, but the majority sat upon the water edge,
the drakes from time to time vociferating their call in musical
unison. When the tide flowed the punt-gunners drove the
Wigeon up and down the estuary. Before dark we caught a
female hiding up among the sods loosened by tidal action from
the edge of the marsh. She had belonged to a flock at which
we saw Bryson fire about a mile out from land, and being
pricked by a shot in the left wing which partially disabled her
for flight, had quietly paddled in to the shore for shelter. She
was very shy, and did not become reconciled to confinement.
Birds similarly injured often recover, if allowed their liberty on
some small pond. Mallard and Wigeon usually leave the water
when crippled by a gun-shot wound, deserting their companions
to seek safety in solitude. I have at different times dis-
covered some beautiful drakes of both species hiding up in the
cover of rushes or tall grass near the water edge when thus slightly
crippled. Such cripples may of course be unable to leave with
their companions when the season arrives at which they would
naturally undertake the journey to their breeding grounds. But
it often happens that a few full-winged birds voluntarily postpone
their departure until the beginning of May or even later. In
1889 we observed on May 6 six drake and two female Wigeon
at Monkhill Lough, the former being in the finest feather
imaginable. Our attention was first drawn to them by hearing
a Wigeon whistle, and, looking up, we saw a male and female
flighting round. They joined the main party, which we then

284 VERTEBRATE FAUNA OF LAKELAND

observed swimming in the water just outside the sedge. In
1890 we showed Mr. F. 8. Mitchell a single drake Wigeon, full
dressed, and showing no sign of eclipse, upon the same lough on
the 6th of June. It flew strongly, but appeared unwilling to
leave the spot. )

POCHARD.
Fuligula ferina (L.).

Dr. Heysham thought the Pochard ‘a scarce bird, and re-
membering that the only example that he examined in an
experience of eighteen years was the drake brought to him on the
Ist of January 1788, we can hardly wonder at his opinion.
Yet the Pochard is by no means an uncommon bird on the
fresh waters of the Lake district. It has occasionally been
shot on the lakes, on Bassenthwaite, Loweswater, Esthwaite,
Ulleswater, Derwentwater among the rest, and often visits
Whin’s Pond and Talkin Tarn, as well as the small loughs near
the Solway Firth. On the other hand, it must be owned that
very few Pochards have at any time been shot by the numerous
punt-gunners of Morecambe Bay and the Solway Firth, though
we have examined odd specimens shot all along the north-west
coast of England, from Carnforth to Gretna. The Pochard is
in fact one of our more local wild-fowl, frequenting our estuaries
only on passage or when frozen out, and appearing even in its
most favourite haunts in rather inferior numbers to the tufted
duck; in outlying districts, such as Alston, its occasional
presence is due to the desire of migrating birds to rest on
passage. Personally, I observe Pochards most towards the close
of winter, when from half-a-dozen to a dozen birds can often be
seen on Monkhill Lough, inactive and less inclined to feed than
to enjoy a quiet siesta, for they are principally night feeders.
They seldom appear except in full dress, and the males always
largely outnumbered the females. They are rather ungainly
fowl, generally fly in a string with very stiff necks, uttering a
rasping call-note, a ‘kr, kr, kr. They seldom fly as high as
other diving ducks, and are of a less suspicious character than
Mallard or Shovellers. On the 21st of December 1889, I

BIRDS 285

saw about twenty Pochards at Monkhill Lough in one party,
chiefly full-dressed drakes; I have seen a similar number on
numerous occasions, but have never known this to be exceeded,
nor do the birds leave their favourite quarters in winter, except
when frozen out. Pochards seldom stay later with us than the
beginning of April, and reappear in the following October,
their numbers increasing by the middle of winter. I believe,
however, that a pair of Pochards nested near Thrustonfield in
1889. Onthe 12th of August that year, a pair of Pochards
were seen on Monkhill Lough, resting lazily in the sedge on
the south side. The drake was in the plumage of a breeding
bird, the head and neck more dingy and the back darker than
in nuptial dress. The duck was more shy than her mate, and
when I stood up, they both stiffened their necks, shook them-
selves and retreated a few yards further into the sedge. Find-
ing that I was still intent on studying their movements, they
rose from the water and flew off in the direction of Thruston-
field ; where the Rev. F. O. Pickard-Cambridge and I saw a
brood of young ducks, which we considered to be Pochards, a
few days later. There cannot be the least doubt that if one
or two couples of pinioned Pochards were turned down on that
lough, and protected from foxes and other vermin, this species
would soon become very numerous in the district, from which
it is only absent, even now, during the four summer months.

TUFTED DUCK,
Fuligula cristata (Leach.).

Neither Richardson nor the elder Heysham catalogues the
Tufted Duck. Dr. Stanley included it in his list of the birds of
the neighbourhood of Whitehaven as early as 1829, and Dr.
Gough alluded to its presence as a winter visitor on the lakes
and tarns of Westmoreland in 1842,' so that for the last fifty
or sixty years it has ranked as belonging to the fauna of Lake-
land. It occurs very sparingly upon the coast line. Mr.
Sharpe never shot any Tufted Ducks in Morecambe Bay until

1 Zoologist, 1843, p. 183.

286 VERTEBRATE FAUNA OF LAKELAND

January 1891; they only visit the Ravenglass estuary irregularly,
and are scarce on the open parts of the Solway Firth. Mr. R,
Mann has met with a few individuals at different times in the
neighbourhood of Allonby, but Mr. Nicol, the punt-gunner, never
fell in with the species during all his years of hard shooting
near Silloth until December 1888, when he shot a drake and
duck out of a party of seven on the 14th of the month. Bryson,
another professional punt-shooter, sent me a male Tufted Duck
in January 1891, saying that he had never met with the species
before in the waters of the Solway Firth. The thigh of the
poor bird was broken, and we tried in vain to nurse it round,
but it looked very handsome as it lay upon the garden lawn, its
blue bill tucked into the dorsal plumage, and the golden irides
setting off the snowy flanks and glossy upper parts. The fact
is that the Tufted Duck prefers inland waters to those of the
coast, and absents itself from the coast except when performing
a journey, or when frozen out of its favourite retreats. Mr.
Baines tells me that the Tufted Duck visits Esthwaite water,
and he has known a drake to spend a whole summer there. It
is a scarce bird on the larger lakes, but still it occurs irregularly,
especially in spring, all over the waters of the western portion
of Lakeland, as on Derwentwater and Wastwater. I have
observed it myself at all seasons, sometimes very unexpectedly.
For instance, when driving from Cockermouth to Wright
Green with Mr. H. P. Senhouse, on the 10th of March 1888,
we saw three Tufted Ducks—two drakes and a female—on
Mockerkin tarn, a small oval strip of water lying among open
fields, close to the road, destitute also of suitable cover, though
there was then a little sedge at the south end. They visited
Whin’s Pond, Edenhall, in the time of the late baronet, and
continue to do so. During the present summer [1891] hopes
were entertained of the Tufted Duck breeding on Whin’s Pond,
in consequence of the appearance of a male and female in the
month of May. No female Tufted Duck could, however, be found
when we prosecuted a search on the 19th of June, but we saw
a fine drake nearly in full livery, but having the white flanks
already clouded with a few brown feathers. He swam very low
in the water, and appeared to be reluctant to leave the side of

BIRDS 287

the lake, but eventually took a short flight into the middle,
and pulling vigorously across to the other side, paddled quietly
round the edge until he regained the cover of sedge from which
he had originally started. Both on this occasion and on July
13th we searched carefully for the female. I fear that our
want of success may have been due to a fox having carried
her off. On the second investigation we flushed the solitary
drake from the side of the pond; he was shedding the wing
quills and could only fly very imperfectly. He had now lost
his fine tassel, and his white sides were washed with brown, so
that he looked shabby and less spruce than three weeks earlier.
Mr. F. B. Whitlock reported to me that he met with three
Tufted Ducks on the Ravenglass estuary late in May 1890.
But in fact I have met with Tufted Ducks in Cumberland
at all seasons, and have little doubt that the species has
nested with us. I was positively assured that a pair nested
near Burgh in 1888, and that the young ducklings were
closely identified, and though I cannot vouch for this, I saw
a brood of young Tufted Ducks at Monkhill Lough on the
17th September, when of course they could fly well. In 1889
we observed three Tufted Ducks on the same water on the 31st
of August; one was an old male, which from its ragged
appearance had probably bred, the tuft being nearly worn away
and the white sides variegated with brown. The other two
appeared to be an old female and a white-fronted bird of the
year, only a few weeks old. On seeing us they swam out from
the bank, the drake rising in the water to flap his white-
bordered wings, while his companions dived from ten to twenty
seconds, usually about ten seconds. During the summer of
1890, a single drake constantly frequented the same lough, and
was observed by Mr. J. N. Robinson and myself almost daily
until the middle of July, but we could never raise a female.
This solitary bird was a strong adult and full-winged. I
have many notes upon this species as observed at Thrustonfield,
but especially on Monkhill Lough, between 1883 and 1891,
and shall venture to quote some of the more recent. On the
17th of February 1890, the weather being mild and open, we
found eighteen Tufted Ducks at Monkhill Lough. They were

288 VERTEBRATE FAUNA OF LAKELAND

chiefly males, and were not on the feed at 11 Am. At our
approach they drew away, and shortly afterwards rose almost
simultaneously, and heading against the wind crossed the lough
in our direction, swept overhead, and wheeling round alighted
again, their eighteen pairs of feet apparently touching the water
at the same instant. But they were no sooner settled than they
swam together and formed a wedge. At the other end of the
lough we found another party of Tufted Ducks with a few
Pochards. It was pretty to see a pair of Pochards sculling
along closely attended by four handsome Tufted Drakes, two
Tufts swimming on either side of the Pochards, and their dark
backs diverging strikingly from the nearly white mantle of
the male Pochard. On the 26th of Mareh 1889 I found the
Tufted Ducks dotted as usual over the surface of the lough,
and the drakes seemed very proud of their companions, stiffen-
ing their necks and keeping asharp look-out. The only solitary
bird was a female, which had retired from her companions to
pose sedately in an upright position upon a grassy portion of
the bank. Presently three full-dressed drakes approached this
duck and she roused herself to plume her wings in coy dis-
regard of the presence of her suitors; one of the drakes swam
in to the side, the white sides conspicuously displayed as he
rode high in the water. An alarm bestirred the fowl at the
other end of the lough, and a Tufted Drake hurried past with
many a quick beat of his pied pinions. Another and another
drake passed, a male and female following in their wake. But
their alarm is short-lived. A little later I found a party of
the reunited Tufts sheltering at the deep end of the pond, two
pairs crowding together; then came a single pair; then two
males and a duck—in all four pairs and an odd drake near one
another ; the remainder were scattered about. A point new to
me was that one particular drake frequently tossed lis head,
snapping his blue bill loudly at the same time—an action which
is presumably part of his courtship, and arises from desire to
ingratiate himself with his chosen partner. Messrs. Thorpe
and Robinson were studying a little party of five Tufted Ducks
in my company at Monkhill, January 28th, 1891; while watch-
ing the birds flighting round, we saw them check their course, and

BIRDS 289

shoot almost like swallows to the water, but just before touch-
ing the water they rose again, and returned in their upward
flight nearly to the point from which they had started. This
point not having attracted my attention previously, I paid some
attention to it, and noticed it again, as for example on March
17, 1891, when we watched a small party of Tufted Ducks
flying across the lough, suddenly swoop down towards the
water like swallows, to rise—without alighting—in a graceful
aerial curve. Tufted Ducks are sociable birds, and often
associate with Wigeon. On February 4, 1891, I found three
female and two male Tufted Ducks assembled at the narrow
end of the lough along with two Pochard drakes. The female
Tufted Ducks openly flirted with the Pochards, swimming
round them seductively, but the Tufted drakes took no notice
of their partners’ irregularities, and did not show any jealousy
of their handsome rivals. On the 4th of October 1889 I spent
an hour and a half in watching a couple of young Tufted Ducks
which had joined company to a stray Scaup on their favourite
waters. The Scaup swam lower in the water than the Tufted
Ducks, and seemed less at home, frequently turning its neck
from side to side as if apprehensive of danger. It was very
active, swimming at a smart rate, occasionally uttering its harsh
eall-note. When the Tufted Ducks rose on the wing, the Scaup
joined them, but it only took half a turn over the sedge and
quietly dropped back on to the water, an example which was
at once copied by the Tufted Ducks. We observed this white-
fronted Scaup again on the 18th of the same October, but the
Tufted Ducks were absent and the Scaup was solacing himself
with the company of a score or so of Coots. It was of course
a larger and coarser bird than the Tufted Ducks. Tufted
Ducks fly from Monkhill to Crofton, Thrustonfield, and to the
neighbouring rivers like the Caldew and Eden, as do the
Shovellers ; so that the first-named lough may often be visited
without any Tufted Ducks being seen, or perhaps an odd one
only, while the birds are still in the district ; but few stop long
enough on the rivers to be shot, except during extended frost.
In the frosty weather which prevailed at the beginning of
January 1891, the Tufted Ducks were frozen out of their
T

290 VERTEBRATE FAUNA OF LAKELAND

favourite ponds, and naturally took to the salt and brackish
waters of the estuaries. Mr. Thorpe and I came across a couple
of full-dressed drakes and a young male swimming in the Eden
near Rockliffe, on January 3, 1891, and had for some minutes
enjoyed their study, swimming gaily in the side of the stream,
when the charm of the scene was rudely dispelled by a twelve-
bore belching forth its contents from a hedge on the opposite
bank. The young bird dropped dead, another drake fluttered
along the top of the water pinioned by a shot, the third dived
at the flash, came up on the other side and flew up the water.
The poor cripple swam low in the water and tried to make in
for the bank to land, but, in spite of our protestations, was ruth-
lessly butchered from a boat. The youngest bird was assuming
the black head on this date, but showed very few white feathers
on the flanks.

SCAUP.

Fuligula marila (L.).

Richardson includes the Scaup among the Wild-fowl of Ulles-
water, and Dr. Heysham was acquainted with the species, but
had only seen ‘one specimen, which was shot in a very severe
winter. The younger Heysham was more familiar with the
species; in January 1840 he offered to secure a specimen for
Henry Doubleday, adding that ‘good ones only occur now and
then.’ At the present time the Scaup is widely recognised as a
very common winter visitant, both to the estuaries of the
Duddon and Morecambe Bay, and to the waters of the English
Solway. It is recorded also from the Ravenglass estuary.
Inland, it cannot be called a common bird. Stragglers un-
doubtedly occur on our tarns and lakes, at a considerable dis-
tance from the sea, almost every winter; but it is generally
after boisterous weather. Even Monkhill Lough, which lies
within a very short flight of the Solway, is only visited inter-
mittently. We saw four Scaups there on November 28,
1888; but single birds are more often found on fresh-water
lakes. Nor is it usual to meet with Scaups during the summer
and early autumn. Undoubtedly stragglers occur at that

BIRDS 291

season. For example, a small party of Scaups visited Silloth
in August 1887; in 1888 another small flock, consisting of
nine, appeared there on July 26, and a male was shot on the
6th of August. In 1889,a single male was shot near Silloth,
September 5th; in 1890 Mr. T. Mann and Mr. A. Wilson saw
three Scaups at the Grune Point on July 14th. Very likely
these birds had passed the summer on the Solway. In any
case the dates of the presence just given are exceptional. We
saw a couple of Scaups near Skinburness on the 21st of
September 1889; but this species usually makes its appearance
about a month later, and then principally in small parties,
which gradually collect together. They feed largely on cockles
and mussels. In Morecambe Bay the bird is sometimes called
the ‘Cockleduck,’ though the name commonly applied to the
Scaup in that locality is the ‘Blue Bill’ They especially
frequent ‘Cartmell Whars,’ and can usually be procured by
punt-gunners during the winter. I have never seen the
Scaup fraternising with any species except the Tufted Duck and
Common Scoter. Mr. Durnford records that a Scaup, which
a friend of his wounded on the reservoir at Barrow in December
1876, not only remained there on the following April, but also
fraternised with some tame ducks, though always careful to
roost on an island by itself. The fowlers of the Flookburgh
and Cark district obtain a few Scaups in their ‘ducker nets’
every season. Punt gunners consider them easy birds to work
up to. Bryson once killed eighteen Scaups on the Esk with
his big gun. They do not, however, often give the fowler a
chance of making a very big bag, because if pressed they
separate a few yards; a man may work his punt up to them,
and have the ducks swimming all around him, and yet fail to
make a lucky shot. They have very little natural dread of
sailing boats; but after a few days’ hard shooting among the
Scottish Solway fishermen, who often enter our English waters,
the birds rapidly become demoralised and rise wild. Their
habits vary with the locality and season; but they feed most
during the morning hours, especially the early hours, and then
spend the afternoon in floating restfully among the sand-banks.

1 Zoologist, 1877, p. 276.

292 VERTEBRATE FAUNA OF LAKELAND

When a party of Scaup are feeding, it rarely happens that all
the birds are submerged at the same time. They generally
feed in one and the same direction, and after travelling a
certain distance on the feed, will rise and fly back to the point
from which they started and begin to work the same area of *
sand or scar over again. They generally go down to feed with
an ebbing tide, and return with the tide. The pace at which
an old Scaup drake will swim up an estuary, when the tide is
helping it, has surprised me on one or two occasions. Their
call-note 1s extremely harsh, and can be heard at some distance,
but during the winter it is not very often uttered. Towards
the close of winter, when the old males are in full dress, they
pair off and frequently ascend the Eden and other rivers for
considerable distances, though it is chiefly birds in immature
or female dress which are shot on our fresh waters. In
February, the Scaups which have passed the winter in small
and large flocks begin to collect in Silloth Bay; at least such
has been their custom of recent years—but their movements,
and the abundance or scarcity of their numbers generally, have
a direct relation to the food supply and to the quiet which they
enjoy. In 1889 I went to Silloth on March 22nd, on purpose
to see the flocks of Scaups which had assembled in the bay,
knowing that they must shortly be taking their departure from
our coast. The tide was flowing, and we at once fell in with a
flock of about fifty Scaups which were congregating in the open
channel. Our trawling boat awakened their apprehension of
danger; after swimming in front of us for a short distance, they
rose hurriedly on the wing. Four of the number went off to
the open sea. Their companions rose to a good height, and,
swinging past us heavily, broke into three divisions, which came
flighting round, and then flew away to the eastward. That
afternoon, when the tide had begun to ebb, we watched a flock
of two hundred Scaups, most of them diving for shellfish ; while
resting on the surface of the water they frequently shook their
wings and sat half erect upon the tide. Occasionally a duck
left the main flock to enjoy a solitary flight. In 1890 we
went down to see the Scaup in Silloth Bay on the 28th of Feb.
The weather was magnificent, and, though the tide had nearly

BIRDS 293

ebbed, we managed to steer our little craft out of harbour. A
sharp frost had set in during the early hours, and a breeze from
the north blew the surface of the Firth into ripples. Common
and Herring Gulls hovered about the quay, but we had nearly
reached Skinburness before we fell in with a flock of between
five and six hundred Scaups assembled in the tide-way. It was
the largest congregation of ducks that I had ever witnessed.
The birds extended in a long and broad band along the shore.
As we drew up to them they rose heavily, and the main
phalanx split up into two divisions. The lesser body flew off
steadily to the westward. ‘The larger section circled round us
and again alighted on the water, out of shot, but sufficiently
near to supply a striking and effective picture—the young birds
and old females forming a pleasing contrast to the full-dressed
drakes. Before they alighted, and while they were wheeling
round, we noticed their heavy flight on first rising from the
water, flying against the wind, gradually attaining an elevation
of 40 or 50 feet, but never ‘towering’ as Goldeneyes and
even Long-tailed Ducks will sometimes ‘tower.’ Presently,
away they swept across the water in a long extended line,
travelling a half-mile, perhaps, and hesitating to alight, until
one or two of the foremost birds dropped and afforded an
example which their followers were not slow to adopt. In a
few minutes you could see them crowding together in a dense
mob; so they would remain until we bore down upon them
again, when the birds began to swim away from us. Now and
then an odd bird rose at one end of the flock, crossed the party,
and alighted on the other side; this was generally followed by
five or six Scaups rising together, succeeded by a fresh detach-
ment. The main body would remain for a minute or two
longer near us, then rise tumultuously as by common consent,
and wheel off in a long-extended line to a quieter part of the
Firth, leaving half-a-dozen birds behind them to court our
attention. The only stranger that we could detect among all
these Scaups was a single Common Scoter, which had somehow
strayed into their company.

294 VERTEBRATE FAUNA OF LAKELAND

GOLDENEYE.
Clangula giaucion (L.).

Dr. Heysham knew the Goldeneye as ‘pretty frequent in
winter. There can be no doubt that he was right, since the
species is more widely distributed over the interior of Lake-
land than any other species of Fuliguline. Murray meets with
it commonly at Carnforth, and Bell at Milnthorpe; the late
Mr. Kirkby showed me some specimens shot near Ulverston in
November 1888, and Mr. Williams tells us that a few are shot
every winter on the Barrow reservoir. It is not with us a
maritime duck. Those I have seen preserved at Whitehaven,
as almost everywhere else, were shot on fresh water. It is a
common bird on many of the lakes, Windermere, Bassenthwaite,
Rydalwater, among others, being frequented by a few Golden-
eyes every winter. I saw a very handsome drake and three
birds in female dress on Derwentwater on April 2, 1889, and
have seen others shot there. It is not a common bird in the
extreme east of our faunal area; immature birds have been
obtained on various occasions near Alston, but suitable tarns
are few and far between, south of Talkin Tarn. But on the
lakes and estuary rivers, and all along the Eden valley, the
Goldeneye is one of the most frequent of visitors, chiefly in
small flocks. It does not arrive in any abundance before the
middle of November, but a few stragglers in female or immature
dress generally appear at least a month earlier; thus in 1884
our first example was shot on October 10th ; in 1885, five birds
appeared on the Eden on October 22d; in 1886, the first seen
arrived on October 21st; in 1888, the first came on October
10th; in 1889, October 8th ; in 1890, three which I examined
in the flesh were shot on Coniston on the 11th of the month.
Goldeneyes were rather scarce during the mild spring or late
winter of 1890, when they almost disappeared from the Solway,
but more than usually abundant in the winter following. Not
less than a score were shot at the mouth of the river Eden
between October 19th and 26th, 1890. Many birds arrived in
November; and on December lst we saw thirty birds in one

BIRDS 295

flock at the side of Burgh marsh. On the 10th of that month
there arrived a flock of between one hundred and two hundred
Goldeneyes. The most experienced wild-fowlers assured us that
they had never seen so large a company before, but their punt-
guns soon split up the flock, while the shoulder-guns further
reduced their numbers. We were on the same ground on the
13th, weather fine with a biting frost, and tide flowing, saw
several birds in female dress come flying up from the basin of
the estuary, to join a big lot, composed chiefly of females and
young birds, with only a sprinkling of old drakes. This broke
up into thirties, and Bryson was just working up to a flock of
thirty-five when another and another joined the first lot, which
was thus augmented to a hundred birds. They swam together
in front of the punt, but were manifestly uneasy and drew away ;
this happened several times, but at length the fowler let fly at
a lot of about three dozen; he killed six dead and lost four
cripples through not having a shoulder-gun.

The Eden was still ice-bound, notwithstanding a partial
thaw, when we visited Burgh marsh on January 3, 1891, to find
little else than Goldeneyes, and these sadly reduced in numbers.
The persecuted birds for the most part frequented the river
above Sandsfield. When they came down stream, eight in one
lot and twenty-seven in another, it was flying very fast and
rather high; but, as they passed, one sportsman pulled down an
old drake which fell with a crash upon the gravel scar, and a
villager on the other side stopped an old female, which our dog
fetched out for him. Their destruction was only excusable
from the point of view that they were hard to shoot, and that
the fishermen depend for their living during the winter upon
the wild-fowl they kill. Fortunately, the large majority of
those shot were males of all ages, their sex always preponderat-
ing, and their slightly larger size rendering them rather more
conspicuous than females. On the 4th of the following February
we found about a score of Goldeneyes on Monkhill Lough, two
of the number being full-dressed drakes. I have spent many
hours there during the last nine years in studying the actions of
the Goldeneye, whether diving actively for food, each bird taking
its turn as sentinel, or flying restlessly and low across the

ad

296 VERTEBRATE FAUNA OF LAKELAND

waters, or flighting round us, beating the air with the hardened
wing-quills that rattle harshly as they speed pell-mell through
space.

Many is the outing that I have shared with this hardy duck,
sometimes crossing the open marsh when the chill north wind
blew the crisp and finely-powdered snow into veritable puff-
balls of ice-crystals ; sometimes in the last days of April, when
the swallows and the very earliest of swifts were hawking
insects above the lough, as though offering a reminder that
the summer home of the Goldeneye would soon be loosened
from a long winter's frost, that he too must journey across the
seas, even like frailer folk, to fulfil the traditions of his race by
rearing a progeny in some hollow birch-tree in the depths of
the Scandinavian forest. In all my studies a-field, I have
found the Goldeneye a day feeder ; indeed, as soon as the grey
morning of a December day breaks, you may depend on finding
a little squad of Goldeneyes diving for the shells that are to
form their breakfast in the middle of the Eden opposite Castle-
town. ‘They are almost always nicely out of shot, but any one
murderously disposed will have a fair chance of gratifying his
lust to kill if he searches the higher pools, which often hold a
stray Goldeneye, and, marking his quarry, runs in when the
bird dives, to shoot the poor thing as it comes up and takes
wing. Goldeneyes are curiously local; I have only once seen
a flock of these birds on the Wampool and Waver estuary,
which I know perhaps more intimately than any other part
of the Solway coast, though at the junction of Esk and Eden
they occur socommonly. The birds which frequent the Eden
follow it up to its head-waters, and occasionally appear at
Whin’s Pond, the ‘decoy pond’ at Lowther, and other likely
localities. At a distance from their favourite feeding-grounds
they are seldom heard of. They leave us generally in March ;
only a few remain until the last days of April. In 1889 a
single bird in female dress haunted Monkhill Lough until at
any rate the 6th day of May. It was full-winged and shy, nor
did it associate with any other fowl, but Goldeneyes are only
sociable in my experience with their own kind. On the 16th of
March 1889 I saw an old drake Goldeneye chase away a Mallard

BIRDS 297

and his mate from the vicinity of his own family party with an
amusing show of indignation. Yarrell (fourth edition) says
of the Goldeneye: ‘the voice is said to be very loud: whence,
or from the noise of the flight, the name clangula. The second
etymology is surely the right one? I have always found
Goldeneyes very silent birds, and have only twice heard them use
a call-note. I was lying upon the bank of Monkhill Lough on
the 10th of November 1888, studying the movements of three
immature Goldeneyes, when one of them dived up within four
or five yards of me, and, catching a glimpse of my head behind
the bank, spluttered out a guttural ‘kkruk’ to express its
astonishment. I lay still and 1t swam out rapidly about fifty
yards into the deep water, and there remained until joined by
its two companions. But they did not fly off just then. Long
I watched their play with fixed glass, and they seemed uncon-
cerned, glancing round with their bright yellow irides, but
unaware of danger. Whenever they began to swim fast, it
meant that they were preparing to dive. I saw one bird drink,
dipping its neck forward and then throwing the head back and
allowing the water to trickle down the gullet. Perhaps it was
only an individual idiosyncrasy, but it was new to me and
therefore pleasant to see. The Goldeneye is more thoroughly
aquatic than almost any of our wild-fowl. It obtains its food—
shells, and in a lesser degree water-plants—in deep water, and
never feeds like the surface-feeding ducks on our salt marshes.
Under no circumstances have I ever surprised a Goldeneye
ashore. ‘The birds which the gunners cripple swim and dive
away, but they do not go ashore, though after death they are
often washed up on the brow of the marsh. I am therefore
unable to say of my own knowledge what attitude the Goldeneye
would adopt on Jand. Mr. Archibald has helped me out of the
difficulty by forwarding a sketch of a bird which his dog
caught alive at the Rusland Pool. The sketch shows that the
Goldeneye on land adopts a more upright position than the
Mallard, an attitude in fact nearly identical with that of the
Tufted Duck on ¢erra firma.

298 VERTEBRATE FAUNA OF LAKELAND

LONG-TAILED DUCK.
Harelda glacialis (L.).

The Long-tailed Duck is quite a rare bird in the sounds and
estuaries of Morecambe Bay. Very few of the local sportsmen
have met with it in any stage of plumage. One of the number,
Mr. H. Arnold, killed a young Long-tailed Duck in the Bay at
Arnbarrow on November 14th, 1876; this I saw at his house.
More recently, I found a very handsome old male in the posses-
sion of Mr. Murray of Carnforth, from whom I learnt that it was
shot in the Bay on the 14th of February 1884. This is the
only full-dressed drake that can be vouched for as having been
secured at any time on the N.W. coast of England. In female
or immature plumage it has occurred a good many times,
although at all times one of the rarest of our wild-fowl, and
unknown hitherto upon the larger lakes of the interior. At
Ravenglass, Dr. Parker obtained a single bird out of a flock of
four, in November 1879. Mr. Harris recollects a similar bird
having been killed on the Derwent, and Mr. W. Hodgson,
A.L.S., answers for another killed on the Ellen in 1855.
Yarrell states in the third edition of his British Birds that
T. C. Heysham obtained this species on the coast of Cumber-
land, and so he undoubtedly did, on two occasions. ‘The earlier
instance is mentioned in a letter written on Nov. 26th, 1834,
to Henry Doubleday ; Heysham remarking: ‘The only novelty
that has occurred to me since my return to Carlisle is a young
specimen of the Long-tailed Duck, the first, I believe, that has
been detected in the neighbourhood.’ He notes on a loose
scrap, headed Long-tailed Duck: ‘Oct. 23, 1850, Townson this
day brought here two young birds of this species, which he had
shot on the Eden, near King Garth.’ Townson was a Carlisle bird-
stuffer. These were the first and last heard of near Carlisle
for many a long day. At length, after a lapse of thirty-four
years, I fell in with a handsome drake on Monkhill Lough.
Readers of the Birds of Cumberland will recall how, on one
occasion, when sheltering from a storm of sleet, crouched behind
a bush at the water edge, I was charmed to see a Long-tailed —
Duck fly up and alight upon the water within thirty-five or

BIRDS 299

forty yards from my position. It was on the 24th of January
1884 that I first formed an acquaintance, which extended over
a good many weeks, during which the Long-tailed Duck afforded
not a little pleasure by its attractive action and picturesque
appearance. Though most often alone, it was not entirely
unwilling to fraternise with the Goldeneyes. At such times it
forewent its usual low flights across the water, to indulge in lofty
aerial evolutions with its strong-winged companions. In the
autumn of that year, 1884, I recognised a small party of Long-
failed Ducks flying up the Esk. Again, on the 13th of Dee.
1890, when sitting with Mr. Thorpe on the edge of Burgh
marsh, we saw a Long-tailed Duck turn the point of the marsh
and come up the Eden, flying directly towards us. The facial
spots were fast developing—it passed within a few yards of us—
but my companion did not recognise it, and, as we had agreed
not to fire, in order to give fair play to Bryson, the punt-
gunner, whose sport we had once or twice spoilt with a chance
shot, and who was just drawing up to some Goldeneyes, neither
of us emptied a cartridge. On it flew, following the flowing
tide, but, spying the Goldeneyes, wheeled round and alighted in
their ranks. Bryson fired, but no Long-tail floated dead upon
the water. We rejoiced that the rare stranger had for once
escaped destruction, but the satisfaction was short-lived. Three
days after, the same gunner was again slaughtering the poor
Goldeneyes, and among the slain this time was the Long-tail,
shot in the identical reach of river in which it had so narrowly
escaped its doom at our first interview. As we had conjectured,
it proved to be a young male, but smaller than any other male
specimen that I have handled. It weighed just 14 lb. The
heaviest bird of this species that I ever weighed scaled just
1 Ib. 10 oz. My personal experience of Long-tailed Ducks in
the Solway faunal area can happily be extended by that of Mr.
Nicol, who has met with several examples of this bird during
his gunning experiences near Silloth, Many immature Long-
tailed Ducks appeared on the English coasts during the autumn
and early winter of 1887—it was quite a ‘visitation’ of
Harelda glacialis—as I pointed out in the Field, and a few
birds visited both the Scottish and English waters of the Solway

300 VERTEBRATE FAUNA OF LAKELAND

Firth. The first English Solway bird was shot on Oct. 10th
by Nicol, who had observed two individuals as early as Oct. 3rd,
and who in one afternoon observed a total of eleven Long-
tailed Ducks, in three parties, consisting of five, and four, and
two birds respectively. Altogether, upwards of a score must
have been killed during the visitation, on the united waters of
the Firth; we examined the birds shot on the Scotch side as
well as those of our own waters, and found several young males
in the number, although females predominated. During the
winter of 1888-89 no Long-tailed Ducks were seen, but Mr.
Nicol sent to Mr. Edward Tandy a fine old female which he
shot on December ist, 1889, and had a shot at another single
bird (which he missed) on the 28th of November 1890. There
can be no doubt that this Duck has hitherto paid but scanty
visits to the Solway Firth. The late Captain Kinsey Dover
had a large experience of punt-shooting in the waters of the
Solway, and he assured me that on no occasion did he come
across a Long-tailed Duck. The Long-tailed Duck has occurred
with us at a distance from the sea only in a single instance.
On the 18th of April 1889 a farmer and his dog caught a
lamed bird of this species on a small moorland beck near
Renwick. It was an adult male, already far advanced in
assuming the plumage of the breeding-time. It was not much
injured, and lived in captivity for two or three days. Its
death was probably due to want of proper food. It was
stuffed by Mr. Dryden, in whose possession I examined it
shortly after. The birds which were shot on the Solway in
1887 proved, on dissection, to have dieted almost exclusively
upon shrimps. The bird shot in December 1890 contained
some small mussels freshly swallowed and intact. A young
drake which W. Nicol shot on the Waver, Oct. 29th, 1891,
proved on examination to have been feeding on small bivalve
shells, which we found on dissection to be in a crushed con-
dition. This happened to be the most juvenile male Long-tailed
Duck that I have noticed locally, the scapulars being as uniform
in colour as in the female. All the other young drakes that
I have seen in the district had begun to sport one or two white
feathers among the scapulars at the time when they were killed.

BIRDS 301

EIDER DUCK.

Somateria molissima (L.).

The Eider Duck is entirely unknown in the upper portions of
the English Solway ; indeed, the only birds of this species, that
have appeared in the English Solway at all, belonged to a party
observed on the coast near Maryport by Mr. R. Mann. This
was in the month of March 1886, and seven out of thirteen
birds were in male plumage. Dr. Stanley obtained an immature
Eider Duck in the vicinity of Whitehaven, but that was prior
to the year 1829. Dr. Parker writes, that, in June 1880, ‘a
pair of Hider Ducks were killed by a fisherman on the Raven-
glass estuary. I was told that they had got entangled in the
fish-garth, and were killed with a stick, and that they were a
pair; but although I was on the spot the next day to secure
them, they were already plucked and roasted.! If Lord
Muncaster could be induced to introduce a few Hiders, by
hatching their eggs or transporting young birds from Colon-
say or the ‘ Long Island,’ I fancy that this fine sea duck might
easily be naturalised, and would become an additional ornament
to the bird colonies which already owe so much to his Lordship’s
fostering care. The Hider is quite unknown to the Morecambe
Bay fishermen, but Mr. Armstrong has an Eider in female dress
killed near Barrow about the year 1860. Mr. Batson has never
met with the Hider in any of his fowling expeditions to the
estuaries of the Duddon and Morecambe Bay; but has often
examined a bird in female feather, which was killed some years
ago on the coast off Fleetwood.

COMMON SCOTER.
@demia nigra (L.).

Dr. Heysham knew the Common Scoter as a bird of our coast-
line. T. C. Heysham also met with it, for he says in a letter of
1840: ‘So far nothing has turned up here this winter, except a
pair of Scoter Ducks, a species however of common occurrence

1 Zoologist, 1881, p. 467.

302 VERTEBRATE FAUNA OF LAKELAND

in most parts of the country.’ Dr. Gough recorded this species
in 1848 as visiting Windermere in July, and in 1861 he wrote
of it as occasionally met with on the Kent. Mr. Hindson, in
in his ms. Notes, speaks of this duck as ‘common on Hawes-
water.’ I closely observed a Common Scoter at Monkhill
Lough in January 1889. KR. Raine had observed a similar bird
at Whin’s Pond in the previous December. Others have been
shot at different times in the neighbourhood of the higher
waters of the Eden. T. C. Heysham notes a Scoter killed near
Rickerby in August 1849. But though often met with at a
considerable distance from the sea, this Scoter is most abundant |
in the neighbourhood of Morecambe Bay, where it frequents the
well-known cockle beds, and is often netted by the Flookburgh
fishermen. Many Scoters are to be seen at sea between Fleet-
wood and Walney Island. The Barrow gunners are fond of
running out towards Fleetwood to have a few shots at the
‘Black Duck.’ Williams assures me that within the last thirty
years this Scoter was much more numerous in the neighbour-
hood of Barrow than has been the case of late years. He
ascribes this apparent decrease to the birds having been driven
away by the steamship traffic.

Flocks of Scoters frequent our open coast-line during all the
winter months, but of late years their visits to the English
Solway have been irregular. The species has never been
numerous in the higher waters on our side of the Firth, though
I have seen Scoters flighting along the Scottish side near Annan.
When they visit our side Silloth Bay is their chief feeding-
ground. A certain number of these birds appear to pass the
summer on our coast, including adult drakes. Mr. W. Duckworth
sent me an old drake in moult, shot near Silloth in the first
week of September 1886. The new quills were only half
developed, and the black feathers of the breast and wing coverts
were variegated with light brown. William Railton killed a
similar bird about the 25th of August 1888, on the Eden, near
Cargo. Mr. J. N. Robinson had observed it for some days
previously, but had abstained from shooting it, because it was
incapacitated for flight by the loss of its old flight feathers.
Mr. Nicol reported to me that a large flock of Scoters appeared

BIRDS 303

in Silloth Bay on the 26th of July 1888; these, he thought,
had been driven up the channel by a strong wind from the
S.W., the sea being rather lumpy outside. But though this
Scoter is represented on our coast-line in every month of the
year, it will of course be understood that the species is most
notably a winter immigrant, leaving our coasts in early spring
in order to revisit its breeding-grounds in Northern Europe.
Mr. Hewetson favoured Mr. Eagle Clarke with a description
of a large flight of Scoters, which passed over Skipton in West
Yorkshire, on the 24th and 25th of April 1879 ; on the first of
which dates the ducks, bewildered by the lights of the town and
the darkness of the night, flew against chimney pots and houses,
no fewer than one hundred and fifty being secured. A large
proportion of them were immolated by the telegraph wires.)
These birds were flying from the westward against a gentle east
wind, and I think that no one, who consults a map, will find
fault with the inference that the Scoters were migrating from
their winter quarters off Morecambe Bay and Fleetwood across
Yorkshire, intending to strike the Humber or the low-lying
coast of Holderness. The return passage of these birds is
illustrated by an observation of Mr. W. Nicol, who informed me
that on the 11th of October 1888, when fishing near Silloth, he
saw a flock of from eighty to one hundred Common Scoters
flying at a great height from east to west, ‘as if they were on
their way from their breeding quarters. They did not stay
here, but went right away west.’ Mr. Nicol has had many
opportunities for studying the habits of this Scoter, and has
often heard the birds flighting over Silloth on a winter’s night,
calling loudly. Among other occasions, this was noticed fre-
quently in the early spring of 1889, when the Scoters, which
spent the hours of daylight in Silloth Bay, used to fly at night
up the channel at a height, rounding the Grune and crossing
Skinburness marsh to Silloth. I have on one occasion only
recognised the call of this Duck migrating over Carlisle.

1 Zoologist, 1880, p. 355.

re aed FE he eS A <7 wre
ro poe

304 VERTEBRATE FAUNA OF LAKELAND

VELVET SCOTER.
Gdemia fusca (L.).

The Velvet Scoter has always been a somewhat rare bird in
Lakeland. Taylor of Headswood reported to T. C. Heysham a
Velvet Scoter seen and fired at on Talkin Tarn, in May 1847,
and Dr. Gough recorded a pair which visited Windermere in
May 1848, the drake being killed by Mr. Watson of Ecclerigg.
These, strangely enough, are the only Velvet Scoters for whose
occurrence in the interior of Lakeland there is satisfactory
evidence. Mr. Heywood Thomson, and also Williams of Barrow,
informed me that they have seen Velvet Scoters in the Irish
Channel between Fleetwood and the south point of Walney,
such birds being usually in the company of Common Scoters.
Certainly the species is rarely obtained in the ‘ducker’ nets of
the Flookburgh fishermen. Mr, W. E. Beckwith informed Mr.
F.S. Mitchell that he obtained a young drake killed on Cartmell
Sands in December 1876. The species has not been obtained
to my knowledge between Morecambe Bay and Silloth, where
the first that came under my notice was shot on May 2, 1883.
Mr. J. N. Robinson shot a beautiful old male on the Eden near
Cargo, December 22,1886. An occasional Velvet Scoter has
appeared from time to time in Silloth Bay, feeding on shell-fish
like the Scaups and Common Scoters. Mr. Nicol shot an im-
mature drake in November 1887, and two in the following
month, sent to Mackenzie, and another in female plumage in
January 1888. This last was in company with an old drake,
which escaped scatheless. In July 1889 the same excellent
observer saw a Velvet Scoter in Silloth Bay, and another, also
solitary, in October of the same year. Mr. Tullie saw a Velvet
Scoter at Monkhill Lough in December 1890, and on the 13th
we observed a Scoter, apparently a Velvet, off the point of
Burgh marsh, where Mr. Leavers had fired at it several times a
few days before. We saw it come up with the tide, flight round
and alight again in the main channel, in which it was rapidly
carried away. Mr. Nicol considers that this Scoter is more
restless than the common species, frequently rising on the wing
and taking long flights. He has never heard it utter any call-note.

BIRDS 30!

OU

SURF SCOTER.
Gdemia perspicillata (L.).

The only example of this transatlantic duck that has been
obtained within the strict limits of Lakeland is the adult drake
which was shot by a farm servant on a pond at Crofton,
November 2, 1856, a few months before the death of T. C.
Heysham. He secured the bird, and probably examined it in
the flesh, because he preserved the trachea and sternum, which,
in the natural course of things, would have been thrown away.
The specimen went to the hammer with the rest of Heysham’s
birds in May 1859, and was purchased by the late Mr. Gurney.
It is now the property of his son, Mr. J. H. Gurney of Keswick
Hall, Norwich. The trachea and sternum were included with
the mounted bird as ‘Lot 176’ of the sale catalogue, but by an
oversight the trachea was retained at Carlisle. Quite recently
a clerk in Messrs. Mounsey’s office in Carlisle handed to me for
examination a small cardboard box which had been found among
some papers. It proved to contain the trachea in question,
together with a note in Heysham’s hand, stating that it was the
trachea of the Surf Scoter shot at Crofton in 1856, and perhaps
the only trachea of this rare duck then in England.

It is a little surprising that this bird should have been killed
at Crofton, because the locality is about seven miles in a ‘bee
line’ from both the estuaries of Esk and Eden and those of
Wampool and Weaver. All the other British examples have
been shot, or washed up dead, on the sea-coast.

Mr. Heywood Thompson recently showed me a specimen of
the Surf Scoter in the plumage of the young male, which he
shot on the N.W. coast of England, although south of our limits.
i.é, on the Ribble, opposite Lytham, December 9, 1882. It was
recorded as a female bird (Zool. 1884, p. 29), but it was not
sexed. I have therefore no hesitation in pronouncing it to be
in male dress, This bird is deep brown in colour, with a slight
whitish mark before the eye, a more decided whitish mark
behind the eye, and a long white patch on the hind-neck, as
extensive as in an old male, although not of course nearly so
pure in tint.

U

306 VERTEBRATE FAUNA OF LAKELAND

GOOSANDER.

Mergus merganser, L.

The Goosander has long been known as a winter visitant to
the rivers and lakes of estuaries. Nor is it improbable that at
one time a single pair of these birds may have elected to nest
in the neighbourhood of Windermere, which has always been a
favourite resort of this species during the colder months of the
year. What gives colour to this suggestion is a statement of
Nicolson and Burn regarding Windermere, based apparently on
information supplied by the papers of Sir Daniel Fleming:
‘Waterfowl in great plenty resort to this lake, especially in
winter, such as Wild Swans, Wild Geese, Duck, Mallard, Teal,
Widgeons, Didappers, Gravyes (which are larger than Ducks, and
build in hollow trees), and many others.’! An explanation of
the difficulty created by this passage is afforded, if we remember
that the Goosander is still called the ‘ Gravel-duck’ on the shores
of the English Solway. I believe that the name refers to the fact
that this species often rests on scars of gravel in the bed of the
estuary when the tide is out. It may include some further
reference to the species obtaining trout in well-shingled pools
in preference to a muddy bottom. At all events the Goosander
is often called a ‘Gravel-duck’ at the present time, and I
believe that the term was formerly of less restricted usage than
is now the case, since old English names naturally tend to
become more and more local, until they eventually become
obsolete. The accounts of Lord William Howard supply several
references bearing directly upon the point at issue. Between
November 7th and 13th, 1612, we find entered: ‘ For Thorne-
thwate the same week. Robinson for fish, viij’, vi‘, iiij seapies
viij’, ij gravens vii‘ Between October 25th and 31st, 1617,
we read, ‘ 2 gray hens, a grevell, and a teale, xiiij*’ In 1622,
we have an entry between January 6th and 12th, ‘5 mallerds
and gravelins, xx¢, Lastly, we read in 1623, between January
17th and 25th, ‘A gravell and a woodcock, vij*. Thus we
have four renderings of the spelling, viz., ‘gravens’ [plural],
a ‘grevell,’ ‘gravelins’ [plural], and a ‘ gravell,’ all varying
1 History and Antiquities of Westmorland and Cumberland, vol. i. p. 185.

BIRDS 307

according to the taste of the steward or cook who kept the
accounts, but all evidently referring to the same species. The
editor of Lord William’s household books has ventured the
spicy suggestion that the gravelin is ‘a small migratory fish,
commonly reputed to be the spawn [sic] of the salmon.’ But he
furnishes no explanation for the ‘spawn of the salmon’ being
entered with purchases of wild-fowl ; the context might fairly
have saved him from expressing so hazardous an opinion, We
have here the ‘Graven,’ of which the singular may well have
been the ‘ Grave,’ which is equally easily pluralised as Graves
or ‘Gravyes’; while at the same time the ‘ Graven’ are identical
with ‘Grevell,’ ‘Gravelins, and ‘ Gravell,’ the latter being the
identical term applied even to-day to the Goosander by those
who are fortunate enough to retain the Cumbrian dialect. It

will be thought perhaps by some that the original term ‘ Gravens,
found in 1612, may have been suggested by the blue-grey
mantle of the female Goosander, just as Badgers were sometimes
called ‘Greys’ from their colour. But be that as it may, the
name ‘ Grevell’ was in use in 1617, and spelt as ‘ Gravell’ in
1623. That it applied to the Goosander is rendered the more
probable by the fact that the ‘Gravens’ or ‘ Gravelins’ were
supplied during the very season at which the Goosander is most
frequently killed on the Solway, viz., from the end of October
to the end of January.

Whether or not the Goosander ever bred in the neighbour-
hood of Windermere, there can be no doubt as to its occurring
in small numbers almost every winter on that sheet of water;
indeed specimens have occurred at one time or another on
almost all the principal sheets of water in Lakeland, such as
Derwentwater, Loweswater, Ulleswater, Bassenthwaite, Hawes-
water, or even on such lesser sheets of water as Whin’s Pond,
Edenhall. It is not suggested that it occurs in any of these
localities except in couples and small parties, nor that it even
occurs every winter on any one lake; though as a matter of
fact Haweswater and Windermere are visited annually. But
inland the Goosander is widely distributed over the central
portions of Lakeland ; if it be absent or nearly so from the fell
lands which form our eastern boundary, it is so because the

308 VERTEBRATE FAUNA OF LAKELAND

waters which it frequents and which must be well supplied with
fish, particularly salmonide, are rare or not to be found where
the Goosander is wanting. Upon the coast-line it is a local
bird, more often found in Walney Channel than elsewhere in
Morecambe Bay. It frequents Ravenglass irregularly, but
shuns the bleak open coast from Drigg to Silloth, so that it has
rarely been obtained even on the more sheltered estuary of
Wampool and Waver. But if it is not partial to the open sea,
it is probably because it cannot so easily obtain in salt water a
regular supply of the trout and young salmon upon which it
prefers to diet. East of Bowness on Solway it occurs pretty
commonly, singly and in small parties, between November and
March, being then distributed along the tideway from Glasson
to the estuary banks of the Esk and Eden, both of which rivers
it frequents seasonally, flying up the Eden to the neighbour-
hood of Penrith and Appleby. Dr. Heysham found that birds
in female dress were much more numerous than adult males;
such is still the case. Though I have examined a fair number
of grey males which possessed the black nuchal collar, the only
bird that I have seen, obtained when actually changing, in the
spring, from the grey dress ifto the black and cream livery of
the old male, was shot at Haweswater early in March 1891.
The Goosander is not partial to the sandy estuaries of Wampool
and Waver, as already remarked, but prefers the rocky and
rapid pools of the Eden, and chiefly dives for its prey in deep
gravelly holes. It is a clever diver; when winged it is some-
times, though rarely, secured by the punt-gunners, who give
chase to such cripples when the tide has ebbed, and left the
central portions of the Solway Firth a wilderness of flat sand,
the banks stretching away for several miles to the westward.
It is sometimes eaten. I have heard its flesh pronounced to be
‘quite as good as grey duck’ (i.e. Mallard). In the Field of
October 4, 1890, Mr. Wrigley records that two Goosanders were
shot that year on the Lancashire coast at Formby on September
27, two days earlier than our earliest date, which relates to a |
young bird shot on the Eden on the 29th of September 1883,
and a week earlier than our second earliest date of arrival,
which is that of a bird in female dress shot on the Eden

BIRDS 309

on the 4th of October 1888. When the tide ebbs, some
Goosanders go down with it seaward, but others rest sitting
nearly upright on a gravel scar or on the sods at the end of
the marsh. I have more than once walked on to the top of
these birds; the haste with which they bustled off afforded not
a little amusement. It is really a pity that the poor things
should be so hard shot, because the fowlers get only a meagre
price for them; yet, when one of these large ducks comes
swinging up channel at a brisk pace, the temptations to ‘ let
drive’ is trying to most sportsmen, even though the chance of
retrieving a wounded or dead bird from the race of the tide may
bea poor one. Its flight, though heavier than that of the Mer-
ganser, is free and vigorous; to see a fine old pair of Goosanders
fighting up the Eden from Burgh to their favourite pool at
Rickerby, above Carlisle, soon after the break of day, is quite
enough to season an early river-side ramble with contentment.
During the frosty days of December 1890 a flock of Goosanders
frequented the Eden near Langwathby, three of them being in
the adult male livery. The old males were sufficiently wary
to elude their persecutors, but their companions were less
fortunate. R. Raine shot four or five of them to feed his tame
Peregrine, and others fell to local marksmen. R. Raine, being
an artistic and thoughtful taxidermist, took special pains to
study the attitudes adopted by these Goosanders when neither
flighting, nor diving, norswimming. He found that their usual
posture of repose was to poise themselves nearly upright upon
a sheet of ice or a rock in the river-bed; a conclusion which
agreed closely with our studies of Goosanders at the mouth of
the same river. In the spring of 1892 a party of eight
Goosanders lingered on the waters of the same part of the Eden
until the 20th of March. This is rather a late date for these
birds to be found in the interior of Lakeland. As a rule they
seem to prefer to withdraw to the estuary waters shortly before
their final departure to more northern breeding-grounds.

310 VERTEBRATE FAUNA OF LAKELAND

RED-BREASTED MERGANSER.

Mergus serrator, L.

With us the Merganser is more of a seafaring duck than the
Goosander. A few individuals always frequent the waters of
the English Solway from October to April, and may often be
seen flighting down from the estuary of the Wampool to the
open sea west of Maryport. In July 1890 Mr. Nicol saw a
half-grown brood of Mergansers swimming in the Waver with
their parents, but the party had probably crossed over to us
from the Scottish Solway. I have seen some very handsome
full-dressed males which had been procured off Carnforth,
Flookburgh, Arnside, and Ravenglass in the spring of the
year: but the majority of those seen on our coast are attired
in female dress. This Merganser is comparatively rare in the
interior of Lakeland; although immature birds have been
obtained on Windermere Lake.

SMEW.
Mergus albellus, L.

Dr. Gough in 1861 recorded the Smew as an occasional
visitant to Lyth moss, a large and wet ‘ flow’ almost adjoiming
Foulshaw, and therefore close to the Kent estuary. In January
1891 two adult drakes were seen on the same river near
Levens. Mr. Todd, a neighbouring farmer, shot one of them
dead. He wounded its companion, but when about to secure
it he fell on the ice, and the crippled bird dived away and was
never seen again. The bird secured is a very handsome drake,
one of the most perfect that I have seen. About the same
time that the Smews visited the Kent, an immature female was
shot in the Rusland valley. Mr. C. F. Archibald reports:
‘Richard Holme shot it in the pool on January 17,1891. It
was alone. Richard “did not see it dive, but there was no
doubt but what it had been, no doubt whatever ; it got up hoful
quick and flew tremendous sharp, it did for sure.”’ Mr. W.
Duckworth has examined a female and an adult male believed
to have been shot near Ulverston. I have not been able to

BIRDS 311

trace the Smew in the heart of the Lake district. A man
named Watson of Little Salkeld showed me a young drake
which he shot on the Eden near that place about the year
1870 ; just when a sharp thaw had succeeded to a severe frost.
It was alone and was diving when he shot it. This bird had
doubtless flown up the Eden from the Solway Firth, to which
Smews have always been irregular visitants, occurring repeat-
edly it is true, but only at long intervals. Dr. Heysham says
that in his time the Smew was rarely met with, and his son had a
similar experience. James Irwin wrote to T. C. Heysham in a
letter of January 13, 1841: ‘A small Smew was shot in the
canal near Glasson a few days ago by a man named Hodgson.
He ate it, not knowing what it was. Heysham purchased
another in Carlisle market in January 1848, between which
date and 1880 seven adult and immature Smews are known to
have been killed in Cumberland, nearly all upon the Eden.
Captain Irwin of Lynehow showed me a fine old Smew drake,
shot on the Lyne in December 1883. Nearly six years elapsed
before the species reappeared, in October 1889. On the 30th
of that month Nicol was shooting on the Waver when he fell
in with a bird in female dress. At the first glance he thought
it was a Long-tailed Duck, but it swam more rapidly, and
looked very small. He soon distinguished the dark reddish
crest, grey mantle and white fore-neck. It swam up the estuary
in front of his punt, with a flowing tide. The weather was
blustering and he thought that the bird had come in for shelter.
It seemed hopeless to shoot so apt a diver on the water, and
he therefore got a shot at it as it rose on the wing, dropping
it into the water. But it was only pinioned and easily dived
away. He did not see it again until the 13th of November, when
he and Law chased it up into a narrow channel, and despairing
of capturing it alive, shot it rather than allow it to be lost
altogether. No others were heard of until the severe winter of
1890-91, when many Smews visited different parts of England.
Mr. Thorpe purchased a female killed by some poor gunner
near Carlisle, on January 7, and on the 10th of the same
month a handsome drake was killed by Mr. Saul’s keeper on
the Eden. Mr. George Saul, who brought it to me for identifi-

5 lb VERTEBRATE FAUNA OF LAKELAND

cation, said that a second and similar bird had been seen and
fired at by the same man. On the 15th of the month I ex-
amined another old Smew drake, shot by the keeper of Mr.
MacInnes on the Eden near Rickerby the same morning. Little,
who killed it, showed me the exact spot where he flushed it,
saying that it flew out from among the ‘ saffs’ or willows at the
water edge and was crossing the stream when he stopped it.
When he began to handle it a small ‘ brandling’ dropped out
of its mouth. On the 17th of the same month a female Smew
in adult dress was brought to me for Tullie House by Mr. J. N.
Robinson, who had shot it near Cargo the previous evening.
No more Smews were killed during January, but on the 4th of
February I found a single bird on Monkhill Lough. The severe
weather had now broken ; Tufted Ducks, Pochards, Goldeneyes,
Teal, and Mallard had all returned to their favourite retreat.
The Smew was in female or immature dress. When first ob-
served, it was swimming near the south side of the lough, but
on being disturbed it swam out into the middle of the water and
along the bank on the opposite side, travelling faster than any
of the common diving ducks. The head was carried fairly
erect, and the white fore-neck was generally visible. It swam
rather deep in the water, and its action in diving resembled that —
of a Grebe more than that of a duck. It seemed to be shy and
wild, and did not consort with any other fowl; neither did it
stay long on the lough, for on my next visit it had disappeared.
The neck of the Smew is rather short in comparison with that
of other ducks, and the body is very compact, the pectoral
girdle giving the impression of unusual strength. The legs are
placed quite as far back as in the other species of Mergansers,
and argue an upright position when the Smew is at rest on land.
I have dissected a good many Smews at different times, and
almost always found their food to consist of small fishes, with
occasional aquatic larve. Mr. MacInnes’s bird had nothing but
a few fish scales and bones in its stomach, but Raine, to whom
I sent Mr. Saul’s bird for preservation, in addition to five fishes
about three inches in length, took four fresh-water shells out of
its stomach. This old drake, in fairly good condition, weighed
1 Ib. 3 oz. The Smew is not a heavy duck at any time. |

BIRDS ole

Order COLUMB. Fam. COLUMBIDA.
RING DOVE.
Columba palumbus, L.

The Wood Pigeon must always have been a common breeding
- bird in the forests of Lakeland, as well as an abundant visitant
from Scandinavia at the fall of the year. In what way this
species may have been captured before powder and shot came
into general use is a matter for speculation; but there can be
no doubt that the Wood Pigeon has long formed an important
article of our food supply. The accounts of Lord William
Howard prove that it was regularly supplied to his table.
Sometimes the birds were entered as ‘Stockdoves, the title
under which, at the present time, they are commonly known in
North Lancashire, or, at any rate, in the neighbourhood of
Foulshaw. Once the species was described as the Ring Dove,
i.e. *iij ring dowes vit’ Generally it was entered by the
common name of Cushat, the taste of the cook varying the
spelling from ‘Cowshots’ and ‘Cowshootes’ to ‘Cowshettes’ and
‘Cushats.’ Occasionally the birds are simply entered as ‘Doves.’
All sportsmen know the pretty shooting which these birds
afford when flocking in to roost in their favourite fir-trees on a
winter’s afternoon, frequently accompanied by a few of the blue
Stock Doves which have joined their ranks while feeding in the
open fields. Though shy and wary when persecuted, there can
be no doubt that this pigeon admits of a certain degree of
domestication if taken from the nest at an early age. In the
year 1842 there was living a tame Wood Pigeon which had
been kept as a pet for three-and-twenty years. Its owner was
Mr. Isaac Stubbs of the Dale, near Kirkoswald. The bird spent
most of its time indoors, having contracted a friendship with
the sheep-dog and the house cat.1

Instances of the Wood Pigeon nesting in highly accessible
situations are comparatively common, but that this species
should voluntarily nest upon the ground appears far from pro-
bable. A single instance of such a departure from its usual
habits is vouched for by a local newspaper, which states that in

1 Carlisle Patriot, August 19, 1842.

314 VERTEBRATE FAUNA OF LAKELAND

June 1843 Thomas Coward, a keeper in the service of Lord
Lonsdale, ‘discovered amongst the Ling on Shap Fell a
Wood Pigeon’s nest, in which were two young ones, almost
ready to fly.’ }

STOCK DOVE.

Columba enas, L.

The Stock Dove appears to have been always a winter
visitant, if not an actual resident in Lakeland; but there can be
no doubt that it is only within a comparatively recent period
that it has bred pretty generally in this region. Mr. Tom
Duckworth informed Mr. Harvie-Brown: ‘In the Rose Holmes,
west of Carlisle, about six miles from this city, on the 28th of
April 1861, in an old oak-tree (one of the last vestiges of Ingle-
wood Forest), I found the first nest of the Stock Dove, and in
the following year I found another in an old rabbit-hole in the
bank of the river Roe, a tributary of the Caldew ;’ since which
date he had found these birds breeding on the Lyne, on the
Newbiggin Holmes, and also on the Eden.2 Mr. W. Dickinson
wrote in 1882: ‘ About 1840 I saw two or three of these birds
fly out by the arch holes of the Irton tithe barn, and was told
they were in the habit of breeding inside the barn in seasons
when the building was not much in use.’? Mr. Reynolds
assured me that when he first came to Ravenglass the Stock
Dove was almost unknown in the district, and none bred in
the rabbit-holes on Drigg Common. They first began to nest
at Kirksanton, and he soon afterwards heard of them as
frequenting the Fells, where they were known as ‘ Rock Doves.’
Latterly they have nested numerously among the sand-hills of
the coast, in which I have inspected the squab young. The
blue pigeons which frequent Whitbarrow are no doubt Stock
Doves, for the keeper on the ground volunteered that they were
‘Blue Rocks,’ and that he found three pairs of them nesting m
rabbit-holes this year [1891]. He knew the Wood Pigeon as
the ‘Stockdove,’ the name commonly applied to it in his district.

1 Carlisle Patriot, June 9, 1843.

2 Proc. Royal Phys. Soc. vii. p. 251.
3 West. Cumberland Rem. p. 19.

BIRDS 315

Dr. Gough did not include the Stock Dove in his local list,
but Mr. Archibald finds a few pairs breeding in the Rusland
Valley ; they undoubtedly nest about Appleby. When we cross
the county boundary we find the Stock Dove well established in
the Edenhall woods and the valley of the Eden. I have seen
young birds taken from the Lyne, and believe this species to
breed in the limestone scars of Eastern Westmorland, and
locally among the central mountains of the Lake district.
Mr. W. Hodgson wrote of Ulleswater in 1885: ‘The Stock
Dove has of late years taken up its quarters at more than one
station among the hills, where its low plaintive cooing is first
heard at the beginning of March.! I have occasionally
observed small parties of Stock Doves flying across our salt
marshes; on Nov. 4, 1889, I happened to walk almost on to
the top of a single Stock Dove, which was drinking at a small
‘dub’ on Burgh marsh. At Wright Green, near Cockermouth,
the Stock Dove has been known as a breeding bird only since
1884. Mr. Dickinson found one nest on the ground under
cover of a very thick whin-bush.

ROCK DOVE.

Columba livia, Bonnat.

The Rock Dove may fairly be considered a Lakeland species,
inasmuch as the northern portion of this region receives
irregular and infrequent visits from veritable ‘Blue Rocks,’
such as we are accustomed to meet with in the caves of the
Hebrides. For example, during the severe weather of January
1891, a small flock of these wild pigeons appeared in the neigh-
bourhood of Allonby. I saw one that had been secured alive, a
veritable ‘cave pigeon.’ Whether the species really breeds in
fissures athong the precipices of the Lake mountains, as some
people report, has never been determined; although I have
often invited those who support this hypothesis to produce
specimens. Most probably some of the birds reported as
‘Rock Doves’ are the descendants of stray dovecot pigeons,
which have partly reverted to feral conditions. Others are

1 Trans. Cumberland and Westmorland Assoc., xi. p. 22.

316 VERTEBRATE FAUNA OF LAKELAND

Stock Doves. Mr J. W. Harris formerly assured me that the
Rock Dove bred at St. Bees; but I find on examining the birds
on which his opinion was based that they are not pure-bred.
The only blue pigeons which I have myself obtained from the
locality were Stock Doves. Readers interested in the domesti-
cation of pigeons, such as those which once bred in the churches
of Warwick and Skelton in Cumberland, and Morland in West-
morland, should consult a paper contributed by the Chancellor —
of Carlisle to the ninth volume of the Z'ransactions. of the
Cumberland and Westmorland Archeological Society.

TURT th Wow G:

Turtur communis, Selby.

Dr. Heysham.knew the Turtle Dove as an occasional straggler
to Cumberland, and such it has continued to be, for its visits to
Lakeland during the last hundred years have never yet resulted
in thé permanent establishment of the species in any one
locality. T. C. Heysham tells us that a young Turtle Dove,
killed at Blackwell in September 1832, was the only local
specimen he had seen; he had heard of others, but considered
the bird ‘of very rare occurrence in this county.’ Dr. Gough
styled the Turtle a rare, occasional visitant to Westmorland.
The Kendal Museum contains a Turtle Dove labelled: ‘ Killed
near Kendal. Presented by Mr. Josh. Leather.’ The only
other Westmorland example that I have myself seen was killed
near Kirkby-Lonsdale in the summer of 189i. I have not
seen any specimens obtained in the heart of the Lake district,
but Dr. Parker thought that a pair bred near Gosforth. Cer-
tainly I saw a fine Turtle Dove at Drigg, on June 5, 1885, and
the collection of the late Mr. Borrodale contains a specimen
shot near Eskmeals. It occurs occasionally in North-west
Cumberland, at Rose, at Wigton, near Kirkbampton ; it nested
at Scotby, on the east side of Carlisle, in 1885; it has
repeatedly occurred in Barron Wood and other parts of the
Eden valley. In 1888 a pair appeared near Little Bampton,
and would no doubt have nested, had not one of them been
winged and caged.

BIRDS D147

Order PT EROCLETES. Fam. PTEROCLID.
PALLAS’S SAND GROUSE.

Syrrhaptes paradoxus (Pall.),

Pallas’s Sand Grouse is essentially an Asiatic species, making
its home in the arid Kirghis steppes, the great Gobi desert, and
extending its range eastward through Mongolia to the plains
between Pekin and Tienstin in North China (Elliott). Prjevalsky
states that Syrrhaptes paradoaus ‘is one of the most characteristic
birds of Mongolia, inhabiting not only the steppes, but also the
deserts. In summer they go north, even beyond Lake Baikal,
where they breed, but spend the winter in the Gobi desert, in
such localities as are free from snow, and in Ali-shan ; and from
the middle of October we constantly meet with them there,
sometimes in flocks of several thousands’ (Rowley, Orn. Misc. i,
p. 382).

The first man to obtain a specimen was a Russian, Nicol
Rytschkof, who forwarded it to Pallas, but in a mutilated
condition, having lost the long tail-feathers, which form so
conspicuous an ornament of the species. Not having a supple-
mentary tail, Pallas figured the specimen without one (Reise,
Russ. Reichs. ii. App. 712, Tab. F. 1773), and made some shrewd
remarks upon the new species, which he referred to the genus
Tetrao. He remarks: ‘Avis inter Lagopodes et Otides ambigua,
multisque momentis anomala et a norma solita aliena.’ Attention
is called to the curious feet: ‘ Pedes maxime insoliti fere usque
ad ungues plumosi, breviculi, tridactyli, digitis brevissimis,
coalitis, solo apice unguibusque distincti$; unde planta triloba,
latiuscula, papillis corneis imbricata. He concludes: ‘ Habitat
in deserto Tartarico australiore, unde adlatum specimen farctum
transmisit nobil Nicol Rytschkof.. Our countryman Latham,
following Pallas, conferred on the species the title of ‘ Hetero-
clite grous.’

Having made these prefatory remarks for the sake of such
readers as are not professed naturalists, it becomes possible to
consider two irruptions of this Sand Grouse into Lakeland, in
the years 1863 and 1888 respectively. Mr. J. H. Gurney has

318 VERTEBRATE FAUNA OF LAKELAND

kindly called my attention to an unrecorded specimen, which he
has examined, in the possession of Mrs. Dawson Rowley of
Brighton. Mr. Gurney says that this bird, which is a female,
was shot by Mr. Jackson of St. Bees in April 1863. If the
month be correctly reported, this Sand Grouse was the first to
be obtained in England that year, but the earliest public
announcement that this species had reached England appeared
in the 7imes newspaper of May 26, reprinted in the Zoologist.
It was Mr. E. J. Schollick who reported that a covey of fourteen
birds had been seen on Walney Island, and that two birds had
been shot. The birds are described as having been very tame,
allowing the man who shot the specimens to approach quite
near while they fed in a field of corn. A fine male Sand
Grouse was killed near Penrith in May or June, and stuffed by
the elder Hope, who says that it was very hard shot. A female
bird was shot near Silloth by a man named Lightfoot, who sub-
sequently narrated to me all the facts concerning its capture.
Routledge of Silloth remembers the occurrence likewise, and
assures me that a second bird was seen at the same time.
Lightfoot’s bird was skinned by the late James Fell, who was
fond of discussing with me the circumstances under which it had
strayed to Cumberland. We little thought a few years ago that
Professor Newton’s prediction of the return of this Sand Grouse
to Western Europe would receive so remarkable a fulfilment.
When the great irruption took place in the spring of 1888, two
distinct flights of Sand Grouse visited Lakeland. The more
northern division would appear to have arrived on the east
coast of England between Berwick and Holy Island, striking
across the Bewcastle fells, and proceeding westward to the
southern shores of the Solway Firth. The southern division
perhaps arrived at Spurn, and after following the Humber,
crossed North-west Lancashire, alighting on Walney Island,
whence they spread northward to the sand dunes of Ravenglass
estuary. It will perhaps facilitate matters if I state that at no
time, during the immigration of these birds, did any of us
succeed in tracing their presence in Westmorland ; although Mr.
W. Duckworth, on June 26, fell in with a flock of seven Sand
Grouse at Green Odd, within a short flight of that county. With

BIRDS 319

this proviso, we may divide Cumberland, temporarily, into four
arbitrary and artificial, yet obvious and convenient, divisions.

(A) East Cumberland. No birds were reported during the
spring from Penrith, Alston, or Renwick, though all possible
inquiries were made. Mr. J. J. Baillie informed me that some
~ Sand Grouse were seen in Northumberland, about thirteen miles
east of Alston. Had these continued their course westward, no
doubt they would have crossed Cumberland. As it is, only the
north-eastern corner of the county is known to have been
favoured. Near Stapleton ‘a lot of five, and on the same day
another lot of three,’ were seen by Mr. H. J. Lorraine of. West-
field House. At Wintershields, near Bewcastle, a flock of ‘ about
twenty’ came under the notice of Mr. Richardson, while fre-
quenting a small moss for two or three days. Neither of these
gentlemen could furnish an exact date, but both referred the
occurrence to April. Near Longtown two flights of about a
dozen birds were observed by Robert Moscrop, gamekeeper to
Major Irwin, flying very rapidly towards the west. ‘At first I
thought,’ he wrote, ‘they were Golden Plover, as they much
resembled their flight, but they were larger, and darker of
plumage, and uttered a peculiar “ chuck-cho-chuck ” as they flew
along well up in the air. Mr. Moscrop was at first under the
impression, like the gentlemen just mentioned, that he had seen
the birds in April; but a reference to his diary proved indis-
putably that the correct date on which he observed the second
drove was May 21, and he accounted for his first impression
by the coldness of the season. No more birds were seen (or at
least reported) from Hast Cumberland until August 10, when a
flock crossed the Esk at Birrell’s weir, near Floriston, in view of
Major Hogg and Mr. Routledge, who were fishing at the time.
Major Hogg kindly furnished the following statement: ‘I should
say that I saw about thirty-five birds, not more. I saw them
twice, but they were the same flock evidently. They appeared
to me darker in plumage than the bird we find in such numbers
in India, where it is called by the natives “CGuttoo,’ from the
continued call it makes when flying.’

(B) Cumbrian Plain.—A flock of six or seven appeared in
some fields near Orton, on the northern edge of the Cumbrian

320 VERTEBRATE FAUNA OF LAKELAND

Plain, on May 19, as reported by Mr. Davidson, and continued |
to frequent the locality until May 26, when three were shot and :
brought in the flesh to George Dawson of Carlisle. About this |
time a flock of nine took up their abode on the mosses and grass

fields near Bow. Mr. J. N. Robinson and Mr. Dawson, being

well acquainted with the farmers of the district, succeeded in
rousing much interest in the preservation of the birds, and none
being shot, the party haunted that district the entire summer.

(C) The English Solway. Much interest attached to the im-
migration of Sand Grouse to this district, from which their
presence was first reported by that excellent out-door naturalist,

Mr. Richard Mann. First seen here were a pair of birds seen

by Mr, Williamson, jun., near Allonby, on May 22. It is pro-
bable, from information obtained by Mr. Tom Duckworth and
others, that about this date Sand Grouse appeared near Bow-

ness and Abbey. JBut the earliest date of any number was

May 27. On the morning of that day a flock was seen near
Silloth by Mr. Osborn. The same afternoon a flock of fifteen

were seen at close quarters under cover of a hedgerow, by Mr,

R. Mann, near Allonby. I reached the ground on the following
forenoon, and, with Mr. R. Mann as guide, observed a number of
birds. They had, however, been shot at, and were growing
wild. A flock of fifteen which were tame, and had not pre-
viously been shot at, was seen in the locality the same day.
On June 5 a flock of thirty birds flew past William Nicol, while
shrimping near Silloth pier ; and the same flock lingered in the
neighbourhood until the 8th, when it was last seen, flying west.
On June 9, Mr. Tandy discovered that a party of ten birds had
frequented Wolstey farm since the beginning of the month, and
there they remained until the 13th, when, according to one
report, they were seen to cross the Solway Firth to the Scotch
side.

After June 13 very few birds were seen near the English
Solway. On June 25 a single bird was seen by W. Nicol to
cross the Solway from the Scotch side, proceeding inland when —
it reached our coast. On the 28th June ten or twelve birds
visited the Grune Point. On July 20 a flock of eight or nine
birds crossed over to us from the Scottish side of the Solway.

BIRDS AYA

(D) West Cumberland. (1) Near Cockermouth the Rev. A.
Sutton, whose experience of Sand Grouse in the Soudan is
extensive, observed three birds on the Tallantine Hill, July 2-3.
When disturbed they flew to Millstone Moss.

At Sandwith, as reported by Mr. H. Nott, four Sand Grouse
were seen on the high ground above St. Bees during the second
week of July by a young farmer, whose dog turned them out of
the turnips.

At Seatcale a male and female were shot out of a flock of
nine by Mr. John Porter. Both birds were killed at one shot,
and sent to Dr. Parker. The survivors flew off in a westerly
direction.

At Ravenglass a flock, numbering at first twenty-three, settled
among the sand-hills on July 24, as ascertained by Joseph Farren.

Mr. W. Duckworth most kindly visited Walney Island at
my request, both on June 4th and subsequently. He ascer-
tained on that date the presence of a flock of fourteen, and of
another of seven, the first birds having arrived on the 19th of ©
May. Between that date and June 18th seven were shot and
sent for preservation to Williams of Barrow. On June llth a
flock of forty, and another of seventeen, birds, appeared at the
north end of Walney. On June 17th a flock of eight were seen
at the south end of the island.

The advent of these interesting strangers roused hopes that
they might become naturalised, or, at least, breed amongst our
littoral sand-banks for a season, and much labour was expended
in ascertaining whether the birds were breeding. I sent to
the Field office the ovaries of two females, killed on the
26th and 28th of May, requesting that a professional expert
might give an official opinion as to whether the birds were
nesting. The editor replied: ‘Both the hens would have nested,
the one in the course of a few days, the other in less than a
fortnight.’ This was quite my own impression.

Ignorance of the signification of hedgerows, easily compre-
hended as characterising a species accustomed to range at will
over vast tracts of unenclosed country, proved fatal to some
individuals on their first arrival; the survivors were not slow
to adopt habits of increased vigilance. Thus when a flock of

x

322 VERTEBRATE FAUNA OF LAKELAND

ten birds had been marked down into a ploughed field, and
their propinquity obtained by a long détowr ad ventre, I had
scarcely taken up a vantage point in a thick furze bush over-
looking the birds when they began to run together, and, having
packed on the ground, rose and abruptly departed, pausing
only when they had gained the shelter of the sea-beach. They
were marked down afresh, but the like result followed. Rising
sharply, at forty yards’ distance, they executed a few rapid turns,
and pitched in the field which they had quitted previously.
On other occasions flocks, which had been shot at previously,
showed similar wariness to that just described; but at the same
time it should be understood that, when in full flight, parties
of Sand Grouse will approach men within a few yards. Noticing
a distant flock apparently making for the sea, a position in
their probable line of flight was hastily secured, and with
success, for the birds shot overhead across the heath like arrows,
their wings beating the air audibly as they pursued their head-
long course. On another occasion I happened to be walking
beneath a bank of littoral sand-hills, when a party of Sand
Grouse dashed overhead, calling lustily. Away they sped
across the beach, over long reaches of sand, away to the edge
of a distant tide, and then, following the water edge for about
a mile, they swept westwards towards Beckfoot, but checking
their course before the village was reached, they rose high in
the air and, curving their course with one accord, travelled back
to Wolstey, dropping once again in a favourite field. And
at this point a word may be said about the flight of the Sand
Grouse. Putting aside all preconceived notions, it must be
held to bear a not inconsiderable similarity to that of the
Golden Plover (Charadrius pluvialis) ; yet the flight, viewed at
a distance, served on more than one occasion to suggest some
analogy with the flight of the Swift (Cypselus apus).

The fact is that Sand Grouse are seen to the best advantage
when performing their graceful aerial evolutions. It was only
on the breezy moor, or among the long lines of sand-dunes
blown up on Walney Island, and at Ravenglass, that we natu-
ralists could enjoy to full perfection the ‘ beatific vision’ of a
flock of these birds in full ery.

BIRDS 320

Not the least pleasurable of many days employed in study-
ing the habits of Sand Grouse was the 3rd of August 1888,
spent with Mr. Reynolds at Ravenglass. ‘Together we ferried
across the estuary to the edge of Drigg Common, and, after
traversing a few hundred yards of sand, took up a position
behind a long ridge of well-drifted sand. <A glance over the
ridge revealed the existence of a strip of sandy ground, evi-
dently saturated by recent rain. Sea plantain and sea milkwort
were the only plants noticed. Conical sand-hills rose and fell
in the background, ridge flanking ridge until the sea-beach was
reached. In the near foreground, scattered over a small area,
were resting the members of a flock of three-and-twenty Sand
Grouse. A few were feeding ; some were scattered in twos and
threes around ; in the centre ten or eleven birds were squatting
close to one another. In spite of all precautions, they seemed
to suspect danger, and began to run together with shambling
gait. A moment later found fifteen birds at once within the
focus of the field-glass. Up to this juncture no cry was heard,
but when the birds rose in a pack their cry was distinctly
audible, notwithstanding the deafening clamour overhead of a
large colony of Common Terns (Sterna fluviatilis).

The cry of the Sand Grouse has been rendered as ‘ truck-
turuk, truck-turuk, by Prjevalsky, and this is certainly an
accurate rendering of a not unmelodious call-note; but if a
flock of Sand Grouse be startled at close quarters, Alor alarm
note is harder and more guttural than the customary chorus of
their united voices.

During the earlier portion of their sojourn, these birds
appeared to feed principally on the seed of clover, turnip, and
rye. Later in the year they glutted themselves on the seeds of
the corn and spurrey (Spergularia arvensis), a troublesome weed.
I sent to Mr. Tegetmeir a gizzard crammed with this small seed.
The birds shifted from one quarter to another in a way that
greatly increased the difficulty of studying their movements.
Their vagaries proved them to be true Bedouins, inheriting a
wandering disposition from their progenitors, whose prolonged
adaptation to sterile regions has clearly caused them to transmit
to their descendants a roving disposition. Upon the whole, it

324 VERTEBRATE FAUNA OF LAKELAND

may be said that they frequented mosses, grass lands, and,
where possible, ranges of sand-hills, feeding chiefly on arable
lands, and repairing at regular intervals to their favourite
watering-places. The remarkable foot, which induced Illiger
to propose the genus of Syrrhaptes for Tetrao paradoaus, Pall., is
eminently specialised to suit the environment of a sandy wilder-
ness. Mr. Reynolds remarked : ‘The footprints are curious.
They are very small for a bird seemingly larger than a Partridge.
The middle claw extends far beyond the other two, and the
smallness of foot may-account for a kind of roll or shuffle they
have in walking or running. We examined hundreds of im-
pressions in the wet sand of the ‘feet of the queen of the golden
sands’ without detecting any variation from the type. The
pad always seemed to produce a depression, shallowest in front,
where the three claws pierce the sand and leave three round
holes, the first in advance of the other two. Although the feet
of the Sand Grouse are encased in pads, and their legs are very
short, yet these birds can run with surprising celerity. On the
6th of August we found that the ground which these birds
frequented among the sand-hills at Drigg was strewn with
the feathers of Sand Grouse. Evidently they were deep in
moult.

Information regarding the autumnal movements of these
birds was naturally less easily obtained than when the first news
of their arrival had kindled a short-lived flame of, enthusiasm.
The following lines refer to some such occurrences :—(A) Hast
Cumberland. Mr. Tandy ascertained that two parties of three
and five Sand Grouse visited the Penrith district, apparently
for the first time, on September 13th and 15th. Near Rockliffe,
a single bird was constantly seen in October. (B) Cumbrian
Plain. At Orton, Sand Grouse remained throughout September,
and two were seen at Newby Cross on the 25th of that month.
Mr. George Dawson stated that on October 18th a flock of
twenty-five flew over his house, calling loudly. (c) English
Solway. Near Workington an odd bird was seen by Mr.
Hodgson early in September. At Beckfoot, near Silloth, five
appeared at the beginning of October, but did not remain.
(D) West Cumberland. The Ravenglass birds lingered on the

BIRDS 325

coast between Eskmeals and Drigg until the middle of October.
My esteemed correspondent, Mr. Reynolds, wrote shortly after
the event of their departure: ‘ Please note that the Sand Grouse
left here on the 17th inst. They were seen to fly high, but in
circles, on that day, and the police officer saw them flying in an
easterly direction over Muncaster. They have not been seen
since. ‘There were about forty of them.’

It is difficult to understand why the Sand Grouse left
Ravenglass, except by the natural hypothesis that the migratory
fever of their race had seized them and they longed to depart
to winter quarters. But a few birds lingered in Lakeland.
During the week ending November 17th, 1888, upwards of a
dozen Sand Grouse were shot near Silloth, in spite of all
remonstrances. Having examined eight of this number in the
flesh, I feel bound to say that, contrary to some statements
current at the time as to the non-suitability of our climate to
their peculiar requirements, these Sand Grouse were in the
finest feather, while their bodies were loaded with fat. They
weighed from 94 to 104 ounces, and their crops were full of
wheat, in some instances of corn and spurrey. When visiting
Walney in November 1888, I ascertained that the Sand Grouse
had left the island in July, but a single bird had just reappeared
at the south end. This was afterwards shot by a man named
Griffiths, and sent to Williams of Barrow, as was a male killed
on December 20th by Mr. Richardson of Biggar. Returning
to Cumberland, a bird in female dress was shot by a keeper
near Ainstable on November 28th. On the 10th of December
a single bird was seen at Aiglegill, Two birds, one of them
apparently wounded, visited Skinburness about the same time.

A little later in the winter, either in December or in
January, a keeper named Smith shot three Sand Grouse a few
miles from Whitehaven. The birds were sent in the flesh to
his brother, the present Jerry Smith of Bassenthwaite, at whose
house I identified one of the number. It was a fine male in
winter plumage, but had been hit very hard. Jerry Smith
mounted all three specimens, returning two of them to his
brother, whose widow still retains them.

On the 19th of January 1889 two males were shot by a

326 VERTEBRATE FAUNA OF LAKELAND

farmer at Skirwith, close to the borders of Westmorland, their
mates being therefore rendered barren. Onthe 28th of January |
1889 Mr. Haliday of Abbey reported that a few Sand Grouse
were frequenting his land, but a heavy fall of snow supervened, |
the birds became restless and shifted to the coast and the neigh-
bourhood of Wolstey, where they were seen by Dr. Gabriel and
others early in February, after which all news of them ceased
until the month of May. Mr. R. Mann then wrote to me from
Aiglegill: ‘I am sure you will be glad to know that the Sand
Grouse have made their appearance in this part of Cumberland
again. A single bird was seen on Sunday, May 12th, and a
couple (together) yesterday on the fields between this and Brown
Rigg.’ Tyson Brown, the Ravenglass keeper, told Mr. Johnson
that a fine pair of Sand Grouse arrived on the sand-hills at Drigg
on the 11th of May. This he repeated to me, with additional
information, the accuracy of which I rather doubted. Indeed,
sO many incorrect rumours of Sand Grouse occurred in 1889
that I have omitted to notice some probably true information
rather than run any risk of adulterating the facts stated in this
article ; not that I query any one’s good faith, but that people of
sanguine temperament are not always to be trusted to distin-
guish between Sand Grouse and Golden Plover. However, I
fully ascertained that a few Sand Grouse appeared near West
Silloth in September 1889, and there remained for a short time.
One bird frequented a garden at Blitterlees for several days.
In taking leave of this handsome Asiatic, I desire to express an
earnest hope that its next immigration to our shores may not
be signalised by a thoughtless slaughter of the newly-landed birds;
but that they may rather be encouraged on all hands to effect
a permanent settlement. The condition of those which were
shot in the middle of an English winter has entirely disproved
the theory that this Sand Grouse is too delicate to endure the
vicissitudes of our uncertain climate.

BIRDS APALE

Order GALLINZ. Fam. TETRAONIDZ.
BLACK GROUSE.

Tetrao tetrix, L.

The Black Grouse does not appear to have been appropriated
to heraldic purposes in the same way as Red Grouse, but
Singleton observed in 1677 that one of the four coats-of-arms
then existing in the ancient manor-house at Melmerby showed
‘three blacke cocks and the crossbow between them;’ the
latter part of the note affording us a pleasant reminder as to
the appliances of sport in vogue before the fowling-piece came
into general use. Sandford about the same date referred to the
existence of black game at Naworth. Evidence of the com-
parative abundance of this game on the English borders early
in the seventeenth century is supplied by the Accounts of Lord
William Howard. Black game did not appear at his table in
the same abundance as ‘Grouse,’ but in some seasons there was
plenty of it nevertheless. Analysing the game purchased for the
Naworth household from August 1618 to the end of that year,
I find that one hundred and twenty head of black game were
bought in during the last five months of the year. The quantity
of Red Grouse consumed during the same period amounted to
seventy-two brace and a half. The prices paid were sixpence
for a Black Cock, fourpence for a Grey Hen, and threepence for
a Grouse.

This species long continued to be numerous on our northern
confines. A sale advertisement of ‘The Manor of Bewcastle,’
published in 1829, tells us that (in spite of recent enclosures),
of 17,000 acres, 8300 acres consisted of ‘unenclosed wastes
abounding with black game and Grouse. ! The district in
question still contains a fair sprinkling of this game, though of
course black game have decreased generally of late years. Dr.
Heysham, whose knowledge of Cumberland related especially
to the north of the county, tells us that this game was scarce.
A few grey hens then nested, as they sometimes do still, on the
Solway Flow. There was generally ‘an annual brood upon
Newtown common within a mile of Carlisle.’ Thirty years

1 Carlisle Journal, May 9, 1829.

328 VERTEBRATE FAUNA OF LAKELAND

later the species was still uncommon in the Solway plain. A
local paper records in 1827, that ‘Last week the Hon. Robert
Leeson of Crosby Lodge, near this city, bagged a brace of fine
black game, which are very rare in the neighbourhood.’! A
brood of black game is sometimes reared on one of the mosses
near Drumburgh, but, owing to indiscriminate shooting, the species
has never become really established there. The only informa-
tion I possess relative to black game in the west of Cumberland
is derived from Mr. H. Patricius Senhouse, who tells me that
there is a sprinkling of black game in the neighbourhood of
Cockermouth. The Westmorland Gazette of September 13,
1845, alludes to Sir George Musgrave killing a few brace of
black game at Barron wood. The specimens now preserved at
Edenhall came from Barron wood, and Mr. R. Raine tells us
that at the present time there are two or three broods of black
game on the Barron wood and Lazonby fells.27. When we come
to the Westmorland border we find a few black game breeding
in several localities, on Whinfell for example. The species was
‘abundant at Julian Bower’ when Mr. Hindson wrote his
local notes. The question whether black game are indigenous
to a district, or have been introduced by human agency, is often
difficult to settle. It is certain that black game have bred in
the country round Appleby since the ‘forties. The Westmor-
land Gazette of September 13, 1845, records that the Hon.
Colonel Lowther and his son had been out among the black
game on the Manor of Sleagill; they bagged six brace, but
found the birds very wild. The Rev. A. J. Heelis kindly
enumerates the following places as those in which he has shot
black game near Appleby: ‘In the “Ellen,” as they call them,
which are rough woodlands of no great extent, immediately
behind Dufton Pike ; on glebe land at Kirkby Thore and in
the neighbouring plantations belonging to Mr. Crackenthorpe
of Newbiggin. I have some impression of having heard father
say that black game were introduced by Mr. Barham, a former
rector of Kirkby Thore. I know my grandfather once shot a

1 Carlisle Patriot, Dec. 7, 1827.
2 Some black game exists at Greystoke, Cumberland, and also on
Barton Fell, Westmorland.

BIRDS 329

brood on the Long Marton Glebe, which had spread from
Kirkby Thore. There are very few remaining now about the
Kirkby Thore estate.’ Mr. Heelis adds that black game exist
in considerable numbers near Alston.

Mr. R. Raine says that there is ‘a breed of black game’ at
Soulby. He saw a brood this year on Hartley Fell near Kirkby-
Stephen, but there the bird is becoming rare because the adjoin-
ing moors are not preserved. Mr. Hindson included black game
as found ‘about Shap, Reagill and Lowther wood.’ R. Raine
writes that black game are to be found about Ulleswater and
Haweswater. The head keeper at Lowther says that they
shoot from ten to twelve brace per day while Grouse driving.

Mr. H. Arnold, who rents the shooting over Kentmere and
Sleddale Forest, informed me that he had a brood of black
game in Sleddale Forest last season [1890], and that his keeper
saw two head of black game in Kentmere this year [1891]. As
regards the southern portion of the Lake district, it may be
convenient to correct a slight misapprehension. In his Birds
of Lancashire, Mr. ¥. S. Mitchell states that black game appear
to have been unknown in that county ‘until a few pairs
established themselves in Furness nearly forty years ago’ (7.¢. in
1842). He then quotes, in a condensed form, a statement
made on this subject in the Zoologist by the late W. Pearson,
upon which he comments: ‘ This is a most interesting example of
the way in which changes in the character of a district will bring

about changes in avifauna.’

It is hardly necessary to assure the reader that the establish-
ment of black game in this part of Lakeland was due to artijicial
means, 2.¢. to the intentional introduction of breeding birds.
Of course their introduction would not have been undertaken
if the district had not become suitable to them. Probably
their introduction was attempted from more centres than one.
At all events, Mr. C. W. Archibald assured me that black game
were intentionally introduced into the Rusland valley between
1832 and 1840. His late father introduced them himself.

The Westmorland Gazette of September 13, 1845, contains a
paragraph headed ‘ The Black Cock in the Lake district.’ The
writer states that the black game had formerly existed in the

330 VERTEBRATE FAUNA OF LAKELAND

high hills of Westmorland and Cumberland, but had been
extinct for a long time: ‘though attempts have been repeatedly
made to introduce it to these localities, they have hitherto been
without success. The exciting cause of these remarks was the
fact that ‘last week Mr, B. Hawkrigg of Sawrey shot four of
these rare birds on the hills between Windermere and Esthwaite
which are supposed to have been bred in the plantations of H.
Curwen, Esq.; but how they came to take up their abode in
this locality must remain a mystery. We understand that
there are four of the brood still left, and that strict orders have
been given for their preservation.’ The subject is referred to
again in 1849: ‘Five or six years ago some of these birds
appeared rather mysteriously in this district, and now they have
spread for miles on every side. Some have been shot, and fine
game they are, equal to any ever brought from Scotland. The
Green Hows, belonging to Mr. Sandys, has a brood or two;
the Dalepark Fell, belonging to B. Harrison, Esq., two or three
broods; Hawkshead Moor contains a few, and the hills in Claife
have some also. With a little care they may become numerous.’

Writing to the Zoologist in 1850, Mr. Pearson ventures some
remarks on the supposed immigration of these birds: ‘The
nearest locality where I have heard of any is Mell-fell, a round
wooded hill at Matterdale in Cumberland, and more than
twenty miles from where they were first seen with us. The
rugged and lofty barrier of the Lake mountains also intervenes :
still it is probable that they came from thence; for we have no
Black Grouse within the same distance, either to the east, west,
or south of us.’ This hypothesis falls to the ground, if we
admit the much stronger probability of these birds making their
way to Sawrey from the Rusland valley.

Mr. Pearson wrote in 1850 that black game then existed ‘at
Cock Hag betwixt Crook and Underbarrow, in the extensive
larch woods at Lamb How in Crosthwaite; and on the summit
of Whitbarrow, a detached limestone mountain, presenting a
grand rock escarpment to the lake tourist, as he approaches
from Milnthorpe. Perhaps they are most numerous in the
larch forest on the heights of Cartmell fell. In the woods of
Furness fells, on the western side of the lake, they are also as

BIRDS Be |

far down, I am told, as Holker Hall.’ The Black Grouse is not
quite extinct on Whitbarrow, but Mr. Drewery informs me that
he is not aware (1891) of any Black Grouse being bred on any
of the Duke of Devonshire’s moors. Mr. R. B. Lee informed
Mr. Mitchell in 1882 that black game were more plentiful in
the Winster district than anywhere else in the neighbourhood.
The Rev. G. Boag has instituted fresh inquiries for me. This
is his reply (August 31, 1891): ‘A few years ago I am told that
black game was very plentiful in the Winster valley, but for the
last seven years it has been scarce, though not quite extinct. I
suspect it has become scarce through being so hard shot. There
are still a few nests occasionally in this valley on the higher
ground. The Rev. T. P. Hartley tells me that he has always
found a few black game in the neighbourhood of Sawrey. Mr.
F.S. Ainslie adds: ‘ About the best place for them is on the east
side of Coniston Lake.’ Mr. H. Arnold favours me with the
following experience: ‘About twenty years ago [1871] I used
to shoot in the township of Applethwaite about four miles from
Lake Windermere on the west side, and there were then
generally a brood or two of Black Grouse each year, and at the
same time I heard of a few broods near Winster, also on the
west side of Windermere. I believe that there are fewer
black game in Lakeland now than there were twenty years ago.
I have a fine black cock which was shot about twenty-five
years ago on Reston Scar, about four miles from Windermere.’

RED GROUSE.
Lagopus scoticus (Lath.).

It was the custom in primitive times to kill Grouse at every
season of the year, a usage observed in Lakeland during the
seventeenth century. The Naworth accounts include many
entries of ‘Moorcocks’ and ‘Moor Fowle’ killed in the summer-
time; nor did the young escape the slaughter meted out to
their parents, because we have such entries as the following:
‘15 moorcocks and 6 pootes, iiij®. xj%.’;—‘ 16 morecocks, ij*.,
8 poutes, x*.’ Once, in April 1620, occurs another name for the
Red Grouse: ‘2 gorcocks, x¢.’; this term does not seem to

352 VERTEBRATE FAUNA OF LAKELAND

have been in very general use, but Machell uses it. So vast
and so remote were the unreclaimed wastes of Lakeland that
persecution failed to affect its numbers seriously; hence Dr.
Heysham and Richardson both record that there were plenty of
Grouse upon our moors, while the blue Hen Harrier still
quartered the wide expanse of Spadeadam Waste. It may be
well to point out that the descendants of the primeval race of
Grouse, that crowed among the heather, when Beavers built
their dams upon our rivers, and Wolves ravened in the forests
which then clothed the sides of the Lake Mountains, supplied
the first Grouse sent out to the Antipodes. It was Mr. John
Boustead of Armathwaite Hall, near Cockermouth, who
despatched five brace of Grouse to New Zealand in 1870.
Unfortunately only one bird reached its destination alive.
Far from being discouraged by this misadventure, Mr. Boustead
had eleven and a half brace of birds taken from Binsey, and
reared by hand, in 1872; this instalment was shipped for the
Colony in November of the same year. There was nothing
very unusual in the birds being reared in confinement. Daniel
mentions that ‘in 1809 Mr. William Routledge, of Oakshaw, in
Bewcastle, Cumberland, had in his possession a pair of Red
Grouse completely domesticated, and which had so far forgotten
their natural food as to prefer corn and crumbs of bread to the
tops and seeds of heather.’1 Grouse are always partial to corn,
and their dietary is perhaps rather varied than is sometimes
supposed. A hen Grouse, shot near Alston in October 1888,
had her stomach distended with food, consisting of fresh heather
tops, grass seeds, and ripe blaeberries. Fine grit is required
for the proper digestion of such food, and the birds have some-
times suffered for want of it. Writing from Alston on the 16th
of April 1837, John Borrow informed T. C. Heysham that ‘in
consequence of the Grouse in some parts of this neighbourhood
having been unable to procure sand (owing to the depth of
snow), they have picked up particles of the Sulphate of Barites,
which appears to have been the cause of a very great mortality
among them. A person whom I can depend on assures me he
saw not less than 40 brace dead upon the Moors a few days

1 Rural Sports.

BIRDS O88

since. I have procured a brace... When the telegraph wires of
the Lancashire and Carlisle Railway were first erected, large
quantities of Grouse were killed near the summit of Shap.
During the early months of the year Shap is one of the dreariest
regions in all Lakeland. Yet Yarrell tells us that, in the year
1835, a farmer who was firing heather on Shap Fell burnt over
the nest of a Red Grouse on the 25th of March.!

PTARMIGAN.
Lagopus mutus (Montin. ).

The former existence of the Ptarmigan in Lakeland has been
affirmed and reaffirmed by numerous writers since first Pennant
stated in 1776 that a few Ptarmigan still inhabited the lofty
hills near Keswick. Having formerly thrown doubt on this
statement of Pennant, I now take up my pen to support his
proposition, Whether Pennant learnt the fact when travelling
through Lakeland does not appear. But I believe that Dr.
Heysham himself had independent grounds for his statement in
1797, that the Ptarmigan might still be found on the mountains
about Keswick. I find those grounds in ¢his fact,—that, when
the author of Observations chiefly Lithological visited Keswick
in 1803 he found a specimen of the Ptarmigan, which he calls
‘Tetrao Lagopus, in Hutton’s Local Museum. It is extremely
likely that Dr. Heysham had himself seen the same bird in
Hutton’s ‘Repository’ when he wrote six years earlier. From
what we know of Hutton’s Museum, I feel confident that the
' late Rev. H. T. Frere saw the same specimen, ‘said to have
been killed on Skiddaw,’ at Keswick, in 1841. Hutton himself
lived until 1831, and his daughter, Miss Hutton, was still
exhibiting the collection in 1841. It was finally broken up
before the lady’s death in 1855, and what became of this
Ptarmigan I cannot say. Probably it was one of the last of its
race, for the Ptarmigan of Skiddaw must have become extinct
by the close of the last century. I have myself conversed with
men who knew Skiddaw and the surrounding hills in the
‘twenties, but they had no traditional belief in local Ptarmigan,

1 British Birds, vol. iii. p. 75.

oot VERTEBRATE FAUNA OF LAKELAND

though the late Jerry Smith remembered an abortive attempt to
colonise our hills with a batch of Scottish Ptarmigan. Mr. R.
Service has shewn that the Dumfries Courier of February 21,
1826, contains an unsigned statement as to domesticated
Ptarmigan, supposed to have been imported from Skiddaw to
Dumfries. This story is not only of uncertain authorship, but
is too wildly improbable to stand in need of serious refutation.
At this time, or within a very few years of the date of the
Dumfries story, T. C. Heysham was writing to a correspondent
at Perth, asking him to procure for him ‘a brace or two of the
white grous . . . in February or March, as well as some
of their eggs during the next summer.’ If Ptarmigan had still
existed in Cumberland, Mr. Heysham would surely not have sent
for them to Perthshire? He always attached additional value
to Cumbrian specimens.

Order GALLINA. Fam. PHASIAN/ID.
PHEASANT.

Phasianus colchicus, L.

When, in the year 1251, Henry 111. decided to keep the Feast
of the Nativity at York, the Sheriffs of the northern counties were
ordered to contribute a supply of game and poultry for the use of
the sovereign. The Sheriff of Cumberland was required to deliver
a thousand Chickens, three hundred Partridges, twenty ‘ cranes,’
fifteen Swans, twenty Peacocks, and forty Pheasants But,
whether this supply of Pheasants was actually forthcoming from
Cumberland I am quite unable to say. Indeed, the earliest
authority that we possess, favouring the supposition that the
Pheasant was early introduced, is that of Machell, who comments
on this game having become extinct in Westmorland: ‘The
species of them being soe tame a fowle are long since destroyd,
and, since the great forrests have bin depopulated of their wood
and verdure, so that there is little or none on the mountanes for
want of copses and covert, to fly too at severall stages, they
could never yet be restored agane.’ If such an early introduc-

1 Documents relating to Scotland, vol. i. p. 338.

BIRDS 330

tion of the Pheasant had really taken place, as Machell hints at,
it is highly probable that the first birds were sent to Westmor-
land out of Yorkshire. We know from the Earl of Northum-
berland’s Household Book that ‘ Fesauntes’ were ordered ‘to be
hade for my Lordes owne Mees at Principale Feestes, and to be
at xij? a pece,’ early in the sixteenth century; that Pheasants
were occasionally sent to Cumberland out of Yorkshire a century
later, is exemplified by the entry in Lord William Howard’s
Accounts for 1629: ‘Januarij.... Toa manne which brought
a phesson out of Yorkshire, v®.’ But Machell himself tells us
that a member of the Lowther family introduced Pheasants into
Westmorland, bringing the birds from Yorkshire: ‘But it hath
bin lately attempted by Mr. Lowther to restore that game, who
2 or 3 years since [1677-1698] brought young ones over out of
Yorkshire hither ; but the countrey people distroy’d them, before
they increased to any considerable repleunishing number.’ The
failure of this attempt to introduce Pheasants into Lakeland
appears to have damped the ardour of our sportsmen, because
for the next hundred years they contented themselves with
shooting Grouse and Partridges. The Rev. J. Wilson has
kindly pointed out to me that Pheasants were included in an
order against poaching made by the magistrates at the Cocker-
mouth Sessions in January 1701-2. But I hardly think that
this would warrant the supposition that Pheasants existed at
that time in Cumberland. As lately as 1784 Clarke wrote that
there were no Pheasants in Cumberland. This deficiency was
remedied by the enterprise of Sir James Graham, Lord Mun-
caster, and some other gentlemen; so that when the County
History appeared, 1794-7, Dr. Heysham and Mr. Nicholson in-
dependently announced the fact of its recent introduction; the
estates of Netherby and Muncaster being perhaps the jirst upon
which the Pheasant was established in the north and west of
Cumberland. The first years of our century witnessed the
extension of its range to all the coverts of Lakeland, but the
original strain was destined to give place to the Ring-necked
Pheasant, which is now the dominant species, though on some
estates great pains are taken to stamp out the new-comers, and
to keep only the old-fashioned red-rumped birds,

336° VERTEBRATE FAUNA OF LAKELAND

RED-LEGGED PARTRIDGE.
Caccabis rufa (L.).

The moist climate of the Lake district can hardly be con-
sidered favourable to the naturalisation of a species which
thrives best in dry and sandy situations, and has probably
exercised an adverse influence upon the various attempts which
have been made to introduce this bird into Lakeland. Dr.
Parker informs me that Red-legged Partridges have lately (May
1890) been introduced to the Gosforth district, and are at
present thriving well in that part of Cumberland. It is to be
hoped that the results of this experiment may be more fortunate
than accrued to the similar attempt made in 1862 by the late
Mr. Jackson Gilbanks, whose stock was shot out by poachers
and neighbouring sportsmen the same session; or to the birds
turned down at Thornthwaite near Keswick, about the year
1878, by Mr. Short. The earliest known occurrence of this
bird in Lakeland is identical with a bird observed feeding with
the poultry in a farm-yard at Dykesfield, Burgh, which was shot
by Mr. Nixon prior to March 18, 1848, when it was examined
by T. C. Heysham. Its appearance points to an introduction of
the species either in Cumberland or the south of Scotland.
There can be no doubt that other isolated attempts have been
made to introduce this bird as a colonist, but country gentlemen
rarely take the trouble to record such incidents in print. About
the year 1865 Dr. Gough informed Mr. A. G. More that the
Red-legged Partridge had ‘bred regularly of late years in West-
morland.’ I have failed to trace the species as now breeding in
Westmorland ; nevertheless, several of these birds were shot
near Kirkby-Stephen in the season of 1887.

PARTRIDGE.

Perdix cinerea, Lath.

Although gifts of Partridges, sometimes of live birds, were
occasionally offered to the lord of Naworth, the species does not
occur in his poultry bills with the frequency that we should
expect to find, had the numbers of this game bird approximated

See eel

BIRDS Sal

in the seventeenth century to those of the present day. We
may therefore infer, without much fear of contradiction, that the
conversion of swamps and mosses into sound arable land has
materially favoured the increase of the Partridge in Lakeland.
Mowing machines prove fatal to a good many chicks. The
operations of poachers during the last nights of August are
generally well planned, and often successfully carried out. But
in spite of some disadvantages, we have generally a sufficiently
good show of Partridges to satisfy the requirements of sports-
men. Nor are sportsmen the only persons interested in the
preservation of this favourite bird. Whether the ice morsels
whirl in gusts and eddies before the furious blast of the north
wind, the warm breath freezing on our beards as we force our
way across the high grounds of Westmorland,—or whether the
honeysuckle and variously-coloured orchids burden the still air
of a summer evening with their heavy perfume,—it is always a
joy to recognise the rasping call of the brown bird that runs to
squat beside its fellows already huddling together in the snow
drift ; or that watches ever so anxiously beside its sitting mate.
But even this must yield place to the superior pleasure of
startling the old hen from the shelter of the ancient tree-stump
in the deer-park, disclosing as she retreats the olive treasures
that so soon will crack and shiver before the onset of the tiny
downy captives which must find a way of exit from their fragile
cradles of thin lime. In some seasons a good many early broods
are reared. Buta local record of the discovery on the Ist of
April of a newly-hatched covey of eight chicks, discovered at
Wreaksand, near Broughton-in-Furness, in the year 1827, might
have been considered a fairy tale had it not been vouched for by
the Carlisle Journal.

Two expressions used in connection with this species deserve
notice. ‘Pubble,’ says Mr. Dickinson, ‘is Cumbrian for plump.
Grain well fed is ‘‘pubble as a partridge.”’1 I happened to
show to Smith of Drumburgh a sketch of a bird drawn in the
act of sunning its plumage; he remarked: ‘It would be balming
itself. You often see Partridges do the same; and so folk
speak of “ A balm of Partridges.”’ The Rev. T. P. Hartley has

1 Glossary, p. 11.
Yi

338 VERTEBRATE FAUNA OF LAKELAND

not heard the phrase in Westmorland, but reminds me that
such expressions as ‘a balmy day’ and ‘balmy weather’ are in
general use.

Oa Alan

Coturnix communis, Bonnat.

I question if the Quail was ever a very abundant visitor to
Lakeland. No doubt it was always well known in some
favourite localities, or Richardson would not have mentioned its
local name, ‘ Wet-my-feet ;’ yet we know the view of his con-
temporary, Dr. Heysham, who says: ‘The quail is not plentiful
in Cumberland. They breed here; but the whole, or most of
them, disappear towards the latter end of October. Curiously
enough, the only reference to the Quail in the Accounts of Lord
William Howard relates to a bird killed in winter. Referring to
the payments made between the 12th and 19th of December
1618, we find this entry: ‘A partrige, vi‘. A quale, iiij®.
A skeldrake, iiij*.’ There can be no question as to the accuracy
of this, because odd birds have several times been killed with us
in mid-winter. For example, a male Quail was shot at Kuirk-
bride on the 29th of December 1831, and T. C. Heysham pro-
nounced it to be in excellent condition. Mr. Woodham shot a
Quail on Foulmire moss on the 26th of December 1871, and
Mr. Pearson saw a Quail when shooting at Rampside, November
7, 1885.

The Quail ranks as an irregular summer visitant, thinly
scattered over the cultivated parts of our area. Its trisyllabic
call-note is usually heard in the neighbourhood of Allonby in
the month of May: it is partial also to the valley of the Eden.
It was fairly numerous at the time of the Franco-German War.
The older sportsmen with whom I have conversed agree that,
when they were young, ‘bevies’ of Quails were far from un-
common. Dr. Gough in 1861 included the Quail as a rare
occasional visitant to the neighbourhood of Kendal,—‘ formerly
a regular summer visitant.. Mr. W. A. Durnford says that it is
now rare in Furness, though stated to have been not uncommon
formerly. The only local clutch of the eggs of the Quail that I
have personally seen was taken by Mr. Gabriel about ten years

BIRDS 339

since in the neighbourhood of Rockliffe. Mr, Dickinson wrote
from his home in the west of Cumberland in 1882: ‘This bird
is now rare around here. In my young days [say 1810] its
whit-tu-whit was frequently heard in the breeding season, in
rye-grass fields, or in the drier meadows. I only remember
seeing one bird so late in the autumn that the ground was
covered with a few inches of snow. ‘They appear to leave the
country at the end of summer or early in autumn.’?

Order FPULICARIA. Fam. RALLIDA.

CORN CRAKE.
Crex pratensis, Bechst.

The numbers in which this bird visits Lakeland vary season-
ally, but from the grass meadows of Holker Park, northwards,
it is generally a common summer visitant. Many of our old
inhabitants were accustomed, as young men, to shoot Land
Rails upon their first arrival in spring, either over dogs or by
decoying them within shot by means of a wooden comb.
This practice has become obsolete, and some consider that the
bird has become more abundant in consequence. It nests in
gardens occasionally, but chiefly in our hay-fields. Mr. A.
Smith, who has examined many nests, tells me that he considers
eleven eggs to be the maximum number laid by any one bird. In
June 1891 he found a Land Rail covering twenty-one eggs, placed
in a tolerably deep depression, lined with finely-shredded grass.
He took and blew the twenty-one eggs, which he found to be but
little advanced in incubation. He had no doubt that two pairs
frequented the field in question, and that the females had
laid their eggs together. He found another nest containing
fifteen eggs, but some of these were rotten, and in this instance
also two birds had laid their eggs in the same nest. The
actions of the Corn Crake are animated and interesting. In
September 1890 George Dawson gave me a young bird which
had been captured among some ‘stooks’ the day previous.
It was too shy to eat before us, but, with the assistance of a

1 West Cumberland Rem., p. 16.

340 VERTEBRATE FAUNA OF LAKELAND

looking-glass, I was able to watch its actions unobserved. It
had a hungry appetite, and consumed earthworms with avidity,
picking out the larger individuals, which were bolted head first.
The worms resisted, and strove to: return, but Crex kept them
down with resolution. The smaller worms were generally
seized about the middle, and, with the aid of a slight jerk, they
disappeared in a twinkling. He drank or sipped water by
dipping his bill into the saucer, and then raised his neck;
but did not throw back the head like a fowl in order to allow
the liquid to trickle down the gullet. At other times he
stalked round the cage, first putting down one foot and then
the other. His plumage was not worn tightly packed together
as represented in most stuffed specimens, but the feathers hung
loosely from the body ; he was fond of ruffling up the feathers
of the back, occasionally shaking his tail. The Corn Crake
usually limits its stay with us to a period of about five months,
from the third week of April until the close of September; but
stragglers have been killed up to the end of the year in
Lakeland, thus extending its longest sojourn among us to eight
months, or two-thirds of the year.

SPOTTED CRAKE

Porzana maruetia (Leach).

A few Spotted Crakes pass through Lakeland in the spring
of the year, but their presence at that season has been less
frequently noticed since a close-time was established. The late
Sam Watson assured me that an acquaintance of his who
possessed a dog clever at flushing Crakes used to shoot one or
two Spotted Crakes on the Petteril every spring, and that on
one occasion this man shot no fewer than five birds in a
morning. Mr. Cowan possesses a specimen killed near Carlisle
in March. In 1888 a single bird (evidently on migration, as it
was shot as soon as it alighted on the beach) was killed near
Silloth on March 31. Many of our mosses appear to resemble
pretty closely the haunts of this Crake, which I have visited in
Holland; nor can we doubt that the species has occasionally
bred with us. The only specimen that Dr. Heysham examined

BIRDS 34]

was killed upon the banks of the Eden in the beginning of
June. Though catalogued by Dr. Gough as an occasional
autumn visitant to the neighbourhood of Kendal, he notes that
a Spotted Crake was killed one year on the 5th of June.
T. Armstrong shot one near Monkhill Lough in the same
month, while at one time the species was observed at Biglands
Bog all through the summer, though I failed to find it there.
A former keeper, named Hismay, shot several early in the
autumn of 1881, and assured me of his belief that the birds
he killed had been bred on Weddholm Flow. Odd birds have
been killed in August in different years. The late Mr. W.
Dickinson recorded that his son shot a Spotted Crake in a
rough sievy field near Arlecdon in September 1852. There can
be no question that most of the Spotted Crakes obtained
hitherto in Lakeland were shot beside our water-courses and on
the swampier mosses between September and November—these
birds being for the most part immigrants from Northern
Europe. zceptionally, the Spotted Crake winters with us.
Mr. Tremble has one killed in December. ‘The late Mr. A.
Mason informed Mr. Mitchell that the Spotted Crake was rare
in Furness.. Mr. Duckworth examined three of these Crakes
killed near Ulverston in October 1889.

LITTLE CRAKE.
Porzana parva (Scop. ).

Mr. J. W. Harris informed me in 1885 that he obtained an
example of the Little Crake which had been captured in a
ditch near Cockermouth Castle in 1850. It appears from three
letters, written by Mr. T. C. Heysham to the late Mr. Bell
(lent by Mr. H. P. Senhouse), that this specimen came under
the notice of the former gentleman. In a letter of March 24,
1852, he wrote: ‘A short time ago Mr. Joseph Harris was so
obliging as to send me a specimen of the Little Crake, Crex
pusilla, which had been captured near Cockermouth for inspec-
tion, and which I returned on the following day. As this is a
rather rare British Bird, it has occurred to me that it would be
advisable to have a drawing made of it, which in all probability

342 VERTEBRATE FAUNA OF LAKELAND

may last longer than the skin, unless the Curator of your
recently-established Museum understands the business hetter
than these officials generally do.’ In a letter of April 15 in the
same year, Heysham repeats his request for a loan of the bird.
That his wishes were attended to is rendered certain by a letter
of April 27, in which he wrote: ‘Your letter of the 24th
reached me on Sunday morning, and the specimen of Crex
pusilla was delivered to me at 9 last night; for both of which
accept my best thanks. I will return the Crake with as little
delay as possible, and, to accomplish this, my Draughtsman’s
pencil is already at work tracing its likeness.’ What became
of the sketch we do not know. The bird remained in the
Cockermouth Museum until Mr. Harris received it back in
exchange for a duplicate specimen. He was therefore able to
show it to us in 1891, when it was in good preservation, despite
the lapse of forty years. This appears to have existed as our
only authenticated Little Crake until the spring of 1886, when
a specimen was obtained by Mr. Woodburn of Ulverston. Mr.
Woodburn then possessed a black retriever bitch, which had a
very soft mouth, and was an adept at capturing Moorhens and
other water birds. On the 19th of April 1886 Mr. Woodburn
visited the clay-pits at Brick Kiln Lane, near Ulverston.
These pits, long disused, cover some few acres, and are full of
water, sedges, and rushes, studded with a few hawthorn bushes.
The spot commands a pretty view of Conishead Priory, the
towers of which appear above the tops of the trees. It is quite
near the sea, and would be very likely to catch the eye of a
bird migrating at some considerable height. The retriever
which accompanied Woodburn ranged the marsh as on many
previous occasions, but, to her master’s surprise, she caught a
Little Crake and brought it to him whole and uninjured. Not
knowing what it was, he killed it, and carried it for identification
to Kirkby, the birdstuffer, who identified it by reference to
books, and spoke of its excessive rarity. A notice of it
appeared in the Ulverston News of April 24, 1886 : ‘On Monday
last [April 19] a good specimen of the Little Crake, Cres
pusilla, was caught by a dog in one of the clay-pits at Brick
Kiln Lane, near Ulverston.’ My attention was drawn to this

BIRDS 343

example by the vigilance of Mr. W. Duckworth, who kindly
introduced me to Mr. Woodburn and his mother. From them
we learnt the foregoing particulars of the very beautiful Little
Crake of which they are so justly proud, the bird being in
bright spring plumage and excellently stuffed. They also
showed us a specimen of Baillon’s Crake, obtained at the same
clay-pits in May 1886, about a month after the Little Crake
had. been secured.

BAILLON’S CRAKE
Porzana bailloni (Vieill. ).

About the year 1864 William Little shot a very small Crake
near Cotehill, which he was not able to preserve, but which
certainly represented the present species or the last named.
Captain Johnson of Castlesteads, a most accomplished field
naturalist, assured me in 1889 that some few years earlier he
flushed out of thick cover a tiny Crake, which he was unable to
secure. The species was fully identified as a visitant to Lake-
land in 1886, under circumstances already alluded to. In May
of that year Mr. Woodburn, who had frequently hunted the
above-mentioned clay-pits since the capture of a Little Crake,
had the extraordinary good fortune to come across an example
of Baillon’s Crake. It was flushed out of the cover by his
retriever bitch, and at once rose upon the wing and flew away
in the direction of Conishead Priory, but, returning to the clay-
pits, dropped into a hawthorn bush, and thence into the
water. The retriever followed it up and caught it alive, and
retrieved the bird to her master. Woodburn took this bird at
once to Mr. Kirkby, who preserved it less successfully than the
Little Crake, and, with questionable taste, painted its legs green,
to match those of the Little Crake, which he had already
mounted.

WATER RALL.
Rallus aquaticus, L.

In the old days, when so large a proportion of Lakeland was
under moss, the Water Rail probably bred with us more generally

Cet Tal,

344 VERTEBRATE FAUNA OF LAKELAND

than is now the case; but, for the last hundred years at least, it
has been chiefly a winter visitant. Dr. Heysham exactly states
my own independent opinion when he says: ‘The Water Rail
visits this county [Cumberland] in the beginning of winter, and
leaves it pretty early in the spring. In the summer-time it
must be very local, because its loud cry (which has also attracted
my attention in severe weather) would always announce its
presence in any of its haunts. Mr. Tom Duckworth has eggs
taken on Rockliffe Moss, and they have been obtained in the
vicinity of Penrith. It has bred also on the river Eden, and
perhaps elsewhere. It should, however, be remembered that
Dr. Gough includes it in his Kendal list as a not uncommon
‘winter visitant.’ From September to March it occurs irregularly
all over Lakeland, especially the western portion of that region,
as in Wastwater and in the Rusland valley, where Mr. C. F.
Archibald has shot several when searching unsuccessfully for
Spotted Crakes. A few Water Rails are always killed in the
neighbourhood of the Eden in late autumn, and are often exposed
for sale in Carlisle. Apparently they have always been regarded
as suitable for food, since we find, among other entries in Lord
William Howard’s accounts for 1620, the following: ‘3 gulls,
a mallerd, one skeldrake, 3 sey mewes, one curlue, a water
creake, iljs.. These birds were obtained between the 2nd and
9th of September. Another entry follows: ‘ Water creakes,
ca

MOORHEN.

Gallinula chloropus (L.).

The homely presence of the Moorhen adds an interest of its
own to summer evening rambles beside the becks and backwaters
of Lakeland. It breeds on the Kent, on the Caldew, and most
of our rivers, as well as on such inland waters as Whin’s Pond,
where the nest is often built on tree trunks, occasionally 20
feet above the water, just as sometimes it is built in the middle
of a wood at a distance from any water. The sight of the
Moorhen’s simple nest and spotted egg-shells often serves as
a pleasant incident in an uneventful afternoon. Wading ankle-
deep through the green, velvety moss which borders many of

BIRDS 345

the small dubs or pools of water on our flows, you are often half
startled by an unpremeditated splash. Next moment a frightened
Moorhen is sure to paddle across the bit of open water, take
wing, and fly away, deserting for the nonce the nest which
lies at the water edge, half hidden by tussocks of sedge,—a slight
nest withal, or rather a hollow platform of dry reeds, lined with
finer stems, containing a few eggs, still warm to the touch.
Though generally reckoned a stationary species, the Moorhen
is migratory to a considerable extent. Mr. W. Duckworth
once found Monkhill Lough fairly alive with Moorhens, ap-
parently newly arrived. I have also found the remains of
Moorhens washed up on the Solway Firth after heavy gales, as
though the birds had been blown out from land and perished
at sea,

COMMON COOT.
Fulica atra, L.

A few pairs of Coots breed on many of our ponds at Crofton,
at Edenhall, and on some of the larger sheets of water—Der-
wentwater, for example. The males are very combative in
spring, and the determination with which they strike at and
buffet their rivals in the water, sometimes trying to drown their
opponents, confers a special charm upon the sedge beds they
favour ; they are quite as plucky and mettlesome as Gamecocks.
When once their passions have been quickened into life by the
approach of the season of love, they spar in real earnest, and
are always ready to resent the intrusion ofa stranger. They are
devoted guardians to their mates when the latter are incubating
on the flag-piled nest. Though they cannot.save their young
from the voracious maw of hungry Pike, they watch over
their interests with great affection. Young Coots instinctively
hide up in cover if danger threatens. On the 12th of August
1889 we disturbed two old Coots on the edge of Monkhill
Lough. They flew off disconcerted, leaving behind two tiny
chicks, covered with black down. These little fellows swam
hurriedly into cover, pausing as soon as they had gained the
shelter of the yellow water-lilies, across the leaves of which they
squatted in coy alarm. In a minute or two one of them dived,

346 VERTEBRATE FAUNA OF LAKELAND

travelling about six yards before a little head bobbed up, looked
round, and, concluding itself safe, was followed by the small
round ball of down to which it belonged. But the old Coots
care for their young even when the latter are well grown. On
July 11th, 1890, I visited Thrustonfield Lough with Mr. J. N.
Robinson; we were especially pleased to see two well-grown
birds in close attendance on their parents, sometimes swimming
in their wake and receiving dainty morsels from their bills, at
other times waiting upon them in easy leisure, while the old
Coots worked for the youngsters. After an interval they
returned to the nest and took up their position on the summit
of the pile of closely-matted water-plants, standing high and
dry, the better to perform their toilet. The juveniles looked
rather handsome in their piebald dress, their white necks
gleaming in the sunshine and forming a pleasant set-off to the
more sombre feathering of the old Bald Coots.

As illustrating the remarkable tenacity with which this
species clings to favourite breeding-grounds, I may cite a passage
in Lord William Howard’s Accounts for 1621, which refers to a
still existing colony of these birds: ‘Feb. 2, For bringing xxij
lake hens from Corkeby, vi*’

Many of the Coots that breed in Lakeland perform a partial
migration in winter. Stragglers occasionally appear on our
estuaries, but the larger proportion congregate on the larger
lakes. The Rev. H. D. Rawnsley counted 382 Coots on Der-
wentwater in March 1888, and Mr. Durnford estimated that in
the severe frost of January 1879 all the other wild-fowl were
far outnumbered by the Coots on Windermere.

Order ALECTORIDES. Fam. GRUIDZ.
CRANE. |

Grus communis, Bechst.

Although the swamps and dismal morasses which formerly
existed in our midst may well have tempted the Crane to
summer with us in a remote past, there is no modern evidence
to show that this Crane ever visits Lakeland, unless a straggler

BIRDS 347

detached from one of the main flocks chances to wander westward
on the vernal passage of the species to its breeding-grounds in
the north of Europe. In the spring of 1869 a solitary Crane made
its appearance in the neighbourhood of Allonby. It frequented
some rough meadow lands in the neighbourhood of the Solway
Firth. Its presence awakened a keen interest among the local
sportsmen, each and all of whom were anxious to obtain the
distinguished stranger. Mr. Matthew and Mr. Thomas Mann
fired two shots at the coveted prize, but only succeeded in
knocking some grey feathers out of the bird. This was on the
29th of April.

Order ALECTORIDES. Fam. OTIDID.

GREAT BUSTARD.
Otis tarda, L.

Although we might reasonably have expected that the Great
Bustard at one time coursed over the lower fells of eastern
Lakeland no less than the Yorkshire wolds, there is absolutely
no evidence for any such hypothesis. In the spring of 1854 a
female Great Bustard was shot in a turnip-field at Leeshill in
the parish of Lanercost. The bird was killed on the 8th of
March.t_ The late Mr. John Hancock saw this specimen ‘a few
days after it was stuffed, and while it was soft and flexible, and
the legs were unfaded; the tarsi and toes were greyish, with
obscure flesh colour between the scales.? The bird was in good
condition and weighed 11 Ibs. At the time it entered the
possession of Joseph Mowbray, a Brampton innkeeper. Many
years later it found its way into the Newcastle museum.

Order LIMICOLE. Fam. GLARHOLID.
COLLARED PRATINCOLE.

Glareola pratincola, L.
One of the first specimens of this Pratincole ever obtained in
the British Islands was shot in the year 1807 in the neigh-
bourhood of the Solway at Bowness, as recorded by Graves in

1 Zoologist, 1854, p. 4407.
2 Cat. of B. of N. and D. p. 95.

348 VERTEBRATE FAUNA OF LAKELAND

the second volume of his British Ornithology. T. C. Heysham
was then a lad of sixteen, and Dr. Heysham had not long
passed the prime of life. They might either of them have
taken cognisance of the capture, but whether they did so is
unknown.! More than eighty years have since elapsed without
a recurrence of this species being detected at any point of our
faunal area.

Order LIMICOLZ. Fam. CHARADRHDZ.

CREAM-COLOURED COURSER.
Cursorius gallicus (Gmel.).

The Cream-coloured Courser has only once straggled to the
neighbourhood of the Solway Firth. This was in October
1862. Mr. Richard Mann recollects the interest which its
appearance awakened among the local gunners, several of whom
hastened in pursuit. The bird was shot on the beach at
Allonby by a man named Costin. It was identified and pur-
chased by the late Mr. T. H. Allis of York. I understand that
Mr. Allis was in the habit of purchasing specimens of stuffed
birds and insects from the local collectors, whom he saw from
time to time in Cumberland when travelling in the tea-trade.”

DOTTEREL.

Hudromias morinellus (L.).

Although the mountains of the Lake district undoubtedly
afford many suitable nesting-grounds for this Plover, it would
be a mistake to suppose that the Dotterel has at any time bred
at all numerously even in the wildest regions. From time
immemorial the Dotterel has visited Lakeland on its spring
passage, sometimes in large flights, and a few individual pairs
have frequently spent the summer with us. But this has never
been true of the greater number. On the contrary, these have

1 T have failed to find any reference to this noteworthy event in the

Carlisle Journal for the year indicated.
2 Zoologist, 1864, p. 9457.

BIRDS 349

always preferred to secure a temporary rest upon our fells and
salt marshes, before resuming their journey to such dreary
tundras of moss as those which Mr. A. C. Chapman found the
Dotterel occupying, in the neighbourhood of the Varanger
Fiord.+

No entries of Dotterel appear in the accounts of Lord
William Howard, nor does Machell allude to ‘the mical
Dotterel’ more than incidentally, in enumerating the ‘ Fowle’
of Westmorland. Nicolson and Burn state tersely: ‘ Orton
scar is famous for dotterels,’ a well-grounded remark, since
many birds of this species have been killed there by living
witnesses. Clarke and Richardson maintain absolute silence
as to the Dotterel visiting their native mountains. Budworth,
who was only a visitor, seems to have been one of the very
first to describe a personal acquaintance with this Plover. This
writer tells us that when visiting Skiddaw ‘we saw some
dotterels upon the summit, that let us approach within eight
yards: and, if I had not thrown a stone at them, I daresaye I
might have come near enough to have threwn “salt on their
tails.’ They suck their food from under the small stones,
under which they build their nests, and what is more remark-
able, have only frequented Skiddaw seven years. These birds
are fat and sweet-flavoured, have only thin claws, a long cylin-
drical bill, and are rather above the size of a thrush, though
coloured like one, excepting a black streak in the head. It is
with difficulty they can be forced to leave Skiddaw, and when
they do, they never rest long on other mountains. Hutton has
one in his repository, the recollection of which gives me an
opportunity of describing it.’ To this a note is appended, ‘ The
dotterel builds and incubates upon the highest mountains in
this country, and early in the spring descends to the lower
craggy hills, especially in the vicinity of Orton and Asby, where
many of them are shot as well for their delicacy of taste as for
their feathers which are in high estimation with the anglers

1 Until the Wild Birds Act was passed, it was a common practice for
parties of gunners to scour High Street and other mountains for Dotterel
on their first arrival in spring. No opportunity was ever neglected of
shooting as many as possible, their feathers being in brisk demand for
tying ‘ flies.’

350 VERTEBRATE FAUNA OF LAKELAND

for making artificial flies’! The author of Observations chiefly
Tnthological telis us that in 1803 he found the Dotterel repre-
sented in Hutton’s Museum at Keswick. He says further: ‘A
bird very much famed among epicures, the dotterel is to be seen
occasionally on Skiddaw and the adjacent country; they are
only there two months in the year, July and August, when
they come into these parts merely to breed. The rest of the
year they spend in Lincolnshire and other flat countries.
Two of the species of Charadrius, the Morinellus and the
Hiaticula, my guide informed me, congregate together, as if
they belonged to the same species. The accurate Bewick,
whose untimely death [he was alive and well] can never be
too sufficiently regretted, gives a very different account of these
birds.2, I saw no dotterels at the time I was on Skiddaw, but
my guide told me the week before he saw twenty brace there
at a time together. The bird itself when stripped ofits plumage
sells only for fourpence ; but its feathers at Keswick are always
worth sixpence, for the purpose of making artificial flies for the
numerous fishermen who live in the neighbourhood.’ Dr.
Heysham only alluded to the Dotterel in a few lines in his
catalogue of Cumberland animals, stating that ten or twelve had
been shot in June 1784, ‘upon Skiddaw, where they breed; on
the 18th of May 1786 I had two females sent from the neigh-
bourhood of Appleby. On dissection, I found the eggs very small,
so that it is probable they do not lay until June.’ It is difficult
to understand WHy the doctor suppressed the following note,
which T. C. Heysham quoted many years later [in 1830] from
his father’s ‘Ms.’: ‘Some time last summer a nest of the
Dotterel was found on Skiddaw ; the old one was killed, and
the eggs brought away which were three or four in number.
I saw three of them [ic. a full clutch]; they are somewhat
larger than a Magpie’s egg; the ground is a dirty clay-colour
marked with large irregular black spots. February 14, 1785.’
Dr. Heysham was without doubt the first scientific naturalist
to examine eggs of the Dotterel taken in England, authenticated,

1A Fortnight’s Ramble to the Lakes (1795), by Joseph Budworth,

pp. 222, 223.
* Thomas Bewick ‘ gently sighed away his last breath’ on Nov. 8, 1828.

BIRDS 351

moreover, by one of the old birds being shot at the nest. In
1830 the younger Heysham remarked in the third volume of the
Magazine of Natural History: ‘The eggs of the dotterel, we
believe, still remain undescribed, which is somewhat extra-
ordinary, considering that they constantly breed in the moun-
tainous districts of Yorkshire, Westmoreland, Cumberland, and
some parts of Scotland. Dr. Latham, it is true, in the Jast
edition of his General History of Birds, has given some account
of the nest of this species, the time and period of their incuba-
tion, and the numbers of their eggs, but does not describe
them.’ He accordingly set himself to elucidate the subject, by
applying to such persons as were likely to find nests of the
Dotterel. William Dodd writes to him from Alston on May 9,
1831: ‘ You will receive at the same time a Dotterel and one
of the finest birds that has been shot in this neighbourhood
for some years. John Brown writes on July 15, 1831, from
Marble Mills, Stone House, Dent: ‘Sir,—I am sorry to say, in
reply to your favour of the 12th inst., that your application
for eggs of the Dotterel is at least one month too late. The
birds have nearly all left the hills. But have you not made a
mistake? I think it possible that in the hurry of writing you
have said eggs instead of skins. Great numbers of these are pre-
served and sold to anglers, but I am told that the eggs are
seldom taken. If you wish to have a few skins pray inform me
and I will send you some. Late in the season as it is for these
birds to be on the hills, and it is unusual for them to remain
so long, I believe I can yet procure two or three fresh ones.’ In a
letter of May 10,1832, Hewitson names to Heysham the species
which he hopes to meet with in Norway, including the Dotterel.
‘When speaking of Dotterel, he continues, ‘do you know any
instance of its breeding in Cumberland? I saw one on Helvellyn
at the end of May, and am told that they do breed in Westmore-
land, not far from Kirkby-Stephen.’ Hewitson no doubt alluded
here to a visit paid to the Lakes in May 1830. Writing under
the signature ‘H,’ he appears to have communicated to the
fifth volume of the Magazine of Natural History a short account
of his trip, in which he says, ‘I was very anxious to meet with
the nest and eggs of the Dotterel [Charadrius Morinellus], which

352 VERTEBRATE FAUNA OF LAKELAND

I was informed had been found here, but we only saw the bird
as it was wheeling round us in the fog.’

In May 1832 Heysham applied for assistance to John
Robinson of Stone House, Dent, who states in his reply: ‘I am
afraid it will be out of my power to procure you a nest with
eggs. ‘There is some dispute whether they breed or not. Some
are of opinion they do, others the contrary. I have never yet
met with anybody who had found a nest. I called a few days
ago on a man who partly makes it his business to look after
them. He informed me that lately he shot a bird Dotterel,
which, on opening, he found contained an egg, which puts the
matter out of dispute. He informs me that for the last four
years the bird has become more plentiful, which is to be
wondered at, considering that immediately upon its being ascer-
tained that they have arrived, every one that can raise a gun is
after them. . . . About the 15th or 16th of last month a flock
of nine or ten arrived. ... One of our men shot two of them.’
Heysham wrote to J. D. Drummond on the 13th of July this
year: ‘During the late cold and backward spring very few
Dotterel were seen in the vicinity (on their way to the moun-
tains), and the only specimen I obtained was too much injured
tosetup. Itisa young one.’ The specimen in question appears
to have been sent to Mr. Drummond with a Ruff and other birds.

In a letter received by Heysham on the 29th of August 1832,
Mr. Robinson writes that he forwards two Dotterel shot on
Woofel the previous day, with this comment: ‘I have been
repeatedly on the mountains during the summer, but could
never meet with any. I think there is little doubt that they
leave us in the spring and return again in September, and
remain a little while with us, prior to leaving our island for the
winter. I would suppose that they are male and female, or a
young and an old bird. I am sorry one of them is hurt in the
plumage round the neck. You will see by the map of York-
shire that Woofel is very high land.’ The number of Dotterel
visiting Lakeland must always have varied seasonally.

In 1833 the birds appear to have been more scarce than
usual, because Heysham informed Doubleday on the 22d of
June: ‘Not asingle Dotterel to my knowledge has been pro-

BIRDS 353

cured in the vicinity of Carlisle, and the only one I have yet
received was sent to me from Yorkshire.’ William Camm of
Keswick wrote to Heysham on May 27, 1834: ‘I forward five
remarkable fine Dotterel for you (one of which is alive at start-
ing). They are very scarce this season, and in consequence
have been very difficult to obtain. I got them yesterday on a
very high mountain (called Great Gavel) situate between
Borrowdale and Wastdale, about 11 miles from Keswick... .
With regard to eggs, unless some of those old birds contain
some, I have not been able to procure any.’ In the following
year (1835) Camm wrote on the 9th of June: ‘Sir,—I send you
thees lines to let you know that there is Dotrels now if you
have the noaton of coming up to Keswick and I will go with
you when its suits you. Heysham in return enjoined on his
agent to visit all the ‘smittle’ [likely| places for the Plovers, in
order to ascertain whether any pairs had really taken up their
quarters with a view of breeding. Camm replied on the 26th
of June: ‘The eggs of the Dotterel will be difficult to procure,
as there is a great scarcity of birds this season.’ He adds: ‘ There
shall be no want of exursion on our part to get them.’ Two days
later, or perhaps on receipt of this note, Heysham despatched
James Cooper to Whiteside, upon which mountain he found a
clutch of three eggs on the 29th of June. On the 3d of July
Heysham accompanied Cooper to Robinson, and obtained a
clutch of two eggs, as well as a young bird, on the 5th of that
month. Heysham sent on loan specimens of the Dotterel, old
and young, as well as an egg, to Yarrell, who acknowledged
their safe receipt in a letter dated December 19, 1835: ‘The
Dottrells old and young are perfect beauties, and when looking
at them I could not but feel some regret that you had allowed
them the risk of so long a journey. The sight of the egg, too,
was very gratifying, confirming as it did that my two from the
Grampian Hills are without doubt the eggs of the Dottrell... .
Having shot part of every season for the last twenty years in
the parishes of Royston, Melbourne, and others in the vicinity
where the Dottrell always make their appearance twice a year,
I have in the autumn both seen and shot more Dottrell than
many of those who attend to Natural History here in the south.’
Z

-

354 VERTEBRATE FAUNA OF LAKELAND

Heysham wrote concerning the same specimens to Doubleday in
a letter of January 25, 1836: ‘A few weeks ago I sent to your
friend Mr. Yarrell (for inspection) a case containing three
Dottrels, one of which was only a week or ten days old, for the
purpose of convincing the ornithologists in the South of England
that the bird does actually breed in the North of England.’
That the Dotterel nested among the mountains of Lakeland
was now fully ascertained. It remained to be proved that this
Plover on some rare occasions nested upon the higher moors of
the Pennine range. The late B. Greenwell wrote to Heysham
from Alston on the 29th of November 1841: ‘I also got on the

7th of June a nest of 3 Dotterel eggs. They were found by a —

shepherd near Crossfell.’ Greenwell wrote again on the 2d of
December: ‘Sir,—I hasten with pleasure to forward a specimen
of the Dotterel egg for your inspection, but owing to a previous

engagement with Mr. Hancock of Newcastle I sent the other two —

down to him, This being the only one I have left, I do not
feel inclined to dispose of it. Some further information was
supplied to Heysham in a subsequent letter from Greenwell,
dated January 9, 1842: ‘Sir,—In answer to yours of the 4th
of Decr. last respecting the other two Dotterel eggs, they were
exactly like the one I sent you in colour and size. They were
found on dry ground about two miles from the top of Crossfell on
a place called by the shepherds Dun dedge, near Mallerby Scar.
There were a great many Dotterels seen and shot, I understand,
by persons that were in search of them for fishing feathers.’
Mr. J. W. Harris sent a young Dotterel to Heysham in 1842,
regarding which he says, in a letter dated the 17th of November
of that year : ‘The young Dotterel was caught by Mr. Benson on
Red Pike on the 12th Aug., after he had shot the mother. It
could then fly about 30 yards. They are not common here, but
are occasionally met with on the Buttermere fells.’ The number
of eggs which completes a clutch of the Dotterel is believed to
be invariably three. Yarrell wrote to Heysham on September 9,
1845: ‘In July I heard of one Dotterel nest with four eggs in
it having been taken on Saddleback.’ Heysham replied two days
later: ‘During the last few years great attention has been paid by
the Dealers at Keswick and the neighbourhood in looking after the

BIRDS 355

eggs of the Dotterel, through the shepherds, and I have been told
that a few have been found or said to be found every year. At
the same time I have little doubt that the eggs of other birds
are now and then sold to the ignorant for those of the Dottrel ;
indeed, I have seen some eggs of the Common Snipe so
extremely like the Dottrels that it was with difficulty they
could be distinguished.’ A loose note of Heysham, dated
October 22, 1850, contains this entry: ‘Mr. Dickinson this day
showed me two eggs of this bird (Dotterel) which he had found
on the 12th of August 1846, not far from Helvellyn. One egg
came to grief, so only two were retained.’

Mr. J. W. Harris, who remembers the discovery of the first
Dotterel eggs, tells me that in his opinion the Dotterel has
always been a scarce breeding species, and that he had to travel
very long distances to fall in with them at all. Captain
Johnson, a friend and contemporary of Yarrell, remarked that
the Dotterel was ‘a rare bird’ even in his younger days, to be
met with on the flat top of Crossfell and similar situations on
migration. A man named Watson, of Little Salkeld, who had
paid a good deal of attention to Crossfell birds, assured me that
prior to 1870 a few Dotterel appeared in his neighbourhood
nearly every year, and some of them were generally secured for
fly feathers. ‘Folk said they went up to the fells to breed, but
he thought they must go on to breed elsewhere, because he had
only heard of one nest of the bird having been found in his
lifetime. The same kind of evidence might be adduced from
the lips of many other witnesses, since I have interviewed all
the likeliest men to give accurate information. Mr, F. Nichol-
son, who contributed an account of this species to the Birds of
Cumberland, at that time wrote: ‘During the last thirty years,
judging from my own observations, the species seems to have
been gradually disappearing from the district, until in this year
(1885) I only saw three pairs during several days spent in
visiting all the most likely ground.’

In 1887 the same brother Ibis wrote to me: ‘I knew of
three pairs of Dotterels breeding in Cumberland this year,

which I hope all reared their young.’! The decrease in the

Another member of the B.O.U., Mr. H. E. Rawson, who possesses an

356 VERTEBRATE FAUNA OF LAKELAND

number of this Plover visiting the Lake Mountains corresponds
with the scarcity which has marked the visits of the Dotterel to
the salt marshes of Lancashire and the Solway Firth in recent
years. Percival, an aged native of Rockliffe, recollects the time
when considerable numbers visited Rockliffe marsh on passage
in May, though they never remained more than a few days. He
also informed me that a brother of John Allen was nicknamed
‘The Dotterel’ by his associates, from his prowess in slaughter-
ing these poor birds for the angling world. They have often
been killed on Burgh marsh. Nicol recollects an old gentleman,
a great fisherman, who used to kill some of these birds every
spring in a field near Silloth, in order to send their skins to
some friends fishing the Eden. ‘The Manns used to observe
(and sometimes shoot) these birds near Allonby, so that they
are, or were, found all along the line of the Solway on migration,

though always local, if not actually to be termed rare. The

month of May has always been the time of their arrival on the
Solway, generally between the 10th and 20th. This year
(1891), for example, a Burgh fisherman (who in his lifetime
has shot thirty or forty of these birds for fly-dressing) fell in
with two small flocks of Dotterel, numbering respectively six
and four birds, on the 14th of May. Following the evil
custom formerly in vogue, and not yet obsolete, he fetched a
gun, and, falling in again with the flock of four birds, he killed
three at a shot, and dropped the fourth with a broken wing as
the poor bird wheeled round. Hoping to obtain a higher price
from a naturalist than from the fly-dressers, he sent the birds to
me, and seemed not a little surprised to hear that I would
eladly have given him a sovereign to let the birds pass un-
harmed.t The other six were fortunately wilder, but on the
18th of the month one of the party flew close past us, looking
finer and smaller than a Golden Plover, and flying across the
intimate knowledge of that portion of Lakeland which is situated in
Westmorland, informs us that he found three pairs of Dotterels nesting
on the mountains in 1889, ’90, and ’91. In the former years he found and

respected their nests with eggs. In 1891 he and Mr. John Young, F.Z.8.,
found three different broods of young birds in company with their parents.

1 The only consolation is that these birds have been mounted for the |

County Museum.

BIRDS 557

marsh with more distinctly separated beats of the wing. On
dissecting the dead birds, we found that the dullest in colour
was a male, and the brightest was a female. The other male
and female agreed exactly in appearance, though the ovary
of the female was rather more advanced than that of the
brighter bird, and the bones seemed to be those of an older bird,
judging from their comparative hardness. Their stomachs were
crammed with a small species of beetle, which the Rev. F. O.
Pickard-Cambridge kindly identified as Chrysomela hyperict. The
weight of a Dotterel is about four and a half ounces. The
local fishermen and other persons accustomed to shoot Dotterel
always maintain that it is useless to look for the birds earlier than
May. ‘There cannot, however, be any question that stragglers
in some rare instances appear in Lakeland during the month of
April, and even in March. I have a skin of this Dotterel
obtained by Sir W. Jardine in Dumfriesshire in March. In
1890 a newly-killed Dotterel was sent in the fiesh to Carlisle
on the 22nd of March, and was bought within half-an-hour of
its arrival by an amateur fisherman, the applications of the
professional fly-dressers arriving too late. In 1885 Mr. Smith
of Rockliffe received in the flesh a Dotterel, which was too far
gone to preserve, on the 26th of April, and must, therefore,
have been killed (on one of the Lake Mountains) about the
middle of the month. Elliot killed another Dotterel on Mel-
merby fell in the month of April. Mr. W. BR. Fisher wrote
to T. C. Heysham from Yarmouth, on the 25th of March 1843:
‘Isaw ... two or three Dotterel this morning at a dealer’s in
Yarmouth.’ Heysham asked him, in reply, whether he meant
to refer to Ringed Plovers, commonly called Ringed Dotterel,
as the date was very early for the true Dotterel to have arrived
in England. Mr. Fisher wrote back: ‘It was Charadrius mori-
nellus, and not C. hiaticula. I mentioned it because, as you
observe, I thought it was earlier than usual.’ I have never
met with the Dotterel on autumnal migration, nor do I know

1 Mr. Rawson, who has spent many hours in the closest scrutiny of
breeding Dotterel, is disposed to think that the males are usually the
brightest birds, or at any rate that the more dull-coloured individuals are
those which exhibit most solicitude for the safety of the young in down.

358 VERTEBRATE FAUNA OF LAKELAND

of any specimens killed either at that season or in winter in
recent years. The Newcastle Museum contains two Dotterels
in nest feather, shot on Crossfell in the year 1843. One of
them is stated to have been killed on the 25th of August, the
other on the Ist of September.

Hancock asked T. C. Heysham, some sixty years ago, whether
he had ever known the Dotterel to occur in Lakeland in winter.
So far as I have been able to discover, the only Dotterel that
any competent authority has identified, shot in England in
winter, is the bird mentioned in the last lines that the late Mr.
Gatcombe ever’ penned for the Zoologist, an immature specimen
killed on Dartmoor, and purchased in the Plymouth Market on
the 12th of December 1886.

GOLDEN PLOVER.
Charadrius pluvialis, L.

Although the wet ‘ flows’ which exist in the neighbourhood
of the English Solway are singularly well adapted to the breeding
habits of this Plover, only one or two pairs seem to nest on any
portion of their area, James Smith found a clutch of the
Golden Plover’s eggs on a moor near the coast in 1889. The
eges chipped on the 11th of May, and three chicks hatched out
on the 13th of that month. When I saw them on the following
day they were in perfect health, and really beautiful little birds.
Their fresh down looked so bright that they appeared to have
been sprinkled with gold dust. Notwithstanding their extreme
youth they ran actively about the room, snapping eagerly at
midges and other small insects. The loud, clear call-notes of
these chicks bore a pretty near resemblance to that of the
adult. A few pairs of Golden Plovers nest sporadically upon a
good many of our higher moorlands. It is surprising how
early the Golden Plovers, bred on our hills, descend to the
estuaries. In 1889 Dr. Meikle noticed a large flock on the
Solway on July 7, and Mr. Cairns reported many present at
Gretna a week later. In 1888, as early as July, I observed
a great flock of Golden Plovers, numbering not less than 500
birds, in a bean-field near Floriston, in company with a few

BIRDS 359

Peewits, but that is always a great district for Golden Plover,
perhaps the very best in the whole of Lakeland. In the last
months of the year Golden Plover often visit our salt marshes
in large and small flocks. Both in the fields near Maryport
and on Newton marsh I have crawled within shot of very big
companies, as well to closely study their varied and graceful
actions, as to listen leisurely to their plaintive whistle. They
are partial to feeding on open sands and mussel scars, and if a
winged bird be tethered down, one or two nice shots may be
secured from behind the big stones at Beckfoot. Yarrell does
not appear to mention the singular order in which Golden
Plover fly, sometimes passing high overhead in a long-extended
line, and on other occasions flying in a V formation. With the
last days of February many parties of Golden Plover usually
make their appearance in the fields in the neighbourhood of the
English Solway. These immigrants, most of which are begin-
ning to assume the black breast, only stay with us a few days
and depart in an easterly direction.

GREY PLOVER.

Squatarola helvetica (L.).

Dr. Heysham knew the Grey Plover as a Cumbrian bird.
T. C. Heysham says, in an undated draught: ‘This bird has
been killed in the month of September near Skinburness, so
that they occasionally at least visit the Firth both in spring
and autumn.’ Dr. Gough did not include the species in his
Kendal list, but it stands in his private notes as ‘taken at
Cark.’ So far as I can judge from numerous inquiries of those
gentlemen who shoot regularly on Morecambe Bay, the Grey
Plover does not visit that portion of our coast in any consider-
able numbers ; nor is this surprising, for, though often plentiful
on the Solway, it is even there capricious in its choice of
feeding-grounds. Certainly we found a few Grey Plovers
frequenting the channel between Barrow and Walney Island in
October 1890, but only a few. Arthur Bolton, who shot some
of them, assured me that he had always regarded it as rather
scarce in that locality. It visits the Duddon, but is not

360 VERTEBRATE FAUNA OF LAKELAND

apparently known on the Ravenglass; nor can I answer for
more than two specimens killed on the coast near Whitehaven.
But east of Maryport it is an occasional spring and a constant
autumnal visitant. Cooper obtained a full-dressed bird on the
Solway in spring—that alluded to, no doubt, by the younger
Heysham, and others have since occurred. Mr. R. Mann
observed a party of six Grey Plovers on the coast at Allonby,
May 7, 1886. Mr. W. Nicol never met with the Grey Plover
in nuptial dress in the spring of the year until 1889, when he
saw a few black-breasted birds in May ; he had frequently seen
a few black-breasted examples in autumn. Of fifteen birds which
he shot on September 14, 1887, eight were young and seven
were adults. Two of the adults were in such handsome dress
that when Mr. Seebohm saw them in the collection of Mackenzie,
he at once remarked that they must be swmmer-killed specimens.
Mr. Nicol has never been able to send me a swmmer-dressed bird,
but he kindly forwarded two adult males, which had begun to
assume black feathers on the chin and breast; shot February 7,
1890. These were male birds by dissection. Some birds pass
the summer in most years on the Solway, but these rarely
assume the black breast during their sojourn with us, and they
are generally wild and unapproachable. The four full-dressed
birds which Nicol saw in May 1889 belonged to a flock of more
than thirty plain-breasted Grey Plover. On the 20th of Sept.
that year he saw two black-breasted birds in a flock of young
ones. The greater number of our Grey Plover arrive in
September on the more open portions of our estuaries, chiefly
that of the Wampool, feed singly and in small parties on the
sands, the mussel scars, and the bottoms of the largest creeks,
and generally fly in long circuits, not proceeding hurriedly from
one favourite spot to another, but flighting round with plaintive
cry. The number of those that winter with us is seldom con-
siderable. In January 1890 a flock of a hundred birds could
generally be found on the Waver, but this is rather exceptional.
On the coast these Plovers feed on small bivalve shells, together
with a little green alge. When met with inland these birds are
usually on passage, though sometimes one or two Grey Plover
voluntarily associate with Golden Plover in the open fields.

i ti,

BIRDS 361

RINGED PLOVER.
Myialitis hiaticula (L.).

The Ringed Plover frequents our coasts all through the year,
and breeds numerously at Ravenglass and on Walney Island.
Some pairs nest on gravel beds on the rivers Esk, Eden, and
Irthing, occasionally on the salt marshes, and constantly, though
sparingly, on the whole coast-line from the Kent to the Grune,
where I saw four nests near together on the 28th of April.
The young begin to hatch between the middle and end of May.
In 1891 I caught a yellow-limbed youngster, feathering nicely,
on the 2d of July, at the south end of Walney, it having
started up at our feet as we crossed the beach. It was pen-
feathered, and could run amazingly. When stopped he lay
crouching in my hand without an effort to escape, his dark eyes
peering inquiringly at his captor. The old birds are generally
so demonstrative when they have eggs or young, that I was
amused by the quiet demeanour of a pair of these small Plovers,
observed at the Grune Point, May 30, 1891. For the first
twenty minutes they ran to and fro over the sands, calling
plaintively ; then one of them began to prune its feathers with
a nonchalant air, while its companion squatted down on the bare
sand very much as a Skylark might have done. Large flocks
of Ringed Plover frequent our estuaries until the end of May,
and many parties of immature birds arrive on our estuaries in
the month of September, feeding on the open sands and in
small pools left by the ebbing tide, especially between Silloth
and Maryport, Cardunock and Port Carlisle. On the 8th of
July 1890 I saw a small party of Ringed Plovers at Monkhill
Lough, but they are rarely seen in the interior of Lakeland, at
least apart from the rivers on which, as already pointed out, a
few pairs breed annually.

ine WoLIN G.
Vanellus vulgaris, Bechst.

If the Lapwing is less frequently met with in the accounts of
Lord William Howard than we should have expected, the

362 VERTEBRATE FAUNA OF LAKELAND

omission is easily explained by the wild character which the north
of the Lake district presented in the seventeenth century. Even
in our own day this bird is less abundant upon the most desolate
moors of Scotland than where there are green straths or culti-
vated areas. Similarly, there is every reason to suppose that
the quantity of land which was drained or brought under the
plough of the Lakeland farmer during the earlier half of this
century was correlated with a multiplication of the numbers of
this Plover. But we find it mentioned under the three titles
of ‘lapwings,’ ‘ puetts, and ‘greene plovers, in the Naworth
books. In 1612 there is an entry between May 30th and June
6th: ‘iij poutes and ij lapwings, vi’; the bird is also men-
tioned as ‘ puetts’[ Peewit] on the 15th of June that year :—
‘Sr George Dawlston’s man bringing 20 puetts, ii8 vj’ In
1621 we have an entry between October 27th and November
3rd: ‘To Mathew Dallton for 22 green plovers, ii$ ix?’ Pro-
bably many of the references to ‘plovers’ refer to this species.
From the lower ranges of our eastern fell lands to the salt
marshes of the Solway and the flat meadows round Morecambe
Bay, this Plover is a common breeding-bird, though, owing to
the quantity of eggs gathered for distant markets, it is on the
decrease in many places.

Cooper, Lord Hothfield’s head keeper on the Appleby estates,
tells me that for a number of years he has always been able to
collect five or six dozens of Peewit eggs to send to his employer
by the 2d or 3d of April, which proves that even in a district
swept by the Helm wind a fair number of eggs are laid before
the end of March. Wherever one goes during the spring
months, one is certain to meet with this Plover on the ploughed
fields which slope slowly to the precipices at Sandwith, no less
surely than upon the rushy grazing-lands of Bewcastle, or the
flat mosses of the interior of Lakeland ; but nowhere else have I
seen as many nests as on our salt marshes. Considering the
systematic destruction of many eggs by those who sell them to
dealers, and the percentage destroyed by high tides, the perti-
nacity with which these birds adhere to their favourite breeding-
grounds is remarkable. The prettiest nest that we have seen
on Rockliffe marsh, examined June 18th, 1889, was built of fresh

BIRDS 363

green grass, mixed with a few flowers and buds of the sea-pink
(Armeria maritima), which latter are sometimes appropriated
for a similar purpose by the Oystercatcher. Peewits are quite
a feature of the salt marshes, at least in the month of May,
when their presence contributes not a little to the interest of
the waterside, as they quietly pose to watch your movements,
or shriek anxiously across the rough grass tussocks in which
their newly-hatched young are squatting, carefully concealed.
The late John Hancock was one of the first to record that
the Lapwing produces a sound not distantly akin to the ‘drum-
ming’ of the Snipe; yet I have heard it on several occasions,
notably on May 27th of the year 1891, when visiting a small
moss near Cockermouth with Mr. H. P. Senhouse. Several
pairs of Peewits rose at our approach, and one individual
wheeled many times round us, giving tongue lustily, and occa-
sionally varying the procedure by beating the air noisily with
its pinions, turning right and left, and producing by the action
of its wings a loud swishing sound, flying very fast, and giving
two or three peculiarly sharp strokes of the wings to produce
the effect described. None of the other birds then present
acted in the same way. Another point not perhaps very
generally known is the Lapwing’s fondness for fly-catching.
During the last days of April, when the Swallows are busily
hawking flies over Monkhill Lough, a Peewit often joins in the
sport, pursuing the insects in graceful undulating sweeps across
the water. Many Peewits frequent our grass lands in the
interior of Lakeland during the autumn, but the larger number
repair to the marshes of the coast. Sometimes they afford a
shot when clustering on the sands at low water, but the punt-
gunners soon teach them caution, and they chiefly feed on the
open salt marshes, where they are safe from pursuit, unless the
sportsman can wade up a creek and so approach them unawares.
A common trait of the Peewit is the preference which it
displays for roosting in and around sheep that are being fed on
turnips. Though many Peewits leave us before winter, their
numbers in frosty weather are often legionary. Thus, on the
5th of February 1890 I fell in with an immense congregation
of Peewits near Longtown. At 8 A.M. I first observed the birds

364 VERTEBRATE FAUNA OF LAKELAND

wheeling at a great height above a ploughed field, sweeping
hither and thither in long lines, fresh divisions, large and small,
constantly arriving and soaring round. Sometimes two divi-
sions would unite, but they generally kept apart, though once I
saw two great flocks meet one another. It seemed certain that
they must either collide or fuse together, but they did neither.
What actually happened was, that the larger division suddenly
expanded, and the second company passed straight through
the extended ranks of the first, which then closed up again;
there was not the slightest confusion, not a single bird lost its
place, and the two bodies remained perfectly distinct ; when at
length they had completed the morning’s drill, a large flock
alighted on the field above which they had been exercising,
followed at short intervals by other large flocks, by parties of a
dozen, by twos and threes, the birds descending to the earth in
gentle curving flight, raising their wings over their backs as
they alighted, and so displaying their white flanks for an instant
before they became black and almost inanimate objects on the
frozen field.

TURNSTONE.

Strepsilas interpres (L.).

Dr. Heysham did not include the Turnstone in his catalogue
of Cumberland animals in 1796, but T. C. Heysham quoted, in
1830, a note from his father’s papers to the effect that ‘the first
was killed on the borders of Ulleswater on the 11th of May
1801.’ The elder naturalist must, therefore, have come across
the species within four or five years of the appearance of his
catalogue. Turnstones rarely occur in the interior of Lakeland,
but immature birds are fairly common on our coast from Arnside
to Seatcale, north of which, and on the English side of the
Solway, they are met with only sparingly, though I have often
observed individual birds, and recognised their mellow whistle
on the mussel scars alike in spring, autumn, and winter. They
very seldom visit the salt marshes of the upper Solway, though
an odd one sometimes frequents the brow edge of Skinburness
marsh at high tide, feeding on the mussel scar opposite at low

AS ee eee

ee ee ay ee

=

BIRDS 365

water. I have seen them in old and young plumage at Raven-
glass, where stragglers appear in summer dress, as is occasionally
the case on the Solway, but more often at Walney Island.
Before Arthur Bolton went abroad he shot several Turnstones
in the handsome tortoise-shell dress of the nuptial season on the
shores of Walney, whence Williams likewise procured some
full-dressed birds.

OYSTERCATCHER.

Hematopus ostralegus, L.

There can be no doubt that the Oystercatcher has always
frequented the coasts and estuaries of Lakeland in very con-
siderable numbers. It was often supplied to the table of Lord
William Howard at the price of two pence a bird. For
example, in November 1612 we have an entry, ‘i11j seapies, viijd.,’
about half the market value of those which are netted now-a-days
in Morecambe Bay, or shot by the Solway gunners. The birds
so destroyed are chiefly immigrants, but many Oystercatchers
nest on Walney and the Ravenglass coast. A few stray pairs
nest along the beach from Whitehaven to Silloth, and several
pairs nest on Rockliffe and Burgh salt marshes, though their
nests are often wilfully plundered, or emptied of their contents
by high tides. Mr. R. Mann showed me a nestling caught near
Allonby this year, but really very few are reared on our coast
north of Whitehaven, numerous as the species must be admitted
to be every month in the year. The Oystercatcher has once,
at least, nested inland near Gilsland, and a pair frequented the
Eden near Langworthy in the summer of 1889; but a gravel
bed in the Esk near Longtown is its usual limit of distance from
the sea. At Ravenglass and Walney the birds breed freely,
nesting on rough saltings, as on the Solway, but especially on
shingled beaches and among the sand-hills. The female chooses
the nesting site some days before eggs are laid, and often makes
several scratchings before she finds one to suit her taste. Laying
commences at the beginning of May, and seldom exceeds three
eggs. The breeding birds are most vociferous when their young
are hiding in the grass or among the sand-bents, and readily

366 VERTEBRATE FAUNA OF LAKELAND

assail a Rook or any other marauder. If their safety be im-
perilled, it becomes pretty to see how the parents unite in
employing every device to draw a stranger away from their
young, watching you from the top of a turfed wall, or from the
brow edge of the salt marsh. All through the year the mussel
scars of the Solway are frequented by numerous Oystercatchers,
including in the summer a good many non-breeding birds. The
number of the local residents is increased in autumn by an
immigration from the eastward. In 1888 we heard some
Oystercatchers whistling lustily as they passed over Carlisle from
east to west, between 11.30 and 12 PM. on the 9th of
August. In 1890 I heard Oystercatchers crossing the town in
the same way on the 13th of August at 1 A.M. Other observers
independently confirm my observations, For instance, on the
2nd of November 1888 Mr. Tremble of Carlisle noticed a con-
siderable passage of these birds, commencing shortly before 9.30
P.M., and lasting about twenty minutes. The birds passed over
his house, flying from north or north-east to south-west, and
were making for the west coast, which they would strike about
the Wampool and Waver estuary.

By the end of September legions of Oystercatchers line
certain portions of the Solway Firth from Bowness to Allonby,
their dark serried ranks easily distinguishing them from the
similar masses of Black-headed Gulls which also range along
the edge of the tide-way. The former birds prefer the open
portion of the Solway, are highly gregarious, and seldom permit
a gunner within shot. The best plan for procuring specimens
is to take a boat when the tide is ebbing, and to anchor on
one of the mussel-beds that lie higher than the rest and is
soon exposed. The Oystercatchers and Knots, with a few
Godwits and an occasional Whimbrel, fly down to the banks
as soon as the water is shallow enough to admit of their wading
over the scar, and, being hungry and eager to feed, are less
cautious than after they have satisfied their appetites. A second
device is to stalk them on a boisterous day, when they are
less wary than in fine weather. A third method is to wait
for these birds on a day when a very high tide covers the
whole beach near Allonby and forces them to fly within shot

BIRDS 367

of the sand-hills, behind which the ‘guns’ are stationed. Happily
there isno great demand for them as food, so few are shot,
though some few years ago large numbers were netted at the
south end of Walney by Troughton, the rabbit-catcher.

Mr. Nicol, who has these birds under daily observation
throughout the year, assures me that they are constant in feed-
ing on mussel-shells, which he has heard them breaking when
night-fishing. My own experience confirms this, both as regards
Walney Island and the Solway; but were limpets present, these
shellfish would no doubt be equally acceptable. When the
young first run, and until they can fly, they are carefully fed by
the parents, which bring live food to them from the scars. The
Oystercatcher is an expert swimmer, and Mr. Nicol has seen
a wounded bird dive like a Duck. The birds which breed on
the upper marshes, and they are not numerous, leave their
breeding-grounds as soon as the young can fly, but they some-
times re-appear. For example, on December 13th, 1890, in
sharp frost, a pair of these birds were wheeling noisily off the
point of Rockliffe marsh. Hardy as these birds must be
admitted to be, I have often found their remains washed ashore
after severe gales, which also frequently drive them inland.
After the south-west gale of November Ist, 1887, Mr. W. Duck-
worth saw a storm-heaten Oystercatcher as far inland as
Brampton. Though specially vociferous in the breeding season,
the Oystercatcher is always a noisy bird. On the 22d of
August 1889 an old pair of Oystercatchers rose off the mud
banks of the Wampool and flew slowly over us, piping as lustily
as if they had young in the neighbourhood, which was not
the case. Exactly the same trait has often been noticed in the
Peewit and Black-headed Gull.

Order LIMICOLZ. Fam. SCOLOPACID.
RED-NECKED PHALAROPE
Phalaropus hyperboreus (1. ).

Whether the Red-necked Phalarope ever visits the estuaries
of the Duddon and Morecambe Bay I am unable to say from
personal knowledge. Certainly no specimens obtained in the
southern portion of Lakeland are at present forthcoming, nor

368 VERTEBRATE FAUNA OF LAKELAND

has this species been obtained at Ravenglass. Stragglers in
immature plumage have occurred on the Solway Firth, but only
in rare instances. Mr. A. Smith killed one of these Phalaropes
on Rockliffe marsh in September 1879, and believes that he
has identified one or two others at the same period of the year.
I observed a solitary example on the estuary of the Waver in
September 1884, and acquired an example shot on a small pool
near Kirkbride in Oct. 1885, but have not met with any examples
during the last six autumns. It would scarcely appear
unreasonable to expect that this Phalarope would visit us
occasionally in the spring of the year; yet the only specimen
at present known to have been shot on vernal passage is a bird
in summer-dress, shot some years ago on a little pond near
Allonby, and preserved at Aigle Gill. It is not a little
surprising that this Phalarope confines its rare visits to our
coast exclusively, considering how many Sea Birds are obtained
inland after wild gales in the Atlantic.

GREY PHALAROPE.

Phalaropus fulicarius (L.).

The large flights of this Phalarope, which in some years form
such a marked feature of avian migration on the south coast of
England, are entirely unknown upon the north-west coast. Yeta
certain proportion of these birds probably migrate southwards
across the Eastern Atlantic, because one or two individuals
usually visit us after any stormy weather that may occur in the
month of October. Such was the case during the present
autumn [1891], when I examined two individuals killed on
Burgh marsh, a third obtained in the Eden valley, and a
fourth shot upon Walney Island. Mr. Richard Mann observed
another individual resting upon a wayside pool of water on the
coast between Mayport and Allonby. This was on the 3d of
October. The birds just mentioned were wearing mixed
plumage when shot, i.e. they were in a state of transition from
first dress to winter plumage. A specimen obtained at Winder-
mere on November 10th, 1891, proved to be in full winter dress,
as I learnt from Mr. H. E. Rawson, F.Z.S. Mr. Nicol sent me

BIRDS 369

a younger bird, shot near Silloth a few days later, No
specimens have ever been obtained on our coast in the
red dress of the nuptial season, nor is any plumage of tolerably
frequent occurrence except the intermediate plumage. The sole
specimen that I have seen in entire first dress was shot some
few years ago at Allonby, and belongs to Mr. R. Mann. We
were indebted to this gentleman for another of the few local
specimens that exist in full winter dress. This bird was shot
near Silloth in February 1887.

WOODCOCK.

Scolopax rusticula, L.

Our earliest records refer to the first portion of the seventeenth
century, when the Woodcock was chiefly valued as an article
of food. Lord William Howard, for example, required a large
quantity of Woodcock for the consumption of his household at
Naworth, and as the supply of birds was obtained from those
who made a practice of snaring them, the entries in the house-
hold accounts throw some light upon the immigration of
Woodcock from the Continent. Thus, in the year 1618, we
find that the first three Woodcock were purchased in, between
September 26 and October 3. October, from the 4th day of
the month, yielded 57 Woodcock, 6 birds being obtained
during the first week, 22 birds in the second week, 13 in the
third week, and 16 in the fourth week. In the first week of
November 45 birds were bought in; in the second week, 10
birds; in the third week, 25; in the fourth week, 10—-making
a total bag for November of 90 Woodcock. The number fell
greatly in December, most of the migrants having no doubt
passed on. The first week of that month yielded 15 Wood-
cock; none were taken in the second week, and only 4 in the
third week; 13 were obtained in the last week, bringing up the
bag for the month to 32, 13 of this number being killed in
Christmas week. In the first week of January, 1619, 8 birds
were killed; 3 in the second week; 8 in the third week; and
6 in the fourth week, so that the bag for January amounted to
25 birds. Seven birds were killed in the first week of

2A

30 VERTEBRATE FAUNA OF LAKELAND

February, after which we hear nothing more of Woodcock until
the last week of March, when a single bird was bought in. If
we examine the records for another year, 1621, we find a single
bird bought in between September 30 and October 6, another
single bird is purchased in the second week; a flight of Wood-
cock arrived in the middle of this month, because 18 Woodcock
were bought in the third week, and 21 in the fourth week,
making a total bag, to Oct. 28 inclusive, of 45 birds. Twenty-five
birds were procured between October 28 and November 3; 12
between that date and November 11; 21 more up to November
17. A rush followed, for between November 17 and November
24 no fewer than 29 Woodcock were purchased. But the rush
soon passed on. Twelve birds were indeed taken between Nov.
24 and December 1; 8 Woodcock were captured up to the 8th
of the month; single birds only were taken in the weeks
ending December 16 and December 22, and only 4 Woodcock
were taken during the remainder of the year. To recapitulate
the figures, in 1618, 60 Woodcock were taken in between the
end of September and the close of October; the total number
killed in November was 90 birds; 32 were killed in December,
and the total number bought in during the last three months of
the year was 182 Woodcocks. In 1621, 66 Woodcocks were
killed in October, 94 in November, and 14 in December, com-
pleting a score 174 Woodcock, or 8 less than in 1618. The
difference between the total number obtained in these two
seasons is easily accounted for by the fact that twice as many
Woodcock were killed in December, 1618, as in 1621, but the
results approximate more nearly than might perhaps have been
expected. The birds only cost from 3d to 4d apiece; the
latter was then reckoned a good price for Woodcock. If we
estimate the cost of the lower rate, his Lordship must have paid
little more than 45 shillings for all the Woodcock supplied to
his table during the season; but if money then possessed ten

times its present purchasing value, why then the outlay may be »

thought considerable. The practice of purchasing Woodcock
from every one who could supply them was no doubt generally
in vogue. Sir Daniel Fleming of Rydal enters in his expenses
for 1682: ‘Dec. 12; Given Parson, Brathwait’s son, who

BIRDS BF |

brought some Wood-cockes, 6d.’ The question naturally arises,
by what means Woodcock were obtained in such considerable
quantities as the Naworth records evidence? Undoubtedly,
some of the Woodcock were taken in nets, according to the
Italian fashion. It was only in 1645 that John Evelyn
remarked of the Villa Borghesi near Rome: ‘Here they had
hung large netts to catch wood-cocks.’’ But the method had
been adopted in Cumberland some years earlier. In the
accounts of Lord William Howard for 1624, we find among the
expenses incurred in Oct. 283: ‘To Rob Stapleton for hempe
yarn in march for making a drawing nett, v*., and for ij hankes
of yarn for a cockshott nett at Brampton parke, 11j%. 27. To
Mr. Skelton for ij hankes of yarn for the cock net, ijs.’ This
device is obviously unsuited to an open country, and was not
the kind of fowling most adopted by the natives of Lakeland.
They preferred to rely upon the simple and less expensive
device of snaring Woodcock.

Pennant himself, though a stranger, noticed the practice as
adopted in the neighbourhood of Windermere in 1772: ‘See
on the plain part of these hills numbers of springes for Wood-
cocks, laid between tufts of heather, with avenues of small
stones on each side to direct these foolish birds into the snares,
for they will not hop over the pebbles. Multitudes are taken
in this manner in the open weather, and sold on the spot for
sixteen pence or twenty pence a couple (about 20 years ago at
sixpence or sevenpence), and sent to the all-devouring capital
by the Kendal Stage? Wholesale destruction, coupled with
the loss of much natural wood, could not but affect the numbers
of birds in the long-run; such was actually the case, for
Hutchinson wrote in (or prior to) 1794: ‘We were informed
that formerly so great an abundance of woodcocks frequented
the woods in this manor [ Muncaster], that, by a special custom,

1 Diary of John Evelyn, Ed. Bohn, p. 144.

2 Tour in Scotland, vol. ii. p. 36. In one of the Tales of the Lakes,
published in the Lonsdale Magazine in 1822, called ‘ Michael,’ and written
in 1821, an aged native of Windermere is represented as saying: ‘The
few shillings I had were obtained by catching Patridges and Woodcocks

in sprents, for they had not found it out at London then that all the birds
belonged to the gentleman.’ (p. 13.)

372 VERTEBRATE FAUNA OF LAKELAND

the tenants were obliged to sell them to the lord for one penny
each; they were taken by springs and traps: but since the
country was stripped of wood, they make but a short stay here
in their passage, and are of late years become very scarce.
I have conversed with several persons who were in the habit of
snaring Woodcock in their younger days. Quite recently Mr.
Ainslie of Grizedale wrote to me: ‘When I was a boy, say
1845-50, I recollect our moors were literally covered with
sprints, and few of these very silly birds escaped.’ Prior to the
present century the Woodcock was uniformly regarded as only
a periodical or winter visitant to the north-west of England.
John Gough of Kendal remarks in some notes written in 1792:
‘March .... 18, Woodcocks, Scolopax rusticula, are very
abundant at present, after disappearing for a fortnight. These
visitors, perhaps, are on their return from Ireland to the Con-
tinent,’ an interesting observation, as shewing how well the
migratory journeys of the Woodcock were even then understood.
He recorded the return of the species on the 2d of October in
the same year.t Dr. Heysham observes: ‘The Woodcock is
sometimes seen in Cumberland the last week in September ; but
they are seldom plentiful till the middle or latter end of
October. They begin to take their departure in March; but a
few are seen, almost every year, in April. Instances, though
very rare, occur of their breeding in England.’ The same
writer adds in another place: ‘In short, from the observations
I have made on the appearance and disappearance of the birds
of passage, I am strongly inclined to believe that ceteris paribus
as many Woodcocks remain during the summer in England
as swallows in winter.’

Those of us who have grown up within the last thirty years,
during which the Woodcock has been generally recognised as
breeding abundantly both in England generally and in the
Lake district in particular, are hardly competent to under-
stand the interest which attached to the nesting of the Wood-
cock early in our own century. Before the old doctor’s death,
his son, T. C. Heysham, had recognised the change in the
habits of the Woodcock; for, in a letter written to Henry

1 Gentleman’s Magazine, 1792, p. 1197.

BIRDS One

Doubleday in September 1831, the younger man was able to
say: ‘I have little or no doubt that this bird breeds annually
in small numbers in this county.’ We can well imagine the
pleasure with which the veteran would have welcomed an
opportunity of watching a dark-eyed Woodcock brooding shyly
over her eggs or russet-coloured young upon the edge of some
pet bit of covert; it was not so ordained. He passed away in
1834—three short years too soon—for, on the 8th of July
1837, his son wrote to John Gould: ‘I had the good fortune
this spring to see four eggs of the Woodcock, which had been
found in a wood about nine miles from Carlisle.’ In 1842 the
Carlisle Patriot of May 5th recorded that George Harrison, a
keeper of the Earl of Lonsdale, had that season found two nests
of the Woodcock in the covers at Melkinthorpe, and stated
further: ‘For several previous years Mr. Harrison has found
nests of these birds nearly in the same locality, and it is his
opinion, as well as that of his brother, Mr. Robert Harrison,
that many of these birds if left unmolested after the month of
_ January, instead of migrating, would breed in this climate.’
Three young Woodcock were captured in a plantation at the
Riddings, on the Netherby estate, in April 1844.1 The late
Mr. Wood of Westward, who spent a long lifetime in that
parish, and was an accomplished botanist, wrote in 1880: ‘A
few years ago the nest of a Woodcock was a great rarity in
Cumberland, now it is of frequent occurrence. Last year a pair
of these birds had a nest in my parish; this year the number
is doubled, and two nests are also said to have been found in
the woods at Edenhall.’* Pages of newspaper cuttings, regard-
ing Woodcock nests in the Lake district, could now be reprinted,
for though there are many parts of the Lake district in which
the Woodcock does not nest, yet wherever adequate cover and
freedom from disturbance are found, one or two pairs of Wood-
cocks nest annually. Many Woodcock nest in the fine sheltered
coverts of the Rusland valley, and their nests have often been
found in Furness. Mr. W. G, Ainslie, M.P., wrote to me in
1889: ‘We have for many years had these birds amongst us all

1 Carlisle Journal, May 4.
* Science Gossip, 1880, p. 190.

oT VERTEBRATE FAUNA OF LAKELAND

the summer, and I think the only reason for their not having
been known previous to the early part of this century, was that
Poachers kept them down most effectively.’ Mr. Ainslie stated,
in the Field of April 27, 1889, that his keeper saw more birds
at Grizedale in the summer than in the shooting-season. His
own bag of ‘Cock’ in the season of 1888 was twenty-nine birds.
But the supply of Woodcock in winter of course varies with
locality and weather, as every one finds. Mr. Archibald’s keeper
once killed eighteen Woodcock in the Rusland valley in one
day, and lost another. This unusual circumstance was fully
explained by the fact that the birds had been driven into the
springs on the low ground by frost and snow. Woodcock
nest near Windermere, Keswick, Appleby, Kendal, Penrith—in
fact, in large woods all round our chief centres; they are also
scattered up and down the west of our faunal area in the
breeding season. Edenhall, Netherby, Appleby Castle, Naworth,
are among the chief strongholds of the species ; its numbers are
of course thin where timber is scarce or where birds are not
encouraged, while the wildest parts of the Lake district are
unsuitable to the tastes of a bird that loves damp plantations
and open drains or mossy ground, in which a plentiful supply
of worms can be obtained. I have often watched the flight of
the croaking Woodcock crossing the glades of some of our big
woods in the gloaming, and occasionally flushed the birds by
day in the depths of the coverts that they frequent. The nests
and young are chiefly found when keepers are collecting
Pheasant eggs. Both the eggs and young require a keen eye
to distinguish them from the dead leaves in which they repose.
Mr. W. Duckworth examined five nests of the Woodcock at
Netherby on April 23, 1886; two were in the shelter of the
Crossleaved Heath, one near Heather, one under some rhododen-
drons, and another beneath some brambles. I have seen others
in fir plantations, and others also in woods of deciduous timber.
One of the nests which Mr. Duckworth found contained a dwarf

egg. The Woodcock is an early breeder, and the eggs are ~

often laid in March. I had some thoughts of seeking to take
a census of the Woodcock nesting in the Lake district, but my
most experienced friends dissuaded me, on the ground that no

BIRDS 375

reliable data could be obtained, as keepers vary so much in the
interest which they take in such matters. Mr. Plenderleath,
the head keeper at Netherby, where the Woodcock is known to
have nested since 1844, has had a very large experience of
Woodcock and Woodcock nests. He told me in 1891 that the
Woodcock which breed at Netherby arrive on their breeding-
grounds in February, and pair off at the beginning of March.
At first he then sees them in pairs, but when the female begins
to sit he chiefly sees only single birds; after the young are
hatched, in April or May, the old birds unite; when the time
comes for a second nest they are again seen singly. Birds have
greatly increased since he went to Netherby about 1865, but their
numbers are very unequal in different seasons. He discredits
the well-known fact that the Woodcock carries her young,
because he has never seen it. But there is not the least doubt
that the Woodcock often carries her young. It was vouched
for by the late Captain Kinsey Dover, a veteran sportsman-
naturalist, and can be proved by several witnesses still living in
the Lake district; for example, by my friend, Mr. C. F.
Archibald, or by Mr. Raine, the highly-respected head game-
keeper at Edenhall. As regards weight, Mr. F. P. Johnson
shot a ‘Cock’ of sixteen ounces near Brampton, Oct. 29, 1888,
and this is the finest that has been reported to me. It may
not be inappropriate to conclude with an extract from the
Carlisle Patriot of Nov. 5, 1841, instancing the fact that these
birds occasionally arrive in large flights on our western sea-
board: ‘On Thursday week [Oct. 28] no less than twenty-six
Woodcock were shot in the neighbourhood of Workington. . . .
Woodcock have been usually numerous in the vicinity of Bootle
during the last week. No fewer than twelve and a half brace
of these birds were shot on Thursday week [Oct. 28] by Mr.
Walker of that town; and four and a half brace were bagged
by the same gentleman on the following day. The birds were
remarkably fine, and averaged upwards of thirteen ounces
each.’

376 VERTEBRATE FAUNA OF LAKELAND

GREAT SNIPE.

Gallinago major (Gmel.).

Dr. Gough included the Great Snipe as an occasional but rare
visitant to the neighbourhood of Kendal. T. C. Heysham only
met with a very few specimens in Cumberland. The late Mr.
W. Dickinson, during an extended residence in his native
county, only heard of five examples killed in the west of Cum-
berland. There can be no doubt that most of the reports and
even records of Great Snipe refer simply to heavy examples of
the common bird. At all events, I can only answer for five
specimens killed in the decade of 1881-1891. The first of
these was shot near Carlisle in 1881; another was killed on
Wardhall Common, September 11, 1883; a third near Carlisle,
October 30, 1886; a fourth near Carlisle on September 9,
1887; a fifth was obtained in the north-east of Cumberland
in November 1891. Our records relate chiefly, if not exclu-
sively, to birds shot in the months of September and October
in the northern part of the Lake district. It is believed that
all of them were single birds.

COMMON SNIPE.
Gallinago celestis (Frenzel).

This Snipe has always been a plentiful bird in Lakeland, and
still breeds on the wild moors round Ravenstonedale in West-
morland, in the Rusland valley, in the marshy lands around
our lakes, or, again, on Solway Flow, Rockliffe moss, and Bowness
Flow in the neighbourhood of the sea-board. Fewer nests are
found no doubt than formerly, but this may be partly accounted
for by the large portion of ‘snipey ground’ that has been re-
claimed even in the dreariest and most remote portions of our
area. This bird is closely associated with the reminiscences of
most sportsmen. Often has the ‘skape’ of the Snipe saluted
my ears on the salt marshes when a Snipe has unexpectedly
slipped away at our feet from a tussock at the side of a creek,
urging us to trace the delicate imprint of its long toes which
the soft sand retains. The ‘ bleating’ of the male, as he shoots
through the air with amorous velocity, or prepares to descend

BIRDS WY

with stridulous flight, has frequently conferred a real charm
upon some rushy meadowland which had otherwise possessed
no interest for any one. Mr. Seebohm’s remark that he has
never seen or heard of a ‘ flock’ of Snipe is a little perplexing to
a student of Lakeland, which is visited in early autumn and
winter by many large ‘wisps’ of Snipe; those that appear on
our lowest grounds being chiefly bred on the Scottish hills and
the Pennine fells, and resorting to the wet mosses and pools of
the low grounds when their own hill-sides are becoming dry
and parched up. On the 19th of August 1889 I showed to
Mr. Matthew Vaughan the numbers of Snipe which had con-
gregated in the half-submerged sedge and mud of Monkhill
Lough ; then, as on other occasions, the Snipe rose wild and
went away in wisps, varying from three or four to thirty birds,
and dispersing in all directions, many towering and others
wheeling gracefully over the corn-fields, while some others were
content to fly restlessly around the margin of the lough. After
a short delay they all turned to their favourite ground, coming
in as big wisps or in twos or threes, the flocks all dropping
into the sedge, each bird hiding up a few feet apart from his
neighbour. This happened in dry weather, which induces
Snipe to congregate in their most aquatic retreats. In the
following October the waters of the lough rose and flooded the
Snipe ground, but many of the birds frequented a ‘lea-field’ in
the immediate vicinity. On the 8th of that month I saw ten
Snipe come flying up to the lough, whence they wheeled off to
the field just mentioned. Their arrival was due to the fact
that a high tide was then submerging Rockliffe salt marsh,
from which they repaired to the lough. The salt marshes afford
Snipe-shooting in wet weather, but are too much disturbed to
be really first-rate at any time. King Garth Island is always
a sure ‘find’ for Snipe; in the early hours of a November day
I have seen it fairly alive with them.

JACK SNIPE.

Gallinago gallinula (I..).
The Jack Snipe has never been a very abundant bird in
Lakeland, although occasionally observed in even the summer

378 VERTEBRATE FAUNA OF LAKELAND

months. Under the old name of Judcock, it is mentioned
three times in the Naworth Accounts of 1621. Thus we find
an entry on the 27th of November : ‘Snipes and jude-cocks, 7,
v’” Two entries follow in December: ‘6 juge cocks, iiij4,’
and ‘ Jugcocks, 2, and a blackburn, j*’ Although unknown in
flocks, and chiefly met with singly or in pairs, the first stragglers
are generally reported to me almost simultaneously, between the
last days of September and the first week of October. Most
sportsmen have had frequent occasion to remark the astonishing
pertinacity with which individuals of this favourite ‘gibier’
adhere to close cover, preferring to lie up almost at the feet of
the gunner rather than to run gauntlet of a ‘twelvebore.’ The
tameness of the ‘Jack’ becomes accentuated in severe and
wintry weather, when even this hardy little northerner finds
a difficulty in procuring a subsistence in the neighbourhood of
such springs and ‘runners’ as may fortunately prove the last
to freeze up.

RED-BREASTED SNIPE.
Macrorhamphus griseus (Gmel.).

Writing to Yarrell on December 8th, 1835, Mr. T, C. Hey-
sham observes: ‘A fine specimen of the Scolopax griseus (a
young bird of the year) was killed in this vicinity during the
autumn, which is perhaps one of the best things in the bird way
that has occurred in this district for very many years.’ It was
recorded in the following words: ‘A specimen was shot on
Rockcliff salt marsh, on Sept. 25, during a very high tide,
which covered the whole of the marsh, with the exception of a
few small elevated patches scattered here and there, on one of
which the bird was observed busily feeding, and picking up
insects, etc., with amazing rapidity. It proved to be a young
female of the year, and was in good condition ; the stomach
was filled with the elytra of several small coleopterous insects :
no other individual was seen.’ James Cooper was undoubtedly
the man who shot the bird. Local tradition maintains, no
doubt correctly, that it was killed on the upper part of the

1 Mag. Natural Hist., vol. ix. p. 186.

BIRDS 379

marsh, nearer to Floriston than Rockliffe. Mr. C. Murray
Adamson says, that, after Heysham’s death he examined his
birds, and found this Red-breasted Snipe to be in a ruined
condition.

PHEETORAL SANDPIPER.
Tringa maculata, Vieill.

The autumn of 1888 witnessed the arrival of this nearctic
species both upon the eastern coast of England and also in
Lakeland. I sent the following letter to the Ibis of January
1889: ‘Carlisle, Nov. 9, 1888.—Sir,—I beg leave to state that,
on the 18th of October last, three examples of the Pectoral
Sandpiper (Tringa maculata) were observed in a grass-meadow
near Penrith. Two of the birds were shot. One of them fell
into a Snipe-pool and was eaten by rats [our subsequent search
only yielded a few feathers]; the other was safely secured, and
within half-an-hour was placed in the hands of my friend Mr.
Tandy, a young but zealous ornithologist. The third bird
lingered in the neighbourhood until the 22d, but escaped
scatheless. Mr. Tandy’s bird proved on dissection to be ex-
ceedingly fat; its stomach contained the remains of vegetable
substances. It is in immature plumage. I may add that Mr.
Bidwell and other friends [including Mr. H. Seebohm] have
examined the specimen, which is the first authenticated example
of the species obtained in the north-west of England,’

This notice may be supplemented by the remark that Mr.
Tandy, being unaware of the rarity of his specimen, proceeded
to skin it before I had examined it in the flesh. I saw it,
however, while the legs were still quite soft and flexible. The
person who shot this bird was Robert Raine of Edenhall. He
at first saw two of the birds running over the grass like Dotterel,
and took them for that species in the distance. He then flushed
them, when they rose in the air, and, wheeling round, dropped
into a neighbouring Snipe-pool. He then flushed them again
with a third bird which he had not previously seen, and shot two
of the three, but lost one in the water. He had no retriever
with him, and, as evening was coming on, he went home with

380 VERTEBRATE FAUNA OF LAKELAND

the bird that he had secured, postponing until the morrow the
recovery of the second bird, which he would not have done had
he been at all aware of its rarity. Mr. Tandy happened
to call at his father’s house the same evening, and at once
recognised that the Sandpiper was unknown to him, and there-
fore took it home and skinned it himself. Raine saw the third
bird subsequently in the same neighbourhood, but it was too
wild to admit of his securing it.

DOING AINE
Tringa alpina, L.

During the winter months large numbers of these birds
frequent Morecambe Bay, and are taken plentifully in the
‘bands’ of nets set by the Flookburgh fowlers, to whom they
are known as ‘Purrs’ or ‘sea-mice.’ They are often termed
‘stints’ on our coast-line, but on the English side of the Solway
Firth are best known to the fisher-folk as ‘sea-mice.’ On the
fells near Alston, the name of ‘ Plover-provider’ attaches to the
Dunlin, from its well-known habit of associating with the
Golden Plover. Although the majority of the Dunlins which
frequent our estuaries in autumn and winter are visitants from
distant breeding-grounds, yet a good many pairs breed either
sporadically on the fells of the Pennine range or in one or two
favourite localities near the coast-line. Mr. Seebohm had no
doubt been misinformed when he wrote in his british Birds, as
well as more recently in his Geographical Distribution of the
Charadriide, that a few pairs breed on the mountains of the
Lake district. At least I know no one who has found the
Dunlin nesting on Skiddaw or any other of the Lake mountains
proper. But if the expression be restricted to the fell lands
which form our eastern boundary, it is perfectly accurate.
Upon Crossfell, for example, I found a fair sprinkling of
Dunlins and Golden Plover in June 1888. We first heard the
two species call almost simultaneously, and noticed a Dunlin
closely following a Golden Plover in flight, even to pitching on
a tussock beside the larger bird when it alighted. When the
Plover rose, so did the Dunlin. When the Plover whistled, the

BIRDS 381

Duunlin trilled. Once we saw five Dunlin stoop to and settle
around a Golden Plover, waiting as sedately as the Plover.
But this attendance of the Dunlin upon its larger neighbour is
only a feature of our fell lands. The two species sometimes
nest thinly on the same mosses near the coast; but there the
Golden Plover is a scarce breeding-bird, while the Dunlin nests
in considerable numbers upon certain portions of Burgh and
Rockliffe marshes, as also near Silloth. The home-breeding
Dunlins do not seem to winter on these marshes, though I saw
a flock of at least a thousand birds wheeling round the point of
Rockliffe marsh on December 1, on the occasion of a high tide.
Certain it is that some individuals are always present. Once I
shot a Dunlin on Rockliffe marsh on the 19th of January, and
found it was already moulting into spring plumage, as evidenced
by the fresh wing coverts and upper tail coverts.

But the Dunlin does not generally begin to lay before the
beginning of May. The earliest broods of young generally
hatch out about the 21st of that month. Most eggs are laid
from the middle of May to the middle of June, the nest being
a tolerably deep depression in a tussock of grass, lined, when the
clutch is complete, with short stems of dry grass. The birds
are charmingly tame at this season, tripping about and flying
round in pairs. It is pretty to watch a male Dunlin carefully
preening his breast and coverts, occasionally stretching his
neck a little forward to utter a deep running trill as an
encouragement to his mate, which probably responds by running
up to his side and settling down to trim her feathers. One day I
watched a couple of breeding Dunlins posing contentedly on the
edge of Rockliffe marsh, until the flowing tide forced them to
suum back to land, which feat they accomplished without the
least show of reluctance. The colour of those which breed on
the salt marshes is not so bright as that of the smaller birds
which nest on the Pennine range. Although so pleasantly
associated with the sea pinks of Rockliffe marsh, it would be a
mistake to suppose that all the Dunlins which frequent our
estuaries in summer are breeding-birds. Some of those seen in
large droves in May are doubtless on passage to more boreal
breeding-stations, but, as with most Waders, there are a good

382 VERTEBRATE FAUNA OF LAKELAND

many Dunlins that do not breed. I have seen them in the
channel between Barrow and Walney in the breeding-time,
though not of course in the numbers which we found in the
same locality in the fall of the year. Some individuals retain
breeding plumage long after the majority have moulted into the
plain grey and white dress of winter. Thus, in 1888, a male
Dunlin, which I shot near Bowness on the 23d of October,
retained the black breast of the breeding season nearly intact.
These little birds seem to feed chiefly on the small shellfish, both
bivalves and univalves, which they obtain in the creeks and on
the sandy flats of our estuaries.

Hy TE Ie pits sy SEL NIE

Tringa minuta, Leisl.

Of the numerous Waders which throng the estuaries of the
north-west of England almost annually, perhaps the rarest,
certainly the most local in its choice of feeding-grounds, is the
Little Stint. This especially applies to the neighbourhood of
Morecambe Bay. Dr. Gough does not appear to have met with
it in the vicinity of Arnside, neither does Mr, Durnford
include it with data in his list of Birds found in the neighbour-
hood of Walney Island. My own inquiries elicited the fact that
Mr. C. A. Hamond shot three Little Stints near Arnside when
shooting there on the 7th and 8th of Sept. 1876. Whether
it ever occurs at Ravenglass cannot be decided, since all
shooting on the estuary is prohibited by the Lord of the Manor.
Possibly it will be detected some day on the sands of the fore-
shore between Drigg and Seascale. But the only part of our
coast-line upon which the Little Stint appears with anything
akin to certainty, is that of the English Solway between Silloth
and Gretna. Mr. T. C. Heysham, whose information hereon
was chiefly derived from his collector, James Cooper, wrote to
Yarrell on September 15, 1839: ‘Some time ago the Little
Sandpiper was credited a rare bird; but this is by no means
the case. Here it is seen every autumn and occasionally in the
spring, and I have a specimen which was caught alive by a
little boy, clerk to Mr. L.— of Carlisle’ [i.e. on the cattle

BIRDS 383

market between the Eden and Carlisle, September 23, 1835].
In the very year that Heysham wrote this letter to Yarrell,
Cooper sent ten Little Stints in the flesh to Mr. C, M. Adamson,
with the remark that he had seen [not obtained] more Little
Stints that autumn than in all his previous experience. That
same year he shot a Little Stint on the Ist of June, a fact
which no doubt induced Heysham to speak of this Tringa
occurring in the spring-time, at which it is otherwise unknown
with us. September is the month which generally sees the
arrival of a few Little Stints, especially after a prevalence of
strong easterly winds. A few appeared in the seasons of 1887,
1888, 1889, 1890, and 1891, though no considerable immigra-
tion of this Sandpiper has occurred since Cooper’s day, ie.
during the last half-century. Cooper himself twice shot Little
Stints on our salt marshes in the beginning of winter, and
other late stragglers have occurred quite recently. Mr. Nicol
saw a single Little Stint flying in a flock of Dunlins up the
Waver on November Ist, 1889, and Mr. Mason shot another on
Rockliffe marsh the following day. This last was resting at
the edge of a little ‘dub’ or pool of water on the surface of the
marsh. He broke its legs, and was obliged to kill it, though
reluctant, as he assured us, to kill such a delicate little Wader,
On examination it proved to be still wearing the plumage of
youth. Mr. Nicol saw a single Little Stint near Skinburness
on the 15th of January 1891, a remarkable date at which to
meet with this bird. Of its habits during its brief sojourn on
our estuaries on autumnal migration it is difficult to write with
the same prolixity as of commoner birds, because of its comparative
rarity. But I have never met with it in Lakeland at any distance
from our estuaries. By choice it seems to associate chiefly with its
own species, and with Curlew Sandpipers. If separated from
its fellows, it either remains alone or consorts with the ubiquitous
Dunlin. Like that species, the Little Stint is fond of feeding
upon open sands, but it never frequents to our knowledge an
exposed beach. When high tides have covered our marshes,
and filled the half-dried creeks, both species may be found at a
distance from the wide sands that they haunt at other times.
I have not dissected many Little Stints, but those that I have

384 VERTEBRATE FAUNA OF LAKELAND

skinned rarely contained more than a little grit. In one case
the birds had fed on some small white worms. Another had
dieted on flies. The flight of this Stint is fast and irregular,
the bird often rising and falling. Its call-note, ‘wick,’ bears
some resemblance to that of the Sanderling, but is quite unlike
the trill of the Dunlin. :

TEMMINCK’S STINT.
Tringa temmincki, Leisl.

T. C. Heysham records that ‘a pair of this rare species of
Sandpiper were killed on Rockliffe salt marsh on the Ist of
September [1832], the only specimens that we have hitherto
heard of that have been got in this vicinity. Both were young
birds, in all probability not more than nine or ten weeks old,
and their plumage was in almost every respect very similar to
the young of the Common Sandpiper (Totanus hypoleucos) of the
same age. They proved, upon dissection, to be of different
sexes, and were exceedingly fat.’ Mr. Charles Murray Adamson
showed to us the specimens obtained by James Cooper, regarding
which he has observed: ‘In answer to my inquiries about this
species, Cooper of Carlisle wrote to me in 1839: “TI never saw
an old Temminck’s Sandpiper; the only young I ever saw were
three, two of which I killed on September Ist, 1832, and one
on the 5th of the same month and year, besides the one I sent
you.”’1 The last-named was shot by Cooper on Rockliffe
marsh on September 2d, 1839. Considering that this Stint
nests on the Norwegian fells, fide Collett, it is a little surprising
that not a single specimen has strayed to the marshes of the
English Solway during the last half-century.

CURLEW SANDPIPER.
Tringa subarquata (Gild.).

Always one of our scarcest periodical visitants, of late years
the Curlew Sandpiper has been very scantily represented on the
Solway Firth. It is possible that this small Wader may have

1 More Scraps about Birds,"p. 130.

BIRDS 385

been more numerous formerly, for T. C. Heysham wrote to
Dr. Drummond in October 1834: ‘Within the last eight or
ten days a very large flock of Pigmy Curlews (Tringa subar-
quata) have been seen upon the coast in this locality, several of
which have been killed. This circumstance most materially
strengthens an opinion I have for some time entertained, that
this species is by no means rare on many parts of our coast.’
Again, a loose note of T. OC. Heysham, dated November 2d,
1849, runs thus: ‘ Watson, the bird-stuffer, this day informed
me that he had seen large flocks of this bird on Rockliffe marsh
this autumn, and had shot several. I saw two of these birds
which he had mounted.’ I usually meet with a few individuals
in September, generally upon the sands of an open estuary, often
in company with Dunlins or Ringed Plover, occasionally among
Little Stints. On Burgh marsh we surprised a solitary bird
feeding alone on a patch of black mud, September 17th, 1888 ;
but this Wader seldom frequents the higher marshes of the
Solway. The Curlew Sandpiper is more deliberative in its
actions than the Dunlin, and stalks, rather than runs, over the
estuary. It is not partial to salt creeks, at least not in the same
degree as the Dunlin. It has not been recorded from Raven-
glass, or from any inland station except Alston, near which
town the late B. Greenwell once obtained a specimen. But it
appears to occur sparingly in the neighbourhood of Morecambe
Bay.

T. C. Heysham once wrote to Dr. Gough: ‘I have not the
least doubt that the Pigmy Curlew and Little Sandpiper will
eventually be found on your coast (1.¢. Morecambe Bay). In
the months of August and September the former sometimes
visits the shores of the Solway in considerable flocks, and fre-
quently in company with the Dunlin. On the contrary, the
Little Sandpiper is somewhat solitary, and seems to be partial
to the creeks of the salt marshes. The skins of the birds I sent
you I am fully aware are not worth your acceptance, and I
merely put them into the box under the impression that they
might possibly assist you in making out these birds, should they
at any time chance to fall in your way.’ It does not appear
that Dr. Gough ever obtained the Little Stint on his coast, but

2B

386 VERTEBRATE FAUNA OF LAKELAND

Heysham’s presentiment as to the ultimate detection of the
Curlew Sandpiper was justified by the fact that Dr. Gough
ultimately presented an immature bird to the Kendal Museum,
this having been shot on the marsh near Arnside, August 24th, .
1868. The species has since been obtained in the same locality.
Mr. C. A. Hammond informs me that he met with a considerable
flock of Curlew Sandpipers at Arnside in September 1876, and
shot seven of the number. The late James Cooper shot a
couple of Curlew Sandpipers on Rockliffe marsh in the month
of May, one of which Heysham says that he lent to Gould, to be
figured in the Birds of Europe. The Pigmy Curlew so rarely
visits us in the spring of the year that it is practically unknown
on our marshes in the red dress.

PURPLE SANDPIPER:
Tringa striata, L.

A few Purple Sandpipers occasionally appear on our estuaries
in late autumn, frequenting the large stones which lie at the
mouths of becks, obtaining much of their food on the sand like
other Tringe. The species has never been shot on our salt
marshes ; indeed, it occurs more frequently near St. Bees than
anywhere else on our coast, which is, at the best, indifferently
adapted to suit its tastes, there being few, if any, reefs of rock
covered with tangles such as this Sandpiper habitually chooses
for its haunts. I have seen it on the west side of Walney
Island, and there Mr. Durnford also obtained specimens. All
the local examples but one that have come under my notice
were killed in winter plumage. The exception is a young bird
killed a few years ago near St. Bees. This is in nest dress, showing
that it was either an early immigrant or belonged to a late
brood. I have never observed this Sandpiper to associate with
any other species of Limicole.

BIRDS 387

KNOT.
Tringa canutus, L.

The Knot visits Morecambe Bay and the lower portion of
the Solway Firth in very large numbers, but is not often met
with on the more open portions of our coast, being in fact an
estuary-loving rather than a maritime species. I have ob-
served considerable numbers in Walney channel, and a good
many are netted by the Flookburgh fowlers, but it is on the
Solway Firth that I have chiefly studied the Knots which
come to Lakeland at the end of their short Arctic summer. A
few arrive in August. In 1888 the first muster of young birds
occurred on the 7th of September, when a large flock allowed
Mr. W. Nicol to approach within shot. On the 18th of that
month many hundreds lined the sea-beach at Bowness, just
when the sunset flooded the heights of Criffel across the tide-
way with a volume of soft light. These, when disturbed, only
wheeled en masse a few hundred yards across the sands. On
the 23d of October 1888 a friend and I visited Bowness just
as the tide began to ebb, and observed a few Knots which from
their tameness had evidently only just arrived. They ran in
twos and threes over the shingle at our feet, and my terrier
ran after them precisely as he would have chevied Sparrows
under similar circumstances. Some large flocks of Knots seen
the same day were as wild as hawks. When shooting on the coast
near Cardunock, on January 4, 1889, we came across a fine
assemblage of Knots. Crossing a field, we gained the shelter
of a hedge within 80 yards of the birds, which were running in
the shallows at the edge of the estuary. The tide was flowing
fast and soon disturbed a great flock of Oystercatchers, which
broke into two divisions that alighted on our right and left.
A dense flock of Knots then came fiying up, and, after stooping
and rising once or twice, pitched in the vacant space between
the two bodies of Oystercatchers, and thus united the throng
of birds crowding the water-side into one dark multitude. We
waited twenty minutes, during which many small flocks of
Knots came flying restlessly up the water, the tide being one
of 24 feet. As the flowing waters encroached upon the land,

388 VERTEBRATE FAUNA OF LAKELAND

the birds lifted here and there, the Knots being obliged to keep
inside the Oystercatchers, as being shorter in the leg! Now
they rose in a swarm and pitched a few yards nearer to the
shore; anon they rose on the wing and exhibited their aerial
evolutions like a well-drilled squadron, hanging in the air like
a swarm of bees, forming into a triangle, now lapsing into a
dense mass, the twinkling effect produced by the beating of so
many pairs of wings impressing the mind with a bewildering
sensation. A few manceuvres performed, the Knots returned,
but this time to pitch a few yards further away, for the tide
had turned; a few minutes more and the receding waters
allured them to descend the firth; the right-hand detachment
of Oystercatchers followed in their wake. A few Knots linger
beside the left wing of Ostralegus; the loud piping of the Sea-
ples was agreeably varied by the shrill cries of the Knots. A
Curlew waded jauntily outside the black throng of birds, which,
no longer content to rest, head drawn within the shoulders,
were keenly watching the departure of the tide. Long before
the waters had left the sand high and dry, the hungry birds
rose and departed to their favourite mussel scars. Wading out
into the shallows, we saw many small parties of Knots pass, all
flighting down the channel to some well-known rendezvous ; a
few of the number crossed over to us from the Scottish side of
the firth. The experience just described has been repeated
many times; on December 21, 1889, when shooting on Skin-
burness marsh, we watched two large flocks of Knots looking
very silvery as they swept up and down the united waters of
the Wampool and Waver estuary, now in a compact mass, now
spreading into a long thin line, then reuniting into an opaque
cloud of birds, anxiously waiting for the retiring waters to lay
bare their favourite feeding-grounds, notably those at Beckfoot.
Mr. Nicol has killed eighty-four Knots at a shot as early as
September 16, but generally gets his best shots at the close of
the season; on the 3lst of February 1888 he shot one hun-
dred and eight birds at a shot, all of course for the market.

At the end of November 1889 Messrs. Law and Nicol con-

jointly shot over five hundred Knots with their punt guns.
But Knots are on the whole most numerous in the month of

BIRDS 389

March, when many arrive on passage to their breeding-grounds.
Knots have not often been taken in the interior of Lakeland,
but I have seen Knots arriving at a great height above the
Solway from the north-east, and these birds, which we recog-
nised by their twittering cry, must have crossed Northumber-
land. So too, on the 7th of November 1890, having spent the
day among the Knots at Bowness, I confess that I was inter-
ested to hear at 10.30 P.M. some Knots uttering their high-
pitched whistle, as they flighted over Carlisle, speeding on their
way through the dark rain-clouds towards our western estuaries.
In November 1887 a man named Elliot, employed as a keeper
on Crossfell, saw a small flock of Sandpipers crossing the fell-
side, and firing a shot at 70 yards, had the good luck to bring
down one of them—a Knot in full winter dress. That is the
plumage of the greater number of the Knots shot on our
estuaries. A few Knots sometimes linger long enough to
assume the red dress, as in 1891, when Mr. Nicol counted six
or seven ‘red Knots’ in a flock of fifty birds in the middle of
May. ‘They occur also in this dress in early autumn, but are
too wild to be often procured. Their food consists almost
entirely of small mollusca. Birds that have been accidentally
pinioned by a shot sometimes frequent our marshes for many
weeks, finding a plentiful supply of animal life in the creeks
which drain the saltings.

ny, (OP 28) 1
Machetes pugnax (L.).

The Ruff visits the salt marshes of the Solway Firth every
year, but in very small numbers, and only in the months of
August and September, when both sexes are exclusively repre-
sented (in our experience) by young birds. They often associate
with Peewits, and feed in company with those birds on the
open portions of the salt grazings, but sometimes in the creeks
or even on the open sand. It has been said that the Ruff is a
silent bird, and no doubt it is so in comparison with some other
- Limicole, yet its loud shrill whistle may occasionally be heard
at a considerable distance. Nowhere has it been met with, or

390 VERTEBRATE FAUNA OF LAKELAND

at any rate reported inland, except from the neighbourhood of
Alston. Alston lies in the track of many migrating birds, and
immature Ruffs have often been shot when resting on passage
upon the neighbouring moors. Neither have I seen the Ruff
upon the coast south of the Solway. Dr. Gough, however, in-
cludes the species as an occasional visitant to Lyth moss.
Baxter of Ulverston shot some birds of this species in More-
cambe Bay in the autumn of 1890. The Ruff has never been
obtained in Lakeland during the breeding season. Mr. C. M.
Adamson assured me that he once received from James Cooper
a clutch of the eggs of this species, which had been taken in
the neighbourhood of the English Solway. Mr. Adamson
subsequently presented these eggs to Mr. Hancock. The late
Sam Watson was very proud of a shot which he once fired at
some Ruffs. A man went to him to say that there was a flock
of strange birds on the ‘Sands’ near Eden bridge. Watson
hastened to the spot and found a party of sixteen Ruffs and
Reeves. He shot four running on the ground, and three others
as they flew round, bagging six Ruffs and one Reeve.

SANDERLING.

Calidris arenaria (L.).

The sandy portions of our coast, and especially of the Solway
Firth between Allonby and Cardunock, are visited by large
numbers of Sanderlings, both in spring and autumn, but
especially at the former season. Large flocks of these birds
make their appearance on the portion of our shores just indicated,
about the middle of May, and their sojourn with us is often
prolonged into June. Some few arrive in full breeding dress,
but some have changed but little, and the great majority have
nearly but not quite assumed perfect nuptial plumage. Their
numbers vary in different years, but their arrival is an unalter-
ing feature of vernal migration. Upon the 30th of May this
year (1891) Mr. Nicol informed me that he had noticed the
presence of some Sanderlings for some days; not in the re-
markable abundance of 1889, when he estimated their numbers
at 3000 birds, but still in very sufficient flocks. About half

BIRDS 391

past two, when the tide flowed, we walked across the sands
together, and ata long distance recognised a flock of Sanderlings
running actively at the water edge. Other flocks came swing-
ing past us, and the birds on the water edge rose and flew to
and fro, finally alighting on the sands about 100 yards from the
beach. The glass proved that many of them were still in the
grey and white plumage of winter. Two other flocks came
past, crying ‘ wick, wick, as they turned, their aerial movements
being neither so sharp nor so angular as those of the Dunlin.
Alighting on the sands they commenced running up to the
large flock, among which their numbers soon absorbed. These
birds feed at the water edge and out on the great sandbanks.
At high tide they rest on the sea beach, or fly restlessly to and
fro. The presence of the Sanderling is the more grateful
because the sands are otherwise sadly bereft of bird life at the
end of May. Bar-tailed Godwits in winter dress are still in
evidence, it is true, while flocks of Dunlins and Ringed Plovers,
of Oystercatchers, and even of Curlews, serve to remind us that
all birds do not necessarily undertake the duties of family life ;
but except for these and a few Gulls, some Sheldrakes, and a
late lingering Red-throated Diver, the estuary is enlivened by
the presence of very few birds. The Sanderlings all leave by
the 12th of June, unless perhaps a few odd birds stay all the
summer; Mr. Nicol once saw two Sanderlings flying in a flock
of Dunlins on the 25th of July, but that was of course an ex-
ceptional circumstance. Nevertheless, both adults and young
birds reappear in their favourite haunts in August and September,
though the small numbers which visit us in the latter portion
of the year clearly prove that the bulk of the birds which
visit us in spring return from the north to their winter quarters
by some other route than the Solway Firth. When I wrote
of the Sanderling in the Birds of Cumberland, our local
experience of this bird was limited to the spring and autumn
—indeed we only knew of one individual obtained in winter
dress, and that at a distance from the sea. Since then I
have frequently met with a few Sanderlings near Beckfoot
in winter, while in December 1886 Mr. J. N. Robinson
shot a bird out of a large flock on Burgh marsh. But our

392 VERTEBRATE FAUNA OF LAKELAND

reference to the Sanderling as ‘ not remaining to winter’ is still
true in the main, the bird being of course chiefly a spring
visitant. Curiously enough, T. C. Heysham turns out to have
studied the birds of Cumberland for very many years before he
came across a Sanderling in winter dress, witness the following
extract from a letter of his to James Cooper, dated December
13, 1844: ‘I have this moment received the enclosed Sander-
ling, which I understand was shot on Burgh marsh a few days
ago, and as it is the only one in winter plumage that has been
met with in Cumberland to my knowledge, I am rather anxious
to have it preserved. The only examples that I happen to
have seen from Morecambe Bay were shot in summer dress by
Mr. Murray of Carnforth.

BUFF-BREASTED SANDPIPER.
Tryngites rufescens (Vieill. ).

The comparatively short distance at which Burgh marsh is
situated from Carlisle has long rendered it a favourite shooting
ground for such of our working men as happen to possess a taste
for rough shooting. In September 1876 a man named John
Dawson was shooting on this marsh near the monument of
Edward 1., when he fell in with a small Sandpiper which
proved to belong to this species. He pinioned it by his first
shot, and was therefore able to secure it almost undamaged.
It was skinned and mounted by his brother George Dawson the

shoemaker, in whose possession it has remained ever since.
Mr. Hill of Carlisle saw it skinned.

COMMON SANDPIPER.
Totanus hypoleucus (L.).

For six months of the year the Common Sandpiper is one of
our most widely distributed birds, nesting in the neighbourhood
of most of the lakes, tarns, and rivers within our area. It
seldom arrives before the middle of April, often in small flocks,
which soon pair off and disperse themselves along the banks
of our wooded streams. In 1891 Mr. F. W. Bailey observed a
single Common Sandpiper on the 11th of April, but that is

BIRDS 393

four or five days earlier than this bird generally appears with
us. In 1889 a clutch of fresh eggs were taken on the Gelt on
the 10th of May, and these are as early as any that I have
found or heard of. The eggs are often laid at some distance
from water, though more usually on the banks of stream or
tarn. One picturesque nest was placed in a nursery garden
between two rows of strawberry plants. I have observed the
old birds perching on trees on a good many occasions, and even
when they had neither eggs nor young. The birds that breed
on our higher lands descend to the sea almost as soon as their
young are able to fly strongly, and may often be heard calling
on dark nights as they pass over. [Tor example, on July 28,
1888, at 11.30 P.M, wind E. to N.E., and much rain, I clearly
distinguished the voices of the Curlew and Common Sandpiper
among other species passing over Carlisle. The same was ob-
served on the 21st July 1888, and on a good many other
occasions. Almost the only ornithological observation con-
tributed to our knowledge of Lakeland by the late James
Cooper, recorded too by the old gentleman in his 84th year,
related to this species : ‘It was early in April while angling in
the Petteril, near Carlisle, when for the first time that year I
noticed a Common Sandpiper, which was sitting on a bed of
gravel near the brink of the river. As I approached, it flew across
to the opposite side and sat down on a stump of the weiring
made to defend the bank of the pool, which is deep and the
stream rapid. It had not been there more than a minute
when a Sparrow-hawk swept over a high hedge close by;
observing this, the Sandpiper dropped off the stump into the
pool, like a piece of lead, and the hawk went on; the bird then
came cautiously out on to the gravel bed it had left on perceiv-
ing my approach.’! In 1890 I found this Sandpiper frequent-
ing the creeks of Rockliffe marsh as early as July 9th, in the
family parties which frequent our coast-line until the end of
September. Stragglers linger into October, but I have never
met with this Wader in Lakeland during the winter.

1 Zoologist, 1876, p. 5126.

394 VERTEBRATE FAUNA OF LAKELAND

GREEN SANDPIPER.

Totanus ochropus (L.).

The beginning of the ‘open’ season is always a little disap-
pointing to those who ‘follow the marsh.’ In other words,
the species to be met with on our saltings during August con-
sist chiefly of home-bred birds; the bulk of the ‘foreigners’
arrive a few weeks later. But the Green Sandpiper affords a
pleasant exception to this rule. By the end of July one has
grown tired of the Redshanks and Dunlins, of the Ringed
Plover, Curlews, and Oystercatchers; their notes have lost all
freshness for our ears, while their flight is viewed with in-
difference. One of the first additions to our air fauna at this
juncture is usually the Green Sandpiper, freshly arrived, we
may suppose, from some nursery in Scandinavia or North
Germany. But, wherever the bird comes from, it is a relief to our
jaded feelings to flush this favourite acquaintance out of a muddy
creek, and to hear its loud shrill whistle as the bird of white
coverts speeds rapidly away from danger. From the last days
of July to the beginning of October a few Green Sandpipers
are generally to be found on our coast marshes. One day,
perhaps, you may flush a couple from the margin of one of our
loughs ; another afternoon, you may possibly walk almost on to
the top of a Green Sandpiper that is feeding busily in some soft
oozy mud at the edge of a salting. It is not numerous enough
to be gregarious in its habits. I have never seen it associate
with any other species of Sandpiper. The largest party of Green
Sandpipers that I ever saw only numbered six individuals, and
they only gathered together, I fancy, because a high tide was fast
covering Rockliffe marsh. That occurred on the 8th of October
1889. But the species is far too scarce to be gregarious with
its own kind, at least in Lakeland. Inland, it is especially
uncommon, but it is quite a scarce bird on all parts of our
coast. I only know of three examples killed in Lakeland in
the winter-time. The first to come under my notice was killed
near Cardew Lees on January 3, 1885. The second was shot
on the Eden, December 18, 1891. I dissected the bodies and

BIRDS 395

found them to be in prime condition ; adults, I should say, and
both females. The other instance relates to a bird killed near
Brampton on the 22d of January 1846.

WOOD SANDPIPER.

Totanus glareola (Gmel.).

The only specimens of this Sandpiper that appear to have
been procured in any part of Lakeland belonged to a party of
five, which visited Edenhall in August 1867. The present
head-keeper, Mr. Raine, has often spoken to me of the birds,
two of which were shot at a small rushy pond, since drained.
Mr. W. Duckworth was formerly under the impression that he
once met with the Wood Sandpiper in the breeding season, the
actions of the bird closely coinciding with the description fur-
nished by the late Mr. John Hancock of Wood Sandpipers
observed at two localities in Northumberland. I mention this
only in order that the possibility of the Wood Sandpiper being
found hereafter nesting on some remote moss in Westmorland
may not be entirely lost sight of.

REDSHANK.

Totanus calidris (L.).

The Redshank is mentioned about three times in the Naworth
Accounts. Possibly it may have been lumped also with other
Waders under the title of ‘ sea larkes,’ which appears frequently ;
at any rate, the fact that it is locally alluded to as the ‘ Red-
shanke’ as early as the seventeenth century, confers a certain
amount of respectability on this common Wader. During the
winter months a few Redshanks may always be found feeding
on the sandy shores of the Solway Firth, but I have never seen
larger flocks than of thirty individuals on the Cumberland
coast, and even that number is above the average; it 1s more
usual to find them haunting the muddy creeks that bisect the
salt marshes in twos and threes, not that the species is scarce,
but that these birds feed sporadically. When rambling along
the shores of Walney Channel on October 14, 1890, with Mr.

396 VERTEBRATE FAUNA OF LAKELAND

C. F. Archibald, we observed an exceptionally large number of
these birds flying together ; exceptional, be it understood, on
the N.W. coast of England. After waiting about four hours
we saw the whole channel covered by the flowing tide. Nearly
all the Redshanks in the neighbourhood seemed to have collected
in the main flock, composed of about a hundred individuals,
though a few small ‘strings’ were also present. On the 17th
of the same month we noticed a flight of forty Redshanks
coming down to feed on the wet ooze in Walney Channel as
the tide left the estuary. Yet on October 20, 1891, I only
saw two Redshanks in the same locality. But though the
Redshank is generally plentiful in winter, only a single pair
usually nests upon Walney Island. The majority of those seen
in autumn are immigrants. A pair or two nest on the marshes
of the Ravenglass estuary, but nowhere else on the coast-line
until you reach the upper marshes of the English Solway, on
which many pairs breed. Dr. Heysham considered the Redshank
‘a very scarce bird in Cumberland,’ a remark from which we
are bound to infer that it did not at all events breed on Rock-
liffe marsh at that time in the comparative plenty of the last
thirty years. I have passed many pleasant hours on these
marshes listening to the loud piping cries of these devoted
birds, which betoken their parental anxiety with ear-piercing
solicitude; but never did I more thoroughly enjoy the wild
charm of their company than on the 6th of May 1890. For
once the dead level of the estuary was transformed into a
scene of weird beauty. A _ brilliant afternoon had become
marred by the unmistakeable appearances of an approaching
tempest. Columns of dense black thunderclouds hung menac-
ingly in long festoons over the upper part of the marsh, above
which the Redshanks wheeled restlessly to and fro, their white
breasts glancing like silver against the swart and ominous back-
ground. The Redshanks assemble on this breeding-ground in
March, and lay their eggs from April onwards, though more
liable to delay that operation in the event of an untoward
season than is the Dunlin. All the nests that I have ever
seen were hollowed out in tussocks of grass. The care which
the sitting bird takes to draw together the grass stems when

BIRDS 397

leaving the nest has often led to the discovery of its eggs.
Both sexes take their share of incubation. At least, I can
answer for two instances in which the male was captured when
sitting on the nest. Four eggs usually constitute a clutch, but
_ five and even six eggs have exceptionally been found, all laid
apparently by the same bird. Although the Redshank is
chiefly a coast bird, a few pairs nest in the interior of Cum-
berland and Westmorland. Prior to 1885 Mr. Bailey reported
to me a colony of Redshanks established in Caldbeck. The
Rey. R. Bower found two or three pairs nesting at Newbiggin
tarn, Westmorland, in 1890; a fact verified by myself in the
season following. Mr. Hutchinson identified an egg of the
Redshank taken on Scouts Scar near Kendal in the summer of
i89t.

SPOTTED REDSHANK.
Totanus fuscus (L.).

This Redshank is quite unknown to Lakeland in summer
plumage. In autumn it has sometimes straggled across country
to our western estuaries, though even on the Solway Firth it is
the rarest of occasional visitants, and appears only in immature
dress. The first specimen locally authenticated was shot at
Cardunock on October 13th, 1830, and stuffed for T. C.
Heysham by James Cooper, who saw others in August 1833
and August 1840. Mr. Garnet of Bassenthwaite possesses a
specimen shot some years ago near Kirkby-Stephen, Westmor-
land, the only example that is known to have been killed in
that county. Mr. W. Nicol has observed several examples upon
the marshes near Silloth during the last fifteen years, but he.
never had the good fortune to shoot one of these rare and wary
birds until the 18th of August 1888. On that occasion he
observed a single Spotted Redshank feeding upon the muddy
bottom of a large creek, upon the flanks of a small party of the
Common Redshank. He had spent ten minutes watching the
stranger boring or tunnelling in the mud, when the birds rose
and flew up the creek. He followed and shot the Dusky
Redshank. On another occasion he observed a Peregrine in

398 VERTEBRATE FAUNA OF LAKELAND

pursuit of a Spotted Redshank (which he had been vainly trying
to out-manceuvre himself), which was driven over towards the
Scottish side of the Solway. On the 4th of September 1889
Nicol saw another Spotted Redshank under the brow edge of
the marsh, but failed to secure the prize. The following day
the bird was shot in a creek near his house by a young lad, who
did not know it from the Common Redshank. Luckily, he
showed it to Nicol, and the specimen was sent to Mackenzie of
Carlisle, at whose house I examined it in the flesh. On the 2d
of September 1890 a fowler named Story shot another immature
Spotted Redshank on the Wampool estuary. In October 1891
Nicol recognised the call-note of a Spotted Redshank on the
Waver, and subsequently saw the bird more than once when
punt-shooting. It frequented the edge of the estuary, and did
not enter the creeks. When disturbed, this bird generally
flew a considerable distance before alighting again.

GREENSHANK.

Totanus canescens (Gmel.).

Of birds that are always scarce upon the estuaries of North-
west England, but which return with unbroken regularity to
their special haunts, I know none more interesting than the shy
and vigilant Greenshank. It is a bird of wide distribution; not
a cosmopolitan like the Turnstone, it is true, but covering the
length and breadth of many regions in the vast journeys which
it annually performs in visiting and returning from its breeding-
grounds. Iceland and Greenland know it not, nor does it
appear to visit the Faroes; but from the north-west of Scotland
its breeding range extends across Russia to Siberia in Asia.
In Scotland, the county that it most affects appears to be
Sutherland. It is local, almost rare as a nesting bird in the
Hebrides, and appears to be absent in summer from the lowlands
of Scotland, though I have heard rumours of its nesting in more
than one border county. Curiously enough, it appears to be
absent in the breeding season from Ireland, though suitable
breeding-places must be very numerous. In the north of Europe
the exigencies of climate induce the Greenshank to nest later

BIRDS 399

than in Scotland. Mr. Seebohm states that it arrives on the
British .coast at the end of April and beginning of May. Mr.
Harting says that it arrives on the coast of Sussex about May 9.
Mr. Collett says that it arrives in southern Sweden in the last
half of May. These dates would suit a bird which breeds
among the bogs and upland lochs of northern Europe, where
frost often binds the earth until the beginning of June. But in
the north of Scotland I have seen the Greenshank on its
breeding-ground by April 11, and Messrs. Harvie-Brown and
Buckley consider that it usually takes up its summer quarters
in the middle of April. The exigencies of climate abundantly
explain this apparent discrepancy between the habits of the bird
in Scotland and elsewhere.. Of its noisy habits when nesting,
particularly when the young are skulking in the heather, I hope
to speak more particularly on a future occasion. The young do
not leave the moss or moor or bog upon which they have been
reared until well feathered and strong of pinion; but, when the
the proper moment comes, they follow the old birds to the river
or to the estuary where the latter have been in the habit of
feeding. After a few weeks’ delay they commence their journey,
southward or westward bound. Most of our Waders appear to
perform their great journeys by night, but tides and the state
of the weather serve also to regulate their movements, so
diurnal migrations may occasionally be witnessed. On August
24th, 1889, I was smoking my pipe beside a small lough near
the Solway, contemplating the Coots and Mallard which chiefly
occupied the water, when I heard the shrill whistle of the
Greenshank, and, looking up into the east, I saw four of these
birds shooting down from the clouds, with the manifest inten-
tion of delaying their journey by a brief rest. They did not
descend abruptly, but wheeled briskly five or six times round
the lough before they proceeded to alight upon its sedgy margin.

It was not, perhaps, quite suited to supply what they wanted,
certainly next day they had gone on. Probably they only
desired to rest their wings and enjoy a wash before continuing
their travels. At all events, it was a pleasant incident, serving
to remind one how these swift fliers come hurrying to us
through cloudland, and, after a brief rest, steer their course

400 VERTEBRATE FAUNA OF LAKELAND

southwards to the coasts of Spain and the lagoons of African
rivers. August is one of the months in which the Greenshank
chiefly travels; odd birds sometimes appear at the end of July,
or even earlier, but August is the first month in which we can
depend upon finding Greenshanks, September being equally
good. For some weeks of early autumn the Greenshank may
thus be studied in his haunts; and his haunts are limited, as
becomes a scarce bird. You will not find him out on the great
sandbanks, nor yet on the mussel-beds, which even the Red-
shank sometimes visits. It is almost useless to search for him
in the narrow creeks that hold the Green Sandpiper, nor does
he affect rocks, except where he has little opportunity for avoid-
ing them—at least in my experience ; but a broad and shallow
creek, below the brow of a salt marsh, or a nice spit of gravel,
please the Greenshank.

When he has been already disturbed, of course you may see
him anywhere along the margin of the estuary ; but he will not
willingly stay there long. Give him time and he is sure to hark
back to the shelter of the marshes, for he likes shelter and
springs of running water. He does not bore for his food in the
same way as other Waders do, because his diet is different.
Nearly all the shore birds feed principally upon small mollusca,
as many dissections have convinced me. But the Greenshank
prefers to feed on shrimps and little fishes; and if these can be
procured he will not trouble much about the mollusca.

I have written of the Greenshank in the singular. Well, you
often meet with odd birds of every species, and the Greenshank
is not so sociable as many other Waders. But he likes the
company of his brethren. When, patrolling the marsh side, you
walk on to the top of a likely creek, broad, and full of running
water, and hear the familiar cry, the probability is that the next
moment you will not see one, but three or four white rumps
flying away in hot alarm.

One afternoon I long watched a flock of nine Greenshanks,
newly arrived on the estuary. Though not yet shot at, they
were sufficiently wide awake to require a good deal of circum-
spection on my part to avoid disturbing them. Some men
would have thought it best to stalk and slay them forthwith ;

ee Eee ee

BIRDS 401

but, caring much for their company and little for their carcases,
I laid down my gun and took out my note-book, It was a
breezy day, and the birds desired to rest in shelter on a broken
portion of the marsh, which is one difficult of access with
ordinary tides. So they enjoyed their security, and ran over
the turf, or poised gracefully upon protuberant hillocks. Now
and then a single bird left his companions to fly noisily up and
down the estuary, first shooting up to a surprising height, and
then circling round a wide area, sporting merrily in the fitful
sunshine, in which his white underparts gleamed with a silvery
glance. In a little while this bird descended to rejoin his com-
panions, and they continued their restless manceuvres, filling the
air with the babel of their choruses. It is really astonishing what
a volume of sound can be produced by a party of nine Green-
shanks all calling simultaneously. But, alas! that party of nine
was reduced in a few days to two or three birds, which took their
departure before the October gales began to blow boisterously.
A few birds linger into October. I have known them shot
in December; but the Greenshank rarely seeks to winter with
us. Mr. R. Warren has described in the Zoologist the wintering
of the Greenshank on the north-west coast of Ireland ; but there
presumably the climate is milder than here, and the Greenshank,
as described by that gentleman, is more plentiful than with us.
Strange to say, though so well known as a spring visitant to the
south of England, the Greenshank is rarely seen with us in May.
The late Mr. T. C. Heysham never met with the Greenshank on
the Solway in the spring of the year. I have seen a pair on
Burgh marsh at the end of April, and in 1890 a single bird was
observed near Silloth up to May 25, when it disappeared. But
there can be no reasonable doubt that the Greenshanks which
visit us In autumn from northern Europe, and escape a legion of
gunners—for nearly every fisherman has a gun—return in spring
to their breeding-grounds by some route lying to the south of
the Solway. Perhaps a dozen Greenshanks may be killed on the
English side of the Firth in an autumn, but I hardly think more.
The Greenshank is virtually unknown upon the more exposed
portions of our coast, nor does it seem to occur in any numbers
upon the Duddon or the Kent. Mr. Murray considers that it
2C

402 VERTEBRATE FAUNA OF LAKELAND

occurs very sparingly on the marshes near Carnforth, although
he showed me a fine specimen shot by himself at the period of
spring migration. It is, however, a well-known bird in autumn
on the estuaries of the Irt, Mite, and Esk at Ravenglass, which
are peculiarly well adapted to its habits. Both Mr. Reynolds
and Farren know the bird well. From them I learnt that not
less than a score of these birds frequented that neighbourhood
in the autumn of 1890, though they quite admitted that the
species was more plentiful than usual. Oddly enough, although
a good many Greenshanks must cross the breadth of Lakeland
in their periodical migrations, they rarely appear to alight to
rest on the shores of our inland lakes or on the gravel beds of
the larger rivers. Consequently the bird has very seldom been
shot by any of our local sportsmen at a distance from the sea.
I have, however, identified one or two specimens which had been
killed in the neighbourhood of the upper waters of the Eden.

BAR-TAILED GODWIS®
Limosa lapponica (L.).

The first reference to which attention can be drawn proves
that this Godwit was supplied among other Limicole to the
table of Lord William Howard. Between November 7th and
13th, 1612, his steward registered an entry: ‘A Godwike and
a Redshanke, iij*’1 Dr. Heysham did not include the species
in his local catalogue, nor did his son meet with the species
abundantly ; but in this connection it should be remembered
that their experience was almost entirely restricted to the
upper marshes of the Solway, which are rarely visited by this
bird. Godwits come to the Solway from an easterly and north-
easterly direction on passage, and, though I have both heard and
seen them flying high over Drumburgh marsh on migration,
they seldom alight until they reach the Wampool and Waver
estuary. You may-notice odd birds flying up to Burgh marsh
when exceptionally high tides compel them to desert their

1 Anentry in the Naworth Accounts for August 1621: ‘3 curlue knaves,

vj4,’ probably relates to this Godwit, which is often called a ‘curlew
knave’ on the Solway at the present time.

BIRDS 403

usual haunts, but the circumstance is unusual, although I have
occasionally examined Godwits that Greenwood had shot on the
Esk between the point of Rockliffe marsh and Gretna. These
birds arrive on the sands of the Solway Firth very numerously
in August, but especially in September, the young being
occasionally accompanied by a few old birds in summer dress.
These last are always very wild. The young birds, on the
other hand, are at first tame and confiding, so that an indifferent
marksman can often get two shots at the same bird. The
misfortunes of those that get ‘pricked’ soon teach the survivors
caution. They feed on the scars of mussels, especially between
Silloth and Allonby, but a large proportion of their food is
obtained from the sand, in which they bore deeply or super-
ficially according to the state of the tide. As the surface of
the estuary dries, when the tide ebbs, their prey descends into
the sand, consequently the birds find it necessary to bore deep;
but when there is water on the surface of the sand, their prey
is only just covered, hence the necessity for the birds boring
deep is obviated. The late Sir W. Jardine wrote regarding
this Godwit: ‘The merse at Skinburness and banks of the
Wampoole on the Solway are localities where we have never
missed parties of them in the end of August and in September.’
Mr. C. M. Adamson likewise shot Godwits in these localities—
in the ‘ forties’— concerning which experiences he says: ‘I did
not observe them there in such flocks as come to the Northumber-
land coast at this season.’ Perhaps not, or perhaps the number of
Godwits varies (as I believe it to do) in different years. Mr.
Nicol, when engaged in trawling, has observed flocks of newly-
arrived Godwits, very wild, as early as the middle of July, and
some of these were in breeding plumage. He has observed
others which spent the summer on our coast without assuming
a single red feather, and these were birds of the previous year.
This Godwit chiefly associates with its own kind, as any one
may ascertain by walking over the sands of the Wampool and
Waver, or visiting the mussel-beds opposite Beckfoot in the
month of September. They feed to some extent in the larger
creeks, but prefer on the whole to run hither and thither
over the sands, scattered in twos and threes, daintily probing

404 VERTEBRATE FAUNA OF LAKELAND

the surface for the shell-fish and ‘sand-hoppers’ on which they
subsist. When the tide flows, and the Godwits have to take
wing, they rise together, or one after another, with the ery
‘kewit,’ from which the name Godwit is perhaps derived.
Mr. Harting has described their cry as ‘lou-ey, lou-ey.’1 This
rendering fails to express to my ears any resemblance to the
call of this bird. At all events it is a shrill cry, and quite
distinct from that of any other marsh bird. Should you want
to see a pretty picture, find a party of Godwits—five or six will
be enough—standing on one leg, stilt fashion, at the edge of the
flowing tide, accompanied perhaps by two or three Dunlins.
If the birds are lazily disposed, you may see them sidling in
on one leg without taking the trouble to let down the other,
occasionally vociferating their shrill whistle.

These Godwits are rather partial to the company of Oyster-
catchers. An odd bird of each species may often be seen
feeding together in the soft sand. The Oystercatchers feed
chiefly on the mussel scars, and, when the former birds have
flocked to a favourite spot, a stray Godwit frequently chooses
to fly up and alight among the noisy Sea-pies, a light-coloured
object as viewed against the background of the mussel scar.
Allusion has been made incidentally to these Godwits journey-
ing to the Solway from the north-east. It seems likely that
they continue their journey westward to the estuaries of the
north of Ireland. They are not often noticed in crossing
country, simply because they fly very high and rarely alight.
But stragglers have been known to alight on passage upon
their fly-line, just as Ruffs are sometimes shot in August and
September on the moors near Alston. For instance, the Earl
of Carlisle possesses a specimen of the Bar-tailed Godwit which
Captain Johnson shot upon one of his moors near Brampton.
Although this Godwit is most notably an autumn visitant to
the English Solway, large numbers generally winter with us,
but these are chiefly adults which arrive in full winter dress
late in the year. In December 1889 Mr. Nicol shot twenty-
five old birds up to the 26th of the month. Their movements

1T mention this, because it is accepted as accurate in the fourth
edition of Yarrell.

BIRDS 405

in winter are more irregular than in settled weather, frost and
thaw, as well as changes in the tides, inducing the birds to
shift their quarters in unexpected ways. Speaking broadly,
this Godwit is a common, if local, bird on our Solway from
August until March. Some non-breeding birds often spend the
summer with us. The reader will observe that my remarks on
this Godwit have hitherto related almost exclusively to the
northern coast of Lakeland. It is so, and for this reason, that
the Godwit is not an equally abundant bird on our western and
southern estuaries. It visits Morecambe Bay only in very
moderate numbers, a fact well known to Dr. Gough, who
recorded that Mr. H. Arnold had shot two Bar-tailed Godwits
out of a party of three on the shore between Arnside and
Milnthorpe, in the Westmorland Gazette of October 10, 1874.
Williams of Barrow showed me some birds of the year, shot in
Walney Channel, where he considered them to be seldom
obtained. Mr. Durnford also recorded the species from Walney.
It does not appear to visit the Ravenglass estuary with any
frequency.

BLACK-TAILED GODWIT.

Limosa belgica (Gmel.).

The Black-tailed Godwit is at all seasons a rare bird on the
western coasts of Britain. I have entirely failed to trace its
presence in Morecambe Bay or upon any other part of our coast
except the Solway Firth, which is occasionally visited by
stragglers—usually young birds. T. C. Heysham recorded the
occurrence of an immature specimen on Rockliffe marsh in 1832,
and received another local example from his fellow-townsman,
the late Mr. T. Reeves, with a note, only dated ‘Saturday
night.’ A few more specimens, but only very few, were killed
between 1832 and 1884, when we obtained two single birds,
shot at Bowness and on Skinburness marsh on September 6
and October 24. No more were seen in 1885 or 1886, but in
1887 Mr. Nicol killed a single bird near Silloth on Sept. 27.
On the 25th of August 1888 the same excellent observer saw
two Black-tailed Godwits on a scar near Skinburness. A small

406 VERTEBRATE FAUNA OF LAKELAND

flight of these birds arrived early in September 1889; I long
watched them feeding on the mud near Port Carlisle on Sept. 3.
Ten days later a man named Storey killed four of these Godwits
at a shot on the Wampool. Mr. Nicol killed another on the
16th of the month. Thus it will be seen that in a period of
five years, 1884-89, at least ten young birds were seen and
eight killed; but none were obtained in the years 1881, 1882,
1883, 1890, so that the total for nine years is identical with
that for five years. In winter the Black-tailed Godwit is a
rare bird on any part of the British coast. I picked a fine
example out of a bunch of Bar-tailed Godwits shot near Bow-
ness, January 1st, 1889. The species has been obtained also in
summer dress upon our salt marshes. Bailey, a Carlisle bird-
stuffer, now deceased, once possessed two red Black-tailed
Godwits; another, in Mr. Doeg’s collection, was shot near
Burgh in May 1876. On the 24th of July 1890 Mr. A.
Wilson came across two full-dressed adult Black-tailed Godwits
on Skinburness marsh. He shot one, which I have identified.
He further assured me that its companion was precisely similar.
Probably those birds were resting on autumnal migration.
This Godwit is a comparatively early breeding bird on the
Continent; Mr. Wilson’s birds may, therefore, have reared
their young before starting on their journey westward. The
bird obtained had not commenced to moult, but wore the rich
livery of the season of love.

COMMON CURLEW.

Numenius arquata (L.).

The Curlew nests on the mosses in the neighbourhood of
Morecambe Bay, in the Rusland valley, on the high moors
around Tebay, on the fells above Appleby, on the mosses of the
Solway, and the fells of Caldbeck and the Lake Mountains, so
that it is widely distributed inland during the summer-time.
The birds arrive upon the moors where they breed towards the
end of March, and begin to lay about a month later. The
clutches are generally full by the end of the first week of May .
in June you find the grey-legged, short-billed, downy Curlews

BIRDS | 407

skulking in the heather, while the parents vociferate their loud
distress, flying away from their young. They more often nest
at the side of a moss than in the centre, but adhere tenaciously
to their breeding-grounds. Some odd pairs nest on rough
pasture lands, preserving the traditions of the race of Curlews
which were wont to nestle on the same spot when the now
enclosed meadow formed part of an extensive moorland. The
Curlew sometimes nests upon the salt marshes; at least a pair
nested on Rockliffe marsh in 1889 and 1890, though their eggs
were, unfortunately, taken in both years. It is fair to add that
this is the only instance of the kind known to me.

When the young have feathered they still frequent the moors
until strong on the wing, and then seek the estuaries. There
is probably no part of our coast where you will not see them
occasionally in twos and threes, but they assemble in consider-
able numbers where food is plentiful. Their wariness renders
it difficult to shoot them, except when they are flighting from
one part of the marsh to another. They generally calculate
their distance pretty accurately, but sometimes seem to trust to
speed rather than to distance, and suffer accordingly. They are
more plentiful than most birds on the wpper marshes of the
Solway, especially upon the Esk. When the tide has
nearly ebbed, numbers of Curlews can be seen any September
day feeding on the sandbanks and scars near Floriston, from
five or six up to forty in a party. It is generally on a dark,
stormy night in ‘the fall’ that we listen to the piercing whistle
of Curlews flighting over the border city on their journey to the
western estuaries; but there is no time and no place in Lake-
land at which you may not suddenly hear the familiar cry and
spy a Curlew passing over, mounted high in the air, to revisit
some favourite pool or sandbank. Mr. Nicol, who has had great
experience of wild-fowling, tells me that no bird preserves its con-
dition so well in severe weather as the Curlew. This should
probably be explained by the depth to which the Curlew is enabled
to probe the mud or sand by means of its long mandibles.
These birds often remove the shrimps used by our fishermen as
baits for codling on the mussel scars. Mr. Nicol one day found
a Curlew which had got hooked and was held a firm prisoner.

408 VERTEBRATE FAUNA OF LAKELAND

WHIMBREL
Numenius pheopus (L.).

The Whimbrel visits Morecambe Bay and the more open
portions of the Solway in considerable numbers from the end of
April until May is well advanced, while odd birds prolong their —
stay with us far into the month of June, frequenting the edge
of the estuaries. The greater number of those which visit us
in spring obtain a large proportion of their food on rough
pasture land. Immature birds occur in August and September,
but only in small numbers, even in the usual haunts of this
species. Their visits to the upper salt marshes, such as Rockliffe,
are highly irregular. Mr. A. Smith assured me that a Whimbrel
which he shot on September 23, 1889, out of a party of three,
was the first that he had killed on Rockliffe marsh for a good
many years. I have never met with a Whimbrel in winter,
except one killed near Silloth in November 1883. Dr. Gough’s
private notes record that two Whimbrel were shot at Arnside
in the month of ‘March, which seems early. In the interior
of Lakeland the Whimbrel is known only as a cross-country
migrant. On the 11th of May 1890 we heard some Whimbrel
passing over Carlisle about 11.27 P.M, calling loudly. The
night was dark and rainy. The Whimbrel appeared to be
migrating in a north-easterly direction.

Order GAVIA. Fam. LA RIDA.
Sub-fam. SVTHRNIN Z.

BLACK TERN.
Hydrochelidon nigra (L.).

The earliest note relating to this species that I have come
across is a record that, during the autumn of 1835, two or three
young Black Terns were observed frequenting the Eden, and
that one of the number was killed a little below Eden Bridge,
Carlisle, on the 12th of September. An unpublished note of
T. C. Heysham, dated August 19, 1848, states: ‘Taylor of

1 Loudon, Mag. Nat. Hist., vol. ix. 1836.

BIRDS 409

Heads Wood informed me this day that a pair of adult Black
Tern was shot on Talkin Tarn the first week in June 1848. The
eges in the female were large, and it is possible they might
have bred there. Thomas Armstrong recorded a few years
later that he had taken a clutch of the eggs of this species on
Solway Flow in 1855.1 This is all the evidence for supposing
that this marsh Tern has nested in the Lake district, though a
few adults appear in the neighbourhood of the English Solway.
They have been killed repeatedly in May and June upon the
Eden, and in one or two instances upon the Eskalso. In 1888,
for example, seven Black Terns were observed upon the lower
reaches of the Eden by Mr. J. N. Robinson, between May 7th
and May the 10th, on which latter day he was an unwilling
witness of the slaughter of three of the party, shot by a gunner
from the opposite side of the river. Mr. H. Miller informed
Mr. Mitchell that he had seen this Tern flying about More-
cambe Bay up to the end of May. The only bird that I have seen
killed on Morecambe Bay was immature. There can be no
doubt that the Black Tern visits us pretty frequently in autumn,
as in 1890, when Mr. Nicol shot one hawking flies over Skin-
burness marsh on September 24, a second was shot on West
Newton marsh on October 2d by a man named Storey (who shot a
young Black Tern in September 1891), while a third was brought
to George Dawson by some local gunner. Near Allonby, Mr. R.
Mann observed an adult Black Tern in 1885, as early as April
27th, while two old birds were observed on Rockliffe marsh
as late as the 20th of October, in 1884. The chief period,
however, of the occurrence of the Black Tern in the Lake
district extends from the second week of May until the middle
of June, at which season the species is more often observed
with us than in autumn. It appears to visit the Solway Firth
on migration almost every year, and though it has occurred all
along our sea-coast from Morecambe to Esk, it may fairly be
considered one of the rarer birds of Lakeland. I have at
present no notes of its occurrence in Westmorland.

1 Naturalist, vol. vii. p. 251.

410 VERTEBRATE FAUNA OF LAKELAND

SANDWICH TERN.

Sterna cantiaca, Gmel.

Sir W. Jardine knew the Sandwich Tern as a visitant to the
Solway Firth (1840), but was not acquainted with any breed-
ing stations, though an impression exists among some of our
oldest naturalists that this Tern in their earliest experience
sometimes nested both on Rockliffe marsh and Solway Flow.
Whether this impression was rightly founded or not, the
Sandwich Tern in recent years has been entirely absent from
the estuary waters of the Esk and Eden, and though examples
have been seen on the coast north of Whitehaven, the species
is restricted in the breeding season to Ravenglass and Walney
Island. The best-known colony in former days, and even
latterly, has been that which existed at the north end of
Walney, among the Black-headed Gulls, estimated in 1880 to
consist of nearly forty pairs of Sandwich Terns. This colony
was broken up by repeated robberies, and the birds nested
there for the last time in 1889. But in 1879 Mr. W. A.
Durnford noticed that three pairs nested for the first time at
the south end of the island, and, though we could not find any
Sandwich Terns on the island in 1891, yet I am assured by
Mr. Heywood Thompson that he found about half-a-dozen pairs
nesting on the south side of the island in 1890. But the
Ravenglass contingent, which has nested among the sand-hills
on the north side of the estuary of the Esk, Mite, and Irt for
some years, established itself within the memory of Farren the
fisherman, a keen observer, who remembers the founders of the
colony, consisting originally of about ten pairs. This colony,
which I have known intimately for some years, is on the
increase, and has possibly embodied in its ranks the birds that
have been accustomed to breed at the north end of Walney.
In 1888 Farren told us, on their ground, that fifteen pairs
were then nesting. In 1889 Mr. F. P. Johnson examined
four types of eggs, and considered that they belonged to twenty-
one pairs. On the 12th of May 1891 Mr. F. B. Whitlock

1 Field, June 19, 1880.

BIRDS 411

visited this colony, at my suggestion, and counted thirty-four
nests of the Sandwich Tern, which were ‘apparently just com-
mencing to lay.’ Later on Mr. H. E. Rawson visited Raven-
glass, and counted no fewer than seventy-one nests. It is
conjectured that the birds which formerly bred on Walney, but
have now deserted that island, may probably have joined the
ranks of those which breed at Ravenglass, whence this unusual
augmentation of their numbers. Whether the birds will ever
return to Walney in our time is problematical, but as long ago
as 1843 the species bred there abundantly, since James Cooper
writes to T. C. Heysham on August 12, 1843: ‘It was rather
strange that you saw so few Sandwich Terns, for Mr. Adamson
says they many [sic], not upon Foulney but on Walney Island,
where they called them Cat Swallows, but he also states that
Foulney was the chief place for the other four kinds, and that
the Roseate was quite plentifull.’ This tern arrives early on its
breeding-grounds. In 1890 a single pair made their appear-
ance at Ravenglass ou the 29th of March, while in 1884 the
birds were not noticed until the 23d of April, so that there is
considerable variation in the movements of different years. But
they always breed early, scratching a slight depression in the
sand, laying during May, and hatching a few of the young ones
on the last days of the month. The larger proportion of nestlings
hatch in the middle of June; fresh eggs and nearly feathered
young can both be taken at the end of June. The eggs vary
in type, and the birds do not all nest in the same corner of the
sand-hills; in 1890 they bred at Ravenglass in three separate
divisions. The young, on the other hand, do not vary at all
from their fellows in the colour of their first downy covering,
but they are cleverer at concealing themselves among the sand-
bents than the other species of Tern. The Sandwich Terns
leave us in August, the young birds then wearing the prettily
variegated dress of immaturity. During the few months which
this Tern spends upon our coast its chief food undoubtedly
consists of small fry and sand-eels, as may be verified by any
one who carefully studies the birds as they fly over their nests,
often carrying small fish. It also diets on small shell-fish. A
female bird was killed by some mishap in May 1887; its

412 VERTEBRATE FAUNA OF LAKELAND

stomach proved to be full of the comminuted remains of a
bivalve shell, though no trace could be discovered either of fish
bones or fish scales.

ROSEATE TERN.
Sterna dougalli, Mont.

The Roseate Tern was found breeding on the island of
Foulney in 1840. The late Mr. Hancock informed Mr. Mitchell
that in July of that year it appeared to be about equally
represented with the Common Tern. Then, as now, the island
was much disturbed by fishermen, and the Terns’ eggs had been
repeatedly robbed, so that the birds had had to lay two and
three clutches of eggs. Six eggs that he found were just
hatching, and one of the number hatched while he was watching
the old bird. This statement is independently corroborated by
Mr. Adamson’s experience, as evidenced by Cooper’s letter of
1843, quoted under Sandwich Tern at p. 411.

Yarrell stated, in the first three editions of British Birds, that
the Roseate Tern probably bred ‘on some of the low flat islands
in the Solway Firth,’ and though no grounds for his statement
have ever been produced, a single specimen of this Tern was
undoubtedly secured on the upper waters of the Solway in 1834.
Writing to Dr. Marshall of Belfast in October of that year
T. C. Heysham observes: ‘Neither did I see a good specimen
of the Roseate Tern in any public or private colln. I had
an opportunity of examining. One was accidentally shot in
this neighbourhood by a countryman in the month of August,
the first instance, to my knowledge, of its occurrence in this
county, although I had looked for it for the last few years.
The specimen alluded to had evidently been migrating south-
wards.’ Heysham subsequently recorded its capture in the
following words: ‘A fine male of this beautiful Tern,
beyond all doubt the most elegant of the British Sternide, was
accidentally shot near Burgh marsh point on the 26th of July
[1834]. For the last five years we have diligently searched
after this bird in this quarter without success, and we have little
or no doubt that the above was an accidental straggler on

BIRDS 413

its passage to the south.’ No specimen of the Roseate Tern has
been obtained on the Cumberland coast since 1834, in which
connection it may be well to explain that at that time this Tern
nested at various points, as, for example, on the coast of Nor-
thumberland, or, again, on the east and west sides of the Irish
Channel, near Belfast, and, as already remarked, at Foulney.
Dr. Marshall, of Belfast, writes to Heysham from Edinburgh,
November 9, 1831 : ‘I shall endeavour to procure you the old,
egos, and young of the Arctic and Roseate ‘Terns, which breed
on an island near Belfast, and where I have frequently visited
them. The egg I now send I believe to be that of the Roseate
Tern, as both it and the Arctic breed on the island, and the only
distinction I could see between their eggs was the greater
darkness of the colours in what I believe to be the Roseate.’
Dr. Marshall writes again in June 1833: ‘I went down one
day last month to the Copeland Island for the purpose of pro-
curing a few Terns and their eggs, but I was rather unfortunate,
for I went too early for procuring the latter, and only brought
home some Arctic Terns. I did not get a Roseate Tern, and
my companion and I remarked how rare they appeared to what
we had witnessed a few years ago. I was told by several
persons on the island that scarcely a week elapses in which a
party do not pay them a visit for the purpose of shooting
Terns. Should the system be persevered in for a year or two
longer, I very much fear that the birds will be totally driven
away. In February of the following year a single specimen of
the Roseate Tern was forwarded to Heysham by Dr. Marshall,
with an expression of regret that he had no more specimens
which he could then forward.

Mr. Hancock was collecting enthusiastically in 1834, and
writes to Heysham on the 5th of March that year: ‘The
Roseate Tern still breeds on Coquet and the Fernes, but is very
scarce and difficult to procure. When I visited those islands a
few years back I could not get either the bird or the egg. I
thought it was probable they might breed more plentifully upon
your part of the coast, or should not have troubled you with its
name. ‘This spring I shall use my best endeavours to procure
specimens, and, should I be fortunate, shall be glad to supply

414 VERTEBRATE FAUNA OF LAKELAND

you.’ Hancock writes again on July 23rd, 1835: ‘You will
think I have forgotten you altogether, but the cause of my
delay you will conceive when I tell you I had to depend en-
tirely upon others for the birds you mentioned, as I could not
get down to the sea myself to shoot them. I have been very
unfortunate, for I have only got one specimen of the Sandwich
Tern and two of the Roseate, which you will find in the accom-
panying box. I have taken their skins off, as I was afraid they
would be in a putrid state before they reached you, as they had
been killed two days previous to their coming into my possession;
they are not so clean as I could wish. You will observe the top of
the head of the Sandwich Tern is spotted with white: at this
season of the year there are none to be had with black heads, for as
soon as they are done breeding the black feathers seem to drop
out, and they are replaced by white ones; in all probability, in
the winter they have an entirely white head, but I have not
had an opportunity of ascertaining this, as they are only summer
visitors. I hope in a few days to send fresh specimens, but the
Roseate I will not promise, as they are much rarer than any of
the others that breed on our coast. These are the first I have
had.’

The Roseate Tern has long deserted Foulney; it is very
doubtful indeed if any Terns even attempt to lay on that island,
though I have, of course, seen both the Lesser and the Common
Terns flying over. In 1865 Mr. Howard Saunders observed a
single pair on Walney, where Mr. Harting had found the species
established in May 1864. Williams, the Barrow blacksmith,
received two Roseate Terns from Biggar in 1874,

COMMON TERN.
Sterna fluviatilis, Naum.

A few Common Terns may be seen fishing at many points
of our coast all through the summer months, but the birds
have only three considerable breeding stations. The best known
of the number is also the largest, viz., the colony established
upon Walney Island. At the north end of the island the birds
nestle on rough turf, but at the south end of Walney almost all

BIRDS 415

the nests are placed among the sand-hills. There are exceptions
to this practice. For example, in 1891 we found one nest of
this species on the open beach, a hollow in the pebbles, lined
with rabbit bones, containing two eggs; a second nest was
also placed on the beach above high tide mark, lined with
small sticks, and containing a single egg. But we saw most
nests in and among the bents of the tall sand-hills, carefully
watched by hundreds of parent birds, which hover with shrill
cries over the heads of an intruder. Sometimes a bolder bird
than the rest returns to its egg within full view, but the
majority circle overhead, or dart angrily downwards, until their
solicitude has been lulled to rest. As these birds poise
themselves gracefully aloft in a flood of sunshine, their breasts
often appear to be suffused with delicate pink colour—an
optical delusion, however, soon dispelled. A much smaller
number nest at the north end, lining some slight hollow in the
turf with a few stems of grass, while even the newly-hatched
nestlings, with instinctive dread of danger, crouch in the grass
almost motionless save for respiration. ‘The little fellows grow
so rapidly that in a few hours, and before the chipper has fallen
from the tip of the bill, you wonder how they were ever packed
away within a small and round egg-case. I have never actually
seen the old birds feed the young with small fish. They prefer
to wait, even though impatiently, until peace is regained, when
the ground will be dotted in a very few moments with the white
bodies of the breeding Terns. The habits of the Terns which
breed at Ravenglass do not seem to differ from the colony at
the south end of Walney, nesting also among extensive sand-
hills. Upon Rockliffe marsh the Terns have no choice but to
nest upon the rough turf of the saltings. Some idea of the per-
severance with which this species adheres to traditional breeding-
grounds, even where most persecuted, may be gathered from the
fact that the Rockliffe colony bred on the marsh as regularly
fifty or sixty years ago as at the present time. In corroboration
of this, I quote an unpublished note of Mr. T. C. Heysham,
written in 1834, though undated: ‘The Common Tern (Sterna
lirundo) annually breeds near the western extremity of Rock-
liffe salt marsh, at no great distance from the juncture of the

416 VERTEBRATE FAUNA OF LAKELAND

river Eden and Esk in Solway Firth. This is the only locality
they resort to in this district to my knowledge, with the excep-
tion of a few pairs which, I believe, breed every year upon
Solway Flow. In some seasons they commence to lay their
eggs about the latter end of May, and fresh ones may occasion-
ally be obtained until the beginning of July; but the best time
to procure them before incubation commences is the first week
in June. They usually make little or no nest. Their eggs,
which vary from two to(four)in number, are generally placed
either on the sand or the green sward of the marsh: they are
exceedingly variable, not only with respect to colour and mark-
ing, but also to size and shape.’ I have never seen four eggs in
a nest myself, but entertain no doubt that, in the few instances
of the kind which have been reported, two Terns had laid their
eges together. After the first eggs have been taken on Rock-
liffe marsh, as frequently happens, the Terns generally shift
their quarters before they lay again, and should the cattle
pastured on the marsh occupy their ground, they attack them
vehemently, to the chagrin of the marsh ‘herds.’ Their intoler-
ance of cattle is exactly analogous to the resentment with which
the Common Terns pursue the young of the Black-headed Gull
on Walney Island, Their attacks are first directed against the
helpless young, but are specially vicious when the young Black-
headed Gulls first begin to fly. Ifa luckless youngster happens
to enter the ternery, the Terns swoop at him savagely, and
frequently with fatal results. In one instance I saw about a
score of young Gulls, unable to fly, cross the beach and make
for the bare sands, hoping thus to elude their persecutors. But
their flight was vain, for the Terns followed their retreating
enemy, one Tern after another in rapid succession darting down
to disable, if possible, their inoffensive victims, which never
attempted to show fight.

Most persons probably consider Terns to be birds of un-
wearied flight, but, as already remarked, they like to perch on
the salt marsh, while not unfrequently they rest on open sands.
On the 30th of May this year (1891) I saw between twenty
and thirty of these Terns congregating on the edge of the wide
expanse of sand which stretches away from Skinburness far into

BIRDS ALT

the Solway Firth. On our near approach the party broke up
and dispersed, but not before they had swooped noisily round
us. Earlier in the afternoon we had watched a pair busily
employed in fishing off the Grune Point.

These birds are conspicuous also if, in early autumn, you
take a trip in a boat trawling in the waters of the Solway.
Sailing up and down the main channel on the 14th of August
1890 we enjoyed a quiet study of the sea-birds’ life, as the
Black-headed Gulls (adults, which had already lost the dark
hood) hovered over the waves in search of drifting prey, while
many young Lesser Black-backs beat along the sea-shore. The
prettiest sight was afforded by the Common Terns, following
up the ebbing tide, at one time darting on to the surface of the
water, at another hovering airily over the retreating shallows.
But this Tern is more numerous in the middle of September,
when migration has set in, than earlier in the season. On the
20th of September 1889 Mr. H. Leavers saw many flocks of
Terns in the lower waters of the Solway, including one flock of
more than half a hundred birds. Four shot for identification
were Common Terns. A percentage of birds were young, but
adults, as is usual, largely predominated. Apropos of the
Solway, it may be repeated that though no Common Terns at
present nest in a colony upon any part of our sea-beach, in Sir
W. Jardine’s day ‘a few pairs bred on the shingle above
Skinburness.’

ARCTIC TERN.

Sterna macrura, Naum.

The Arctic Tern is chiefly a spring and autumn visitant to
our open sea-board, but has always nested on Walney Island,
where Mr. Howard Saunders in 1865 estimated its numbers to
be equal to those of the Common Tern. Ten years afterwards
Mr. H. Durnford considered the Common Tern to predominate,
and in the season of 1891 the Arctic Terns were certainly in a
great minority, though we detected undoubted Arctic Terns
hovering over us. Mr. Archibald had tried to snare some
specimens at the north end the previous year, and, though he

2D

418 VERTEBRATE FAUNA OF LAKELAND

was not quite successful, his impression that all the birds at
the north end were Common Terns was independently corro-
borated by my experience in 1891. The only adult Tern that
we found dead was a Common Tern, and the colony at the
south end likewise consists principally of Common Terns, but
the Arctic Terns are present undoubtedly, and seem to nest
upon the outside of the main colony of Common Terns. Birds
of this genus are notoriously fickle, and the Arctic Tern is
especially changeable in its movements, so that it may be
numerous in one season and hardly represented in the next. I
have never identified the Arctic Tern among the birds that
breed at Ravenglass, though in 1885 my search for that species
was assisted by Mr. H. Saunders, who has long been recognised as
the highest living authority upon the family. The Arctic Tern
is absent from the Solway Firth except during .the seasons of
migration.

LITTLE, TEEN.

Sterna minuta, L.

The Lesser Tern arrives at its breeding-grounds about the
beginning of May, but only begins to lay towards the close of
the month. On the 2d of July in 1891 I examined eighteen
nests of the Lesser Tern on the. beach at Walney Island, upon
which the following notes were made. The first nest was a slight
hollow in coarse pebbles, lined with fine pebbles, containing an
egg andachick. The nest of another pair was lined with a
few dry stems of grass, and contained one egg; another egg
was a little distance from the nest to which it apparently
belonged. A third nest in the shingle contained two eggs. A
fourth nest was a shallow depression in the sand and contained
three eggs. The next four nests all contained two eggs apiece,
and were only a few yards from one another. The ninth and
tenth nests contained two eggs each, but the next two nests
held only one apiece. The thirteenth and fourteenth nests
were placed in sand near large stones, and held two eggs each.
The next held a chipped egg and a newly hatched chick. The
sixteenth was a nest of three eggs. The seventeenth nest con-

BIRDS 419

tained a single young one and an incubated egg. The last was
a nest of two eggs. Thus we see that, of eighteen pairs of
Lesser Terns, fourteen had incubated clutches of two eggs,
while two pairs had only single eggs, and two pairs had clutches
of three eggs. Leaving out of consideration clutches of single
egos, only two clutches in sixteen contained three eggs; so that
about seven-eighths of the birds lay clutches of two eggs, and
one-eighth of the number lay three eggs. It may be objected
that it is hardly fair to form a conclusion from the birds of one
colony; but my experience of the Ravenglass birds in past
seasons is precisely similar. If we suppose that all the eggs
would be hatched and all the young attain maturity, it is
obvious that these birds should increase rapidly ; but owing to
various circumstances they only just maintain their footing in
these localities. The Ravenglass estuary affords rather more
shelter than the shores of Walney; in both cases the lords of
the manor employ keepers to secure these and other breeding
sea-birds from molestation. A severe epidemic killed many of the
young Lesser Terns at Ravenglass one season; their eggs, being
laid upon the open beach, are exposed to many enemies. Only
a few weeks ago I watched with pleasurable interest the
courageous attacks which a pair of these diminutive Terns
inflicted upon a Rook, which seemed to be bent on mischief ;
when the robber at last sailed off, he was chased by a pair of
Oystercatchers, which worked in concert, first one and then
the other striking at the Rook from above. The mention of this
recalls the fact that Dr. Heysham catalogues the Lesser Tern
as breeding in Cumberland, though without a hint as to any
locality. T. C. Heysham informed a friend in 1829 that the
Lesser Tern was a scarce visitant to the Solway Firth, but in
1832 birds of this species were sent to him from Dub Mill
near Allonby, and here a couple of pairs reared their young in
safety in 1891. A similar instance of the instinct, which induces
this species to resort occasionally to ancient breeding-grounds, is
suggested by the fact that in 1890 a pair nested near Skin-
burness, where there was a colony in Sir W. Jardine’s time;
this had been broken up only in 1882 by some strangers, who
wantonly killed the breeding-birds. During autumn the

420 VERTEBRATE FAUNA OF LAKELAND

numbers of the Lesser Tern that breed upon our coast are to some
extent recruited by birds from other districts, and immature
birds occur on the higher salt marshes, from which at other
times they are conspicuously absent. I have never, however,
observed the Lesser Tern after September. It comes and
departs earlier than the Common Tern.

Order GAVIA. Sub-fam. Z.ARIN.
LITTLE GUL;

Larus minutus, Pall.

The Little Gull is a much rarer bird on the coast of the
N.W. of England than on our southern and eastern sea-boards.
It occurs however as an occasional straggler to the waters of
Morecambe Bay and the Solway Firth. Dr. Gough mentions
in his private notes that a specimen was found dead in a field
at Low Meathop, on the 3d of February 1870. In the neigh-
bourhood of the Solway Firth this bird appears to have been
taken in all plumages. Thus the collection of Messrs. Mann
includes two specimens, both in the pretty dress worn by the
young in their first winter. The most recently obtained of
these was killed near Allonby on the 6th of February 1889.
The fellow-bird was shot near Silloth some few years before,
Mr. Richard Mann has seen one or two other specimens in his
neighbourhood, as, for example, a bird observed in company
with some Black-headed Gulls, on March 30th, 1889. Mr. W.
Duckworth observed two Little Gulls in company with a flock
of Black-headed Gulls near Ulverston in the early spring of
1889. Mr. J. B. Hodgkinson purchased from the late Sam
Watson an old bird in full winter dress, shot near Bowness on
Solway. George Dawson has an adult in summer plumage,
killed in the last-named district in the summer of 1886, I have
never seen the Little Gull on this coast myself, but Messrs.
Law and Nicol believe that they have seen several Little Gulls
in different autumns while engaged in fishing.

BIRDS 421

BLACK-HEADED GULL.
Larus ridibundus, L.

In no part of Britain: is the Black-headed Gull more numerous
or more firmly established than upon the coasts and inland waters
of the Lake District. Its breeding-places, it is true, are generally
a good many miles apart, but in the autumn and winter months
the species becomes very generally distributed. If you ramble
along the banks of the Eden on a winter morning shortly before
dawn, you will be sure to see some of these birds working up
the swollen river, looking like spectral fowl in the grey light of
breaking day; you hear no cry, for they flit silently past, each
one following rapidly in the wake of its immediate predecessor,
all bent upon reaching their feeding-grounds higher up the
river, All the winter through, many of these Gulls may be
seen upon our estuaries from Morecambe Bay northwards; nor
are such localities entirely forsaken at any time. Not only do
the breeding-birds visit the coast at frequent intervals, but the
surplus population, consisting of immature individuals prin-
cipally, spends all the summer on the sands. Consequently, if
you visit the beach between Silloth and Maryport at the end of
May, you may miss the big troops of these Gulls that one
is accustomed to see in winter; but the species will nevertheless
be represented by little parties of unpaired birds. Gracefully
do they pose in the shallows of the fast-ebbing tide, a single leg
generally drawn up close to the white feathers of the breast,
apparently absorbed in contemplating the mist-wrapped outline
of the hills across the Solway Firth.

This remark applies with equal accuracy to the Lancashire
sands, upon which this Gull is known as the ‘Cockle Maw.’ A
few stragglers may at all times be observed upon the larger
sheets of water in the interior of Lakeland. The gregarious
character of this Gull would facilitate the enumeration of its
breeding-stations, were it not that the birds resent human
interference, and, consequently, change their breeding-grounds
occasionally, shifting to quieter spots than those in which they
have been systematically robbed. The most southern of our

422 VERTEBRATE FAUNA OF LAKELAND

breeding colonies has long been known as established among the
sandhills, or upon the rough meadows, of Walney Island. I
found that a few pairs had brought out their young at the
north end of the island in 1891, at which time a larger number
held possession of some of the sandy hollows at the south end
of Walney, in spite of the havoc caused to their progeny by the
attacks of their neighbours in the Ternery. The fostering care
bestowed upon the ancient gullery at Ravenglass has resulted in
the consolidation of a colony which should cheer the heart of
the Lord of the Manor. In Westmorland there is a nice colony
at Sunbiggin Tarn (where in 1891 I found young birds crouch-
ing in the sedge), and a second on Clibburn Moss. At Greystoke
there is a colony, the members of which are often called ‘ Black-
headed Crows’ in the neighbourhood. An offshoot of this colony
exists at Newton Reigny.

I have never known any of these birds to nest near Alston, but
there are colonies on Denton Fell and Bolton Fell. A few birds
likewise breed on a small moss near Castlesteads. Solway Flow
has long been a great resort of this small Gull, but the numbers
that used to nest there have become much reduced in conse-
quence of their nests being so systematically harried that the
poor birds could get no peace. Great numbers always breed on
Bowness moss, building in the heather. The islands on Salta
moss are utilised by a colony of Black-headed Gulls, which
are locally known as‘ Chir-maws.’ Of all our gulleries, no one
is inferior in interest to that which occupies a few acres of
water, half choked with grass and bog-bean, at Moorthwaite,
near Wigton. As recently as 1889, I considered this to be numeri-
cally the strongest gullery in north-west England, a fact that is
remarkable because it has no pedigree. It was only founded in
1878 by. four pairs of birds. In 1879 thirty pairs of Gulls
nested there. Ten years later I calculated that a thousand pairs
bred there. Certainly it was an extraordinary sight to witness.
Many hundreds could at any time be seen hovering in a white
cloud over their nests. The surface of the tarn stretched out
before us like a white sheet, so closely were the resting birds
massed together; several hundreds formed a white patch on the
dark surface of a neighbouring field; many more were constantly
arriving with food for their young, gathered for miles around.

“Sh

BIRDS 433

Besides the well-recognised gulleries, some other stations,
which seem equal in scenic attractiveness to the chief nurseries,
are utilised irregularly. Thus, these birds in dry seasons
build their nests on the sedge at Monkhill Lough ; occasionally
they nest at Crofton Hall, at Devoke Water, or at Seathwaite
Tarn. The open salt marsh seems an unlikely site for a colony;
yet in 1889 a detachment of the Solway Flow birds, resenting
the loss of their nests, transferred themselves to the point
of Rockliffe marsh, where they built and nested. Unfortunately
their efforts to rear young in this situation were frustrated by
their eggs being swept away by high tides, but some birds
returned to the same salt marsh in 1890 and 1891. It has, in
fact, been utilised by a few pairs of this Gull at various times
within the recollection of Mr. Tom Duckworth, who, in company
with the late Mr. T. H. Allis, took eggs on Rockliffe marsh in
the period 1859-63, and also in 1870. It will have been
observed, from the foregoing remarks, that Larus ridibundus
nests in many parts of our faunal area, and this under widely
varied conditions of life, taking possession of rough ground on
the sea-board, as in Walney; assembling in swarms among
estuary sandhills, as at Ravenglass; sharing the grouse moors
with the more legitimate tenants on the coast or among the
hills, or, again, contenting itself with the more limited area of
some unimportant tarn in an agricultural region, where grass-
lands and root crops alternate with large fields of wheat.

The nests vary in size and structure according to individual
taste ; some of them are scarcely larger than the nest of a Coot,
others are decidedly cumbrous piles. They are constructed of
bents, dry rushes, pieces of stick, and such other materials as
can conveniently be gathered together. I have never seen eggs
laid in March, but from the third week of April until the end of
July there is always a certain supply of eggs in one or other
colony. The earliest broods take wing in May, seldom before
the end of the month. A large proportion of eggs are hatched
in June. The Ravenglass colony breeds rather earlier than
some of the others, but the constant interference to which these
birds are liable renders it impossible to define the dates at
which the young mature with absolute precision. The old birds

424 VERTEBRATE FAUNA OF LAKELAND

are ever apprehensive of intrusion, and the arrival of a stranger
induces them to hover, with noisy outcry, overhead. A practised
eye can often distinguish a female which is about to lay from
the other sex, even on the wing. The wide variation in colour
exhibited by a large series of eggs adds interest to the examina-
tion of any large colony, and scarcely less the contrasts of
nesting sites, from masses of half-dried sedge and matted clumps
of bog-bean to extensive floes of heather, open marsh, and dry
sandhills. I can hardly devote space to describing every local
gullery, but a brief allusion to the general appearance of one or
two of the number may be acceptable. Moorthwaite Lough, for
example, lies in a sheltered hollow, hemmed in on either side by
sloping meadows and hawthorn hedges. A nice strip of wood
runs along a neighbouring ridge of land, and the Gulls often
balance themselves on the branches of the trees. One end of
the lough is open and 8 or 10 feet deep, but the greater
portion is choked up with equisetum, bog-bean, and some species
of grass, whilst a few rushes grow at the water edge. The bog-
bean and grassy islets are whitened by the Gulls, some sitting
on their nests, if it is early in the season, while their mates
stand on guard close beside them. Concerned as they are by

interference with their eggs, the charge of their helpless young’

redoubles the persistency with which they seek to put the
enemy to flight. When visiting the colonies on Walney Island
in 1891, I felt greatly entertained by the manceuvres of these
birds, and of one pair in particular. As I stooped to handle and
caress their offspring, which were crouching in the wiry grass,
one bird, apparently the male, made repeated swoops, uttering
a deep cry, sounding like ‘ Badaaer,’ as he dashed down, whilst
his mate hovered round with drooping feet and loudly menacing
cries. It is curious to see the craftiness displayed by the young,
not, indeed, by the very small ones, but by those which are
growing strong. Although they can patter down the slopes of
the sandhills or run across a shingled beach very fast indeed,
they prefer to escape by hiding up. The very little chicks are
content to rest quietly in their nest, which at Ravenglass is
generally built on the top of a tussock of dry grass. But those
feathering hide up and remain so still that it is very difficult to

BIRDS 495

avoid treading on them. The birds which are bred in the
neighbourhood of water, and which swim strongly at an early
age (though they do not like to cross a lough in the teeth of a
strong wind), rarely attempt to escape capture by swimming.
If danger threatens they usually run in for shelter to the bank ;
there, if you search, you are sure to find the fugitives stowed
snugly away in the sedge or rushes. But as the young begin
to feather they skulk less, and draw together in level places
among the sandhills or under lee of some island that offers a
screen from the wind. The social instinct, thus early mani-
fested, becomes even more obvious when the birds feather and
can take short flights. Some youngsters are very independent,
and prefer to cruise about by themselves, others follow their
parents with amusing perseverance, but the greater number
congregate together in parties of twenty and thirty birds,
until, their pinions growing strong, they leave the nursery on
their own account or accompany their parents to fresh waters
in search of food.

For the first few weeks of their feathered existence the
young birds are conspicuous, owing to the dark colour of the
nest plumage, but when the grey mantle has been assumed, in
September, the old birds and juveniles are not very dissimilar,
though of course the black bar across the tail, and wing coverts
mottled with brown, tell their own story. It is very unusual to
see any birds of the year at a breeding colony, so unusual that I
have only one note of having observed a Black-headed Gull,
possessing a black bar,.upon the tail, associating with nesting
birds, i.e. at Moorthwaite in 1889.

Individuals show considerable variation in the time at which
the dark hood is donned. In the year 1889 I came across an
example which showed no sign of assuming a black head on the
20th of May. An interesting topic, and one deserving wider
attention than it appears to have received hitherto, is that of
the epidemics which occasionally attack whole colonies of birds in
the breeding-time. The Black-headed Gull is a typical sufferer.
In certain years the percentage of deaths among the unfledged
birds is so high at Ravenglass that wherever you go in the
midst of the gullery you find the bodies of the birds in all

426 VERTEBRATE FAUNA OF LAKELAND

stages of putrefaction. In 1891 an alarming death-rate prevailed
among the old birds at Moorthwaite ;—the colony was almost
decimated, and was reduced from being the leading colony in our
midst to a second-rate position. That the birds died from want —
of food is impossible, because they were nesting at a time when,
owing to the lateness of the spring, the country round was being
extensively ploughed. Those that I examined were in fine
_ plumage, but had wasted away, as though exhausted by some
kind of fever, the germ of which had found favourable condi-
tions for incubation, owing to the resident population of Gulls
being grossly overcrowded. There can be no doubt that the
too rapid increase of this bird is amply secured by those natural
conditions which, in every season, kill off a certain number of
the young which would otherwise be raised. But in dry sum-
mers many young birds die from want of worms and grubs, which
form the chief food of the nestlings even on the coast-line.

In summer the old birds themselves feed largely on motns
and other winged insects, as noted long ago by Nicolson and
Burn, who wrote of Betham, near Witherslack: ‘ Within this
manor also is Helflack Tower, now in ruins. Helflack mosses are
remarkable for the ant or pismire. About the middle of
August, when they take wing, a thousand sea-mews may be
seen here catching these insects. The neighbours call them the
pismire fleet.’! At other times they feed on small shells, such
as they find readily on the sands. I have found numerous
pellets, entirely composed of small mussels, which these birds
had bolted entire and afterwards rejected. An intelligent
farmer who watches over the Moorthwaite colony pointed out
to me that the birds appear there to feed on grass; at any rate,
they crop the grass on the banks of the lough. He values them
highly as destroying enormous quantities of injurious insects,
but finds that though they do not care for fresh-sown wheat or
barley, they will feed on oats with such avidity that he has
often had to sow furrows twice over. ‘They shell the oats
before bolting the kernel.’ But they are so far from being
dainty feeders that they regularly frequent localities in which
they can obtain the offal discharged from bone-mills, or even

1 History of Cumberland and Westmorland, vol. 1. p. 225.

BIRDS 427

from less inviting sources. In the spring of the year, when
their eggs are in brisk demand for the table, their food is of a
wholesome character. No doubt they obtain many small
Crustacea in our estuaries. JI am disposed to conjecture that
when severe frost induces these marine animals to leave the
shallows and retire into deep water, the Gulls are almost com-
pelled to seek the larger proportion of their food upon the
higher reaches of the river; notwithstanding which, many of
their number return before nightfall to roost upon the sandy
margins of our estuaries, clustering together so closely that one
of the punt-gunners killed thirty at a shot. Upon inquiring of
his son what purpose such slaughter might fulfil, I received the
naive assurance, ‘ They’s terrible good eating!’ ‘That such was a
common estimate of ‘sey mewes’ during the Caroline period
may fairly be inferred from’ the Naworth Accounts. The birds
were generally fattened artificially for the table. Of the young
birds that were sent to Naworth for this purpose a proportion
seems to have been of Northumbrian origin; others were
supplied from the colony of Black-headed Gulls near Muncaster
by ‘my Lady Savell.” In 1618 we find entered the cost of
accommodating these birds: ‘June... 20. To Andrew Creak
for 2 dayes making a place for gulls and hernsues, vj’ <A
‘crook for the gull house’ was provided the same year at
the cost of twopence. In 1622 we find an entry of August
10: ‘A knife to cut the gull’s meat, ij.’

COMMON GULL.

Larus canus, L.

The Common Gull frequents our coasts at all seasons, and
often feeds inland. It is also a frequent visitor to our salt
marshes during autumn and winter. But the birds which are
usually seen off Whitehaven and elsewhere in the month of
June have generally been immature, and the same must be said
of those remarked inland. Dr. Heysham recorded this Gull as
nesting in Cumberland, but, in the absence of any hint as to
where it bred, we may not unjustly assume that he was mis-
taken; a remark which applies equally to the statement which

428 VERTEBRATE FAUNA OF LAKELAND

Mr. A. G. More received from the late Dr. Gough, that the
Common Gull bred in Westmorland. It is only fair, however,
to say that the late Mr. R. Gray, as early as 1871, reported that
this Gull bred in the ‘Scottish Solway’ faunal area, a decision
fully confirmed by the researches of Mr. Robert Service. The
Common Gull remains with us until April, in which month a
few examples always visit Monkhill Lough for a short period.
In April 1890 I witnessed an entertaining attack made by a
Carrion Crow upon a bird of this species. The black robber
persistently pursued its quarry backwards and forwards, rising
and falling, but the Gull showed great agility, and occasionally
turned the tables by swooping swiftly at its adversary, which it
finally left far astern. The Crow then departed, but not
without making an ineffectual swoop at another immature Gull
of the same species which happened to cross its line of flight.
The largest number of Gulls of this species that I have observed
together belonged to a flock of seventy individuals.

HERRING GULL.

Larus argentatus, Gmel.

The Herring Gull is a common bird at all seasons on our
coast, particularly between Silloth and St. Bees, which it
especially affects, fishing in the waters of the Irish channel,
and resting on the sands and shingled beach. It is not so
common inland as the Lesser Black-backed Gull ; nevertheless it
may frequently be observed feeding in the fields during the
winter months, especially after gales at sea. As a breeding bird,
its chief stronghold is in the red sandstone cliffs at St. Bees,
which afford many of the grassy ledges which this Gull generally
chooses for the purpose of nidification. Another haunt is
Foulshaw moss, in the neighbourhood of Morecambe Bay. Mr.
W. A. Durnford found that the Herring Gull bred on that moss
in 1879, in the proportion of one Herring Gull to ten Lesser
Black-backed Gulls. In 1885 Mr. F. S. Mitchell reported to
me that the Lesser Black-backed Gulls were nearly banished
from Foulshaw, and that the Herring Gull had become the
dominant species. In 1891 I found that the Herring Gulls of

BIRDS 429

Foulshaw had again become reduced to a very few pairs, The
colony at St. Bees numbered a few hundred pairs, and no doubt
supplies our coast with its resident population. It nests in May,
and I observed many young squatting upon the rocks in June
1891, frequently accompanied by the old birds. All those that
I have examined flying about the breeding ledges have proved
to be fully mature, with the single exception of one immature
but nearly full-dressed bird, detected among the number of these
loudly clamouring birds disturbed from their nests on one of
my inspections in 1885. Many immature birds undoubtedly
feed in the fields at a short distance from the breeding station,
and form an important component part of the Grey Gulls which
habitually frequent this portion of our coast-line. Upon the
sands of Morecambe Bay this species is less numerous than some
other Laride, and the same applies to the upper Solway, where
the Herring Gull is comparatively scarce in full dress, though
you may occasionally see some fine old birds resting on broken
turfs at the edge of Burgh marsh. Although the Lesser Black-
backed Gull nests so commonly on the mosses near our coast, I
have never seen the Herring Gull in the breeding season on any
of our moors or flows, with the single exception of Foulshaw
moss.

LESSER BLACK-BACKED GULL.
Larus fuscus, L.

The Lesser Black-backed Gull is at all seasons a common
bird upon our coast-line, but of its five large breeding colonies
no fewer than four are situated in the neighbourhood of im-
portant estuaries. When Thompson visited Windermere in
July 1835 he observed a pair of adult birds on the lake. Mr.
Durnford was told many years later that this species had nested
on islands in this lake; but if this species ever nested in such
a situation, 1t has not done so since 1870; a remark which
applies also to Ulleswater, where Mr. H. Saunders states that a
colony once existed upon an island. ‘That single pairs may
occasionally nest in such localities as those just mentioned (as a
single pair does upon a rocky slope beside the Eden) is far

430 VERTEBRATE FAUNA OF LAKELAND

from unlikely ; but all our accredited colonies are established
upon more or less extensive grouse moors. Dr. Gough remarks
in his MS. notes that this Gull breeds abundantly upon Foul-
shaw moss, a fact already familiar to most Lancashire ornitho-
logists. The persistency with which this colony manages to
maintain its footing is the more remarkable because at one time
strenuous efforts were made to induce the Gulls to shift their
quarters. Many of the old birds were shot and killed, so that
when Mr. Mitchell visited Foulshaw in 1885 he found that the
Lesser Black-backed Gulls had nearly disappeared from their
nursery. But the proprietor relaxed his orders for their destruc-
tion, with the result that in 1891 their numbers had resumed
their former flourishing proportions. Another fine colony of
Lesser Black-backed Gull exists on Roudsea, where I saw many
eggs and young birds in the present year [1891]. There are no
more colonies of this Gull in our faunal area until we reach the
mosses on our northern boundary. Butterburn Flow is the only
inland colony. Travelling westward, thence, we come to the
gulleries established on Solway Flow and Bowness moss. The
neighbouring colony upon Wedholm Flow appears to have
been transferred to Bowness Flow. Many pairs nest upon
Solway Flow in spite of the destruction of a large proportion of
their nests, but more young are reared upon Bowness moss.
The nests of this species are usually built early in May, con-
structed of heather and grasses ; or, as Mr. W. Duckworth has
pointed out, in some instances of bog-bean. The eggs are laid
from May to July, but the Lesser Black-backed Gull does not
commence to breed as early as the black-headed species. Even
before laying has commenced the breeding pairs swoop down
menacingly in advance of intruders. Although none but full-
dressed birds engage in the duties of nidification, it is usual to
see one or two immature birds drifting about the skirts of the
breeding-colony at Bowness. Even in nesting-time a dozen or
so of old birds may be observed clustering on the sands on the
opposite side of the neighbouring estuary at low water, occa-
sionally rousing themselves to run a few paces, opening their
wings and often clamouring; at high tide the mosses they
affect become white with the birds that are nesting in the

BIRDS 431

heather. The approach of a stranger is sufficient to disturb the
nearest birds, and, should he cross their ground, every gull in
the colony wheels noisily overhead, the birds passing backwards
and forwards so rapidly that to count their numbers accurately
is a difficult undertaking. Roudsea moss is a broad level,
intersected by many open drains, covered closely with heather
and the cross-leafed heath, tussocks of sedge and coarse grass
intervening. Here, as in the other gulleries of our area, the
birds nest chiefly in the centre of the moss. ‘This year [1891] we
found eggs and birds in all stages on the 29th of June. The
nests chiefly contained two eggs, advanced in incubation, but
three is not an uncommon number, and we found one clutch of
two eggs to be quite fresh. Some few of the young birds were
squatting in open ground, but the greater preportion, whether
small or three-parts grown, hid themselves, burying their heads
in heather, though the grey mottled down of the upper surface
was seldom entirely concealed. The old birds are never more
vehement than when their young are feathered. These last
hide up with cunning craftiness in drains and under cover, but
are less disposed to take to water than the young of the Great
Black-backed Gull. They resist capture strenuously, and when
released run away in hot haste to some fresh hiding-place.
During the breeding season the old birds are indefatigable in
catering for their young. The small pink bivalve ( Tellina tenuis)
is a favourite food, as attested by the numerous pellets contain-
ing the remains of this shell which I have observed on all our
gulleries. On Roudsea one youngster threw up a crab and a
flounder ; we replaced the crab in its gullet, much to its apparent
satisfaction. There and at Foulshaw they seem to feed chiefly
on small crabs and the above-mentioned shell, but on Bowness
and Solway Flows there can be no doubt that fish form a con-
siderable portion of their diet. They are also fond of catching
moths. At all seasons of the year a few examples of this gull
frequent the inland waters of our rivers, and may be observed
daily passing and repassing. In autumn the immature birds
frequent the estuaries, and often rob smaller gulls. Some pro-
bably depart before winter, but at that season this Gull is
plentiful all along our coast-line, even in such coarse situations

432 VERTEBRATE FAUNA OF LAKELAND

as the western side of Walney, since it is more indifferent to
bad weather than the Herring Gull. A good many examples
visit us at migration-time. Mr. R. Mann every year observes
a few pairs of these birds passing Allonby in an easterly
direction, in the spring of the year, and my own observations
corroborate his, since this Gull is more frequently heard crying
over Carlisle than any other of our Laride. To take a single
example of this: on the 23d of February 1890 a great number
of birds passed over Carlisle between 8 and 12 p.m. Among
the various cries recognised, none were more emphatic than
those of the Lesser Black-backed Gulls. There was moonlight,
but heavy clouds and some mist made the night a dark one.

GREAT BLACK-BACKED GULL.

Larus marinus, L.

The Great Black-backed Gull is generally to be seen in full
dress upon the sands of the Solway Firth, usually alone but
sometimes in pairs; a few immature birds haunt the tidal
waters of the Eden, the Esk, and Morecambe Bay. Its large
size and fine appearance often induce desultory shore-shooters
to compass its destruction. Though wary, it often flies away
to die of gunshot wounds, or its dead body is carried out to sea
by the ebbing tide. It has become much rarer since 1885,
when I estimated the number of breeding pairs that frequented
the Solway at fifteen ; the decrease can be fully accounted for.
Several have been trapped in order that their presence might
lend attractiveness to garden lawns. Others have been shot or
poisoned because they annoyed punt-gunners, like the Black-
headed Gulls, which frequently sail up the estuaries a short
distance in front of the punts, and give a warning to any flocks
of ducks that they may meet with. But though this gull has
never been numerous with us, and has lately decreased, it has
colonies in both the south and north of our faunal area. That
it bred sparingly on the fells near Rusland, a short distance
from Morecambe Bay, was first ascertained by Mr. C. F.
Archibald, who took eggs laid upon the open moor in 1889.

BIRDS 433

He discovered in 1890 that a single pair were nesting upon an
island in a small tarn in the same neighbourhood. He swam
to the nest, which contained two eggs, one of which he took.
The female continued to incubate the second egg, from which
a fine young bird was eventually brought off. On one occasion
when Mr. Archibald was visiting the colony of Lesser Black-
backed Gulls at Roudsea, the clamour of these birds induced
their larger relatives to descend from the hill and unite their
cries to the prevailing babel.

Dr. Stanley stated in 1829 that some Great Black-backed
Gulls nested on the margin of Devoke Water.1 There can be
no doubt that the birds of this colony, locally recognised as
‘Devoke Water Maws,’ bred in that district fora known period
of half a century. Some fifteen years subsequent to Dr. Stanley’s
note, it occurred to T. C. Heysham that he might obtain eggs
from this quarter. He applied for them to Mr. Isaac Hodgson
of Corney, who wrote to him under date of May 8, 1844:‘I
went yesterday to Devoke Lake, and found eight nests, each
having three eggs. I brought away six, but unfortunately
broke three of them in returning home. I found not the
slightest difference in colour except in one egg, which was
nearly white, and which I have sent.’ Heysham applied again
for eggs, and Mr. Hodgson wrote to him under date of June
26, 1845: ‘When I sent you the eggs last year I got them on
the 14th of May; the young birds are now nearly half grown.’
On the 29th of April 1846 Mr. Hodgson reported: ‘In
obedience to your request I went yesterday to Devoke Lake,
and am sorry to say that in some degree I shall disappoint you.
I found only eight eggs on the island, all of which I have sent
you. The varieties in colour, therefore, was not at my disposal.
Indeed they seldom vary, excepting occasionally one more
lightly dotted with the dark spots. Mr. Stanley had been up
two days previously, and had taken away ten, and the number
of pairs will not be more than fourteen.’ This colony appears
to have become extinct towards the end of the seventies. <A
farmer, who had known it intimately, volunteered the informa-
tion that the breeding birds departed ‘ strangely and suddenly ’

1 Magazine of Nat. Hist. 1829, p. 276.
2E

434 VERTEBRATE FAUNA OF LAKELAND

from their time-honoured stronghold. The Great Black-backed
Gull has now apparently ceased to nest upon Wedholm Flow.
The once flourishing colony upon a neighbouring moss has been
reduced to two or three pairs, all of which were robbed during
the present year. It is a matter for some regret that this fine
species has been so nearly exterminated. These last are the
survivors of a colony of a dozen pairs, which had for some
seasons repaired in spring to nest upon some large tussocks of
rough grass, which they strictly reserved for their own use.
Upon Wedholm Flow the eggs were sometimes laid upon the
bare ground, but here they are deposited in large nests, con-
sisting of dry stems and heather, piled together in a considerable
mass. Upon one of our visits—on July 19, 1890—my party
caught three of the young birds, each crouching under shelter
of the heather and rough grass quite by itself. Two of the
number apparently belonged to the same nest, a difference in
size being accounted for by the fact that even in early life the
male slightly exceeds the other sex in dimensions. But the
third bird was considerably younger, since much down adhered
to the sides of the head and to the breast, and the wing pens
were only half grown. When discovered, this bird rose and
ran away as fast as it could, screaming lustily with its infantine
larynx. As the person who accompanied us was fully deter-
mined to take these young birds, and could not be dissuaded,
we agreed to pay him a consideration and to retain them our-
selves. We left them at the man’s cottage to be pinioned,
together with some young Lesser Black-backed Gulls. While
in his charge the birds strayed on the railway line. The finest
Great Black-backed Gulls escaped, but all the Lesser Black-
backs were immolated by a passing train, and the youngest
individual of the larger species received injuries to which it
shortly after succumbed. I fetched the survivors home on the
29th of July, and turned them down in a walled garden. In
early life these individuals often uttered a plaintive and shrill
ery, which bore considerable resemblance to that of a young
Curlew. Though attached to one another, the male from the
first tyrannised over his companion. They both showed great
hostility to a stuffed Lesser Black-back which was placed on

BIRDS 435

their favourite turf, ruffling up their feathers and pacing
solemnly round it before they commenced to attack the dummy
with their powerful mandibles! This Gull is far from dainty
in its tastes, and few animal substances are rejected as food, but
the ground upon which these young birds were bred was covered
at the time of their capture with remains of fish, including the
skeleton of a small cod; the birds themselves disgorged the
bodies of two fine eels, which were nearly fresh, and must have
been swallowed only a short time before.

GLAUCOUS GULL

Larus glaucus, Fabricius.

Opportunities for studying the habits of this fine Arctic Gull
are extremely rare on the north-west coast of England. Mr.
W. Duckworth observed a Glaucous Gull ‘of a deep creamy
tinge’ flying down to the estuary of the Leven on the 23rd of
November 1888. A very similar specimen was shot on the
same day of the month at Ravenglass in 1877. Messrs. Mann
once obtained an immature bird when following the plough
near Allonby. Another was shot (and lost) near Bowness-on-
Solway in the winter 1883-84; so that it has occurred singly
all round our coast. The only instance in which I have met
with the Glaucous Gull locally occurred in January 1890, during a
heavy westerly gale which inflicted great damage on shipping
in the Atlantic. On the 25th of that month I walked along
the coast from Mayport to Silloth, and when nearing Allonby
fell in with a large Glaucous Gull, in nearly full dress, though
still retaining on the back a few feathers of immaturity. Most
of the Herring and Common Gulls, and all those of the Black-
headed species, had sought shelter on the shores of a small
‘dub’ screened from the gale, but the Glaucous Gull was resting
alone upon a ridge of the pebbled beach. He seemed tired and
unwilling to move, but, when disturbed, took a short flight and
alighted near a Herring Gull, thus affording an interesting
comparison between the two species. Some of his wing feathers

1 In September 1891 this female Larus marinus was killed by an
escaped fox.

436 VERTEBRATE FAUNA OF LAKELAND

were damaged, and it was evident that he was wearied of con-
tending with the tempest. We tried to secure a very close
inspection, but the fine fellow carefully kept out of gunshot, and
seemed quite annoyed at our interfering with his intended
repose. Once, indeed, he flew a short distance out to sea, but
the tide was flowing fast; great waves came heaving shorewards
to break into long lines of seething foam. The Gull thought
better of his first purpose. Recrossing the beach, he rose to a
considerable height, and, after taking a couple of turns to
survey the country, sailed off inland and dropped to rest
in one of the neighbouring fields, where we left him. On the
following day he had disappeared. Early in February 1892 a
single Glaucous Gull made its appearance on the upper waters
of the English Solway. It was reported to me by Thomas Peal
as an ‘Ivory Gull,’ but his description of its size satisfied us
that it must be an immature example of Larus glaucus. Mr.
Thorpe and I searched for it ourselves on the banks of the Esk,
but to no purpose. Peal was out shooting daily, but he never
saw it again until the 25th of the month, when he spied it
feeding upon some dead fish on the opposite side of the river.
He waited all day to get a shot, and bagged his bird before night
fell. He brought it in to me for identification the same evening.
The alar expanse exceeded 5 feet by half an inch.

ICELAND GUL

Larus leucopterus, Faber.

The late Mr. T. C. Heysham was the first naturalist to record
the occurrence of this Gull in Lakeland. The specimen which
he obtained had been killed on the Solway Firth on the 8th of
February 1835.1 For many years this remained the only
specimen obtained on our coast, but in 1880 another example,
immature like the first, was shot at the mouth of the river
Calder on the 20th of February. On the 28th of January
1882 Mr. Moore of Millom shot a third immature bird on the
saltings near that town, and the same man fired at, but missed,

1 Mag. Nat. Hist., 1836, p. 187.

BIRDS 437

a similar bird when shooting on the Duddon estuary on the
24th of October 1885, The Iceland Gull has not been obtained
on our coasts in adult plumage.

KITTIWAKE.
Rissa tridactyla (L.).

There are no cliffs on our coast suitable to the requirements
of this rock-loving species except at St. Bees, where it does not
happen to breed. It is seldom, therefore, seen in the summer
months, but in winter and spring it is fairly common along our
shores, being more often washed ashore dead after gales at sea
than any other member of the Laridz. Such birds are often in
the immature or ‘tarrock’ dress, which is otherwise little known
to our local observers. On Walney Island I have picked up
mature birds which had succumbed to the winter tempests ; the
same must be said of the Solway Firth. Though common on
our open coasts, it is only after gales that the immature birds
are noticed on the wpper portion of the Solway. Even so ex-
_ cellent an observer as W. Nicol sent to me, as new to him, a
couple of young Kittiwakes which he shot at Skinburness in
November 1888. In the spring of the year a few Kittiwakes
often assemble in the fields a few miles from salt water to feed
on the worms and grubs exposed by early ploughing. A straggler
occasionally delays its departure after the arrival of summer.
Thus, in 1891, when visiting Salta moss with Mr. R. Mann on
the 23rd of June, we observed a single immature Kittiwake
flying among the Black-headed Gulls which were nesting there.
The Gulls did not like its presence; they mobbed it, and
eventually drove it away, but not before we had enjoyed a close
inspection of the intruder.

EVLOvR NS -G Ul bs:
Pagophila eburnea (Phipps).
The late Mr. J. Hindson states in his Ms. catalogue: ‘This

Gull has been killed two or three times in Morecambe Bay.’
Though unable to directly confirm this statement, I can vouch

438 VERTEBRATE FAUNA OF LAKELAND

for the authenticity of an adult Ivory Gull, in the possession of
Mr. Arthur Law of Silverdale, who obtained it from the person
who shot it. Neither the shooter nor Mr. Law was aware of
its specific identity until I happened to examine the bird. Mr.
Law has taken considerable pains to thoroughly overhaul its ante-
cedents, and the information supplied shows satisfactorily that
this Ivory Gull was shot on Cunswick Tarn about the year
1850. This tarn lies between the road from Kendal to Newby
Bridge and the road from Kendal to Bowness. It is therefore
within a short flight of the sea-coast.

Order GAVIZ. Sub-family STHRCORARIIN.
GREAT SKU A:

Stercorarius catarrhactcs (L.).

The Great Skua was added to the Lakeland list by T. C.
Heysham, who reported the occurrence in the following words :
‘A fine old Skua Gull was brought to us alive on the 27th of
April [1833], which had been captured on the preceding day,
on the coast, in the following very extraordinary manner :—A
fisherman, who had been examining his nets on the above-men-
tioned day, observed at some distance two large birds struggling
together, and upon arriving at the scene of combat, he found
this bird upon the point of killing a Herring Gull (Larus
argentatus), and so determined was the Skua to despatch its
prey, that the fisherman secured it without the least difficulty.
The stomach was quite empty, and the eggs in the ovary were
still very small. We cannot find that the Skua has been
captured in this vicinity before.1 I learn from Mr. J. B.
Hodgkinson that this Skua was killed on Rockliffe marsh.
Heysham appears to have met with this Skua again a few years
later. In the draft of a letter addressed to Yarrell, dated
October 19, 1837, Heysham adds: ‘Since my return to Carlisle
I have procured a young specimen of the Common Skua,? the

1 Phil. Mag., 1834, p. 339.
2 Possibly Heysham referred to an Arctic Skua, and not to the Great
Skua.

BIRDS 439

first [% young specimen] I have met with or heard of in this
quarter. The late Mr. Grayson of Whitehaven assured me
that he mounted a local specimen of the Great Skua killed in
1865. The only recent appearance of this Skua on any part of
our N.W. coast was ascertained by William Nicol, who has ex-
ceptional opportunities for observing such birds, since his entire
time is spent, summer and winter, in fishing and shooting in the
waters of the Solway Firth. He wrote to me on November 7,
1889: ‘I saw on Friday, Nov. 1st, a Common Skua, a fine-
looking bird, but could not get near it.’ He told me a few days
later that he saw this bird off the Grune Point, and that it was
harassing some large gulls. He also remarked that he had a
good view of the white alar bar. Mr. Nicol is well acquainted
with the other species of Skuas, and has himself shot both the
Arctic and Buffon’s Skua.

POMATORHINE SKUA.

Stercorarius pomatorhinus (Temm. ).

We should naturally suppose that this Skua would pass down
the Irish Channel in small numbers every autumn, but in point
of fact experience shows that it is a rare bird on the N.W.
coast. Dr. Gough has a note of a Pomatorhine Skua killed near
Tuustal, on October 17, 1870. Mr. Murray possesses the oldest
local bird that I have seen, but it has not quite reached perfect
maturity. It was shot on the coast near Carnforth. <A few
birds of this species visited us after some heavy weather in the
autumn of 1879. Mr. A. Smith obtained a specimen on Rock-
liffe marsh. Dr. Parker secured a second near Whitehaven. A
third bird (in the brown plumage of the first year) was shot at
the south end of Walney Island. George Holmes forwarded a
Pomatorhine Skua which he shot when the bird was flying along
the beach near Bowness on the 24th of October 1884. This is
the ouly specimen that I have seen in the flesh in Lakeland, but
Mr. R. Mann recollects that on one occasion numbers of this
Skua visited the Solway Firth.

440 VERTEBRATE FAUNA OF LAKELAND

ARCTIC SKUA.

Stercorarius crepidatus (Gmel.).

Under a name which indicates a popular fallacy regarding
the habits of the bird, but which is hardly fitted for polite ears,
this Skua is well known to Whitehaven fishermen, who not un-
frequently see one or two individuals in company with the
smaller Gulls and Terns, upon whose exertion the Skuas chiefly
depend for their subsistence. It has occurred on more occasions
than one in the interior of Lakeland, in fact upon the borders
of Cumberland and Northumberland, having probably followed
one or other of the rivers of the latter county from the sea. As
lately as October 1887 a young Richardson’s Skua was shot
near Alston, in which neighbourhood Greenwell obtained a
similar bird on October 1, 1857. Mr. Horrocks possesses a fine
old bird, ight breasted, which was also shot near Alston. Mr.
Graham of Cockermouth forwarded for identification the wings
of a young bird of this Skua, which had been shot at Tallentire
about Christmas 1890. But allowing for such exceptions as
these, it would appear that this Skua is rarely met with except
on our coast-line. Mr. Nicol believes that some of these birds
migrate eastward in spring vid the Solway Firth. On the 20th
of May 1887, after a gale from the N.W., he and two other
fishermen saw twelve of these Skuas pass close to them, flying
up the Solway in an easterly direction. At the same time it
should be understood that odd stragglers, obviously not breeding-
birds, pass the summer months on the Solway, not perhaps
every year, but from year to year. They are generally wild and
keep out in the open sea except after heavy gales. A fisherman
named Johnston, whose cottage is close to the sea-shore, between
Allonby and Silloth, is the only man who has sent me local
specimens of Richardson’s Skua. In 1889 he shot an old bird
of the dark form, after a heavy westerly gale, while the Skua
was hotly chevying a Black-headed Gull above the beach. It
proved to be’moulting on the 9th of October. The plumage
was much infested with parasites. A bird which he shot on the
4th of October 1890 was still more advanced in moult, but this

BIRDS 44]

was only a bird of the second year. Another was felled by a
stone at Allonby, December 7, 1887, while feeding on a dead
pig upon the beach. The Walney Island fishermen sometimes
apply the name of ‘Sea Hawk’ to this Skua, which they con-
sider a somewhat rare bird. Mr. Murray possesses an immature
individual, killed on our coast between Carnforth and Fleet-
wood.

BUFFON’S SKUA.

Stercorarius parasiticus (L.).

The first naturalist to ascertain that this Skua occasionally
visited Lakeland was the late Mr. Anthony Mason of Grange,
who identified three specimens shot in Morecambe Bay on the
25th of October 1859. Its presence does not seem to have
been detected on the English Solway until 1879; that, at
least, is my first positive date referring to the bird which Mr.
A. Smith shot on Rockliffe marsh in October that year, and gave
to Mr. Anson of Carlisle. Mr. Richard Mann recollects, how-
ever, that a large number of Skuas once appeared in the Solway
Firth after a severe gale. A good many were killed near
Allonby, and he believes some Buffon’s Skuas to have been
among the slain. This Skua was not, however, obtained in
young plumage until 1890. On the 5th of November that year
the keeper engaged on the Musgrave property at Kirkoswald
came across a single Skua, swimming in a small pond near the
Eden. It was quite alone and appeared to be much exhausted.
He shot it, and gave it to Robert Raine, who kindly asked me
to identify it. It proved on dissection to be much emaciated.
On the 16th of October 1891 a very similar nestling bird was
shot at Skirwith, almost in the same part of the Eden valley as
the bird which had occurred the previous year. It was sent to
Hope, for whom I decided the species. It was rather darker
in ground colour than the bird killed at Kirkoswald, but was of
the same age and the same general appearance. Curiously
enough, on the very day that the Skirwith bird was shot in the
interior of Lakeland, a flight of this Skua appeared in the waters
of the English Solway. Mr. Williamson, junior, killed an old
bird deep in moult near Allonby on this date. His uncle, Mr.

442 VERTEBRATE FAUNA OF LAKELAND

Thomas Mann, fell in with two full-dressed adults (in change),
on October 17th, one of which he secured. He fired at the
other but lost it; this was possibly the bird which Mr. W.
Hodgson picked up dead at Workington on October 19th. Bob
Law shot a bird in the one-year-old plumage on October 19th,
and Mr. Glaister winged a similar bird the same day. Mr.
Nicol shot another on Skinburness marsh on October 23d.
Storey the punt-gunner killed another year-old bird on the
Wampool, which he stuffed (after a fashion) and brought to me.
Mr. Lomas found another dead inland, a year-old bird. Some
unknown person shot a full-dressed bird at Silloth about
October 17th, which I examined at the house of James Barnes.
Yet another year-old bird wandered up the Eden valley into
Westmorland, and was shot near Lowther on October 23d.
Several others appear to have been seen but not obtained.
About the same time a similar flight visited Walney Island,
where about a dozen specimens were reported to me as having
been shot. I only examined three of this number, two of them
freshly killed, and these were year-old birds. At least one
adult in more or less full dress appears to have been killed on
Walney, but as the birds fell into private hands no particulars
could be ascertained. It is noteworthy that the only specimens
shot in possession of the long central rectrices were the birds
obtained by Mr. T. Mann at Allonby, by Mr. Hodgson at
Workington, and by two unknown persons at Walney and
Silloth. Not a single bird is known to have been shot on our
coast in really young plumage. Ten of those which I have
examined were in the one-year-old plumage, and I understand
that an additional specimen telegraphed near Allonby is in the
same stage. These birds were all in some stage of change, and
much varied with grey. They were very similar to a bird presented
to the Zoological Society about the same time by Mr. Hart of
Christchurch. The bird which Mr. Glaister winged came into
my possession by his kindness. Like the Hants’ bird, exhibited
in the Fish House of the Zoological Gardens, my captive Skua
fed heartily on shrimps. It was a tame bird, and when crouch-
ing on the carpet made a very pretty picture, its dark eyes
beaming with intelligence. It was however in poor plight.

BIRDS 443

At some earlier period it had lost a foot, and, when its wing
was broken, the poor thing was heavily handicapped. I fancy
that the good people who kept it for me a few days supplied it
with more shrimps than were good for a half-starved bird. At
all events it soon died. All those who were fortunate enough
to see these birds flying in life—I had not that advantage,
though only a mile away from Mr. Tom Mann when he fired
at an adult—assured me that they were much exhausted, which
the emaciated condition of their bodies fully bore out. It seems
probable that large numbers of these birds were migrating
across the Atlantic, when they got into the centre of a hurricane,
which forced them up on to our western shores, far out of the
usual line of their migration. I think it quite likely that the
two young birds killed in the Eden valley in 1890 and 1891 had
travelled into Lakeland from the North Sea, and that the coin-
cidence of the Skirwith bird being killed on the day on which
the species first appeared in the English Solway was purely
accidental. But this is a point on which every one must form
his own opinion, since it is entirely a matter for conjecture.
The only specimen of Buffon’s Skua that is known to have
been killed in Lakeland during the breeding season of the
Arctic bird was shot near Kirkandrews on the Eden, on the 3d
of June 1885. The bird had frequented the neighbourhood of
the river for a few days before it was shot on the lower waters
of the Eden by George Batey. It was secured the same day,
and sent to me in the flesh by my friend Dr. John Macdougall.
It proved on dissection to bea male. As a specimen in nuptial
plumage it would be uniform with most others, but for the
circumstance of some slight trace of immaturity on the lower
surtace, a stage which Mr. Howard Saunders told me is rather
rare. The body was imperfectly nourished, and contained no
traces of food beyond three earthworms. Unusual as the
occurrence of Buffon’s Skua in Britain undoubtedly is during
the summer months, yet several other examples have been
obtained in June. The late Mr. Rodd identified an adult shot
near the Lizard at the beginning of June Mr. R. Service has
recorded that another adult male was shot in Dumfriesshire on

1 Zoologist, 1877, p. 300.

444 VERTEBRATE FAUNA OF LAKELAND

the 12th of June 1881, as well as a third captured in Notting-
hamshire on the 8th of the same month. In 1860 a fourth
adult was shot in June on the Kingsbridge estuary, S. Devon.”

Order PYGOPODES. Fam. ALCID.
ba ZO R BILL:
Alca torda, L.

A nice colony of Razorbills, which has probably existed from
time immemorial, holds possession of a number of ledges on the
red sand-stone cliffs at St. Bees. As compared with the vast
gatherings of birds, which one is accustomed to visit on the
great headlands of the north of Scotland, the St. Bees colony
is small of course; a considerable number of pairs nest there,
nevertheless, and very handsome they look as they sit sedately
on their eggs, or come hurrying past the boat, the white eye-
streak relieving the sombreness of their otherwise uniformly
black upper surface. They are not so numerous as the Guille-
mots, and appear to succumb to the hardships of winter in a
greater proportion to their numbers than the latter species.
Nor does the Razorbill occur in the interior of the country with
the same frequency as Uria troile. A loose scrap in T. C.
Heysham’s handwriting runs thus: ‘ Razorbill, Jan. 21, 1849.
A specimen was found alive in Mr. Mounsey’s plantation at
Rockliffe this day. It lived until the 27th.’ Similar occur-
rences have come under my observation in different years, but
chiefly at a short distance from the sea-board.

COMMON GUILLEMOT.
Uria troile (L.).

Pennant tells us that, in his day, St. Bees Head was ‘noted
for the great resort of birds,’ referring doubtless to the Guille-
mots, which, in company with a lesser number of Razorbills,
rear their young on the cliffs at Sandwith. If you walk along
the top of the cliffs from Fleswick Bay on a summer day, you

1 Zoologist, 1881, p. 469. 2 Zoologist, 1860, p. 7106.

SS

i
3

BIRDS 445

can distinguish a few Guillemots far below you, as they fly off
their ledges to the sea; but the colony is seen to best advantage
by the simple expedient of taking a boat from Whitehaven.
This is the only colony on the mainland of the N.W. of England.
As a natural consequence, the species is somewhat localised in
summer, but when shoals of fishes arrive upon our shores they
are frequently attended by considerable numbers of Guillemots.
There can be no doubt that a good many unpaired birds pass
the summer in the Irish Channel and accommodate their move-
ments to the food-supply. Heavy indeed is the mortality among
both adult and young birds during the storms of autumn and
winter. Many are beached, lying with the white breast upper-
most, upon the sands of the Solway Firth; but probably the
largest quantity are washed ashore between Seascale and the
south end of Walney Island.

BLACK GUILLEMOT.
Uria grylle (L.).

In the month of October 1891 a Black Guillemot was caught
alive in a ditch between Silloth and the Abbey Holme. It
appeared to be exhausted at the time of capture, but, being
transferred to a small pond, it soon recovered from its fatigue
and dived actively for food. It lived about a week in semi-
confinement. It was wearing the plumage of the first winter.
Why it had wandered a few miles into the interior I am unable
to say. Such conduct is rarely resorted to by this Guillemot,
though its powers of flight are excellent. The late Mr. Grayson
informed me that some thirty years ago he stuffed two full-
dressed Black Guillemots which had been shot near Whitehaven
in the spring of the year. The only other specimen that can be
vouched for as having visited us in recent years was observed
by Mr. W. Duckworth near Silloth in 1886. It is to be
supposed that this Auk must sometimes visit the waters of

Morecambe Bay, but I have not succeeded in tracing its presence
there.

446 VERTEBRATE FAUNA OF LAKELAND

Lara EAU
Mergulus alle (L.).

The Little Auk not only occurs irregularly all round our
coast-line, but penetrates into the very heart of Lakeland. The
Keswick Museum has a specimen captured among our mountains.
Dr. Gough occasionally met with specimens in Westmorland,
regarding one of which the following paragraph was furnished
by his pen to a local newspaper: ‘One of these birds was
picked up on Thursday week in the neighbourhood of Helsington.
When first observed the poor wanderer was sitting surrounded
by a flock of poultry, and, on being approached, rose and flew
to a short distance. From its exhausted state, no difficulty
was experienced in effecting its capture alive. Variety of food
was offered to it in confinement, but the prisoner, not relishing
his change of habits, refused all sustenance, and died on the
ensuing day.’ ‘Two others were captured about the same time
in the neighbourhood of Coniston and Windermere. In a
draught of November 8th, 1841, T. C. Heysham states: ‘ The
Little Auk is a rare bird in Cumberland, and I have not seen
or heard of more than two or three specimens during the last
twelve or fourteen years. It is, however, a somewhat curious
coincidence that one should have been taken alive a few days
ago at no great distance from Ulleswater Lake, which is up-
wards of twenty miles from any part of the coast.’ The most
recent occurrences of the Little Auk in Lakeland include an
example captured near Appleby in January 1887; another
observed by Mr. Nicol near Skinburness during a very heavy
gale on November 16, 1888 (the first he ever saw); a third
picked up dead on Walney Island, November 1890; and a
fourth, a very beautiful adult in winter dress, picked up dead in
a field near Langwathby, January 3rd, 1890. All the local
specimens which I have seen preserved as rarities in the hands
of private individuals were in winter dress. It is possible that
a black-throated bird, existing in the collection at Belle Vue,
which formerly belonged to Bailey the birdstuffer, was obtained
locally. If such be the case, it is the only one that has been
obtained within this region in swmmer dress.

BIRDS 447

EU rE LN.

Fratercula arctica (L.).

It is chiefly during the storms of winter-time that the Puffin
becomes numerous all round our coast-line. The Whitehaven
fishermen assure me that even in the breeding season they see a
few Puffins off St. Bees Head, and the description furnished of
their orange bills leaves no room for doubt as to the species ;
but though the glassy ledges at St. Bees are suggestive of
Puffins’ burrows, in point of fact the species does not nest there.
In late autumn, on the other hand, a good many Puffins come
ashore, dead or moribund; not in at all the same proportions as
the Guillemots, nor as numerously as even the Razorbills, but
still in pretty considerable numbers, from Silloth all round the
coast to Walney Island. Though the species must be vastly
more common than the Little Auk in the Irish Sea, it hardly
occurs inland as frequently as the Rotche. A Puffin which was
picked up dead near Kirkby-Stephen, in August 1885, had
travelled more than forty miles from the open sea.

Order PYGOPODES. Fam. COLYMBIDZ.

GREAT NORTHERN DIVER.
Colymbus glacialis, L.

The Great Northern Diver is generally reckoned a rare bird
on the waters of the N.W. of England, but single birds not un-
frequently visit our larger lakes, especially Windermere and
Ulleswater. Mr. W. Duckworth retains the feet of a Great
Northern Diver, shot on Windermere, Nov. 24, 1888. The
owner insisted on having the skin converted into a muff.
Another in full summer dress was killed on the same lake in
1889, in the month of August, as separately reported by Mr.
H. E. Rawson, Mr. G. A. Hutchinson, and Mr. W. Duckworth.
The Rev. R. Bower has a summer-dressed Great Northern
Diver, killed on the Eden above Appleby. A bird in winter
plumage, killed on Ulleswater, is preserved at Edenhall. A few
weeks before the bird was killed on Windermere in 1889 I had

448 . VERTEBRATE FAUNA OF LAKELAND

pointed out to Mr. Leavers a large Colymbus crossing over
Carlisle at a great height, flying from N.E. to S.W. Within a
week there arrived information that a bird of this species had
appeared on one of the smaller lakes. This Diver moults late
in the year, a fact which perhaps explains the occasional appear-
ance of stragglers in Lakeland during the summer. The Eden
has been more often visited by this Diver than any other of our
rivers. An example was shot near Bolton Bridge, Westmor-
land, on the 1st of November 1848. An undated scrap of T. C.
Heysham records that ‘on Tuesday last’ a man belonging to
Rickergate killed a young Great Northern Diver on the Eden a
little above Eden Bridge at Carlisle. In the extreme west of
Lakeland specimens have been recorded from Wastwater by
Dr. Parker. The Great Northern Diver appears to occur only
irregularly in the immediate neighbourhood of Morecambe Bay.
Mr. Durnford reported a bird killed near Barrow in December
1876. Two were killed in the channel between Barrow and
Walney in the severe winter 1890-91. This Diver very seldom
visits the English side of the Solway Firth. Mr. W. Nicol
wrote on December 7, 1889: ‘I am glad to tell you that on
Wednesday the 5th inst. I saw for the first time a Great
Northern Diver. Law and I chased it in our punts for, I think,
a mile and a half, but could not get nearer than a hundred and
fifty yards or so. There was diving along with it a Red-throated
Diver. When both went under, the Great Northern stayed
twice as long under water, and went twice the distance. We
chased it near to the point, hoping he would not take wing, but
when he saw we were driving him into narrower quarters, after
a careful survey of the situation, he got under weigh and flew
away to the westward.’ On the 3d of September 1890 I
watched a Great Northern Diver diving and swimming down
the channel near Port Carlisle. Wading out into the ebbing
tide I watched the bird for ten or twelve minutes, It swam
nearly submerged, but occasionally raised itself up in the water,
when the white breast became visible. It was in summer
plumage, and quite alone. Greenwood told me that he had
seen two strange Divers going up with the flood-tide, but I only
saw a single bird returning with the ebb. It constantly swam

BIRDS 449

in the main channel, going out further and further, as the tide
ebbed, to avoid the shallows, diving at frequent intervals.

BLACK-THROATED DIVER.
Colymbus arcticus, L.

This species is a much rarer visitant to our waters than
either the Red-throated or Great Northern Divers. Indeed, all
the Black-throated Divers that have ever been reported to me
from our western estuaries turned out, on inspection, to belong
to the Red-throated species, which varies widely in dimensions.
Some idea of the comparative scarcity of this Diver in the north
of England may be gathered from the fact that only two
specimens have been obtained in Lakeland during the whole of
my local experience, which covers a period of more than nine
years. The first of these made its appearance on the river Eden
a short distance above Carlisle on the 20th of March 1888.
The Rev. J. Phelps was the first to observe the bird diving in
the river, a fact which he kindly communicated to me the same
day. I was not, however, privileged to see it in life. It was
soon shot by one of the waterside keepers, who thought that it
was fishing for salmon fry, a conjecture which proved to be only
too well founded. On examination, it was found to be an
adult, already commencing to assume the summer livery, though
the new feathers were almost wholly concealed by the long
winter plumes. On the Ist of January 1891 a young female
of the Black-throated Diver was killed on Ulleswater. By a
curious coincidence a Red-throated Diver was shot on the same
lake the same day, thus enabling me to compare the two species
in the flesh before the soft parts had lost their natural colours.
The Black-throated Diver, although a female, was the heavier
bird. It weighed 6 lbs., whereas the Red-throated Diver, a
male, turned the scales at 4 Ibs. Both birds were in good
condition when procured. The birds just mentioned are not
the only specimens that have been obtained in Lakeland. I
have identified one or two others, birds which were killed before
I took this faunal area in hand. But the foregoing specimens
are the only ones known to have been procured during the last

2F

450 VERTEBRATE FAUNA OF LAKELAND

ten or twelve years, a fact which sufficiently evidences the com-
parative infrequency of their visits.

RED-THROATED DIVER.

Colymbus septentrionalis, L.

The Red-throated Diver is a regular spring visitant to More-
cambe Bay and the Solway Firth. It does not frequent our
estuaries numerously at any time, but a few individuals are con-
stantly to be met with in the waters of the Solway from Silloth
to Gretna between the end of March and the last days of May.
These generally assume full plumage before their departure, but
an adult which Mr. Mason shot in October 1890, off the point
of Rockliffe marsh, was really as handsome as any spring-killed
bird. This Diver generally appears in our estuaries in
November, when, as the adults are often in moult and unable to
fly, they sometimes perish in heavy gales. Such had been the fate,
no doubt, of an individual which I found washed ashore near
Silloth, and of another adult, retaining a few red feathers, which
Mr. Williams showed me in the flesh in November 1888. It
had just been washed up on the west side of Walney Island.
Some birds occasionally winter with us, but this is the excep-
tion, and, as already remarked, the larger proportion are spring
visitants. Individuals have occasionally been observed at mid-
summer. In July 1886 a small but full-dressed male Red-
throated Diver was found dead by a platelayer near Gretna,
having struck the wires full upon the lower neck. The presence
of this Diver on our inland waters is unusual at any season, but
odd birds do in point of fact make their appearance on Bassen-
thwaite, Windermere, and the other lakes of this area at tolerably
frequent intervals. Mr. H. E. Rawson lately informed me that
a Red-throated Diver was killed on Windermere in January
1892, and taken to him for identification. Even such a limited
extent of water as Whin’s Pond, Edenhall, has been known to
serve as a temporary resting-place for this Diver. A bird of
this species was shot in the locality just indicated in April
1840, the poor thing having probably alighted with a view to
fishing in the lake, whilst migrating across country to the east

BIRDS 451

coast of Britain. No one, who has watched the strong flight of
this Colymbus, would imagine that it suffers much harm from
severe weather. But the fact is, that the adults shed their wing
quills all at once, a proceeding which disqualifies them sadly for
contending against a heavy gale. A bird in this condition was
captured near Silloth on the 6th of September 1888. It was
secured in a shrimping net, and, proving to be uninjured, was
subsequently liberated.

Order PYGOPODES. Fam. PODICIPEDIDZ.
GREAT CRESTED GREBE.

Podicipes cristatus (L.).

This Grebe has been recognised for the last hundred years or
more as an occasional winter visitant to Lakeland, but it has
never become an established resident or even a numerous winter
visitant. The plumage chiefly met with is that of young birds
in their first winter. The summer dress is not entirely unknown
locally. For example, Mr. J. N. Robinson shot a Great
Crested Grebe, fast assuming summer dress, on the Eden in
March 1884; a similar bird was drowned in a net in the
channel off Bowness-on-Solway in March 1886. Mackenzie shot
a full-dressed bird on the Eden in July 1869. But the species
is quite unaccountably scarce, even as a winter visitant, though
perhaps met with rather more frequently on our larger lakes
than in the estuary waters of Morecambe Bay or the Solway
Firth. Dr, Gough and T. C. Heysham both noticed in their
private notes the comparative rarity of the bird in this part of
England.

RED-NECKED GREBE.
Podicipes griseigena (Bodd.).

Sometimes, in a hard winter, we get a visit from a Red-necked
Grebe, but such an incident is of extremely rare occurrence—
surprisingly so if we take into consideration the comparative
frequency of the species on the coasts of Northumberland and
the Firth of Forth reported by friends who are competent to

452 VERTEBRATE FAUNA OF LAKELAND

speak. Of recent specimens, I may notice two obtained in
January 1891. One of these was killed on the Solway Firth
near Gretna. The other was caught in miserable condition on
the river Eden near Little Salkeld. Another specimen was
felled on the Kent some few years ago by a stone from a catapult.
This last is the only example which I can vouch for as having
been killed within the territorial limits of Westmorland. It
was submitted to me for identification through the kind offices
of Mr. Hutchinson.

SCLAVONIAN GREBE.
Podicipes auritus (L.).

Dr. Gough included this small Grebe as an occasional but rare
winter visitant to Kendal, stating that it had been killed on
Whinfell Tarn [prior to 1861]. It is a scarce bird at all times
in Lakeland, but occurs occasionally on our estuaries, and less
frequently on lakes and loughs inland. Mr. Tremble has an
interesting adult which he shot one year on Monkhill Lough as
early as September, There are two specimens at Edenhall
which were shot on Whin’s Pond. Other stragglers have been

killed on Derwentwater, on Ulleswater, and in the neighbour-

hood of Alston. Mr. Nicol never met with the Sclavonian
Grebe until March 17, 1889, when he shot a bird which had
newly commenced its spring moult in the neighbourhood of
Silloth. On the 24th of October 1890, the same gunner was
paddling up the channel past the Grune, when he saw a young
lad running along the side of the big creek in pursuit of two
Grebes which were swimming and diving up the water. ‘The
lad shot one, and its fellow dived but came up directly and was
on the point of flying off when he fired and stopped it. Both
birds proved to be Sclavonian Grebes.

EARED GREBE.
Podicipes nigricollis (Brehm),

The Eared Grebe is one of the rarest of our occasional visitants
—so rare in Lakeland that I have never seen a local specimen.

BIRDS 453

Probably some of the birds reported to me formerly as ‘ Eared
Grebes’ were Sclavonian Grebes, but two excellent observers
have met with local specimens. Dr. Parker procured the first
in the neighbourhood of Ravenglass, and this, I understand, was
preserved and can be seen. This is all the more satisfactory
because the most recent specimen was past preserving when
found. It was Mr. Richard Mann who found this second
specimen washed up dead near Allonby in September 1891,
after a spell of bad weather. It was an adult, still retaining a
good deal of summer dress, and the upturned bill decided the
species beyond a doubt. It was found impossible, however, to
make a skin of it.

LITTLE GREBE.
Podicipes fluviatilis (Tunstall).

The Little Grebe used to nest almost gregariously at Moor-
thwaite before the birds were driven away from their favourite
haunts by the encroachments. of the Black-headed Gulls. Our
northern rivers do not seem to be as well adapted to the
requirements of this Grebe as the sluggish streams of the: south
of England. The Dabchick is accordingly scarce as a breeding
bird, though certain favourite stations are occupied every year.
In autumn and winter the species is widely distributed, and
may often be seen diving through the waterweeds in the vicinity
of several species of wildfowl. I have seen examples which had
been killed on the Solway Firth, but the bird is not common in
the tideway of that estuary.

Order TUBINA RES. Fam. PROCELLARIIDA.
FULMAR.

Fulmarus glacialis (L.).

It might be supposed that a species so well known in the
North Atlantic as the Fulmar would stray at frequent intervals
to the N.W. coast of England; but this plausible supposition
has been entirely belied by our experience during the last
hundred years. Neither Dr. Heysham, T. C. Heysham, nor Dr.

454 VERTEBRATE FAUNA OF LAKELAND

Gough ever met with the bird. Though well aware that my friend
Mr. J. W. Harris secured a specimen washed up near Mowbray
many years since, I never myself seteyes on a Lakeland specimen
of the Fulmar until February of the present year [1892]. On
the 11th of that month a man named Thomas Peal brought to
me in the flesh a Fulmar which he had secured on Rockliffe
marsh two days earlier. It was in the finest possible feather
and represented the white-breasted form. The body was how-
ever the reverse of well nourished. Mr. Thorpe remarked at
once that it was a small specimen, and such on comparison it
turned out to be. On dissection it proved to be a female,
probably a bird of the year.

MANX SHEARWATER.

Puffinus anglorum ('Temm. ).

Possessing a more intimate acquaintance with this Shearwater
than with any other oceanic species, I have long experienced
a sense of regret at its almost entire absence from this region.
It is not merely that it does not wander inland like the smaller
Petrels. The grievous thing is, that we never enjoy the
beautiful gliding flight of this attractive species on the N.W.
coast, where it is unknown to our fisher folk. That it occurs
in some numbers far out in the Irish Sea there can be no doubt.
Dr. Parker has twice obtained derelict specimens near Seascale,
where my friend Mr. Whitlock found the remains of a Manx
Shearwater in May 1890. The most classical home of this
Shearwater was that which once existed on the Calf of the’
Isle of Man, within view of our own shore. This has long been
deserted. Sir William Jardine wrote to T. C. Heysham in the
year 1836: ‘I had almost forgot the Isle of Man. It is nearly
nine years since I was there [in 1827], we went as you observe
to seek the Manks’ Petrel, but were unsuccessful. The people
said that it had certainly left the Calf several years previously,
and if any number had been there we should not have missed
them. |

BIRDS 455

FORK-TAILED PETREL.
Oceanodroma, leucorrhoa (Vieill.).

This Petrel gets the credit, generally, of being a rarer species
on the N.W. coast than is actually the case. At the same time
we must not forget that its appearance in the neighbourhood
of our coast is chiefly limited to the last months of the year,
and bears a direct relation to the prevalence of tempestuous
weather in the open Atlantic. It seems to have occurred on one
or other portion of our coast almost every autumn, during the
last half century. Dr. Gough and T. C. Heysham both identified
a few specimens, obtained in the south and north of Lakeland
respectively. My inquiries have naturally covered a much
wider field than the researches of either of my predecessors. As
a natural consequence, I have seen a good many fresh specimens
from Morecambe Bay and the shores of Cumberland, as well as
others from the interior of Lakeland. In 1889 I examined five
local specimens, all obtained in the month of October. Three
of them were obtained near Carlisle, one at Sillcth, and a fifth
at Ravenglass. This last was picked up dead on the 28th of
the month. Such figures represent the return of an ordinary
year. ‘There are of course seasons in which this Petrel is more
than usually numerous. The last days of September 1891
witnessed the arrival upon the shores of Western Britain, of
large flights of this Petrel. The birds had apparently been
induced to travel eastward by the prevalence of wild weather
on the open Atlantic. At all events they occurred in varying
numbers all along the line from Skye to the Cornish coasts.
Several were procured in the neighbourhood of Morecambe Bay,
and I examined about sixteen specimens which had been ob-
tained on the coast of Cumberland, others being observed
battling pluckily against the gale. Two or three specimens
turned up far inland, e.g. a Fork-tailed Petrel, which was shot
while flying along the edge of Ulleswater Lake on the 16th of
October. The first that were sent to me from the Solway
Firth reached me on the 28th of September. A marked feature
of this immigration was that it consisted exclusively of adult

456 VERTEBRATE FAUNA OF LAKELAND

birds, at least so far as concerned the N.W. coast. Usually the
specimens that we meet with are young birds, easily distinguished
by their fresh plumage and the possession of a pale grey alar
bar. All the birds which I saw in 1891 were adults, deep in
moult, and very ragged in plumage. ‘Their appearance was
fully a fortnight in advance of the usual arrival of this Petrel
on our coast in autumn; October and November are the two
months in which it principally occurs. Some stragglers have
been obtained in December, but I cannot recall having ever
met with the species locally during the first four months in the
year, and should be disposed to think that the birds noticed in
October have been forced upon our shores whilst migrating to
winter quarters in some more southern latitude. The species
is almost unknown locally, except as a scarce autumnal visitant.
I have never met with it at any other season, but T. C. Heysham
was more fortunate. In the year 1841 he obtained a local
specimen of this Petrel at the end of July, sending it on the
31st of that month to B. Greenwell, that his bird-stuffer ‘ might
have an opportunity of seeing a scarce British bird in the flesh.’

STORM PETREL.

Procellaria pelagica, L.

In bygone years we used to regard this Petrel as the most
frequent representative on our coasts, of the family to which it
belongs, and there can be no doubt that such it used to be.
Moreover it occurred inland on more numerous occasions than
the Fork-tailed Petrel. Whatever the reason may be, there
can be no doubt that this species has become rarer on our
coast than it was at one time, while the larger species has
visited us in larger numbers than was formerly the case. I
have seen specimens of this Petrel obtained all round our
coast, from the sands at Flookburgh to the mussel scars of
the Solway Firth, but the species appears to be less gregarious
than the Fork-tailed Petrel. It has been obtained locally in
all the winter months.

BIRDS 457

WILSON’S PETREL.
Oceanites oceanicus (Kuhl).

Mr. T. C. Heysham sent word to Yarrell of the occurrence of
a specimen of this Petrel, which 1s supposed to have been ob-
tained in Cumberland.t Unfortunately such papers of that
deceased naturalist as are forthcoming fail to throw any light
upon its history. There can, however, be no doubt that this
rare Petrel has occurred within our faunal regions in at least
two instances. In the year 1881 one of the servants at Castle-
steads found a dead Petrel which he took to his master, Captain
Johnson, by whom it was identified as a Wilson’s Petrel. Un-
luckily this specimen was too far gone for preservation, other-
wise Captain Johnson would have mounted it himself. The
other specimen was washed up dead on the north-west shore of
Walney Island in November 1890, and after being kept for a
day or two by the working-man who found it, was taken to
Williams, the Barrow blacksmith. It was then very far from
fresh, but he made a rough skin of it. The skin was subsequently
sent to Mr. O. Salvin, F.R.S., who kindly compared it with the
series of Oceanites oceanicus in the British Museum. Mr. Salvin
wrote to me that he found the measurements of this specimen ‘ to
be unaccountably small, the wing only measuring 4°9 in. instead
of 5:9.’ He adds, ‘Besides its small dimensions the Walney
Island bird has a square tail, but this varies, some specimens
having a slightly forked tail, others nearly or quite even. The
yellow mark on the webs of the feet is not nearly so well
marked as in the ordinary form. The amount of white on the
rectrices and on the under tail coverts is about the same as in
the rest. The plumage, generally, is dark, due to recent moult.’

FRIGATE PETREL,
Pelagodroma marina (Lath.).

I furnished the following notice of this bird to the Jbis of
October 1891 :—
‘After a severe gale in November 1890, a number of sea-
1 Yarrell, British Birds, vol. iii. p. 516, 1st ed.

458 VERTEBRATE FAUNA OF LAKELAND

birds which had been washed up dead on the outside of Walney
Island were collected and taken to Williams, a working black-
smith, of Barrow-in-Furness. It was Williams who received
the Spotted Eagle which was washed ashore at Walney in 1875
(cf. Mitchell, Birds of Lancashire, p. 109), and I know that he
has always been in the habit of stuffing a few of these birds;
for example, when visiting him in November 1888, I found his
house full of Guillemots and other birds that had just been
brought to him from Walney. On the present occasion the
birds brought to him were various, but being hardly con-
valescent from influenza, and out at his work all day, he only
skinned two Petrels,a Little Auk, and one other bird. He
skinned these birds as well as he could, for they were not fresh,
and put them by in a glass-topped box until I should call, which
was not until the beginning of the following July. He then
showed them to me, and offered to give them to me, as he con-
sidered that he could not mount such rough skins to his
satisfaction. I had great difficulty in inducing him to accept
half a sovereign for the birds, and he was then anxious to make
me a present of a white Twrdus iliacus, as he thought I was
paying him too much. I at once recognised the smaller Petrel
as Oceanites oceanicus; but not knowing the larger bird, I sent
the two skins to Mr. Osbert Salvin, F.R.S., just as I received
them, the sand of Walney still adhering to their feathers, espe-
cially to those of the smaller bird. Mr. Salvin, whose great
kindness I specially desire to acknowledge, has not only
identified the unknown bird as a typical example of Pelago-
droma marina, which he thinks may perhaps breed in the
Canary group, but has compared both skins with the British
Museum series, and has further favoured me with some very
valuable notes, of which I now avail myself.

‘ Pelagodroma marina was first noticed during Captain Cook’s
first voyage, and a specimen obtained on the 23d December
1768 in lat. 37° S., off the east coast of South America, about
opposite the mouth of the Rio de la Plata. It was sketched by
Parkinson, one of the artists who accompanied Captain Cook

1 The exact part of the island where the Petrels were found is the north-
western beach, nearly opposite the windmill.

(456 -9¢ VOY) HT a Wel «ow ea
Ut] Preyuey

BIRDS 459

and Sir Joseph Banks in the Endeavour. This sketch is now
in the British Museum, where it appears as “No. 13” under
Solander’s unpublished name Procellaria equorea, in a MS. volume
called Banks's Drawings. It then became the Frigate Petrel
of Latham’s Synopsis, and the Procellaria marina of the same
author’s Index Ormthologicus.

‘The bird is now known to have a wide range in the southern
hemisphere. Gould’s collector Gilbert discovered it breeding
on some of the small islands lying off Cape Leewin, south-
western Australia, in December, where he procured numbers of
its eggs as well as many examples of the adult birds. He also
met with it on a small island about three miles south of East
Wallaby Island in January, when the young birds were almost
ready to leave their holes (Gould, B. Austr. vol. vii. pl. 61)-
The most northern locality where P. marina has been observed
hitherto is the Canary Isles. Here it would appear to be not
common, though many observers have either procured specimens
or recognised it when flying over the sea.. The bird from
these islands was named Procellaria hypoleuca by Webb and
Berthelot. Mr. Salvin concludes his notes by remarking that
“the specimen from Walney Island agrees closely with ex-
amples from the South Seas and the Canary Islands now in the
British Museum.” I should be happy to submit the specimen
to any brother member of the B.O.U. who may entertain any
desire to see it.’

The man who found these birds subsequently left Barrow for
Girvan. A fisherman named Gillespie, still resident at Barrow,
saw the birds before they were taken to Williams, and says that,
though taken together to Williams, they were found washed up
on different days. As a matter of fact, the Wilson’s Petrel was
much staler than the other birds, and had probably been kept a
few days at least longer than the Frigate Petrel.

The lines which follow, and which not unfitly close this Book,
were composed by my friend the poet after examining the skin
of the above-mentioned Frigate Petrel :—

Whence, wanderer of the ocean, have you come?
Could not the sun’s perpetual glory please,
Where under waves of hyacinth, white trees

Of coral glance, where round the palm-roots foam

460

VERTEBRATE FAUNA OF LAKELAND

Slow beaming miles of emerald? Driven from home
By thirst of venture or in search of ease,
Did the great wind-blown river of the seas
‘Neglect your heart and bid you northward roam? ~
“Nay rather, deep within your snowy breast
There moved the wild solicitude of man,
The eager quest for something still beyond,
Till the kind fate to which we all are bound
Closed the keen eyes that would the distance scan,
And gave for storm and tempest calm and rest. —

H. D. RAWNSLEY.

Wook ChHitd.

REPTILIA.

Order OPHIDIA. Fam. COLUBRID.
COMMON SNAKE,

Tropidonotus natrix (L.).

In the extreme S.W. of Lakeland the Grass Snake is not
uncommon, Mr. W. Duckworth assures me that he can find
specimens any sunny morning in the neighbourhood of Ulverston,
and he has sent me ova of this Snake from the district, Among
the mountains this species becomes comparatively rare, but Mr.
Tom Duckworth met with single specimens at Stanley Gill,
Eskdale, and at Holm Rook near Gosforth. In the Eden valley,
as in the north of Cumberland, this Snake is extremely local, if
not rare. Mr. Tom Duckworth has met with specimens in the
Newby Cross woods, in which he also found eggs of 7. natria.
On single occasions he has seen specimens at Newlands, near
Carleton, and Black Moss Pool near Cotehill.

Order OPHIDIA. . Fam. VIPERIDZ.
Wh JE TR? J) 1B
Vipera berus, L.

The mosses in the neighbourhood of Morecambe Bay share
with those which fringe the Solway Firth the unenviable dis-
tinction of affording a tolerably safe asylum to large numbers of
Vipers. I have rarely visited any of our flows on a hot summer
day without coming across one or two individuals of the present

462 VERTEBRATE FAUNA OF LAKELAND

species, basking in the sunshine upon some heather-covered
prominence. The late Mr. Kirkby captured great numbers of
Vipers in the neighbourhood of Ulverston, and showed me some
pretty sections of their teeth under the microscope. His skill
in capturing these animals was very great. The occupation
appeared to have become his ruling passion.

Order LACHERTILIA. Fam. LACHERTIDZ.
COMMON LIZARD.

Lacerta vivipara, Jacq.

This Lizard occurs plentifully on many of the hedge banks,
especially in dry situations, both upon the coast and in the
interior of Lakeland. One of the brightest of the local
specimens that have come under my notice was captured
on a moor near Tebay. Lizards are often termed ‘ Asks’ and
‘Land Asks’ by country folk.

Order LACEHERTILIA. Fam. SCINCID.

SLOW-WORM.
Anguis fragilis, L.

To one accustomed to find the Slow-worm comparatively
numerous on the heaths of the south of England, this reptile
might appear to be rare in Lakeland. It is, however, local
rather than rare. If searched for carefully it would probably
be found in a good many localities. Thus it is not uncommon in
the neighbourhood of Appleby. Mr. Tom Duckworth has always
been accustomed to find the Slow-worm in the Corby woods.
I have not as yet seen a specimen from the heart of the Lake
Mountains. Mr. Jackson describes it as present in Martindale
New Forest, and his description seems to identify the animal
beyond a doubt. The name ‘Hagworm’ is applied in different
districts to the Slow-worm, the Viper, and the Common Snake.

a a ee it

AMPHIBIANS 463

AMPHIBIA.

Order BATRACHIA URODELA. Fam. SALAMANDRID.

GREAT CRESTED NEWT.

Triton cristatus, Laur.

This Triton is more local in Lakeland than in the south of
England, but I do not know that it can be termed uncommon
with us. It occurs in the neighbourhood of Carlisle and of
Appleby. I have not searched for it elsewhere.

SMOOTH NEWT.

Triton tenratus (Schneid.).

This Newt is common in the clay pits of brickfields and in
many of our ponds. It is an object of abhorrence to old-
fashioned country folk, who call it the ‘Water Ask.’ In
accordance with the traditions which are transmitted from one
generation to another in remote places, they believe this Newt
to be poisonous.

Order BATRACHIA ANURA. Fam. BUFONIDA.

COMMON TOAD.

Bufo vulgaris, Laur.

This Toad is often accredited with poisonous qualities by the
old wives of the fell villages. ‘In my boyish days,’ wrote the
late Dr. Gough, ‘a poor toad ... was subjected by rude
country lads to a barbarous sport called “spang-hewing,” 1.e. a
sudden blow upon a piece of wood on which the Toad was
placed, sent the reptile to a height of thirty or forty feet into
the air, the object being to rejoice over the harmless creature
falling stretched out dead upon the ground.’?

1 Personal Reminiscences of the Habits of Ammals, p. 16.

464 VERTEBRATE FAUNA OF LAKELAND

NATTERJACK TOAD.

Bufo calamita, Laur.

Dr. Heysham appears to have received a description of this
Toad from the English shores of the Solway Firth, but not to
have been able to verify the fact by personal investigation.
His cautiously expressed belief that this amphibian, so whim-
sical in its distribution in Great Britain, was found ‘upon the
sandy grounds, in the neighbourhood of Allonby,’ has been more
than justified by subsequent experience. Mr. Tom Duckworth
at one time knew a large colony of Natterjacks, established in
the neighbourhood of Silloth. He also captured a number of
specimens near Bowness on Solway. I have myself captured
examples at Silloth. Several Natterjack Toads have been
supplied to me during the last ten years from the kitchen
garden at Castletown. There, these Toads manifest a partiality
for the shelter afforded by the bottom of a thick yew hedge.
I am unable to say whether the Natterjack occurs in any
numbers on the west coast of Cumberland, but its presence in
the neighbourhood of Egremont was ascertained some years
ago, when a Natterjack was captured alive and sent for deter-
mination to Dr. TAnson of Whitehaven. It was exhibited by
that gentleman before the members of the Whitehaven Scientific
Association, and a correct description of the specimen went the
round of the local press.t The late Dr. Gough appears to have
been the first to ascertain the existence of this Toad in West-
morland. He stated in 1861 that the Natterjack was to be
found ‘in quarries on the lime-kilns on Kendal-fell.’ In the
year 1865 he presented two specimens of the Natterjack ‘from
Kendal-fell’ to the local museum.” From a MS. note left by
the same naturalist he appears to have found the Natterjack
abundant at Levens, Westmorland. As to the Lancashire
portion of Lakeland, I need only add that Mr. W. Duckworth
discovered a fine colony of Natterjacks near Ulverston in the
summer of 1888. :

1 Carlisle Journal, May 19, 1868.
2 Thirtieth Annual Report of the Kendal Literary and Scientific In-
stitution, p. 4.

REPTILES 465

Order BATRACHIA ANURA. Fam. RANIDZ.
COMMON FROG.

Rana temporaria, L.

This Frog shares the soubriquet of Paddock or Paddick with
the Common Toad, at any rate in the north of Lakeland. The
spawn of Frogs or Toads is ‘Paddick rud’ or ‘ Paddick rid.’
‘Star sleet’ is Frog spawn dropped on the ground.!

1 Dickinson, Cumberland Glossary, p. 93.

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Book Fourth.

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Order CHONDROPTERYGII. Fam. CARCHARIID.
COMMON TOPE.

Galeus canis, Bonap.

The commonest Dogfish on the N.W. coast of England is the
Tope, better known in Morecambe Bay as the ‘Fay Dog. At
Ravenglass it is usually called the ‘Blue-back’ or ‘Bastard
Shark.’ An example sent to me from Silloth in September
1890 measured about 17 inches; this, Mr. Nicol says, represents
the size of most of those that he has seen taken in the draught
net. He once saw a specimen measuring about 4 feet stranded
at Skinburness, but this is the only large one that he has seen.
Sometimes a dozen or even two dozen of this destructive fish
are taken by the draught nets in the waters of the English
Solway. The Peel fishermensassure me that they sometimes
use the rough skin of this fish for scrubbing purposes.

Order CHONDROPTERYGII. Fam. LAMNIDA.
PORBEAGLE.

Lamna cornubica, (Gm.).

The Morecambe Bay fishermen and those of the English
Solway assure me that Sharks of large dimensions are virtually
unknown in the waters which they fish; but upon the open
coast the capture of such fishes, though rare, is not unheard of.
Captain Wignall of Whitehaven caught a Porbeagle in a trawl
net off St. Bees, on the 30th of October 1889. My friend the

FISHES 467

Rev. R. Burn saw it soon after it had been landed, and with
admirable promptitude at once informed me of its arrival. I
went to Whitehaven by the next train and identified the animal,
which was examined by Dr. Welby I’Anson a little later. It
measured about 7 feet 9 inches in total length. Fortunately it
early became entangled in the net and did little damage to the
gear. While being hauled out of the water by the tail, this
Shark disgorged a quantity of Plaice and other flat fishes.
Wignall told me that he had caught a similar fish on the same
ground about five years earlier.

Order CHONDROPTERYGII. Fam. SCYLLIIDA.

SMALL-SPOTTED DOGFISH.
Scyllium canicula (L.).

The Whitehaven fishermen complain of the destructiveness
of this fish, but it 1s not usually numerous enough in our open
waters to do any great harm to their industry. It appears to
be almost unknown in the shallow waters of the estuaries.

Order CHONDROPTERYGII. Fam. SPINACIDZ.
PICKED DOGFISH.

Acanthias vulgaris, Risso.

This Dogfish, sometimes called the ‘ Bastard Shark,’ appears
to occur in sparing numbers on our coast; of late years, at all
events, it has not been very numerous. An example which
Cradock sent to me in July 1891, caught off Whitehaven,
measured 2 feet 3 inches. Heysham mentions in one of his
letters to Yarrell that a Picked Dogfish had been caught in
the river Caldew, November 26, 1828. <A local paper tells us
that the specimen in question was caught in Dentonholme
Caldew dam by a boy, who had observed the fish struggling in
a shallow pool. It measured 34 inches, and scaled 54 Ibs.}
It is curious that this marine fish should have wandered so far
from salt water as to reach Carlisle.

1 Carlisle Patriot, Nov. 28, 1828.

468 VERTEBRATE FAUNA OF LAKELAND

Order CHONDROPTERYGII Fam, RHINID.

ANGEL-FISH.
Rhina squatina (L.).

The Angel-fish or Monk has rarely been captured off the
N.W. coast of England. In the autumn of 1793, as Dr.
Heysham is careful to tell us, two examples of this species, a
male and female, were caught near St. Bees. Having been
‘dried and preserved,’ these specimens ‘were carried through
the country as a show.’ The male was subsequently placed in
Crosthwaite’s Museum at Keswick, but probably perished prior
to the final dispersion of that local collection in 1870. At all
events, it was not included in the sale catalogue. Dr. Welby
T’Anson has seen only one example of this fish, and that was
taken on somewhat the same ground as Dr. Heysham’s specimens.
It was caught in January 1884, and is preserved in the White-
haven Museum. The upper surface closely corresponds with
the figure given by Day, which is a good likeness.

Order CHONDROPTERYGII. Fam. TORPEDINID.

TOR? i D0:
Torpedo hebetans, Lowe.

This fish owes its inclusion in the Fauna of Lakeland to my
friend Dr. Welby I’Anson. He has met with two examples of
this species during his long residence at Whitehaven. These
specimens, curiously enough, were caught within two years of
one another, although they were taken by different fishermen.
The first Torpedo was caught off Whitehaven in October 1880,
and was brought ashore by the boat belonging to Mrs. Cowman.
A second example of this Ray was secured in the month of
November 1882. Dr. Anson preserved both the skin and the
soft parts of the second specimen for the Whitehaven Museum.
The cellular batteries of this fish render the soft parts a very
pretty preparation, the nerves having been dissected out with
great skill. Dr. l’Anson tells me that the acrid juice of this
fish blistered his hands as he skinned the specimen and pro-
duced a severe rash, the unpleasant irritation of which lasted
for several] days.

FISHES 469

Order CHONDROPTERYGII. Fam. RAJIDZ.
THORNBACK RAY.

Raja clavata, L.

Dr. Heysham wrote in 1796 that both Skate and Thornbacks
were plentiful on our coast, ‘but only of late years have been
used in this county as food.’ The fallacy of this impression is
self-evident. We have also documentary evidence which proves
that these fish were often served up at the tables of the county
gentry in the seventeenth century. The household accounts of
Lord William Howard supply many entries of Thornbacks
purchased from the local dealers. Thus, there stands in this
book (under date of January 1621) an entry: ‘A thornpyke
and scate, xv’ The price of Thornbacks varied in different
years from sixpence upwards, according to the supply and size.
Now-a-days many Thornbacks are taken in Morecambe Bay
and in the waters of the English Solway. Farren of Ravenglass
only sells the ‘wings’ of the Thornbacks. In the winter time
many of these fishes abandon the sandy shallows of the estuaries
and retire into deep water.

The fishermen of the English Solway are sometimes content to
send only the ‘wings’ of Skate to market, but their usual plan
is to make an incision on the lower surface of the fish and cut
out the head, leaving only a ring of cartilage as a sort of handle.
The liver of the Thornback varies in colour, being brown, grey,
or cream-coloured in the newly caught fish. I have seen an
astonishing quantity of shrimps taken out of a large Thornback.

STARRY RAY.

Raja radiata, Donov.

The Starry Ray, or, as they call it, the ‘Starr Ray’ is
occasionally captured by the Whitehaven fishermen. I received
an example of this fish on July 9, 1891, from Whitehaven,
Cradock, the fisherman who sent it to me, stated that he had
caught the fish the same morning. He added in his note that
‘The Starr Ray is a noted cure for sprains in the back or chest;
it must be boiled to a jelly, and rubbed well into the affected
parts when cold.’

470 VERTEBRATE FAUNA OF LAKELAND

COMMON SKATE.
Raja batis, L.

This Skate is well known to all our fishermen. In Morecambe
Bay it is called the ‘ Bluett,’ a name that obtains some currency
also among the fishermen of the English Solway. A good many
Skates are taken with lines off Ravenglass and Whitehaven in
the winter-time. The numbers of this species are considered to
have shown some falling off of late years, large examples having
been taken less frequently than formerly.

LONG-NOSED SKATE.

Raja vomer, Fries.

Joseph Farren tells me that he sometimes takes a large Skate,
with pointed bill, off Ravenglass in the winter-time, when
fishing with long lines; but since I asked him to send me a
specimen he has taken none. The only example that Mr. W.
Nicol ever saw taken in the waters of the English Solway was
caught in a stake-net set close to the Grune Point. The fish came
up the Solway in a strong current, the force of which, together
with its weight—30 lbs.—carried the Skate partly through the
net, cutting a gap in the net of about a foot. This example
agreed exactly with the figure of this species given by Couch.

Order GA NOIDEI. Fam. ACIPHENSERID.
STURGEON.

Acipenser sturio, L.

Sturgeon have long been recognised as summer visitors to the
Solway Firth, When William de Brus granted a fishery at
Horduf to the monks of Holmcoltram, he reserved to himself
and his heirs any Sturgeon or Whale (le graspes) that they
might secure. The owners of the fisheries of the English
Solway retained their rights to Sturgeon caught within their
fisheries until they found it more profitable to forego their
privileges—in the present century. The Sturgeon is not, in

1 Documents relating to Scotland, vol. i. p. 107.

FISHES 47]

fact, as valuable a fish as might be supposed. A Sturgeon
which weighed 114 stone was caught in the Eden, near Cargo,
on July 7, 1891. It was sold to a Carlisle tradesman, who
sent it to Manchester. It was there knocked down to a pur-
chaser for £2, 5s. The salesman deducted the incidental ex-
penses of his commission and the cost of transit, and sent the
fishmonger a cheque for the balance, which I saw, £1, 18s. 10d.
Consequently, the ‘ royal fish’ averaged a trifle under 4d. per
pound in open competition. I have not found any record of
Sturgeon being captured in our waters earlier than the month
of April. A Sturgeon which weighed 114 stone was caught in
the salmon nets at Kinggarth on April 27,1841. The months
of May, June, and July, are those in which this fish usually
visits our estuaries. The size of the Sturgeon taken by our
fishermen varies considerably. A Sturgeon caught off Chapel
Island in June 1842 weighed between 60 and 70 pounds.
Another, caught off Flimby in July 1850, weighed 17 stone,
and measured 8 feet 6 inches. Fish of 8 or 9 stone are not
very uncommon in the English Solway. Their condition at the
time of capture varies individually. They are often very
vigorous, and a blow of a struggling Sturgeon’s tail will cut a
man’s leg to the bone. They are generally taken in the haaf-
nets. Although we have no evidence of young Sturgeon having
been reared in any of our rivers, it appears probable that it is
the instinct of reproduction which impels Sturgeon to seek an
entrance to our fresh waters. A Sturgeon which Mr. Back-
house caught near Skinburness in the summer of 1891, proved,
on being opened, to contain a large quantity of roe.

Order ACANTHOPTERYGII. Fam. PERCID.

PERCH.
Perca fluviatilis, L.
The Perch has always been a common fish in Lakeland.
Adam Walker, who visited this part of England in 1792, found

that at Low Wood, on Windermere, boats, lines, and baits
were always ready for fishing Perch (called Bass here). ‘ This

AZ, VERTEBRATE FAUNA OF LAKELAND

social fish,’ he says, ‘ haunts particular places, particularly where
an aquatic vegetable grows called Meakin. This plant grows
to be 6 or 8 feet long, in water about 10 or 12 feet deep,
forming a curious wood. Over this wood the boat is fixed by
an anchor, or a great stone fastened to the end of a long rope,
and if the fishing party consist of Ladies and gentlemen, the
sport is excellent; for every one being equipped with a line and
hook, on which the bait is hung, a plummet sinks the bait near
to the bottom, and the fishers hold the lines in their hands
over the side of the boat. If the Perch are hungry, perhaps
three or four will bite at a time, giving the hand a shake
almost equal to an electric shock ; then are they drawn up, and
the struggling victims erect their sharp fins, so that the female
fishers dare not touch them; squalling and laughter in conse-
quence ensue—she holds her wet captive at arm’s length, who
sprinkles her all over with water, and occasions the most laugh-
able distress! I know of no pleasanter diversion than to make
one of a good-humoured fishing-party on this lake. 1 Just a
year later, in 1793, Richardson wrote the following note re-
garding the existence of Perch in Ulleswater: ‘Bass is the
usual name for them here; in an inquisition, taken in the time
of Queen Elizabeth, they are called Basse, Barce, and Barcelles,
They never go out of the lake ; they deposit their spawn among
weeds near the shore, where the water is deep, in the month of
May. It is frequently drawn up by the nets along with the
weeds, by which means myriads are destroyed. Some of these
fishes will weigh 5 lbs.’ Perch-fishing is s#iJJ a popular sport
araong the visitors to Windermere. In 1878 no fewer than
200 rods were kept at Bowness to be hired by tourists for
catching Perch. So abundant was this species that some local
anglers desired that Perch should be treated as vermin. When
Coniston was much polluted by water from the copper mine,
the Perch suffered less than the Trout. The finest Perch that
John Poole saw taken out of Windermere during an experience
of thirty years, weighed 4# lbs. Perch are sometimes drawn
up from the bottom of Windermere. Their bladders are then

1 Remarks made in a Tour from London to the Lakes, pp. 67, 68.
2 Hutchinson’s History of Cumberland, vol. i. p. 459.

FISHES 473

inflated and they cannot sink.1 The Perch is seldom taken in
our rivers. T.C. Heysham wrote to Yarrell on January 10,
1835, that the Perch was now and then taken in the Solway
Firth—washed down, no doubt, by heavy floods. <A loose note
shows that T. C. Heysham examined a Perch taken in the Eden
at Kinggarth, March 1849. It was in good condition. Mr.
H. Leavers has known several Perch to be captured in the Eden
of recent years.

BASSE.
Labrax lwpus (Lacép.).

The Morecambe Bay fishermen take a fair supply of Basse in
most summers in the stake-nets at Foulney, and in draught-nets.
A fish weighing 7 lbs. was caught near Greenodd in June 1891,
in a draught-net. This was a fine specimen, but Mr. Nicol
tells me that he has known this species to attain a weight of
13 lbs., and that examples scaling 7 lbs. are not very uncommon
in the Solway Firth. The Silloth Fishermen term this fish the
‘Perch.’ In spring and summer they capture Basse in their
draught-nets. In May and June it is sometimes taken in the
haaf-net. In winter Basse are sometimes caught on long lines
off Beckfoot. Mr. Hutchinson recently showed me a Basse
which he had received from the Duddon estuary. Joseph
Farren tells me that he catches fewer Basse than formerly in
the Ravenglass estuary.

Order ACANTHOPTERYGII. Fam. MULLID.

RED MULLET.
Mullus barbatus, L.

Red Mullet are well known to the Morecambe Bay fisher-
men, but they are not often captured on our coast. Specimens
captured in the waters of the Scottish Solway (on the Wigtown-
shire coast) have been exhibited before the Royal Physical
Society of Edinburgh.2 These, I find, belonged to the striped

' Report on the Fisheries of the English Lake District, p. 9.
2 Proc. Ryl. Phys. Soc., vol. iv. p. 43.

474 VERTEBRATE FAUNA OF LAKELAND

variety, surmuletus, L. . . . It is highly probable that the Red
Mullet which visit the N.W. coast of England represent the
same form.

Order ACANTHOPTERYGI. Fam. SPARIDA.

COMMON SEA-BREAM.
Pagellus centrodontus (De la Roche).

This is not a common fish in the waters of the English Solway,
but a few individuals are captured from time to time among
the ‘white fish. The figure given by Couch is excellent, but
the colour of this species fades rapidly when exposed to the
air. In the autumn of 1879 this small fish was comparatively
plentiful in the neighbourhood of Skinburness. Mr. Nicol
netted a considerable number in drawing a big hole beside a
mussel scar off the Grune Point. I have not as yet succeeded
in tracing this fish to Morecambe Bay.

Order ACANTHOPTERYGII. Fam. SCLEZ NID.
MAIGRE.
Sciena aquila (Lacép.).

The Whitehaven Museum possesses a stuffed specimen of the
Maigre, measuring between 4 and 5 feet in length. It was
captured by a fishing-boat in the neighbourhoood of White-
haven early in the year 1877. Dr. Welby I’Anson saw it in
the hands of the taxidermist. It was then flayed open, and the
operator was about to cook some Maigre steaks. This specimen
can always be seen at Whitehaven. It is the only Maigre that
we know to have been obtained on the N.W. coast of England.

Order ACANTHOPTERYGII. Fam. XIPHIID.
» WORDFEIS EF.
Xiphias gladius (L.),

Although the Swordfish is tolerably well known to the
Bowness fishermen, almost all the specimens that have been

FISHES 475

captured in the Solway Firth, including one very recent
specimen, have been taken in Scottish waters, probably owing
to the greater depth of channel on the Scottish side. But we
may fairly claim as a Lakeland fish the Swordfish that was
captured by an Annan fishing-boat off Silloth, August 31, 1876.
The fisherman who caught it in his ‘whemmle-net’ in the
channel between Silloth and Annan took it to Annan, where it
was exhibited to crowds at threepence a head. The Carlisle
Journal of September 5, 1876, states that this Swordfish
measured ‘fully eight feet in length, and the sword being
entire, it presents a very formidable appearance.’

Order ACANTHOPTERYGI., Fam. CYTTID.

JOHN DOREE.
Zeus faber, L.

During the summer of 1829 the waters of the English
Solway were visited by some Dories, and two small examples
were captured. They were identified by T. C. Heysham. The
first was caught upon the 19th of May, and weighed 18 oz.
Its length was 144 inches. The second specimen was taken on
the 12th of June. ‘This exceeded 17 inches in length, and
measured upwards of 32 0z.’! There is a specimen of the Doree
in the Whitehaven Museum. It was taken off that town in
1884. Dr. Welby TAnson preserved this specimen, and has
since seen a second from the same quarter. These are the only
specimens that have been authenticated of late years.

Order ACANTHOPTERYGII. Fam. SCOMBRIDZ,
MACKEREL

Scomber scomber, L.

This bright-bodied, ‘lish-looking’ fish rarely wanders up the
Solway Firth into brackish waters, but Dr. Heysham records
that his friend Dr. Blamire, once caught a Mackerel in the Eden

1 Mag. Nat. Hist. vol. v. p. 174.

476 VERTEBRATE FAUNA OF LAKELAND

near Rockliffe. The supply of Mackerel netted upon our open
seaboard has always varied from season to season. The Carlisle
Journal of June 21, 1834, announced that a very abundant
supply of Mackerel, of fine quality, had been caught off White-
haven during the previous week, and had in some cases been
sold as cheaply as three-halfpence each. In 1839 the Carlisle
Patriot of June 8 reported a catch of 228 Mackerel, taken off
Whitehaven, as the first of the season. Stragglers are often
taken on the line near Silloth.

Order ACANTHOPTERYGII. Fam. SCOMBRID.

GERMON.
Orcynus germo (Lacép.).

The Germon is the only species of fish which I have been
able to record as taken in British waters, north of the English
channel, for the first time. The specimen in question was found
stranded in a creek of Burgh marsh (which creek I visited soon
after) early in October 1889, by one of the Glasson fishermen.
It was in fine condition, and would have been cooked by its
owner, had not tidings of its occurrence reached James Smith.
Smith has a commission from me to secure any unusual fishes,
and on hearing of this fish he at once secured it. He came to
report it to me a few days later, and to say that he had made a
rough skin of it. It weighed 11 lbs. and possessed a very
beautiful eye. The long sickle-shaped fin convinced me that
our prize could only be referred to Thynnus alalonga; but, having
no material by me for comparison, I took the fish to the Natural
History Museum, where Mr. G. A. Boulanger kindly confirmed
my decision.

Although the Germon has occupied a place in the British list
for a long number of years, this appears to be only the fifth
example hitherto recorded from British waters, and to be con-
siderably more northern than the others, all four of which refer
to the coasts of Cornwall and Devon. The occurrence of the
Cumbrian specimen was recorded in that useful journal, The
Naturalist.

1 The Naturalist, 1890, p. 15.

FISHES Afi

BONITO.
Thynnus pelamys, C. and V.

A Bonito of twelve pounds weight was captured by a trawl
boat between Workington and Whitehaven in September 1856.
It was announced in the local papers as ‘a valuable addition to
the Fauna of Cumberland.’ The following are the dimensions
published. Length, 27 inches; girth, at the dorsal fin, 84
inches; from the caudal to the first dorsal, 18 inches; to the
second do., 10 inches; from the extremity of the upper jaw
to the operculum, 74 inches; from do. to the pectoral fin, 8
inches ; and to the ventral, 12 inches; from the caudal to the
ventral, 94 inches; length of dorsal fin, 7 inches, and height, 4
inches; from the nose to the eye, 24 inches. This fish was
purchased by the late Mr. R. Rook, who, after sketching it, pre-
sented the specimen to Mr. Wallace of Distington.

Order ACANTHOPTERYGII. Fam. TRACHINIDZ.

LESSER WEEVER.
Trachinus vipera, C and V.

In some seasons this fish is so numerous in the shallow waters
of the English Solway, as to be a source of great inconvenience
to the fishermen in sorting their shrimps, especially when that
operation is conducted by candle-light, for the ‘sting’ is
extremely painful. Hot salt water is locally considered to be
the best expedient for reducing the pain of a ‘sting.’ If stung
in the finger, as is usually the case, the fisherman ties a piece of
twine tightly round the finger above the puncture. This pre-
caution prevents the pain, which is very severe, affecting the
hand and arm. At one time, such numbers of these little
Weevers were caught off Cardunock, that they were boiled and
used to feed pigs. Curiously enough the flesh of this fish is
firm and wholesome. Fowls eat Weevers readily. An old man
who was pestered by cats tried to reduce their number by feeding
them on Viper Weevers, but he only became an object of increased
affection to the creatures of the goddess ‘Pasht.’ Weevers are
dangerous to bathers, because they bury themselves in the sand

478 VERTEBRATE FAUNA OF LAKELAND

to wait for their prey, and work their way into sand that is
tolerably hard. In June 1889 Mr. Nicol trawled as many as
six quarts of Weevers to eight or nine quarts of shrimps; but,
happily, these dangerous fishes are not often present in such
numbers. ‘They sometimes attain a length of six inches, but
average about three inches.

Order ACANTHOPTERYGII. Fam. PEDICULATTI.
ANGLER.
é Lophius piscatorius, L.

The Angler is by no means a rare fish in the waters of the
English Solway, but specimens of large size are seldom captured
in the nets. They are generally found stranded after heavy
weather at sea, and only at considerable intervals of time.
Small specimens, on the other hand, are taken almost every
year in the stake-nets set on the scars of the Solway to catch
Flounders. The colour of those taken on our coast is constantly
darker than in Couch’s figure. Mr. Nicol captured two small
examples in a trawl-net in May 1890. T.C. Heysham wrote
to Yarrell on the 13th of May 1835: ‘A few days ago I received
a specimen of the Common Angler (Lophius piscatorius) about
eight inches long.’ This notice occurs in the draught of a letter
written by Heysham to acknowledge the receipt of the second
and third parts of Yarrell’s British Fishes.

Order ACANTHOPTERYGII. Fam. COTTID.

RIVER BULLHEAD.
Cottus gobio, L.

This small fish is not uncommon in the smaller streams of
our lower grounds, which alone are suitable to its peculiar
requirements. Richardson supplies the information that the
name of ‘Tom Carle’ used to be applied to this fish upon the
Eamont.

FISHES 479

SHORT-SPINED SEA BULLHEAD.
Cottus scorpius, L.

The ‘ Father-lasher’ is a common species in the waters of the
English Solway. The finest example that I have examined
locally measured seven inches and a half. It was sent to me
by George Holmes of Bowness on Solway, in February 1891.

RED GURNARD.

Trigla cuculus, L.

This Gurnard is not very plentiful on our coast, but its
numbers vary from year to year. . In exceptional seasons Mr.
Nicol has himself taken a dozen specimens at one tide, but its
presence is uncertain in the waters of the English Solway.

GREY GURNARD.
Trigla gurnardus, L.

Dr. Heysham remarked of this and the preceding species,
‘Both these species are rare, but a more extended inquiry would
have convinced him that the present is one of the commoner
fishes of our west coast. ‘The young fry of this Gurnard occur
in some numbers in the shallow waters of the Solway, west of
the Grune. The adults are frequently caught in deeper waters,
as off Whitehaven.

Order ACANTHOPTERYGII. Fam. CATAPHRACTI.

POGGE.

Agonus catawphractus (L.).

This is one of our common fishes, frequently caught in the
shrimping nets off Silloth, occasionally secured likewise in the
sparling nets. |

480 VERTEBRATE FAUNA OF LAKELAND

Order ACANTHOPTERYGII. Fam. DISCOBOLL.

LUMPSUCKER.
Cyclopterus lumpus, L.

The Lumpsucker is sufficiently intermittent in its appearances
in the nets of our fishermen to have induced several of their
number to send specimens to me for identification. It is, how-
ever, a comparatively common fish in our shallow waters, visit-
ing Morecambe Bay as well as the English Solway. Mr. W.
Duckworth has occasionally eaten examples of the Lumpsucker,
while in earlier times this fish was frequently supplied for the
table of Lord William Howard, being entered in his accounts as
the ‘pad,’ ‘sea pad,’ and ‘lump.’ Dr. Heysham calls it the
‘Lumpfish’ or ‘Sea Owl,’ but the fishermen of the English
Solway generally apply the title of ‘Sea hen’ to this species.

UNCTUOUS SUCKER

Inparis vulgaris, Flem.

This small fish frequents the shallows of the English Solway,
and is often captured in the shrimp-nets. In life the Sucker of
this species is strongly adhesive, so that an Unctuous Sucker
will readily adhere to a finger, The white streaks of Couch’s
figure are more pronounced than in our local specimens.

MONTAGU’S SUCKER,

LInparis montaguz (Donov.).

This small fish is not unfrequently captured in the shrimping
nets of the English Solway during the summer season.

Order ACANTHOPTERYGII. Fam. GOBIIDZ.
SLENDER GOBY.

Gobius gracilis, Jenyns.

This Goby is common in the shallow waters of the English
Solway, and is frequently taken by shrimpers. Its local name
is the ‘ Groundling.’

FISHES 48]

WHITE GOBY.

Latrunculus albus (arden)

This small species has often been taken in the shrimp-nets of
the Silloth fishermen. Whether it visits the waters of More-
cambe Bay, I cannot say.

DRAGON ET.
Callionymus lyra, L.

A female specimen was brought to me recently, taken in
the English Solway in May 1890 by Mr. Nicol, who had met
with several others. In 1889, for example, he caught a couple
of these fishes in his shrimp-net, fishing in shallow water on a
sandy bottom. T. C. Heysham informed Yarrell that a single
specimen ‘was captured in the Solway Firth not far from Car-
dunock, on the 6th of April 1834.’

Order ACANTHOPTERYGII. Fam. BLENNIIDA.

SHANNY.
Blennius pholis, L.

The Shanny is of occasional occurrence among the various
small fishes taken in the shrimp nets near Silloth. I have a
specimen of this species taken in that locality by Mr. W. Nicol,
and expect to find that it is fairly common, as time goes on.

BUTTERFISH.

Centronotus gunellus (L.).

This Blenny is not very abundant in the shallow waters of
the English Solway, but it is always present with us. Mr,
Nicol tells me that he gets two or three specimens every season.
It is locally known as the ‘ Cat-fish.’

482 VERTEBRATE FAUNA OF LAKELAND

VIVIPAROUS BLENNY.

Zoarces viviparus, L.

This species was first recorded from the English Solway in
the year 1837. Writing to Yarrell on the 29th of March 1839,
T. C. Heysham remarked: ‘On Saturday last I also met with
three specimens of the Viviparous Blenny, a fish I have never
seen in our market before. I have them preserved in spirits,
but I fear this species is much too common to be of any service
to you.’ Dr. l’Anson has obtained this fish near Whitehaven.

Order ACANTHOPTERYGII. Fam. MUGILID.

LESSER GREY MULLET.
Mugil septentrionalis, Giinth.

Whether more than one species of Grey Mullet visits the
coast of Lakeland remains to be determined. The specimens
which have been taken in the waters of the English Solway
belong to this form. Dr, Heysham wrote in 1796: ‘The mullet
is a very good fish, but is not frequently met with upon our coasts.
There was one in the market in the beginning of June which
weighed two pounds.’ Farren tells me that the Grey Mullet
which he nets on the Ravenglass estuary run up to three and
four pounds. He considers that the local supply of Grey Mullet
has decreased of late years. All the Morecambe Bay fishermen
with whom I have discussed the habits of this fish dwelt upon
the adroit efforts made by shoals of Mullet to leap over the edge
of their encircling nets. Mullet are often taken in the sound
between Barrow and Walney.

Order ACANTHOPTERYGII. Fam. GASTROSTEID.

THREE-SPINED STICKLEBACK.

Gastrosteus aculeatus, L.
The typical form of this Stickleback is common in our brooks

and ditches. The marine form, G. trachurus, the Rough-tailed
Stickleback, is often taken in the shrimp-nets in the waters of

FISHES 483

the English Solway. The finest specimen that I have by me at
present measures exactly 3 inches. The late Captain Kinsey
Dover procured some examples of the Four-spined Stickleback,
G. spinulosus, in the vicinity of Keswick.

TEN-SPINED STICKLEBACK.
Gasterosteus pungitius, L.

As long ago as 1793 the Rev. W. Richardson recorded this
species as found ‘in this lake [Ulleswater] and the rivulets.’
He adds that the local name was ‘ Prickly Dick.’

FIFTEEN-SPINED STICKLEBACK.
Gasterosteus spinachia, L.

This Stickleback is a summer visitant to the waters of the
English Solway. Its numbers vary from season to season; at
times it may be termed plentiful. |

Order ANACANTHINI. Fam. GADID.
CODFISH.

Gadus morrhua, L.

The fishermen of the English Solway rely to no small extent
upon their ‘takes’ of this fish as a means of procuring a sub-
sistence for their families. Codfish vary so much in condition
according to age and other factors of growth, as to suggest
the employment of several local synonyms. When such terms
have once become fixed, their transmission from one generation
to another follows almost as a matter of course. We therefore
find without surprise that the Naworth Household Bocks contain
some specimens of the peculiar phraseology at present employed
by our fishermen. ‘ Keelings,’ for example, were often purchased
for the Howards. The editor of the reprinted accounts
correctly remarks that ‘ Keeling or Killing is the name given to
Cod of a large size.’ Charles Waugh wrote in 1806 that ‘ there
are two species of this fish; that which is of the brownest

484 VERTEBRATE FAUNA OF LAKELAND

colour on the back is most esteemed. There are some so large
as to weigh twenty pounds. But they are so well known in
the markets that I think I need describe them no further.’ !
The term is now chiefly applied to large Codfish which are out
of condition. So I am informed, at least, by Mr. W. Nicol,
who speaks with authority as a representative fisherman.
Another name applied to Cod in the Naworth accounts is
‘Bodling,’ upon which the Rev. G. Ornsby volunteers an amusing
note: ‘Dr. Simpson, Vicar of Kirkby-Stephen, tells me that
this is a fish which is found in Wastwater, more especially at
the head of that lake, and still known in the neighbourhood by
the name of Bott-ling. I learn from William Jackson, Esq. of
Fleatham House, St. Bees, that it is a mule between the salmon
and the fresh-water trout. All are males. It is only found
where the water is frequented by salmon, never in the
mountain tarns where salmon cannot get. In Scotland it is
called the bull-trout. Its scientific name is Salmo ferox.’ ”
Charles Waugh states that the Bodling ‘is smaller than the
Keeling, and thicker towards the tail; they are caught from
one pound to nine or ten pounds’ weight. It is also of the Cod
species. ? Mr. Nicol tells me that the ‘ Bodling’ represents the
best quality of the white fish caught at Silloth, and runs from
seven to twelve pounds in weight. The term ‘Robbin’ is fre-
quently entered in the same accounts, but the editor does not
seem to have ventured any suggestion as to its meaning.
Charles Waugh writes that the ‘Robin’ (sic) is a small Cod:
‘Seldom exceeding one pound and a half or two pounds
weight ; it is thick and short in the body, but drops suddenly
small towards the tail. The back-bone, when taken out, seems
as if it had been broken and grown together again.’* Dr. Day
says that the members of the Cod family appear to be very
susceptible to disease of the vertebral column. Mr. Nicol tells
me that the ‘Robbin’ or ‘Robin’ is a deformed-looking fish,
often taken at the end of the winter fishing. He caught two or

1 Fisherman’s Defence, p. 64.

2 The Household Books of Lord William Howard, p. 78.
3 Fisherman’s Defence, p, 64.

4 1b. ctt., p.

FISHES 485

three examples in the trawl-nets in the spring of 1891. The
Whitehaven fishermen depend upon their ‘ takes’ of Codfish for
a large part of their maintenance; the same may be said with
regard to the fishing communities of Morecambe Bay. Dr.
Heysham has placed on record the interesting fact, that Codfish
were sometimes taken so numerously on the Cumbrian coasts
a hundred years ago, as to be sold at Carlisle market at the
surprisingly low rate of one halfpenny a pound.

HADDOCK.
Gadus eglefinus, L.

The Haddock is not often taken in the higher waters of the
English Solway, but in some seasons the species is common on
our open coast. Some Haddock were taken west of Silloth in
the first months of 1892. Dr. Heysham wrote that ‘the Haddock
is seldom met with on the Cumberland coast. What we see
are generally sent from Newcastle. Such numbers, however,
were taken during this present autumn [1796] near St. Bees,
that they were sold at Whitehaven for a penny or three half-
pence a pound.’

WHITING.

Gadus merlangus, L.

This is not a very abundant fish in our waters, but a few
Whiting are netted every year in Morecambe Bay and in the
lower waters of the English Solway. Those which I have seen
caught were netted west of Silloth. The fishermen called them
‘Silver Whiting.’

POLLACK.
Gadus pollachius, L.

I have never yet met with Pollack in the waters of the
English Solway proper, but the sandy channels are entirely
unadapted to the requirements of this fine fish. Some suitable
ground for Pollack fishing exists between St. Bees and White-
haven, and there good sport may be obtained with the ‘ Sand-eel.’
The local name of this fish is the ‘ Kellat.’

486 VERTEBRATE FAUNA OF LAKELAND

COAL-FISH.
Gadus virens, L.

This is a common fish upon our coast in all stages, from the
fry, which are often caught in the shrimp-nets, to the fully
mature fish chiefly obtained on the open portions of our coast.
Some individuals are taken in the docks with hook and lines.
The Coal-fish is known to our fishermen as the ‘ Green-back ’ or
‘ Bluffin.’ |

HA K E.
Merluccius vulgaris, Flem.

The Hake has not been taken, to my present knowledge, in
the shallow waters of the English Solway, nor can I record it as
taken within the limits of Morecambe Bay, but it occurs spar-
ingly upon our open sea-board. Dr. Welby I’Anson writes to
me that ‘the Hake is occasionally found on this coast [ie. off
Whitehaven], but is regarded by the fishermen as an “ escape ”
from the Irish coast where they catch it in great numbers.’

GREATER FORKBEARD.
Phycis blennioides (Briinn.).

T. C. Heysham informed Yarrell of specimens taken in the
Solway Firth in December 1833 and March 1836. He also
wrote to Yarrell on the 29th of March 1837, reporting the
occurrence of a third specimen in the following words: ‘ On the
14th inst. I received a fine specimen of the Great Forkedbeard
(Phycis furcatus) which had been taken in the Solway Firth the
day previous. I have to beg your acceptance of this rarity,
which I have already sent in a box to your friend Mr. H.
Doubleday, who I make no doubt will deliver it safely to you
the first opportunity ; and which I trust will prove acceptable.
When the fish was first brought to me, the sides above the
lateral line were strongly tinged with reddish pink.’ Dr. Anson
secured an example caught off St. Bees, May 24, 1892: it
measured 234 inches, and weighed nearly 5 Ibs. |

FISHES 487

LING.
Molva vulgaris, Flem.

Ling are commonly taken on the long lines during the
spring months, together with Cod and Skate. The presence of
large examples in our shallower waters is rather exceptional.
Mr. W. Nicol sent me a Ling measuring rather more than four
feet on the 22d of April 1892. He had taken it in his trawl-
net fishing off Skinburness.

THREE-BEARDED ROCKLING.
Motella tricirrata (B1.).

Dr. Heysham included this species in his catalogue without
remark, but his son reported to Yarrell an example which: he
found exposed for sale in the Carlisle market on the 14th of
March 1833. A _ pencilled note, written on the margin of a
leaf of a copy of Yarrell’s British Fishes belonging to the Carlisle
library, records that ‘a specimen caught in the Solway Firth
was exhibited in Carlisle market January 22, 1858, measuring
16 inches in length.’ The Carlisle Patriot says that the example
in question was taken near Browhouses. Bell of Glasson
caught one in the sparling nets in the very same part of the
estuary in October 1888. Mr. Nicol has taken several other
specimens in his shrimping-nets near Silloth. I have not
examined any examples from the open coast, but Mr. Newton
presented to the Kendal museum a Three-bearded Rockling
which had been caught at Silverdale in December 1866.

TADPOLE HAKE.
Raniceps trifurcus (Walb.).

The only example of this fish that we know to have been
caught in our faunal waters has been preserved by Dr. Welby
TAnson, It was caught near Whitehaven in the year 1887.

488 VERTEBRATE FAUNA OF LAKELAND

Order ACANTHOPTERYGII. Fam. OPHIDIIDZ.
GREATER SAND-LAUNCE.

Ammodytes lanceolatus, Lesauv.

This fish must be comparatively rare in the waters of the
English Solway, at least Mr. W. Nicol has very rarely met with
it, although constantly engaged in fishing. On ene occasion
Mr. Nicol picked up a Greater Sand-Launce which had been
washed up upon the sand. He caught another in a haaf-net,
but it contrived to make its escape.

LESSER SAND LAUNCE.

Ammodytes tobianus, L.

This is an abundant species in Morecambe Bay, indeed it is
well represented in all our estuaries. The Terns which nest at
Ravenglass feed their young upon ‘ Sand-eels’ to a considerable
extent. The species is frequently taken in the shrimp-nets of
the Silloth fishermen.

Order ANACANTHI. Fam. PLEHURONECTIDZ.

HOLLER. TF.
Hippoglossus vulgaris, Flem.

Dr. T’Anson assures me that the Holibut is very seldom
taken by the Whitehaven boats. The Cumberland Pacquet
furnishes particulars of a large specimen caught in the year
1849: ‘A fine Holibut, a fish that rarely appears on this coast,
and which is nearly or quite equal in flavour and delicacy to
Turbot, was caught on Wednesday last by the fishermen be-
longing to one of the boats of Messrs. Wilson of Tangier Street,
Whitehaven, and the Isle of Man. It weighed no less than 9
stone, 2 lbs., and measured in length 5 feet 9 inches, and
breadth 2 feet. This we believe is the second Holibut which
has been taken in the vicinity of Whitehaven for some years
past. The fish, we understand, was forwarded by Messrs.
Wilson to Liverpool.’ +

1 Reprinted in the Carlisle Patriot, May 26, 1849.

FISHES 489

TURBOT.
Rhombus maximus (L.).

The Turbot is comparatively scarce in our waters. Those
taken in the waters of the English Solway of late years have
been uniformly small. Mr. Nicol recollects certain seasons in
which a few small Turbot, scaling from half a pound to a
pound and a half each, have been taken in the shrimp-nets
during a week of night-fishing ; perhaps half-a-dozen fish might
be taken during the five nights. On the other hand, there
are many seasons in which scarcely any Turbot make their
appearance. In former days, when our channel was deep, large
Turbot were sometimes taken off Silloth; indeed Mr. Nicol
himself once assisted in capturing a large Turbot. The fisher-
men noticed the mark which this big Turbot left in the sand
(technically called a ‘ Fluke-bed’) for several days. Having
thus learnt its exact habits, they set a ‘row-net’ (4 feet deep,
and furnished with pockets) in such a way that the Turbot
entered the engine and was secured.

BRILL
Rhombus levis (L.).

Under the title of ‘ Brett,’ which is still applied to this fish
by the fishermen of the English Solway, the Brill was often
supplied to the household of Lord William Howard, especially
in Lent. That this fish was then held in good esteem appears
certain from the fact that individual Brills commanded a price
of eighteenpence and two shillings each. The Brill taken in
the English Solway run up to about half-a-pound weight. In
some seasons they are numerous. The fishermen reckon that
when Brill are plentiful, Plaice are scarce. [Brill have been
very scarce of late years, but Mr. Nicol once took three stone
weight of Brill with a short draught-net at one tide.

490 VERTEBRATE FAUNA OF LAKELAND

MULLER’S TOPKNOT.
Rhombus punctatus, Bl.

Recent research has failed thus far in detecting this small fish
upon the coast-line of Lakeland; a misfortune which renders it
necessary to fall back upon an undated note in T. C. Heysham’s
handwriting. This fragment, inscribed in weird and mysterious
characters upon a tiny morsel of paper, informs us that T. C.
Heysham owed his opportunity ‘of examining a specimen of
this scarce fish to the kind attention of Mrs. Miller of our
[Carlisle] fish market, who received it from Cardunock on
Saturday last.’ The remainder of the note recapitulates the
well-known distinctions between the present species and Bloch’s
Topknot.

iP VAN TG:
Pleuronectes platessa, L.

Dr. Heysham quaintly remarks that ‘the plaise (sic) is
very plentiful;’ but the fish taken inshore are chiefly small.
There is an old saying, still current among the fishermen of the
English Solway, that ‘ Plaice improve as the grass grows.’ It is
certain that they improve in condition as the season of spring
advances, probably because they obtain an increased and superior
supply of food as the temperature rises. Their colour varies
with the ground upon which they live. The upper surfaces of
those caught upon mussel scars are much darker than in such
Plaice as have been taken off clean sand. Plaice are usually in
better condition during the winter months than the Flounder.
The ova of the Plaice hatch in April in our waters. The newly-
hatched young are of a reddish colour. 7

COMMON DAB.
Pleuronectes limanda, L.

This Dab is very plentiful in the English Solway waters in
some seasons, while in others few are seen. It was scarce, for
example, in the summers of 1890 and 1891. This Dab arrives
in our shallow waters in the spring of the year, and lies upon

FISHES 491

sandbanks like the Plaice. It is frequently captured in the
- draught-net, but does not attain large dimensions. A fish of
half a pound weight is considered a fine Dab, Dr. Heysham
wrote: ‘We now and then see a few of this species in
our market among flounders. They are small, but delicate
food.’

SMEAR DAB.

Pleuronectes microcephalus, Donov.

This species arrives in our shallow waters at the beginning
of spring. The first example caught by the Silloth fishermen
in 1892 was taken on the 20th day of April, a solitary specimen.
I received it the same evening. When the present species is
numerous, the Sole is generally scarce.

FLOUNDER.
Pleuronectes flesus, L.

Large numbers of ‘fresh-water flounders’ of all ages are
netted in the waters of Morecambe Bay; many are taken at
Ravenglass, and the species abounds in the waters of the English
Solway, ascending the Eden in its wanderings a couple of miles
above Carlisle. The custom, time-honoured, of spearing Floun-
ders or ‘flukes’ is still observed as a pleasant and even profitable
pursuit upon the Solway, especially in the Waver and Wampool,
together with their tributary creeks. The young are often
taken in the shrimp-nets, but they are not so tenacious of life as
young Plaice. The Flounders which feed on small shellfish,
after the habit of Plaice or ‘ salt-water flounders,’ are larger and
of better colour than those which subsist upon the inferior and
muddy fare of the creeks which drain the salt marshes.

SOLE.

Solea vulgaris, Quensel.

The shallow waters of the English Solway seem to have been
designed as a natural nursery for baby Soles, but the fry
measuring from three to four inches in length are destroyed

499 VERTEBRATE FAUNA OF LAKELAND

wholesale by the shrimp-nets, although the fishermen show the
most praiseworthy desire to reduce to a minimum the destruction
of the young of this and other food-fishes. I have seen fine
Soles trawled off Beckfoot. Fish of good quality are frequently
taken in Morecambe Bay. On the whole, however, the Sole is
scarcer with us than it was some years ago. Those sold in
Whitehaven are chiefly taken by our own boats off the coast of
Wigtownshire.
LEMON SOULE.

Solea aurantiaca, Giinth.

The Lemon Sole arrives in the inshore waters of the English
Solway towards the end of April and the beginning of May.
It is less abundant than the common Sole. Those which I have
seen netted were fishes for which we trawled in the Firth to
the west of Silloth.

Order PH YSOSTOM]. Fam. CYPRINID.

COMMON CARP.
Cyprinus carpio, L.

The Carp exists only at Whin’s Pond and in a few other
waters to which it has been intentionally introduced. Dr.
Heysham wrote that in his time the largest Carp were to be found
in Tarn Wadalayne (or Wadling), drained in the year 1858.
Jefferson alludes to the same fact, stating on the authority of
the Carlisle Journal, that on June 24th, 1815, some men
employed at Armathwaite Castle ‘took in Tarn Wadling two
Carp of extraordinary dimensions, each being about 24 inches in
length and 143 inches in girth.’!

GUDGEON.
Gobio fluviatilis, Flem.
Careful inquiries have failed to bring to light any evidence of
the presence of the Gudgeon in the northern portion of Lake-
land. Mr. Hutchinson possesses a specimen caught on a recent
occasion in the Kent at Force Falls. This, he is disposed to
1 Leath Ward, p. 218.

FISHES 493

think, may have entered the river from the Kendal and Lan-
caster canal, in which Gudgeon were tolerably plentiful ten or
twelve years ago, though now rare, owing to the action of the
Pike which infest the same waters.

ROACH.
Leuciscus rutilus (L.).

The Roach is included in Dr. Heysham’s list without any
particulars. Mr, W. Patrickson of Crosby wrote to the younger
Heysham on September 3, 1841, that he sent him some fishes
which his men had captured when ‘drafting the Irthing,’ in-
cluding ‘3 roaches (I suppose I name them properly).’ The
recipient duly acknowledged the present, and agreed that the
Roach were correctly identified. One of T. C. Heysham’s
scrappy notes, dated March 21, 1849, records the receipt of a
Roach of 13 inches, forwarded by Mr. Ralph and taken in the
Eden. Mr. Tom Duckworth caught small Roach in the Eden
opposite to Stanwix church until 1868, when he gave up fishing.
Mr. Hutchinson informs me that at the present time Roach
fairly swarm in the canal at Kendal. Mr. Duckworth says the
Carlisle canal also swarmed with Roach. Parnell says, ‘In the
Solway Firth I saw in the month of June five examples taken
in the salmon-nets, and I was informed by the fishermen there
that in the early part of the season they frequently captured
them after a flood.’ ?

CE Ur:

Leuciscus cephalus (L.).

This coarse fish is only too abundant in some of our fresh
waters, particularly in the river Eden, where it is the béte noire
of all good fishermen and consequently destroyed whenever
possible. The drug employed for ‘skelly fuddling’ is the
Cocculus indicus. This is prepared by being mixed with flour
and water; the composition is half baked into a soft cake, of
sufficient consistency to enable it to hold together in the water.

alem. Wern. Soc., vii. p. 268.

494 VERTEBRATE FAUNA OF LAKELAND

The cake is then broken up and the pieces thrown into the
water ; many stones of Chub sometimes succumb to this treat-
ment. In the Eden the name of Chub is quite unknown, the
fish being invariably distinguished as the ‘Skelly.’ At Ulles-
water, it was known to Richardson as the ‘Chevin.’ Pennant
wrote of the Esk: ‘This river is inhabited by trouts, parrs,
loches, minnows, eels, and lampries; and, what is singular,
the chub, which with us loves only the deep and still waters
bounded by clayey banks.’ }

DACKE.

Leuciscus vulgaris, Flem.

Mr. Tom Duckworth tells me that a few Dace exist in the
lower waters of the river Eden. They are found about Cargo
and near Eden bridges. To the best of his belief, there were
no Dace in the Eden when he was a boy; but when the species
was introduced, or by whom, he does not know.

RUDD,

Leuciscus erythrophthalmus (L.).

The only locality from which I have seen Rudd is Whinfell
Tarn, near Kendal. JI learn from Mr. G. A. Hutchinson that
‘this fish simply swarms in Whinfell Tarn, and towards dusk
they come to the surface to feed in small shoals, when they are
very easily taken with a paste bait. Mr. Severs told me some
time ago that he caught one weighing 2? lbs., which he sent
to London.’

MINNOW.

Leuciscus phoxinus (L.).

Now, as in Dr. Heysham’s time, the Minnow ‘is plentiful in

all our rivers.’ This fish is in some request as bait among the
anglers of Windermere.

1 A Tour in Scotland, vol. ii. p. 88.

FISHES , 495

DENCH,

Tinca vulgaris, Cuv.

This fish appeared in Dr. Heysham’s list of 1796, but with-
out remark. A note, possibly penned by the younger Heysham,
appeared in the Carlisle Journal of November 3, 1827: ‘Tench
(Cyprinus tinca, Linn.). A small fish of this species was
caught on Thursday the 25th of October, with a rod and line,
in the river Eden, a little below the bridge. It weighed 74
oz., and had only one cirrhus or beard at one of the corners of
the mouth. This fish, although common in many parts in
ponds and stagnant waters, is very rarely taken in rivers.’
Heysham told Yarrell in 1835 that the Tench was ‘ occasionally
taken in Solway Firth and now and then in river Eden.’ The
only locality in Westmorland reported to hold Tench is Whin-
fell Tarn, near Kendal. Mr. Hutchinson informs me that,
about four years ago, a farmer netted a couple of large Tench
in the tarn just mentioned: ‘they were sent down to Kendal,
and weighed a trifle over 7. lbs. between them.’

BREAM.

Abramis brama (L.).

Writing to Yarrell on January 10, 1835, Mr. T. C. Heysham
communicated a short note upon this species: ‘Common Bream
(Abramis brama). I received a specimen of this fish on
February 21, 1831; another on May 12, 1832, both taken on
the coast in the vicinity of Bowness.’ I have not been able to
obtain any recent specimens, although the Bream is credibly
reported to frequent the waters of the river Esk. Yarrell states
that ‘the lakes of Cumberland produce large quantities of Bream
of great size. 1 Dr. Day copies the statement, volunteering:
‘Here it is local in its distribution, being found in the lakes of
Cumberland.’? I believe this assertion to be a pure romance,

1 British Fishes, 1836, vol. i. p. 335.
* The Fishes of Great Britain and Ireland, vol. ii. p, 196.

496 VERTEBRATE FAUNA OF LAKELAND

LOACH.
Nemachilus barbatulus (L.).

The Loach is found commonly in our streams. Richardson,
who was well acquainted with the species, wrote: ‘We saw one
in the Vennet in Westmorland, measured 5 inches; the largest
here not more than 4,... Vulgarly, Lob-loache.’ Dr. Heysham
had evidently no personal knowledge of this species, for he
follows Richardson in a carefully guarded sentence: ‘This species
is found in the Kamont and small streams near Ulleswater.’ As
a matter of fact, it was quite as common in the Petteril and other
streams near Carlisle, but he had probably not troubled to look
for it. Mr. Tom Duckworth assures me that the Loach is an
excellent bait for catching eels. |

Order PH YSOSTOMI. Fam. SCOMBRESOCID. —
GAR-FIS H.

Belone vulgaris, Flem.

Dr. Heysham includes the Gar-fish as ‘now and then taken
on our sea-coasts.’ It is not uncommon on our open seaboard,
but is rare in the higher waters of the English Solway. George
Holmes sent me a fine specimen from Bowness in May 1891.
Mr. J. N. Robinson obtained a male and female which had
entered the mouth of the Eden together, apparently that the
female might spawn in fresh or brackish water, some three
years earlier. Dr. Welby I’Anson has met with specimens at
Whitehaven, but he considers it scarce in his neighbourhood.

pA WY:

Scombresox saurus (Walb.).

In January 1891 Dr. Welby Anson showed me a specimen
which he had obtained a short time previously from a small
boy, who caught it with a hook and line when fishing off the
quay at Whitehaven. It was the first that Dr. Anson had
seen, so we must infer that the species is rarely captured at
Whitehaven. Mr. Nicol has found three different examples,
washed up on the sands of the English Solway during winter.

FISHES 497

Order PH YSOSTOMI. Fam. HSOCIDZ.
PPE,
Esox lucius, L.

All food-fishes were held in more or less estimation in the
middle ages. The Pike among the rest was highly valued. A
warrant of Edward 1., dated September 25, 1298, authorised
Robert de Clifford to allow the Bishop of Carlisle to have sixty
jacks to stock the moats of Carlisle Castle: ‘E. par la grace
Dieu, etc., a nostre foial a loial Robert de Clifford, justice de
nostre forest de cea Troute, saluz. Nous vous mandours ge
Vevvesque de Cardoill suffrez prendre seyssante pikerels en
nostre lay, qi est apele le lay Kybraid, qi est dedens les bundes
de nostre forest d’Englewode, pour estorer eut nos fosses entour
le chastell de Cardoill.’! Edward 11, in 1319, ordered John de
Crumbwell, keeper of Ingelwode forest, to give John, Bishop of
Carlisle, fifty pikerels from the lake of Ternewathelau [| = Tarn
Wadelyn| to stock his vivaries at ‘la Rose.’? These fishes were
most likely placed in the ‘ Bishop’s Lough’ in Dalston parish.
Pike run to a large size in several of the lakes, notably in
Windermere, in Bassenthwaite, in Derwentwater. A Pike of
34 lbs. was caught in Bassenthwaite in July 1861.2 Mr. Hut-
chinson tells me that the finest fish that he has seen were
taken in Killington Reservoir.

Order PH YSOSTOWNI. Fam. SADLMONID.
SALMON.

Salmo salar, L.

The Salmon, which essay to leap the falls of our Lakeland
rivers, like the Stags which crop the grass and heather of the
fells that flank the shores of Ulleswater, belong to a race which
played an important part in the early history of this region.
Both the Salmon and the Red Deer have afforded noble sport
to many successive generations of hardy huntsmen and patient
fishermen ; both the one and the other have been the cause of

1 Papers and Letters from the Northern Registers, p. 137.
2 Documents relating to Scotland, vol. iil. p. 123.
> Carlisle Journal, June 19, 1861.

21

498 VERTEBRATE FAUNA OF LAKELAND

frequent law-suits; but while the Red Deer have long ceased to
supply a subject of dispute, the money which has been expended
on fighting local fishing rights, real or imaginary, even within a
recent period, would have provided a handsome endowment for
any charitable institution.

It is not my purpose to attempt to deal exhaustively with the
local history of the Salmon. Such an attempt could not be in-
cluded within the modest limits of the present volume. It
would require also the special skill of a professed archeologist.
My task is a simpler one. All that I can aspire to do is to show,
however imperfectly, that the gleams of light which we catch
to-day, reflected back from the faded characters of ancient
charters, go far to prove the importance which once attached to
the Salmon as an article of ordinary consumption. I am no
ecclesiastical lawyer; but, so far as I understand the earliest
evidence, it seems tolerably plain that the kings of England
used to grant rights of fisheries to great nobles, who in their
turn bequeathed a large share in their special privileges to the
ecclesiastics of their own neighbourhood. The royal grants
were sometimes of almost a nominal character. Henry m1., for
instance, in 1226-27, granted licence to Thomas de Muleton and
Ada his wife, a fishery on the bank of the Eden, in Inglewood
Forest, for the yearly reddendo of a pair of gilt spurs at Easter.?
But the majority of such grants implied large possessions,
out of which the bold barons could well afford to endow
the various religious establishments. The favours which
the warriors bestowed upon those who offered prayers for
their souls and those of their ancestors were not limited
to Salmon fisheries. William of Lancaster, the generous
benefactor of the Furness monks, gave them facilities
for netting sheets of fresh water: ‘Et insuper concessi eisdem
unum batellum, competens ad cariandum, que fuerint necessaria
in aqua de Thurstainwater et aliud modicum batellum ad pis-
candum in ea, pro libitu, cum viginti retibus, ad opus dictorum
manchorum meorum.’ The monks were allowed another ferry-
boat on Windermere, in which lake they likewise kept a fishing-
boat: ‘et aliud modicum batellum ad piscandum ibidem cum

1 Calendar of Documents relating to Scotland, vol. i. p. 175.

NSCs SH NOP WO'Ord) =NVOsWitiavesm =v

i]

il

i
'

FISHES 499

viginti retibus, sine ulla contradictione mei vel heredum
meorum.’! But it was to their rights of fishing for Salmon
that the monks clung most tenaciously. Pleased and thankful
they were, no doubt, to dip the light paddles of their well-
seasoned bark in the rippling waves of Windermere, the
brethren chanting their vesper hymn as they drew to land the
dripping nets, detaining in their fatal meshes numbers of dark-
banded Perch or delicate crimson-bellied Charr. These last
might either be preserved alive in tanks or converted at once
into a savoury mess, prepared to grace the festal memory of
some hermit or legendary saint. Fish stews, let us remember,
were the rule in those days. Venison could not be obtained at
all seasons. Moreover, the original stock of the wiry little
Herdwick sheep, which now people our bare hills with bleating
thousands, the ewes dropping their dark-limbed lambkins during
the first days of May, had not as yet landed on our western sea-
board, saved from the wreck of the gallant Spanish galleon that
drove inshore before a hurricane, breaking up on one of those
sunken reefs of rock that bind our coast, concealed from the careful
pilot by the wash of the treacherous tide. The bishop at Rose
replenished the episcopal lough with Jack and other coarse fish,
fit food for the humbler retainers of his household. At Holm-
coltram the Abbot maintained the course of discipline prescribed
by his order with sturdy conscience, entertaining Lenten guests
with a variety of fishes, selected from those which lay huddling
together at the bottom of his well-appointed fish stews. But
what mattered stews full of Carp and Pike, when a Grilse, fresh
run from the sea, could be had for the trouble of drawing a
favourite pool? Hugh de Morville gave to God and the Blessed
Mary of Holmcoltram and the monks there serving God, ‘unum
rete integrum ad Soleburgh et in omnibus aliis locis super
Edene communiter, cum vineto de Burgh, et unum bothum eé
locum aptum ad rete swum exsiccandum, cum omnibus aliis aysia-
mentis ad illud rete pertinentibus.’? Disputes about fisheries
are legionary, and even the religious bodies quarrelled with one
another about their respective rights. For example, in the
year 1234, a dispute arose between the Prior of Carlisle and the
1 Dugdale, Monast., vol. v. p. 247. 2 Lbs pe 607.

500 VERTEBRATE FAUNA OF LAKELAND

Abbot of the Abbey of Holmcoltram ‘super Piscatione de Eden.’
Walter, the Bishop of Carlisle, was appointed to arbitrate upon
the case. His Lordship accordingly heard the witnesses, and
gave his decision in the following words: ‘Videlicit, quod decimee
piscium captorum in aqua de Edin, infra loca prenominata, vel
alibi infra limites parochiz de Routheclif tractorum, ad terram
infra parochiam prenominatam, nobis tanquam preefatee ecclesize
rectoribus remanebunt; ita tamen quod nos, pro bono pacis,
duos solidos argenti preefatis abbati et conventul annuatim ad
Pentecostum persolvemus impetuum.’ But the interests of peace
will not always satisfy litigating parties. The monks had already
sent the story of their wrongs to Rome and obtained a Bull from
Pope Lucius 111. which confirmed the rights of the Abbey and
forbade any one to levy toll upon their Salmon: ‘Sive de pisca-
tionibus vestris, ubicunque fuerint in aquis salsis, vel fluminibus,
nullus a vobis decimas extorquere presumat.’! Throughout the
whole of Lakeland the religious houses exacted and clung
tenaciously to certain rights of fishery, which were confirmed,
as occasion required, by different sovereigns. For example,
Henry Itt. confirmed to the Abbot and monks of Kaldre their
claims to the fishery of Derwent and that of Egre in 1231.
They were allowed ‘twenty salmon yearly at the feast of Saint
John the Baptist, and one net in Derwente between the bridge
and the sea.’* That the monks were not too saintly to in-
dulge in personal disputes about their fishing is evidenced
by the fact that in the reign of Henry vi. Thomas de Sevenhouse
was fined for throwing a monk from the bridge into the Calder
during the progress of an argument regarding their respective
rights.* On that occasion the monk seems to have had the best of
it on the whole, though we are not told whether he suffered any
disagreeable effects from his unexpected bath. But I suspect that
the religious communities were sometimes grasping. The Prior
of St. Bees was worsted at an assize held at Carlisle, 1278-79,
when the jurors present and the whole county complained
‘that the Prior of St. Bega has two engines called “cupe” for

1 Dugdale, Monast., vol. v. p. 598.
2 Documents relating to Scotland, vol. i. p. 207.
3 Trans. Cumb. and West. Arch. Soc., vol. ix. p. 225.

FISHES 501

catching Salmon in his pool of Staynburn, where in times past
he had but one, and the other was set up six years ago without
warrant, and after the last justice-eyre. Therefore he is in
amercement. The Sheriff is ordered to remove the second
“cupa” at sight of the jury at the Prior’s expense.’!
This assize is especially interesting for the glimpse which it
affords us into the practical working of the Lakeland fisheries
during the thirteenth century. It was on this very occasion
that the jurors of Lyth, and Eskedale, and of Cumb’, and Aller-
dale made a presentment regarding the great destruction in the
waters of Hdene and Esk and others in the county, of
Salmon coming up to spawn, and likewise of the young fry
going down to the sea. The whole county, knights and free-
holders, unanimously decided that they should observe a close
time ; ‘that from Michaelmas to St Andrew’s day no net shall
be drawn or placed at weirs, pools, or mills, or mill-ponds, and
that none fish in the above or any other waters in the county,
with nets, stergilds, or other engine, within said close time; or
without engine. Also that from the feast of the Apostles
Philip and James until the Nativity of St. John Baptist, no net
or “wile” or “borache” shall be placed at pools or mills or
mill pools in said waters.’ Only approved nets were to be
employed, and the meshes were required to be wide enough to
let the salmon fry through,—viz., of four thumbs’ length.
Persons convicted of illegal practices were to be summarily dis-
posed of by being sent to the King’s prison. One of the enact-
ments of this jury survived until our own century—viz., their
order that illegal nets were to be burnt in public when seized.
The Carlisle Journal of April 21, 1827, informs its readers
that ‘within these few days no less than 20 shackle and other
fishing nets have been sublicly burnt in the market-place,
Appleby, which were taken from a most noted gang of night
net poachers; most of the nets were new and worth altogether
upwards of thirty pounds.’ It would weary the reader, were I
to detail the dry statistics of the salmon fisheries of Morecambe
Bay, as they have been stated in law-suits and other pleas. The
year that the above-mentioned nets were burnt at Appleby
1 Documents relating to Scotland, vol. 11. p. 38.

502 VERTEBRATE FAUNA OF LAKELAND

witnessed the settling of a dispute regarding the fishery of the
Manor of Beethom, originally bestowed on the Derby family by
Richard 1. It may suffice to say that the lord of the manor
won his claim to the Salmon caught in the river, and to nothing
else. But the story of the rights and counter rights that have
been held and claimed, and fought and lost, is too tedious for
general readers. One finding of an inquisition regarding the
Eden shall alone obtain place here: ‘Also we present that it
hath been used to have a Water Court for the reforming of all
wrongs in the said water of Eden, or of taking young of fry,
called white trouts, or for fishing with nets of so small a mesh.’ ?
All forfeitures were to be extracted and answered to the Lord,
and the said Court ‘was used to be kept at such times as the
Stewart thought by complaints it was needful, but not other-
wise, certainly every year. Here I may remark that our
shrewd north countrymen employed mechanical means for
ascertaining the growth of young Salmon more than two
centuries ago. Our information on this point is to be found in
a letter which Mr. Johnson of Brignall wrote to John Ray on
April 16, 1677: ‘In the Mouth of Eden, in Cumberland,’ says
Johnson, ‘the Fishers have four distinctions of yearly growth
(after the first Summer, when they call them Free or Frie, as we
Smowts or Smelts) before they come to be Lackes,; and this they
say they have curiously observed by fixing so many Pins in the
Fins of Yearlings, or two Years old, and after taking them again.”
It seems not unreasonable to infer from Johnson’s expression—
‘curiously observed, that this marking of fish was at that time
a novel practice, if not actually first developed in Cumberland.
Of the numerous engines employed upon our estuaries from
medizval times for capturing Salmon, I cannot attempt to speak
at length. They varied at different seasons, but were principally
stake-nets. The ‘ Haf’ net, still employed by the fishermen of
Bowness on Solway, was in use in the thirteenth century, and
consisted of a net fastened to a pole of eleven or twelve feet in

1 This is quoted by the late Mr. Nanson, as reported in the Carlisle
Journal of April 13, 1877. The,late Town-Clerk of Carlisle does not seem
to have furnished any date for this interesting inquisition.

* Correspondence of John Ray, p. 142.

FISHES 503

length, supported on a framework, and held by the fishermen
‘in an easy stream, in the ebbing and flowing of the tide.’ The
fishermen draw lots for their respective places in the estuary.
Time was when the fishermen of this ‘mean village,’ as it was
called in 1785, obtained a supply of Salmon by striking the fish
with ‘leesters’ in the tideway.! Fish must have been very
plentiful in the middle of the eighteenth century, if we can
credit the statements made by ‘ Philtopographus’ in the Genile-
man’s Magazine of 1755. ‘Salmon,’ observes this anonymous
writer, ‘at their markets sells from three halfpence to twopence
a pound; but the people have so little notion of dressing it to
advantage that they throw away the livers and eat the fish without
having so much as a little melted butter for sauce. If any remain
unsold after the market is over, they cut it into pieces and salt
it, putting it up close in a pot or earthen vessel, to be eaten as
winter provision with potatoes or parsnips.2 If the poor
Bowness fishermen really sold their fish for such a price as
‘Philtopographus’ states, they must have been less alive to
business than some of their neighbours. The Workington men
sent their fish ‘up to London upon Horses, which, changing
often, go Night and Day without Intermission, and, as they say,
out-go the Post, for that the Fish come very sweet and good to
London, where the extraordinary price they yield, from 2s. 6d.
to 4s. per Pound, pays very well for the carriage. They do the
same from Carlisle.’? Clarke stated, in 1787, that Salmon never
entered Derwentwater ; or again, ‘Salmon come to the foot of
Ulleswater to spawn, but never enter it.’ Salmon used to enter
Ulleswater, and Haweswater too, in Clarke’s time, and would do
so now if they could gain entrance. Indeed, it has long been
well known that Salmon enter several of the lakes. Thus
Pennant wrote of the Derwent, that Salmon ‘come up the river
from the sea about Michaelmas, and force their way through both
lakes as far as Borrowdale. They had lately been on their
return, but the water near the [Ouze] bridge proving too shallow

1 The ‘leester’ employed at this time was a staff of ash about fourteen
feet long, armed at the end with three barbed spikes.

2 Gentleman’s Magazine, 1755, pp. 315-317.

® Defoe, Tour thro’ Great Britain, 1769, seventh ed. vol. iii. p. 321.

504 VERTEBRATE FAUNA OF LAKELAND

to permit them to proceed, they were taken by dozens, in very
bad order, in the nets that were drawing for trout at the end
of the lake.t The author of Observations chiefly Lithological
wrote in 1804: ‘The lake of Derwentwater has no char in it;
only perch, or bass, as it is here called, eels, pike, and trout ;
and the salmon which pass through the lakes of Derwent and
Bassenthwaite from the river Cocker to spawn in the winter
season. In the month of May the salmon smelts, or fry as they
are called, are on their way to the ocean. They may then be
very easily caught. They are esteemed a great delicacy.’ It is
sad that this noble fish has fallen upon evil days, when the
pollution of mines and factories invades its favourite pools,
while the direful pestilence of leprosy selects the finest fishes,
and destroys them piecemeal before ever a ‘fresh’ can arrive to
sweep away their exhausted bodies into the wholesome currents
of the Irish Sea. The intervention of poachers in removing
diseased fish, if allowed full scope, would do something to
decrease the risks of contamination. Poachers unfortunately
cannot be trusted to destroy diseased fish. Usually they try to
sell the carcases, sending them to a purchaser in a basket full of
clothes going to the laundress, or disposing of them at a low rate
in rural public-houses. Quite recently two little boys, six years
of age, were discovered in a public-house in Carlisle, endeavour-
ing to dispose of an Eden Salmon on their own account. But
notwithstanding the ravages of disease, the finest and gamest
Salmon are taken as often as ever they were. It is believed
that the Eden produced the heaviest Salmon authenticated as
taken in Lakeland waters. It was not, however, a native of
this region, but a Liverpool angler, Mr. Frances, who secured
this prince of fishes. It was on the 9th of November 1888
that the fish was hooked in Cat Clint. Half an hour’s fine play
followed before the fisherman landed his prize in Colley’s Nab,
the next stream below. It proved to be a finely proportioned
male fish, measuring 51 inches in length and 29 inches in girth.
The breadth of the tail was 14 inches. The weight was regis-
tered at 554 lbs.”

1 A Tour in Scotland, vol. ii. p. 50.
2 Carlisle Express, Nov. 10, 1888.

FISHES 505

SEA TROUT.

Salmo trutta, Flem.

This is a common fish in our larger rivers, especially in the
immature stage known in the Eden, and among the fishermen
of the Esk, as the ‘ Whiting.’ Though no fisherman, I heard so
much doubt expressed as to the identity of the Esk ‘ Whiting,’
that I asked my friend, the Rev. W. Jackson, an enthusiastic
sportsman, to obtain the opinion of the late Dr. Day upon this
fish. Carefully selected specimens were sent to Dr. Day, who
submitted them to an elaborate examination. This resulted in
his convincing himself that the fishes which he dissected were
the young of the Sea Trout. These fishes begin to run up the
Esk in June, when they average four and five to a pound.
They continue to improve in condition until August, some fishes
running up to half a pound, or even a pound, each. At this
period of their existence ‘Whiting’ are highly gregarious, and
congregate in such shoals, when fresh-run from the sea, that the
bottom of the Esk at Floriston is sometimes black with them.
They are special favourites because they are such plucky fish,
fighting hard even on the top of the water. The artificial fly
which they like best is made of a grouse feather, with a gold
rim and purple hackle. Mr. H. Leavers tells me that the
largest Sea Trout that he has seen from the English Solway was
a fish of nine pounds.

COMMON TROUT.
Salmo fario, Te

The becks and lakes of this mountainous region abound in
Trout, varying in size and appearance according to locality, but
everywhere affording sport in the loveliest and most romantic
spots that can be found. Even the little brook by the wayside
at Dale Head contains a numerous population of speckled
trouties, while their brethren are exceedingly plentiful in certain
lakes. T. Lindsay assured me that on one occasion he took
47 lb. weight of Trout in Wastwater Lake in a single day. It
must be confessed that on the occasion in question Lindsay was

506 VERTEBRATE FAUNA OF LAKELAND

fishing with the destructive engine known as an ‘otter,’ now
illegal. The Trout of the Eden sometimes attain a weight of
five and six pounds, occasionally half a pound more ; but heavier
fishes have occasionally been taken in some of the lakes. The
Rev. T. P. Hartley saw a trout of 7? lbs. caught in a big ‘top
net’ near Rawlinson’s Nab, Windermere. The late Mr.
Whalley, a local authority on the Salmonide, pronounced the
fish to be an undoubted Great Lake Trout (S. ferox). The late
Dr. Day degraded the so-called Great Lake Trout to the position
of a variety of salmo trutta. Whether this Windermere Trout
represented the variety S. ferox, it is of course impossible for
me tosay. It would have weighed considerably more than it
did had it been in good condition. But whatever view of the
question may please our local anglers, there can be no doubt
as to the fact that Ulleswater was at one time considered to be
the home of the Great Lake Trout, and that these fishes are
now regarded by most of the local fishermen as extinct. The
earliest reference to Trout of large size that I have as yet been
able to discover is contained in the recently published Rydal Ms.

Sir Daniel Fleming enters in his accounts of October 1683:
‘Given to Mr. Mounsey’s man for bringing a great trout,
£00 00s. 06d.’ Captain Hatton alludes to a similar fish in a
letter of October 25, 1692, addressed to John Ray :—

‘Sir. . . Whilst I am now writing, a Westmorland
acquaintance of mine coming to see me, in Discourse did acci-
dentally mind me of the Surprize I was in, some years since, at
Lowther Hall in Cumberland, the House of Sir John Lowther,
seeing at Sir John’s Table a fresh Water 7Z’rout, which was 38
inches in Length, and 27 in Girth, taken in Hull’s water, a
large Lake in Westmorland, in which I was assured by Sir John,
and other persons of unquestionable credit, trowts of that Size,
(nay larger) are frequently taken.’ }

Clarke tells us regarding Ulleswater that ‘the fish found in
this Lake are trout, perch, eels, char, skellies; and a fifth
peculiar to this and Buttermere (where there are very few),
called the Grey Trout. These grey trouts in form resemble the
other trouts, but are much larger, weighing thirty or forty

1 Correspondence of John Ray, p. 268.

FISHES 507

pounds: one was killed a few years ago which weighed fifty-
six; but the ordinary weight is from seven to twenty pounds
each. They are found chiefly in the deep water below House-
Holm island; they are, however, sometimes taken in all parts
of the Lake, though but seldom, except in October, which is
their spawning time. During that month the King of Paterdale
usually sets a net across the foot of Coldrill-Beck, but not one
has ever been known to enter any other of the streams. ‘Some
of the trouts, however, escape the net, but are generally taken
by the neighbouring farmers, who strike them at night-time
with spears by the light of a torch. These unlawful practices
the Gentlemen of the neighbourhood have not been able to pre-
vent: it is indeed impossible they should, for the farmers of
the fisheries connive at them, because the grey trouts prey upon
the small trouts and char, upon which their profits depend; and
so voracious are they that I have seen two trouts, near a pound
weight each, taken out of the belly of one of the large ones.
They are taken with nets, but will sometimes rise at the fly:
their strength, however, makes them very difficult to kill’?
Walker, who wrote about ten years after Clarke, has left a
similar statement: ‘The Grey Trout of this Lake grows to 30
or 40 pounds weight, and goes up the brooks and rivers to spawn,
and takes up its abode in the deepest part of the water at other
times, and therefore is very seldom caught.’? Mr. C. C. Hodg-
son tells me that he once caught a fine, pink-fleshed Trout in the
Eamont, shortly after the river leaves the lake, and this he
thought must be asmall example of S. ferox, var. It may be con-
venient to state here that a hump-backed variety of the Common
Trout inhabits the upper waters of the Caldew, near Sebergham.
As regards the introduction of fish into Lakeland waters, Mr.
H. Leavers informs me that some eight thousand fry of Salmo
Levensis have been introduced into the Eden near Carlisle
during the last five or six years; these came from Howietoun.
Similar experiments are being made, I understand, in other
Lakeland waters. The Vorkshire Post of February 27, 1889,
stated that Captain Machel had just caused 1000 examples of

1 Survey of the Lakes, p. 38.
2 From London to the Lakes, p. 68.

508 VERTEBRATE FAUNA OF LAKELAND

the American Brook Trout (S. fontinalis) to be placed in the
Eden at Crackenthorpe, near Appleby.

THE ALPINE CHARR.

Salmo alpinus, L.

Among the numerous writers who have essayed to treat of
Charr in the English lakes, a high rank must be assigned to
John Ray. He refers to this fish as ‘the Red Charre Westmor-
landici lactis Winandermere dicti.1 He adds: ‘Quatuor aut
quinque in Cambria lacus hunc piscem alunt: necnon lacus
Winandermere in Westmorlandia.’ He speaks of the ‘Gilt
Charre: ‘ Hic procul dubio idem est cum Charra alba, The Gilt
Charre lacfis Winandermere. Defoe writes that Wuinander
Mere is famous ‘for producing the Char-fish, seldom found
unless it be at Ulles-water, bordering on Westmorland, and in
North Wales, as I have mentioned before. It is a curious Fish,
and, as a Dainty, is potted and sent far and near by way of
Present. It must needs be a great Rarity, since the quantity they
take, even here, is but small. Mr. Camden’s Continuator calls
it very happily the Golden Alpine Trout.’? But Charrs were
valued for pies before it became customary to pot them. Some
practical information as to the gastronomical qualities of Charr
may be gleaned from the book of accounts kept by Sir Daniel
Fleming of Rydal, between the years 1656 and 1681. Thus,
in 1660: ‘Mar. 12, Item, for the carryage of a char pie to my
Aunt Dudley to London, £0, 7s. 0d.’; 1662, ‘Mar. 23, Item,
for the carryage of a charr-pie unto my aunt Dudley at London,
at 2d per lb., £0, 6s. Od.’ When a guest stayed at Rydal, Charr
must needs be served up; therefore in 1655, ‘June 29, Item,
for twelve charrs when Mr. Dugdale was here... 3s. Od.’
Pies must be sent to grand acquaintances; therefore in 1666,
‘Mar. 6, Paid John Banckes which he had paid at Kendall,
February 23, 1666, for the carryage of a char-pye unto the Earl
of Carlisle at London, being 4 stone and 5 lb., 9s. Od.’ Private
friends looked for similar attention; therefore in 1665, ‘ Mar.

1 Synops. Method, p. 61.
2 Tour through Great Britain, vol. iii. p. 294, 7th edition, 1769.

FISHES 509

2. Paid unto John Banks which he had disbursed at Kendall
last Satturday, for the carryage of two charr-pies unto London—
to the Lord Arlington and Joseph Williamson, Esq.—to Will
Banckes, carryer, weight 6 stone, 7 lbs.—the sum of £1.’ It
will be noticed that the size of Sir Daniel’s pies varied with the
importance of the recipient. ‘The Earl required a very big pie,
exceeding four stone; Lord Arlington had a somewhat smaller
pie; ‘my aunt Dudley’ had to content herself with pies of
lesser dimensions, as the charges for carriage, according to
weight, testify. How many Charr went to a pie? Thirty-eight ;
for in 1662 we find that Adam Fleming brought ‘eleven dozen
of charres from Connistone for four pies.’ Supposing that the
Charr were fine fish, they might possibly average three to the
pound; the whole thirty-eight might reach a collective weight
of thirteen pounds. But even ‘my aunt Dudley’ received a
pie weighing thirty-six pounds, as the cost of carriage shows ;
therefore, twenty-three pounds of the pie must have been pastry
and dish, and only thirteen pounds fish; if the weight of the
pastry increased, in ratio to the total bulk, faster than the Charr,
as no doubt it would, the consistency of the pastry of the Earl
of Carlisle must have required a pretty stiff potation to wash
it down. The actual cost of the fish was 3d. apiece, or 3s.
a dozen. Curiously enough, the price paid by Sir Daniel is
corroborated a century later by Pennant, who remarks of Conis-
ton: ‘The fish of this water are char and pike; a few years ago
the first were sold for 3s. 6d. per dozen, but thanks to the luxury
of the times are now raised to eight or nine shillings.’ !

Mr. John Fell prints, in ‘ Appendix Iv.’ to his paper, ‘ Home
Life in North Lonsdale,’ a curious letter from the Duke of
Montagu :—

‘Mr. ATKINSON,—I received yours of the 1. of this month,
& also the Pott of Charr which you sent me by that days
Carrier, which was the best I ever eat, & I would have you
send me some of the same sort by every Carryer, take care to
Pick the hen fish and those that are of the Red Kind, and
let them be potted and seasoned just as that Pot was for it cant
be beter—as I recon it is now the best season for Charr, I

1 A Tour in Scotland, vol. ii. p. 34.

510 VERTEBRATE FAUNA OF LAKELAND

would have you send me some fresh ones, directed to my Lord
Lovell who is Postmaster Generall as you did the year before
last, which I think was by an express, but these came in a
wooden box, which made it to great a weight for the Post to
carry conveniently therefore these should be put into some sort
of a basket and the fish packed in it in moss or some sort
of thing that will keep them from bruzing and not give them a
taste. You let me know what day they will be in town that I
may give Ld Lovell notice of it that they may not lye at the
Post office. Let them you send me be well chosen fish and all
of the Red sort. When you have Particulars of the Bloom
Smithy Rents youl send them me.—I am yours, MonrTacu.

‘London, Jan. 27, 1738.’

Sir Daniel Fleming’s correspondence includes a letter from
Dr. T. Smith, written April 1, [16]35, and addressed to him
at the lodgings of Lord Arlington, Whitehall, explaining the
difference between Char and Case. ‘They are very much alike,
but the latter is smaller, and spawns at a different time. 2 In
the lakes of Cumberland, Westmorland, Lancashire, observes
Jenyns, cited by Day, this fish in its ordinary state is the case
Charr of Pennant; when exhibiting the bright crimson belly
which it assumes before spawning, it is called the red Charr ;
when out of season, the spawn having been shed, it is distin-
guished by the name of the gilt Charr. In Sir Daniel’s day, a
Charr pie cost 33s. for Charr alone. When the fish became
dear, housewives devoted their energies to potting Charr, instead
of making them into enormous pasties. Thus Clarke (1787)
observes of Windermere: ‘The Charr in this Lake are of ex-
cellent quality for potting, many pots of which are sent to
different parts of the kingdom every year.’ He adds: ‘I do
not however think them superior in quality to the Ulswater
trout, and are distinguishable from them more by their colour
than taste ; so much alike indeed are they, that many pots of
Ulswater trout are sold for Winandermere Char. They are
taken in perfection in this lake only from the beginning of

1 Cumberland and Westmorland Arch. Soc., vol. xi. p. 397.
2 Rydal Ms., p. 35.

FISHES 511

September to the middle of February, during which time they
assemble themselves in what is here called schools like Herring.’
Of Ulleswater, Clarke states: ‘The Char of this lake are smaller
than those of Winandermere, but in my opinion equal in flavour
to the best of them. ‘There is indeed one species of Char in
Winandermere, called Red-bellied Char, which is far inferior
to the Ullswater Charr: these are the kind usually sent to the
metropolis, but as they have the name, it is enough.’ The
Ulleswater Charr are extinct. Their race perished owing to
the pollution of the stream in which they spawned, by dele-
terious matter from the mines. Robinson, who wrote in 1709,
supplies a quaint account of Buttermere: ‘The fourth remark-
able Lake is Buttermere, wherein is bred a sort of Fish called
Charrs, much like the Ullswater Trout; the Male is grey, the
Female yellow-bellied ; the Flesh upon them is fed, and crisp
to the Taste. They are more luscious and delicious than the
Trout. They are in this country baked in pots well seasoned
with spices, and sent up to London as. a great Rarity. . . . These
Charrs are a Fish bred in this Water, and are peculiar to it and
Windermer-water.’+ Clarke wrote that Buttermere possessed
‘the best fish of any (Ulleswater only excepted), viz. charr and
trout for potting, but not very plentiful.’ Dr. Heysham wrote
that Charr ‘are found in Ullswater and Ennerdale lake, but are
most plentiful in Winandermere in Westmoreland, where large
quantities are annually taken, and when potted are sent to
almost every part of the kingdom.’ A full-grown Charr is
about 10 inches in length, and, if taken in season, weighs
about 10 oz.

Sir Daniel Fleming, Bart., was probably the first to describe
the habits of these Windermere Charr, about the year 1671:
‘Up the river Routha go yearly great plenty of large trouts,
and up Brathy many Case (a fish very like a charr, but of a
different species, 1t spawning at another time of the year), and
tho’ these waters runs a good way in one channel before they
fall into Winander-meer-water, and are both very clear and
bottomed alike, yet the owners of Rydal-hall [i.e. the writer

1 Hssay towards a Natural History of Westmoriand and Cumberland,
p. 60.

512 VERTEBRATE FAUNA OF LAKELAND

himself] (to whom the fishing of both these rivers doth belong,
and have a fish-ark or coop in either river), scarce ever got any
trouts in Brathy, or Case in Routha-meer, in which are several
islands and store of fish as pikes, perch, trouts, and eeles, the
fishing whereof, as also Elter-water, Longbrigge Tarn, and other
waters in the parish of Gresmere, have time out of mind be-
longed to the lords of the said mannor.’! Mr. Browne’s MSs.
include the draft of an agreement by which ‘Dame Elizabeth
Otway, of Ambleside, lets to George Braithwaite, of High Wrey,
her privilege of fishing upon Windermere water, with the privilege
of carrying a boat with any goods whatsoever from the head
to the foot of the said water, for one year, in consideration of
the sum of five shillings. The said Dame Elizabeth reserves
only to herself the twenty chars which the fishermen are to
give her every year. July 2, 1701.’?

Thompson speaks of live Charr kept for sale when he visited
the Lakes: ‘When at the inn at Waterhead at the northern
extremity of Coniston Water, during a tour to the English
lakes in June 1835, a number of Char from this lake were kept
alive by our host in a capacious wooden box or trough, into
which a constant stream of water poured. They were fine
examples of the species, about a foot in length. Here I was
informed that a supply of this delicate fish was always kept up,
that the “curious” visitor might gratify his taste at any season
by having fresh Char set before him at the rate of ten shillings
for the dozen of fish”? Latterly Charr have become almost
extinct in Coniston owing to the pollutions caused by the
Coniston Copper Mine Company.

But John Poole gave evidence in 1878 that he had heard his
father say that he had caught seven dozen Charr in Coniston in
one day, using his straw hat for a landing-net. One of the best
accounts of Charr that have been published is that of an anony-
mous writer, whose identity was covered by the letter ‘O.’ He
wrote in 1832 that this fish was found in ‘Coniston in Lan-
cashire, Windermere in Westmorland, Buttermere and Cromack-

1 Description of Westmoreland, p. 16.
2 Report Hist. Mss. Comm. xli. p. 354.
3 Nat. Hist. of Ireland, vol. iv. p. 165.

FISHES 513

water in Cumberland, and, I believe, in Ulswater.’ He describes
the Charr as making up the Brathay. from Windermere ‘ in large
shoals in the first sharp weather in November, for the purpose
of spawning, preferring that river to the Rothay, probably
owing to the bottom being rocky and resembling more the
bottom of the lake; and it is singular that those fish which
ascend the Rothay invariably return and spawn in the Brathay ;
they remain in the stream and in the shallow parts of the lake
until the end of March. . . . Great quantities are caught during
the spawning time by the netters for potting, and some are sent
up fresh for the London market; but only those who have
eaten Charr in summer on the spot, when they are in season,
can tell how superior they are to those eaten in London in the
winter. About the beginning of April, when the warm weather
comes in, they retire into the deep parts of the lake, where
their principal food is the minnow (Cyprinus phoxinus, L.), of
which they are very fond. At this time they are generally
angled for by spinning a minnow, but in a general way the
sport is indifferent, and the persevering angler is well rewarded
if he succeed in killing two brace a day. A more successful
method of taking them is by fastening a long and heavily-leaded
line and hook baited with a minnow to the stern of a boat, which
is slowly and silently rowed along; in this way they are taken
during the early summer months, but when the hot weather
comes in they are seldom seen. They feed, probably, at night ;
and although they never leave the lake except during the period
of spawning, nothing is more uncommon than taking a Charr
in July and August.’! Some remarks about the Charr of Enner-
dale Lake appeared in the same journal a few years later.”

The Rev. T. P. Hartley, who is intimately acquainted with
Windermere, tells me that the natives of the district catch Charr
either in nets or with plumb lines. Their season extends from
the beginning of March until the end of September. Charr
appear to swim near the bottom of the lake in cold weather,
and are therefore fished with ‘bottom nets.’ In hot weather
the shoals of Charr swim near the surface, and are captured in

1 Mag. Nat. Hist, vol. v. p. 316.
2 Ib. cit. vol. viii. p. 231.
2K

514 VERTEBRATE FAUNA OF LAKELAND

‘top nets.’ They are largely fished also with the plumb line
and artificial minnow, very much as Day describes.t These
fish fetch about eighteenpence a pound in the season, and the
surplus supply is despatched to Manchester. The Windermere
Charr have improved in quality of late, owing to a larger mesh
of net being employed than formerly. Mr. R. B. Lee states
that the Windermere fish often average three to the pound.
He mentions an instance in which a local fisherman caught
eighteen Charr with the hook and line. These fishes were
weighed together and scaled 7 lbs. William Bevins, the Leven
watcher, stated in 1878 that the largest Charr he ever saw
weighed 14 lbs. Matthew Fleming estimated an average fish
to weigh from + lb. to } lb. The largest he ever saw weighed
2 Ibs.”

Sot Rela.

Osmerus eperlanus (L.).

The Smelt, or ‘Sparling,’ as it is usually called in our estuaries,
has long been recognised as affording profitable occupation to
our fishermen. As early as 1807 Charles Waugh described
this species as ‘sometimes caught as large as a herring,’ and as

‘near the same shape. The back is of a dusky colour, but the
belly and sides are of a silver colour or resplendent white; it
smells like green rushes, but is agreeable food.”*

fr. Nicol tells me that he once assisted in netting nearly a ,

stone weight of this fish. George Holmes gave me the benefit.
of a similar experience; but the general opinion appears to be:
that the Sparling is less plentiful in the tideway of the English
Solway than was the case some years ago. ‘At Ulverston,”

wrote the late Frank Buckland, ‘a considerable number of

Sparlings are caught. Mr. Jackson Lee, of the Kent Salmon
Board of Conservators, informs us that in February the Sparlings
are heavy with spawn; they begin spawning about the middle
of March, and the:spawning is all over by the middle of April.

1 British Fishes, vol. ii. p. 111.
2 Report on the Fisheries of the English Lake District, p. 9.
3 Fisherman’s Defence, p. 66.

FISHES 515

They come into the Bay in early autumn.! Dr. Day was
correct in saying that ‘in the Solway Firth the best fishing
season is in September, but I doubt if he was accurate in
stating that the Sparling ‘disappear the next month [October]
until March and April, when they ascend to spawn ;’ because
Sparling are fished during the winter months. Dr. Day re-
marks that Mr. W. Wankly of Grange ‘was much struck with
the very rapid growth of the Sparling from October to March—
in October ten or twelve together weighed no more than 1 lb. ;
in March the fish were 4 oz. to 6 oz. each, and occasionally one
or more in a take weighed close on 8 oz. ... He opened
a Sparling as soon as it was taken out of the net and found six,
seven, and eight herring fry . . . The Sparling are very un-
certain and apparently fickle in their visits to their supposed
haunts—i.c. in holes near rocks where fresh-water streams
mingle with tidal water. ?

GWYNIAD.

Coregonus clupeoides, Lacép.

The existence of this fish in Ulleswater was well known in
the seventeenth century. Edmund Sandford, for example,
described this Lake as containing ‘great store of some Chars,
Trout, and Scedlies in abundance, a very good fish oth the bignes
of a heering.’ ? The Howard Household Books of 1622 include
an entry on ‘Janu: 5... To Mr. Mounsey’s man bringing
charrs and skellyes ij8’* It is extremely likely that the fish in
question had been netted in Haweswater (anciently spelt Hall’s
water, zc. ‘the water of the Hall’). Clarke, a native of the
Ulleswater district (though he lived at Penrith latterly), was
well acquainted with the ‘ skelly ’ of the Lake, beside which his
boyhood was spent. ‘The shelly,” says he, ‘is remarkable for
this, no bait has ever been found which they will take... .
Like the herring, they assemble in vast numbers during the

1 British Fishes, p. 332.
2 British Fishes, vol. ii. p. 123.

3 Sandford MS., p. 33.
4 Household Books of Lord William Howard, p. 177.

516 VERTEBRATE FAUNA OF LAKELAND

harvest months, rippling the surface of the water, and are called
Schools or (in the country dialect) Skyuls, of Skellies. When
they lye in water not too deep, vast numbers are taken at one
draught, sometimes ten or twelve thousands. Sometimes the
Schools lye so close together, and the fishermen take such
numbers, that carts are employed to carry them to the adjacent
market towns. They weigh about five ounces each, and 800 are
commonly reckoned as many as one horse can draw; they are at
these times extremely cheap, generally a penny a pound; but I
have seen two Winchester pecks of them sold for a shilling. .. .
The Skellies spawn in the winter among the mud at the bottom
of the Lake.’! The old people with whom I have conversed, whose
lives have been spent beside the Lake, independently volunteered
statements very similar to that of Clarke. Every one agrees
that of late years this fish has become extremely scarce in
Ulleswater, although a few are occasionally caught in the trout
nets. It is interesting to notice that this fish occasionally quits the
Lake and enters the Eamont, as remarked by Dr. Heysham, who
added, ‘now and then a solitary one is taken [in the Eden]
below the bay at Armathwaite.’ On the 2d of April this year
[1892] Mr. Tullie brought to me an example of this fish, that its
identity might be solved. It had been picked up dead on the
edge of Burgh marsh, having been washed down thither by
the waters of the Eden. It was in poor condition, and much
diseased, but about its identity there could be no doubt.
Dr. Day remarks that this species is found ‘in Red Tarn on
Helvellyn,’ on the authority of Braithwaite. ‘The late Professor
Rolleston,’ he says, ‘gave me some examples which he collected
at Haweswater, and informed me that in the early spring some
came to the surface with the stomach everted, due to expansion
of the air-bladder. 2 The Rev. T. Hodson tells me that this
fish is still abundant in Haweswater, where its numbers have
not suffered the diminution noticed at Ulleswater. Although
this fish is procured with nets almost exclusively, Mr. Hodson
tells me that he recently caught a fine specimen with a fly.
This occurred at Haweswater.

1 Survey of the Lakes, p. 38.
2 British Fishes, vol. ii. p. 127.

7

ay

x,

WALLOW CRAG, A FORMER EYRIE OF SEA EAGLE

FISHES 517

VENDACE.

Coregonus vandesius, Rich.

The earliest reference to this species inhabiting our faunal
area appears to be that furnished in a note which Housman
wrote for Hutchinson’s History of Cumberland. This note was
published in 1794, or shortly after.' Speaking of Bassen-
thwaite, Housman observes: ‘The Lake . . . has perch, pike,
vendesses, trout, eel, and salmon, in the spawning season.’ He
was evidently aware of the interest attaching to this species,
because the word ‘ vendesses’ is the only word italicised in the
paragraph. Whether the species had been artificially introduced,
I do not know, but the fact that it is confined to Derwentwater
and Bassenthwaite rather supports the view, especially since
these two lakes have direct communication with one another.
The Vendace has rarely been taken in either lake within living
memory. As long ago as 1856, Dr. Davy described the capture
of a Vendace as being ‘the purest accident, not because it is so
rare, but because it 1s contrary to the habits of this fish to take
the fly or any of the baits commonly used here in angling. I
have heard of one instance only of its having been taken with
the artificial fly, and that by an old fisherman of long experience,
and likewise of only one of its having been captured with the
worm... . In this Lake [Derwentwater], within the last eight
years [1848-1856] a good many have been taken with the net,
and many also in the same way in Bassenthwaite Lake. That
it is not a scarce fish here may, I think, be inferred from the
circumstance of two lately having been killed by a stroke of
an oar; and that the fish is a true Vendace I am satisfied,
having compared a specimen from Lochmaben with one from
Derwentwater, and also with one from Bassenthwaite Lake, and
found them similar. The two first-mentioned I can show you
at home; the last you may see at the Museum at Keswick,
which is worthy of a visit on other accounts.’? There are
now several local specimens of Vendace in the Keswick Museum.
Mr. Birkett tells me that these were found floating dead upon

1 History of Cumberland, vol. ii. p. 237.
The Angler in the Lake District, p. 262.

518 VERTEBRATE FAUNA OF LAKELAND

the top of the water, or were stranded on the bank of the lake
in a dying condition; such was the case with a Vendace
captured in a moribund stage in Derwentwater, June 3, 1856.)
In corroboration of Dr. Davy’s statement that Vendace have been
netted by our fishermen, I may cite the following statement
from a local print: ‘On the 24th ult. [July 24, 1843] a con-
siderable number of that rare and beautiful fish, known locally
as the Vendis, were taken in Derwentwater by Mr. Mossop of
Lodore Inn. Although a fisherman for upwards of twenty
years, Mr, Mossop does not recollect more than five specimens
being taken, and then, as in the present instance, with the net
only. ? Thomas Bell gave evidence before the Inspectors of the
English Fisheries in 1878, stating that Vendace existed in
Bassenthwaite in very small numbers. He thought that the
Pike eat them. A Vendace, which had been taken in Derwent-
water, was exhibited before the Zoological Society by the late
Dr. Day, May 19, 1885.

GRAY ELNG

Thymallus vulgaris, Nilss.

Dr. Heysham was under the impression that the Grayling
was occasionally taken in both the Eden and the Esk, but I
fancy that he was wrong upon this point; it seems to be quite
clear that the Grayling has only been introduced to our waters
within a recent period. Mr. W. Patrickson sent to T. C.
Heysham two supposed Grayling taken in the river Irthing in
September 1841. Heysham replied that the fish must be
referred to the Gwyniad, ‘the Skelly of Ulleswater;’ adding,
‘there can be no doubt that both these (females) have made
their escape from that lake. The true Grayling (Thymallus
vulgaris), a specimen of which I am anxious to get hold of, has
some resemblance to the Gwyniad, but may easily be known
from the latter by its large dorsal fin.’ In the year 1883, Mr.
C. Donald Thompson introduced some Graylings into the upper
waters of the Eden, near Appleby, on May 29. He has since

1 Carlisle Journal, June 6, 1856.
2 Carlisle Patriot, August 4, 1843.

FISHES 519

favoured me with a brief note respecting the success which has
attended the experiment. ‘The first 1 saw caught,’ he writes,
‘was at Easter 1890, and last Easter [1891] I got one myself
about 8 inches long, and a friend had one the same day. Since
then, I hear about forty have been seen in one stream, evidently
spawning (and some large ones), as there were trout close
behind them, feeding (from their movements) on what loose roe
they could catch. This, I think, clearly shows they are estab-
lishing themselves.’ The Grayling has been introduced within
a recent period to the river Mint, as I learn from Mr. G. A.
Hutchinson, who writes that a few were caught in that river
‘early last season [1891 |.’

Order PH YSOSTOMI. Fam. CLUPEID.,
AGN, CoE OW: Ve

Engraulis encrasicholus (L.).

During the summer of 1890 the presence of the Anchovy was
noticed at various points of the British coasts, including the
waters of the English Solway. On June 27, 1890, eighteen or
twenty Anchovies were caught near Silloth by W. Nicol. They
averaged about 6 inches in length, or rather less; but one
female fish measured nearly 8 inches.

HERRING.
Clupea harengus, L.

Large quantities of Herrings are taken off Allonby, Mary-
port, and Harrington, in good seasons, but in some years,
often for several successive seasons, the industry has proved
almost a blank. In the year 1828, the Carlisle Patriot of
September 12 spoke of the Maryport fishermen as being ‘in
high expectation of having a successful fishing ;’ adding that
‘one small boat brought in this morning (Wednesday) twelve
hundred Herrings, which were sold ten fish for sixpence.’
In 1834 the Carlisle Journal of November 29 reported that
some Maryport fishermen caught nearly 600 herrings in one
night, and sold them next morning at 25 for ls. In 1849
the Carlisle Patriot stated that the Whitehaven fishermen had

520 VERTEBRATE FAUNA OF LAKELAND |

taken large quantities of Herring, which fetched 4s. 6d. per
100. In the following September the price fell to 1 shilling per
100. As recently as 1891 some huge catches of Herring were
made by the Maryport fishermen. The early carts from the
country purchased fish at from ls. 6d. to Is. 9d. per 124, but
later on the price dropped to the unprecedented figure of 3d.
to 6d. per 124. Many tons were despatched to Glasgow, Leeds,
and other large centres of population; but, after all sacrifices
had been made, the fishermen found it impossible to clear out
the whole of their stock.1 Dr. Welby I’Anson informs me that
in some years Herrings have visited the immediate neighbour-
hood of Whitehaven in such numbers, that stake nets were
temporarily erected on the shores to effect their capture.

SUP RAG:
Clupea spratius, L.

The Sprat is often very abundant in our waters. In the
winter and spring months the Sprat is the favourite food of the
Red-throated Diver, which subsists principally on Sprats as long
as it haunts our seas.

ALLIS SHAD.
Clupea alosa, L.

Dr. Heysham was acquainted with this species as a visitor to
the English Solway. He remarks that Clupea alosa ‘is by much
the largest species of this genus, sometimes weighing 7 or 8 lbs. ;
but what I have seen have not exceeded 4 lbs. May 28 [1796],
I saw one in the market which weighed 4 lbs. It was taken in
the Eden near Cargo, and the milt was very large. The
vounger Heysham wrote to the late Mr. Gurney on June 4,
1840: ‘I have within the last fortnight received two specimens
of the Alice Shad, both taken in the river Eden, both males,
and full of milt, and about 22 inches in length.’ A few speci-
mens of this Shad have been taken in the waters of the English
Solway of late years, but the species is relatively scarce and
sparsely represented. Its visits have hitherto been limited to
the spring and summer months.

1 See Carlisle Journal, July 7, 1891.

FISHES 521

TWAITE SHAD.
Clupea finta, Cuv.

Yarrell, referring to the two British species of Shad, states :
‘I learn from Mr, [T. C.] Heysham that both species have been
taken on the west coast of Cumberland.’! When examining the
collection of Mr. J. R. Wallace of Distington, I found a speci-
men labelled ‘Twaite Shad, Harrington, 1836.’ Mr. Wallace
appears to have obtained most of his specimens of British fishes
from the coast of the Isle of Man.

Order PHYSOSTOMI. Fam. MURHANIDA.

SHARP-NOSED EEL.

Anguilla vulgaris, Flem.

An excellent illustration of the value which at one time
attached to the fish supply is afforded by a letter attributed to
Sir John de Drokenford, dated February 25, 1303-4. The writer
was in Scotland in attendance on Edward 1., and expected to
stay there all Lent. He begged of his correspondent in
Cumberland that if any ‘porpoys’ or ‘graspoys’ or ‘laumpres
de Nauntes,’ or other ‘freshes, should come in his way, or if
any large eels could be found, he would instantly salt them, as
well as any smaller eels, so that they might last well, and send
them to him.2, Whether the wishes of the knight were carried
out does not appear. It is highly probable that a supply of
Eels were forthcoming, because these fishes have always been
numerous in our lakes and rivers. Sandford describes their
relative abundance in Ulleswater: ‘And now I must goe up
southward to Glencume Beck, that parts Cumberland and West-
merland on the eastward, and presently falls into the great
River Eles water or Eales water, for theirs the greatest gott in
england: Thick as ones arme They come forth of a tarne or
meer on Top of montaines: how long they stay in this River:
but naturall they goe downe every August to the sea: and swim

1 British Fishes, 2d ed., vol. ii. p. 211.
* Calendar of Documents relating to Scotland, vol. ii. p. 382.

522 VERTEBRATE FAUNA OF LAKELAND

close by the bothome of the water: so as no flood carries them
over the dam set to stopp them; and catcht in a nett by Mr.
Huddston of Hutton John in great plenty, and them that getts
by becomes great Congers; and a dainty sea-fish.’4 Clarke not
only alludes to the quantities of the ‘silver eel’ taken in Eamont,
but he also refers to the sport of spearing eels in Ulleswater
Lake: ‘Two or more persons go in a boat in a summer morning,
from three to six o'clock; one gently moves the boat by the
margin of the Lake, while the other looks for eels; he no
sooner sees one than he strikes it with an eel spear, and by this
method great numbers are sometimes caught.’? A similar
practice obtained at Windermere. Walker tells us that ‘the
large Eels may be seen sprawling on the grassy bottom of the
Lake like a country inhabited by innumerable serpents. These
are taken early in a morning by bearded spears fixed on the end
of long poles. But this is a dangerous diversion; for, as the
bottom of clear water always appears nearer than it is, the un-
experienced striker finds the Eel more distant than he expected,
and frequently tumbles over the side of the boat.’? Richardson,
writing in 1793, details the method employed for capturing
these fishes in the river Eamont on their preparing to descend
from Ulleswater to the sea: ‘They are taken in August, Sep-
tember, and October, in nets, at Eel-Stank, about half a mile
down the river Eamont. In five or six hours eight or ten
horse-loads have been caught; but such large quantities only in
the darkest and stormiest nights. The largest commonly go
last... . They scarcely stir if the moon suddenly peeps out, or
when there is lightning... . When snow appears on the hills
they cease to descend.’ This ‘ Kel-Stank’ has only lately ceased
to exist. I have visited the spot and questioned local folk, who
assured me that considerable numbers of Eels had been taken
within a recent period.

Pennant gives a description of Urswick Mere, which may be
compared with Richardson’s account of Eamont: ‘The eels
descend in multitudes through the river that flows from this

1 Sandford Ms., p. 32.
2 Survey of the Lakes, p. 39.
3 From London to the Lakes, p. 69.

FISHES 523

Mere into Winander, beginning their migrations with the first
floods after midsummer, and cease on the first snows. The in-
habitants of the country take great numbers at that season ;
whence it is their opinion that the eels are going into the salt
_ water, and that they return in spring.’

Dr. Gough’s Ms. notes record this Eel as found in Killington
reservoir. Mr. Hutchinson writes to me that the species ‘is
common in all the tarns and rivers. Very large ones are caught
in Whinfell Tarn. I saw a hamperfull about two years ago
from Whinfell, and I should judge that the fish would average
about 44 Ibs. each. I stuffed one of this lot; it weighed about
5 lbs., and measured 3 ft. 9 in.” There are large Hels in the
Eden, especially at Armathwaite. One of the big fellows, well
known to anglers as frequenting that part of the river, scaled
5% lbs. It was caught in June 1852.. I question whether this
weight has often been surpassed. A watcher named Bevins told
the late Mr. Frank Buckland that he had known an Eel of
9 lbs. weight to be captured in Windermere.

BROAD-NOSED EEL.

Anguilla latirostris, Risso.

Dr. Gough mentions this species (if it is a species) as taken
in Skelsmergh Tarn and at Levens. Mr. Hutchinson informs
me that it is ‘fairly plentiful in the river Pool and Hood Tarn.
These are the only places in the district [Kendal] where they
are to be obtained that I am aware of. I have one in my
cabinet about 2 feet 6 inches long, caught in the former place.’
The largest example of this supposed species that I have ex-
amined weighed 24 lbs. It was caught near the mouth of the
Eden in September 1890.

CONGER.
Conger vulgaris, Cuv.
Dr. Heysham stated that ‘the Conger is not frequently taken
up our coasts;’ probably because he seldom saw the fish exhibited
1 A Tour in Scotland, vol. ii. p. 35.

524 VERTEBRATE FAUNA OF LAKELAND

in the Carlisle market, where his knowledge of local fishes seems
to have been chiefly acquired. Small Congers are often taken
near Silloth, and large fishes are occasionally hooked upon the
long lines in deep water. Dr. Gough mentions one caught at
Arnside in September 1872. Another, caught in Silloth Bay,
November 1841, weighed 57 lbs. Dead and sick Congers are
occasionally washed up on our shores. The Carlisle Journal of
November 24, 1876, records that a small Sturgeon, measuring
18 inches in length, was found entire in the stomach of a large
Conger. The Kel had been captured off Port Patrick and sent
to a Carlisle fishmonger.

Order LOPHOBRANCHII. Fam. SYNGNATHID.
GREAT PIPE-FISH.

Syngnathus acus, L.

This Pipe-fish appears to be of fairly common occurrence in
the waters of the English Solway. The largest local specimen
that I have seen measures 154 inches. This was sent to me by
Mr. W. Nicol, who caught it near Silloth in September 1890.
Parnell observes: ‘The Great Pipe-fish I have also found on the
shores of the Solway.’!

WOBM PIPE SFiS.
Nerophis lumbriciformis (L.).

This delicate fish is believed to be not uncommon in the
neighbourhood of Whitehaven. Dr. Welby Anson showed me
three specimens, taken by himself with the bladder wrack in
the dredge net. We compared them with Day’s figure, and
found that they closely agreed with it, although the fine black
network traced upon the head of the specimen described by
Day was only present on one of the three local examples.

1 Mem. Wern. Soc., vol. vii. p. 396.

FISHES 525

Order PLECTOGNATHI. Fam. PHTROM YZONTIDZ.

SEA LAMPREY.

Petromyzon marinus, L.

This Lamprey is comparatively seldom captured in our waters,
although in former times it seems to have been far from un-
common as a summer visitor to some of our larger rivers—the
Eden, for example. It appears to be of very infrequent occur-
rence in Morecambe Bay. Mr. W. Duckworth and I were
shown a fine Lamprey, June 30, 1891. It had been caught
that day near Ulverston, and appeared to be quite a strange
fish to the local fishermen. This example measured 25 inches.
Richardson wrote of this fish as round in the Eamont a century
ago: ‘It is but rarely taken. Three or four in a summer are
killed near Pooley Bridge, in the river. Some weigh 7 lbs.’
Dr. Heysham gives his experience in the following words:
‘Lampreys appear in the Eden and Esk in April and May, are
chiefly caught in June when the waters are low. They
spawn in both these rivers, and afterwards return to the sea.
I eat part of a very fine one this year, the 13th of April, which
was taken in the Eden the beginning of that month. April 28,
I examined a female full of roe. From the immense number of
egos which this contained, they must be astonishingly fruitful.
June 28, I examined three, two of which were males and one a
female; they had all spawned; the liver of the males was
much larger than the liver of the females.’ Writing of the river
Eden in 1803, Warner tells us that it produced ‘quantities of
excellent lampreys.’1 Warner referred especially to the neigh-
bourhood of Armathwaite Hall. I learn from Mr. H. Leavers
that a person named Irons, now residing in the district just
named, owns the right of fishing for Lampreys under some
old deed or covenant, which, however, does not entitle him to
fish for trout or salmon. I have made many inquiries among
our professional fish-poachers, and I find that very few of them
have ever taken the present species in the course of their water-
side researches.

1 Tour through the Northern Counties of England, vol. ii. p. 80.

526 VERTEBRATE FAUNA OF LAKELAND

LAMPERN.
Petromyzon fluviatilis, Le

The river Lamprey is common in the Petteril and some
other tributaries of the Eden, the Caldew for example. The
Keswick Museum possesses a local specimen, procured by the
late Captain Kinsey Dover.

PRIDE.

Petromyzon branchialis, L.

Richardson records this species as ‘frequent in the Eamont, |

and is about five inches long. There called Lamper eel.’ Dr.
Heysham writes of this species and the last, ‘Neither of these
species are very plentiful in our rivers. They appear and dis-
appear about the same time as the Lamprey.’ It is quite true
that these species are seldom caught, but I fancy that it is more
because no one searches for them than because they are actually
rare. ‘This species, like the last, is to be found in the Petteril
near Carlisle.

See

NOTES ON THE TEXT.

Book first.

MAMMALIA.
Order CARNIVORA. Fam. FELIDA.
WILD CAT.
Felis catus, L.

‘The Wild Cat lingers among the Fells of Cumberland only by
tradition’ (p. 11).

The Yorkshire Post of May 4, 1892, announced that a Wild
Cat had just been killed ‘at Belah Bridge near the Stainmore
Fells. The Rev. J. Wharton took an early opportunity of
informing me that the animal in question proved to be ‘an
errant domestic “ Tom” which had led an anchorite life.’ The
late William Pearson wrote the following note in 1839: ‘I
believe I once saw one many years ago. It was caught in a
snare on Cartmell-fell, and was a very fine animal. ... Al-
though it appears to be now extinct in our district, yet I have
talked with a famous hunter, John Elleray (he died not many
years since at the advanced age of more than ninety), who had
been at the death of more than one Wild Cat.’ !

Order CARNIVORA. Fam. MUSTHLID.
BADGER.
Meles taxus (Schreb.).

‘ Whether the Badger really became extinct in Lakeland within
the limits of the eighteenth century is a difficult point to settle (p. 44).
The late William Pearson wrote in 1839 that the Badger

1 Letters, Papers, and Journals, p. 49.

528 VERTEBRATE FAUNA OF LAKELAND

had become extremely rare: ‘I am told, however, he added,
‘that within the memory of persons now living, he has been
met with at Smithy Hill, and at Town-head in Cartmell-fell ;
and a friend informs me there are still a few to be found at
Humprey Head near Allithwaite.! Major Parkin kindly
showed me the skull of a Badger which was found drowned
in Ulleswater a few years since. It was conjectured to have
perished in attempting to cross the lake, and its remains were
washed up on the shores of Westmorland.

Order UNGULATA. Fam. CERVID.

RED DEER.
Cervus elaphus, L.

“<P? quid Squire Hasell” entertained his friends at Dale Head’ (p.62).

This refers to the ruined portion of the present farmhouse at
Dale Head. Wordsworth has left a description of it: ‘At the
last house in the dale we were greeted by the master, who was
seated at his door. . . . He invited us to enter and view a
room built by Mr. Hasell for the accommodation of his friends
at the annual chace [sic] of red deer in his forests at the head
of these dales. The room is fitted up in the sportsman’s style,
with a cupboard for bottles and glasses, with strong chairs and
a dining table; and ornamented with the horns of the stags
caught at these hunts for a succession of years—the length of
the last race each had being recorded under his spreading
antlers.’ 2 Similarly, the late Mr. Braithwaite visited ‘ Dale
Head or Stag Hall, the property of Squire Hasell of Dalemain,’
in September 1853. ‘ Here,’ he says, ‘we inspected the large
banqueting room, hung round with the heads of stags killed in
the chace, on the adjoining hills.’

‘ They die either from old age or from gradual inanition, due to a
deficiency of food during the early spring months’ (p. 64).

These words received a faithful illustration in the fate of a
young Red Deer Hind, found dying up in Bannerdale, April 5,

1 Letters, Papers, and Journals, p. 55.
2 Description of the Scenery of the Lakes, p. 123.
3 Salmonide of Westmorland, p. 165. j

NOTES ON THE TEXT 529

1892. Warned by the voice of nature that dissolution was
fast advancing, the shy creature had slipped away from the
company of her fellows to seek a quiet spot in which she
might await the arrival of the end with the calm resignation
of her race. Surely a sadder picture has been rarely seen
than this forlorn Hind presented, resting on her side, deep-
bedded in the marshy ground, helpless, and now advanced
beyond the reach of human succour. It was not that the germ
of any contagious malady had found lodgment in her frame to
mar her shapely outline, or to paralyse the powers of those
beautifully-proportioned limbs. She lay stricken by the disease
of poverty, a starved child of the mountain mist; but now
succumbing to the hardships of the winter season. Not as yet
had the film of death dimmed the soft lustre of those dark,
eloquent eyes—indeed the chest still heaved uneasily; the
plaintive groan which answered a caress of sympathy travelled
quickly to my heart. Only too sadly evident was it that her
small stores of strength were rapidly ebbing away. Already a
pair of Ravens, black as night, exchanged ominous congratula-
tions as they flew down from the impregnable fortress which
held their newly hatched young. Poised far aloft, a solitary
Buzzard kept lonely watch over the last throes of a prospective
prey. Now and again the echoes of the hills awoke from
peaceful slumber, starting into life at the bidding of that
querulous wail, which only too plainly betokened the greedy
appetite that longed to batten upon the waste venison of
Martindale.

Order CETACEA, Fam. DELPHINID.

GRAMPUS.
Orca gladiator (Lacép.).

‘The only recent occurrence that I can positively vouch for was
stranded near Skinburness in July 1876’ (p. 49).

This animal was one of a herd of six, which visited the
English Solway in July 1874, exactly two years earlier than
stated in the text. It proved to be a female, and was in fine

21

530 VERTEBRATE FAUNA OF LAKELAND

condition. Its occurrence was recorded atthe time in a White-
haven newspaper, which described the animals as ‘ deep-sea
porpoises.’

Order UNGULATA. Fam. BOVID.
WILD WHITE CATTLE.

Bos taurus, L.

‘A correct translation of the original’ (p. 76).

It may be convenient to add here a copy of the original
grant itself :—

‘R. a Gardein de nre forest dicea Trent ou a son lieu tenaunt
en fire forest Denglewode & Nous vo’ mandos q a iire ch feal
Andreu de Harcla Comite de Cardoill ou a ses genth en son
noun suffrez prendre auoir sys Cerfs & sys Deyms en fire dite
forest de Englewo de fre donne. Don a Noef Chastel s*

Tyne le xix Jour de Sept. [1322].

Order RODENTIA. Fam. LEPORIDZ,
HARE.

Lepus europeus, Pall.

‘But a Cumberland hunt, says a local writer’ (p. 85). The
local writer quoted is the worshipful Chancellor Ferguson, F.S.A.,
whose little work, Zhe Cumberland Foxhounds, appeared anony-
mously. It may here be remarked that, as long ago as the
reign of King John, a breed of Harriers was kept in Cumber-
land. In the fourth year of that sovereign, Allan Wastehouse
received a sum of £109, 15s. as the wages for a year and a half
of himself and four attendants. This included the maintenance
of ten dogs, bred for hunting Hares, as their title of ‘leporarii’
plainly proves.

NOTES ON THE TEXT 531

Book Second.

Order PASSERES. Fam. CINCLIDZ.
DIPPER.

Cinclus aquaticus, Bechst.

‘The Duckworths have overheard the Dipper singing in all the
summer months’ (p. 104).

It may be remarked in corroboration of this statement that
Mr. Rawson and I heard a Dipper singing cheerily on the 27th
of June, 1892. It was perching on a stone beside the stream
which flows out of Esthwaite. Mr. Rawson assures me that he
too has heard the Dipper’s song at every period of the year, a
fact which he has enjoyed the best possible opportunities of
testing.

Order ANSERES. Fam. ANATID.

BARNACLE GOOSE.
Bernicla leucopsis (Bechst. ).

‘Two Barnacle Geese made their appearance on Windermere
Lake. One bird of the couple was shot’ (p. 247).

This has proved to be a mistake. The species was incorrectly
reported to Mr. Rawson. We recently called together to see it,
and found that the bird was a Canada Goose, probably one of
those bred at Rydal.

SCAU P.

Fuligula marila (L.).

‘ Stragglers undoubtedly occur on our tarns and lakes’ (p. 290).

During the winter 1891-2, several parties of Scaups, each
numbering ten or a dozen individuals, frequented Windermere
Lake. Mr. H. E. Rawson frequently saw them, and shot a

532 VERTEBRATE FAUNA OF LAKELAND

couple of them as specimens. The local boatmen recognised
them under the name of ‘Blue bill,’ by which they are generally
distinguished in Morecambe Bay.

Order PYGOPODES. Fam. PODICIPEDIDA..

RED-NECKED GREBE.
Podicipes griseigena (Bodd. ).

‘ Another specimen was felled on the Kent . . . the only example
which I can vouch for as having been killed within the territorial
lumits of Westmorland’ (p. 452).

Two additional specimens were killed on Windermere in the
winter 1891-2, and were taken in the flesh to Mr. H. E. Rawson,
F.Z.S., by the man who shot them.

Book fourth.

Order PH YSOSTOMI. Fam. SALMONID. |

COMMON TROUT.
Salmo fario, L.

‘A hump-backed variety of the Common Trout inhabits the upper
waters of the Caldew’ (p. 507).

In May 1892 a fresh example of this variety was brought to
me by an angler named Rook, who had just taken it in the
Caldew. The so-called ‘hump’ was well developed. Dr.
Matthews kindly dissected the specimen with me, when we
found that the vertebral column was perfectly regular. The
deformity appeared to be due to a thickening of the cervical
muscles. The spinous and interspinous processes had been un-
usually developed, to support the abnormal growth.

NOTES ON THE TEXT 533

THE ALPINE CHARR.

Salmo alpinus, L.

‘The largest he ever saw weighed 2 Ibs.’ (p. 514).

Mr. Rawson has kindly ascertained for me that a Charr,
which weighed 2 lbs. 4 oz. was caught this spring [1892] in
Windermere. It was purchased by a local fishmonger named
Mudd, who sold it to a customer. This is the heaviest
that Mr. Rawson has been able to hear of. Charr were taken
in very good numbers in the spring of 1892. The largest take
of Charr this season scaled 320 lbs.

GWYNIAD.

Coregonus clupeoides, Lacép.

‘The eaistence of this fish in Ulleswater was well known wn the
seventeenth century’ (p. 515).

Sandford’s record of the existence of this fish in Ulleswater
was followed by the independent evidence of Willughby, who
probably was the first to record in print the existence of this
species in Lakeland waters, which he did in 1686: ‘ Lavareto
eundem omnino esse exestimo Schelley Cumberlandis dictum,
qui in lacu Hulswater non procul ab oppido Pereth invenitur.’ +

Order PLECTOGNATAHI. Fam, PETROMYZONTIDA.

LAMPERN.
Petromyzon fluviatilis, L.

‘The Liwer Lamprey is common’ (p. 536).

A paper entitled ‘An Account of a remarkable Decrease of the
Fiiwer Eden, in Cumberland: In a letter to Charles Lord Bishop
of Carlisle, F.R.S., from William Milbourne, Esq.,’ was read
before the Royal Society on Jan. 13, 1763. This notice con-
tains a record of a sudden fall of the Eden at Armathwaite ‘ In
the night between the twenty-eighth and twenty-ninth of
December last.’ The decrease of the water was so sudden ‘ that

1 Historia Piscium, p. 184.

534 VERTEBRATE FAUNA OF LAKELAND

several trouts and young lampreys had not time to save them-
selves, but were found the next morning frozen to death. Of
the former, eye-witnesses can speak to fifteen, of the latter two
hundred, all which were found in the extent of no more than
forty yards; and several dozens of young lampreys were easily
taken up alive by the hand, in the shallows.

N.B.—The trouts in general were small, the lampreys about
ten inches or a foot long.’ !

1 Phil. Trans. vol. liii. p. 7.

INDICES

L—INDEX OF SCIENTIFIC NAMES

A

Abramis brama, 495.

Acanthias vulgaris, 467.

Accentor modularis, 102.

Accipenser sturio, 470.

Accipiter nisus, 202.

Acredula caudata, 105.
a ‘rosea, 106.

Acrocephalus phragmitis, 100.

e ' streperus, 100.
Aigiatilis hiaticula, 361.
Agonus cataphractus, 479.
Alauda arborea, 162.

» arvensis, 161.
Alca impennis, xxvii.

»» torda, 444.
Alcedo ispida, 168.
Ammodytes lanceolatus, 488.

“e tobianus, 488.

Ampelis garrulus, 121.
Anas boscas, 269.

», streperus, 271.
Anguilla latirostris, 523.

- vulgaris, 521.

Anguis fragilis, 462.
Anser albifrons, 240.

» brachyrynchus, 238.

» cinereus, 232.

»» segetum, 235.
Anthus obscurus, 115.

py Pratensis, V3:

gue richards, 114:

a3 rtvialis. V13.
Aquila chrysaétus, 186.

» Cclanga, 186.
Archibuteo lagopus, 185.

Ardea alba, xcvii.

>, cinerea, 220.

» purpurea, 225.

» vralloides, 225.
Ardetta minuta, 226.
Arvicola agrestis, 82.

ass amphibius, 82.

aA glareolus, 83.

Asio accipitrinus, 173.
AA OSS dlyP4,

Astur palumbarius, 202.

Athene noctua, 177.

B
Balenoptera musculus, xvii.
Belone vulgaris, 496.
Bernicla brenta, 244.

ae canadensis,
53 leucopsis, 246.
Fh rujicollis, XXvViil.

Blennius pholis, 481.
Bos taurus, 75.
Se as) vale Congefprons, lin:

ce) 29 29 primig enius, iii.

Botaurus stellaris, 227.
Bufo calamita, 464.

>, vulgaris, 463.
Buiteo vulgaris, 184.

C

Caccabis rufa, 336.
Calcaritlapponicus, 148.
Calidris arenaria, 390.
Callionymus lyra, 481.
Canis lupus, xli.

», vulpes, 12.

538 VERTEBRATE FAUNA OF LAKELAND

Capreolus caprea, 72.
Caprimulgus europeus, 164.
Carduelis elegans, 132.
Castor fiber, lviii.
Centronotus gunellus, 481.
Certhia familiaris, 131.
Cervus dama, 65.

», elaphus, hi, 50.
Charadrius pluvialis, 358.
Chelidon urbica, 121.

Chen albatus, 243.
Chenalopex egyptiaca, xcii.
Chrysomitris spinus, 134.
Ciconia alba, 230.

Cinclus aquaticus, 103.
Circus eruginosus, 177.

5, cineraceus, 183.

» cyaneus, 179.
Clangula barrowit, xxviii.

. glaucion, 294.
Clupea alosa, 520.

»» junta, 52).

», harengus, 519.

» sprattus, 520.
Coccothraustes vulgaris, 136.
Columba enas, 314.

a linia, 315.

5A palumbus, 313.

Colymbus arcticus, 449.
- glacialis, 447.

ss septentrionalis, 450.

Conger vulgaris, 523.
Coracias garrula, 169.
Coregonus clupeoides, 515.
x vandesius, 517.
Corvus corax, 156.

»» cornix, 155.

»» corone, 154.

» Jrugilegus, 155.

», monedula, 154.
Cotile riparia, 130.
Cottus gobio, 478.

»» scorpius, 479.
Coturnix communis, 338.
Crex pratensis, 339.
Crossopus fodiens, 7.
Cuculus canorus, 170.
Cupidonia cupido, xe.

Cursorius gallicus, 348.
Cyclopterus lumpus, 480.
Cygnus bewicki, 259.

>» tmmutabilis, xcv, 252.

» musicus, 253.

», olor, 25%;
Cyprinus carpio, 492.
Cypselus apus, 163.

a melba, 164.

D
Dafila acuta, 276.
Dendrocopus major, 165.
minor, 166.

33

E
Emberiza citrinella, 147.
miliaria, 146.
scheniclus, 147.

bi)

99

Engraulis encrasicholus, 519.

Erinaceus europeus, 4.
Erithacus rubecula, 95.
Esox lucius, 497.
Eudromias morinellus, 348.

F

Falco esalon, 212.
candicans, 207.

5, islandus, 207.

>» peregrinus, 208.

3, subbuteo, 212.

», tinnunculus, 214.
Felis catus, 8,
Fratercula arctica, 447.
Fringilla celebs, 138.

39
Fulica atra, 345.
Puligula cristata, 285.

is JSerina, 284.

a marila, 290.

m nyroca, XcVil.
Fulmarus glacialis, 453.

G

Gadus eglefinus, 485.
», merlangus, 485.

montifringilla, 139.

a

INDEX OF SCIENTIFIC NAMES

Gadus morrhua, 483.
», pollachius, 485.
>, verens, 486.
> vulgaris, 486.
Galeus canis, 466.
Gallinago celestis, 376.
» gallinula, 377.
a5 major, 376.
Gallinuia chloropus, 344.
Garrulus glandarius, 153.
Gasterosteus aculeatus, 482.
3 pungitius, 483.
55 spinachia, 483.
a spinulosus, 483.
a trachurus, 482.
Gecinus viridis, 167.
Gecko mauritanicus, xciii.
Glareola pratincola, 347.
Globicephalus melas, xlix.
Gobio fluviatilis, 492.
Gobius gracilis, 480.
Grus communis, 346.

H

Haliaétus albicilia, cii, 194.
Harelda glacialis, 298.
Hippoglossus vulgaris, 488.
Hirundo rustica, 129.
Hematopus ostralegus, 365.
Hydrochelidon nigra, 408.
Hymenophyllum wilsoni, xxix.
Hyperoddon rostratum, 48.

I
Tynz torquilla, 167.

L

Labrax lupus, 473.
Lacerta vivipara, 462.
Lagopus mutus, 333.

- scoticus, 331.
Lamna cornubica, 466.
Lanius excubitor, 116,

3, collurio, 120.

», pomeranus, 120.
Larus argentatus, 428.

Larus canus, 427.

>», Juscus, 429.

» glaucus, 435.

>», leucopterus, 436.

>» marinus, 432.

», minutus, 420.

», philadelphia, xcvii.

» ridibundus, 421.
Latrunculus albus, 481.
Lepus cuniculus, 85.

» europeus, 84.

», variabilis, xc.
Leuciscus cephalus, 493.

58 erythropthalmus, 494.

an phoxinus, 494,
5G rutilus, 493.
an vulgaris, 494.
Ligurinus chloris, 136.
Inmosa belgica, 405.
», lapponica, 402.
Innota cannabinna, 139.
», jlavirostris, 141.
», linaria, 140.
», rufescens, 140,
Inparis montagut, 480.
» vulgaris, 480.
Locustella nevia, 101.
Lophius piscatorius, 478.
Loxia bifasciata, 145,
>», curvirostra, 142.
Lutra vulgaris, 35.

M

Machetes pugnax, 389.
Macrorhamphus griseus, 378.
Mareca penelope, 281.
Martes sylvestris, 17,
Meles taxus, 39.
Mergulus alle, 446.
Mergus albelius, 310.

» merganser, 306.

» serrator, 310,
Milvus ictinus, 2038.
Molva vulgaris, 487.
Motacilla alba, 110.

a lugubris, 111.

9 melanope, 112.

as rai, 112.

539

540 VERTEBRATE FAUNA OF LAKELAND

Motella tricirrata, 487.
Mugil septentrionalis, 482.
Mullus barbatus, 473.
Mus decumanus, 81.

», minutus, 79.

5, musculus, 79.

», rattus, 80.

», sylvaticus, 79.

Muscardinus avelianarius, 78.

Mustela erminea, 26.
» vulgaris, 26.
Musicapa atricapilla, 123.
-, grisola, 128.

N

Nemachilus barbatulus, 496.
Nerophis lumbriciformis, 524.
Numenius arquata, 406.

fs pheopus, 408.
Nyctala tengmalmi, 175.
Nycticorax griseus, 226.

O

Oceanites oceanicus, 457.

Oceanodroma leucorrhoa, 455.

@demia fusca, 304.

- nigra, 301.

», perspicillata, 305.
Orca gladiator, 48.
Orcynus germo, 476.
Oriolus galbula, 116.
Ortyx virginianus, Xci.
Osmerus eperlanus, 514.
Otocorys alpestris, 163.

iP

Pagellus centrodontus, 474.
Pagophila eburnea, 437.
Pandion haliaétus, 214.
Parus britannicus, 107.

», ceruleus, 108.

», major, 106.

», palustris, 107.
Passer domesticus, 137.

» montanus, 138.
Pastor roseus, 151.

Pelagodroma marina, 457.
Perca fiuviatilis, 471.
Perdix cinerea, 336.
Pernis apivorus, 207.

Petromyzon branchialis, 526.
99 Jluviatilis, 526.
>» marinus, 525. j

Phalacrocorax carbo, 218.
fe graculus, 219.
Phalaropus fulicarius, 368.
Rs hyperboreus, 367.
Phasianus colchicus, 334.
Phoca grenlandica, 46.
», vitulina, 46.
Phocena communis, 49.
Phycis blennoides, 486.
Phylloscopus rufus, 98.
“ stbilatrix, 99.
He trochilus, 99.
Physeter macrocephalus, 47.
Pica rustica, 153.
Platalea lewcorodia, 231.
Plecotus auritus, 1.
Plectrophanes nivalis, 149.
Pleuronectes flesus, 491.
ty limanda, 490.
os microcephalus, 491.
as platessa, 490.
Podicipes auritus, 452.
i cristatus, 451.
7 Jluviatilis, 453.
5. griseigena, 451.
Porphyrio ceruleus, xci.
Porzana bailloni, 343.
a maruetta, 340.
As parva, 341.
Pratincola rubetra, 93.
mA rubicola, 93.
Procellaria pelagica, 456.
Pseudocordylus microlepidotus, xcil.
Pseudorca crassidens, xlvii.
Puffinus anglorum, 454.
Pyrrhula europea, 142.
Pyrrhocorax graculus, 152.

Querquedula circia, 280.
je crecca, 279.

INDEX OF SCIENTIFIC NAMES 54]

R

Raja batis, 470.
», clavata, 469.
» radiata, 469.
>» vomer, 470.
Rana temporaria, 465.
Raniceps trifurcus, 487.
Regulus cristatus, 97.
», tgnicapillus, 98.
Rhina squatina, 468.
Rhombus levis, 489.
mu maximus, 489.
is punctatus, 490.
Rissa tridactyla, 437.
Ruticilla phenicurus, 94.
a titys, 94.

S

Salmo alpinus, 508.

>, Jario, 505.

a3) ©6feroa, 506.

», Jontinalis, 508.

>, levensis, 507.

» salar, 497.

;, trutta, 505.

Sazicola enanthe, 90.
= tsabellina, 92.
Sciena aquila, 474.
Sciurus vulgaris, 76.
Scolopax rusticula, 369.
Scomber scomber, 475.
Scombresox saurus, 496.
Scops giu, 176.
Scyllium canicula, 467.
Sitia cesia, 108.
Solea aurantiaca, 492.

5, vulgaris, 491.
Somateria mollissima, 301.
Sorex minutus, 7.

5, tetragonurus, 6.
Spatula clypeata, 272.
Squatarola helvetica, 359.
Stercorarius catarrhactes, 438.
crepidatus, 440.
parasiticus, 441.

PP)

3%

i)

pomatorhinus, 439.

Sterna cantiaca, 410.

», dougalli, 412.

» fluviatilis, 414.

>» macrura, 417.

» minuta, 418.
Strepsilas interpres, 364.
Strix flammea, 171.
Sturnus vulgaris, 150.
Sula bassana, 220.

Sus scrofa, xlix.
Sylvia atricapilla, 96.

>, cinerea, 9d.

» curruca, 96.

», hortensis, 97.
Syngnathus acus, 524.
Synotus barbastellus, 1.
Syrnium aluco, 175.
Syrrhaptes paradoxus, 317.

T
Tadorna cornuta, 264.
bi rutila, civ.

Talpa europea, 5,
Tetrao tetrix, 327.

>» Uurogallus, xci.
Thymallus vulgaris, 518.
Thynnus pelamys, 477.

we alalonga, 476.
Tinca vulgaris, 495.
Torpedo hebetans, 468.
Totanus calidris, 395.

x canescens, 398.

no Suscus, 397.

Ba glareola, 395.
hypoleucus, 392.
ochropus, 394.
Tr ine vipera, 477.
Trigla cuculus, 479.

» gurnadus, 479.
Tringa alpina, 380.

» canutus, 387.

» maculata, 379.
minuta, 382.
striata, 386.
subarquata, 384.
temmincki, 384.
Triton cristatus, 463.

» palnipes, xcviii.

542 VERTEBRATE FAUNA OF LAKELAND |

Triton teniatus, 463.

Troglodytes parvulus, 109.

Tropidonotus natrix, 461.
Tryngites rufescens, 392.
Turdus iliacus, 88.

>> merula, 89.

> musicus, 87.

» pilaris, 88.

», torquatus, 89.

> vescivorus, 87.
Turtur communis, 316.

U
Upwpa epops, 169.
Uria grylle, 445.
», troile, 444.
Ursus arctos, xlv.

Vv

Vanellus vulgaris, 361.
Vespertilio daubentoniz, 2.
5 mystacinus, 4.
A natteri, 3.
Vesperugo noctula, 2.
As piprstrellus, 2.
Vipera berus, 461.

x
Xiphias gladius, 474.

Z

Zeus faber, 475.
Zoarces viviparus, 482.

.
|

IL—GENERAL INDEX

AND

GLOSSARY OF LOCAL NAMES

Notre.—The Lakeland names of animals, both extant and obsolete
are printed in ttalics.

A
Anchovy, 519.
Angel-fish, 468.
Angler, 478.
Aplin, O. V., on Hybrid Sparrow,
ber
Assize at Carlisle, presentment
regarding Salmon Fisheries, 501.
Auk, Great, xxvii.
», Little, 446.
Auroch, lii.

B

Badger, 39; baiting, 42; exter-
mination, 40 ; first use of name,
lxxiii; meaning of name, 20. note.

Banty Hemplin=Lesser Redpoll,
West Cumberland.

Barnacle, 246; arrival, 248 ; early
mention of, 248; myth regarding,
246; occurrence inland, 247;
amusing incident witnessed by the
author in St. James’s Park, 250.

Basse, 473.

Basse (Barce, Barcelles) = Perch,
472.

Bastard Shark = Common Tope, 466.
Bat, Barbastelle, 1.

», Common, 2.

5, Daubenton’s, 2.

», Great, 2.

,, Long-eared, 1.

», Reddish-grey, 3.

», Whiskered, 4.

Bear, Brown, xlv.

Beaver, lviii.

Bessy Blakeling = Yellowhammer.

Bessy Ducker = Dipper.

Bird fowling, lxxii.

Hitter = Bittern, 228.

Bittern, 227; formerly nested on
EKamont, 228 ; at Cardew Mire,
ibid.

Bittern, Little, 226; capture in
Scotland, ibzd.

Blackbird, 89.

Black Duck=Scoter, 302.

Blenny, Viviparous, 482.

Blueback=Common Tope, 466.

Blue Bill=Scaup, 291.

Bluett=Skate, 470.

Bluffin=Coal-fish, 486.

Boar, Wild, xlix.

*

544 VERTEBRATE FAUNA OF LAKELAND

Bodling=Cod, 484.
Bonito, 477.
Brambling, 139.
Brampton Churchwardens, their
refusal to pay for Foxheads, Ixvii.
Bream, 495.
Brett= Brill, 489.
Brill, 489.
Brock= Badger, 39.
Bullfinch, 142.
Bullhead, River, 478.
aa Short-spined, 479. ,
Bunting, Corn, 146.
i. Lapland, 148.
x Reed, 147.
ms Snow, 149.
ms Yellow, 147.
Bustard, Great, 347.
Buzzard, 184; in cave deposits, lviii.
+, Honey, 206.
,, Rough-legged, 18

C

Capercaillie, xci.

Carp, Common, 492.

Cat, Wild, 8; former distribution,
9; extinction, 11; last strong-
hold in Martindale, lxv.

Cat Fish=Butterfish, 481.

Cat Swallow=Sandwich Tern, 410.

Cattle, extinct, lii.

,, Wild White, 74.

Chaffinch, 138.

Charr, Alpine, 508; how taken,
513 ; how cooked, 508 ; infested
by parasites, xcix ; where found,
ibid.

Chiffchaff, 98.

Chir-maw = Black-headed Gull, 422.

Chitty = Wren, 109.

Chough, 152.

Chub, 493.

Clean Marit=Pine Marten, 25.

Coalfish, 486.

Cockle Duck=Scaup, 291.

Cockle Maw=Black-headed Gull,
421,

Cod, 483.

Con= Squirrel, 77.

Conger, 523.

Coot, Common, 345.

Cormorant, 218.

Courser, Cream-coloured, 348.

Crag Starling = Ring Ouzel, 89.

Crake, Baillon’s, 343.

», Corn, 338.
», Little, 341.
» spotted, 340.

Crane, 346.

Crane = Heron, 221.

Creeper, tree, 131 ; nesting in stone
wall, 132.

Creepydyke= Hedge Sparrow, 102.

Crossbill, Common, 142; irruptions
of, 144; nesting in Cumberland,
143.

Crossbill, Two-barred, 145.

Crow, Carrion, 154.

», Hooded, 155.
5 Hybrid,lxxx

Cuckoo, 170.

Cub-hunting, 13.

Curious nesting sites, viz. of Curlew,
406; of Ring Dove, 313; of
Shell Duck, 265; of Tawny Owl,
175 ; of Tree Creeper, 132.

Curlew-knave=Whimbrel, or Bar-
tailed Godwit.

Cushat = Ring Dove, 313.

D

Dab, Common, 490.
>, smear, 491.

Dabchick, 453.

Dace, 494.

Daker Hen=WUand Rail, Alston.

Dale Head, Squire Hasell’s house ~
at, 62, 528.

Deadfall, 23.

Deer, Fallow, 65; in Inglewood,
ibid. ; management, 70; in parks,
xciv, 71; formerly in Martindale,
7M

Deer forests, ancient ; in Cumber-

GENERAL INDEX AND GLOSSARY OF LOCAL NAMES

land, Coupland, 58; Ennerdale,
59; Inglewood, 55; Walton, 53 ;
Wastdale, 58; in Furness, 51;
in Westmorland; Martindale,
extant, 61.

De Harcla, grant of bucks (not
Wild Cattle), 76; original of
grant, 530.

Deer parks, ancient, 66; extant in
Cumberland; Armathwaite, 71;
Crofton, zbid., xciv; Edenhall,
ibid., Ixxv; Gowbarrow, zbid.,
xciv; Greystoke, zbid.; High Moor,
ibid. , xxv; Muncaster, ibid., xciv;
no deer at Brougham, 72; no
deer at Naworth, xciv ; in Lanca-
shire, Holker, 71; in Westmor-
land, Dallam Tower, 71; Levens,
ibid., xxv; Lowther, 71; Rig-
maden, 71.

Deer, Red, 50; in Martindale, 61 ;
imparked, xciv, 58; extinct race,
li; royals, abid.

Destruction of Wild Animals,
Ixiv.

Devilin=Switt.

Devoke Water Maw=Great Black-
backed Gull, 433.

Dipper, 103, 531.

Diver, Black-throated, 449.

», Great Northern, 448.
», Red-throated, 450.

Dogfish, Picked, 467.

» small-spotted, 467.

Dope or Doup= Carrion Crow.

Doree, John, 475.

Dormouse, xciv, 78.

Dotterel, 348 ; history of search for
nest, 350-354; recent decrease
of, 355; first eggs ever found in
Lakeland, 350; arrival in May,
356; early arrivals, 357; colour
of breeding birds, ibid.

Dove, Ring, 313.
yee hock, 315.

a stock, 314.
» Turtle, 316.
Dragonet, 481.

545

Duke of Montagu’s letter about
Charr, 509.

Dunlin, 380.

Dykey = Hedge Sparrow, 102.

EK

Eagle, Golden, 186; bred near
Keswick, 190; in Martindale,
188. See Note, 552.

Eagle, Sea, 194. Former eyries in
Cumberland: Borrowdale, 194 ;
Buttermere, ciii, 191, 198, ; Esk-
dale, 198, 200; Langdale, 198.
Kyries in Westmorland: Buck
Crag, cii, 189; Wallow Crag,
194.

Eagle, Spotted, xcv, 186.

Eagles in Scotland, 201.

Kel, Broad-nosed, 523,

», Conger, 523.
»5 Sharp-nosed, 521.

Eider Duck, 301.

F

Falcon, Greenland, 207.
>, Iceland, 207.
», Peregrine, 208.

Fay Dog=Tope, 466.

Fatherlasher=Sea Bullhead, 479.

Flounder, 491.

Fluke = Flounder.

Flycatcher, Pied, 123.

= Spotted, 123.

Food of Birds, viz. :—Barnacle,
248; Barn Owl, 171; Bean
Goose, 236; Bewick’s Swan,
261; Bittern, 229; Black-headed
Gull, 426; Brent Goose, 246;
Buffon’s Skua, 443; Cormorant,
219; Curlew, 407; Dipper, 105;
Dotterel, 357; Dunlin, 382;
Eagle, 188; Goldfinch, 134;
Golden Plover, 358; Goosander,
308; Great Black-backed Gull,

435; Greenshank, 400; Grey
Plover, 860; Honey Buzzard,
207; House Sparrow, 137;

Kestrel, 214; Kite, 205; Lesser

2M

546

Black-backed Gull, 431; Little
Stint, 384; Long-tailed Duck,
300; Merlin, 213; Oystercatcher,
367 ; Pied Flycatcher, 128; Red-
breasted Snipe, 378; Sand-
Grouse, 323, 325; Sandwich
Tern, 411 ; Scaup, 291; Shoveller,
276; Shrike, 117; Short-eared
Owl, 174; Skua, 488, 441;
Smew, 312; Tawny Owl, 175;
Waxwing, 122.

Food of Mammals, viz. :—Of Fou-
mart, 33; of Seal, 47 ; of Marten,
lxi, 18; of Otter, 38; of Stoat,
26; of Weasel, 26.

Forkbeard, Greater, 486.

me Lesser, 487.

Foumart, 27; disappearance of,
ibid. ; former distribution, 28 ;
payments for, ibid., lxx ; hunting
in Westmorland, 29; ditto in
Cumberland, 30; value of skin,
32, 34; habits, 33; variation of
pelage, 34.

Fox, 12; greyhound and terrier
foxes, 16; payments for, lxvii;
cessation of capitation fees at
Asby, Ixviii; at Greystoke, 14.

Fox Hounds, 12; kept for the
crown, lxviii ; pack kept by Mar-
tindale parish, ibid.

Frigate Petrel, 457.

Frog, Common, 465.

Fulmar, 453.

G

Gadwall, 271.
Gallinule, Purple, xci.
Gannet, 220.
Gar-fish, 496.
Garganey, 280.
Gecko, Moorish, xciii.
Germon, 476.
Goby, Slender, 480.

» White, 481.
Godwit, Bar-tailed, 402.

ep Black-tailed, 405.

VERTEBRATE FAUNA OF LAKELAND

| Groundling =Slender Goby, Silloth.

Goldcrest, 97.
Goldeneye, 294.
Me Barrow’s, XXviil.
Golding=Goldeneye in Westmor-
land.
Goldfinch, 132.
Goosander, 306.
Goose, Barnacle, 246.
» Brent, 244.
», Bean, 235.
», Grey lag, 232.
,, Pink-footed, 238.
5, snow, 248.
White-fronted, 240.
ree Red Grouse, 331.
Gor Maw=Great Black - backed
Gull, English Solway.
Gos Hawk, 202.
Gowk=Cuckoo, 170.
Grampus, Common, 48, 529.
be Thick-toothed, xlvil.
Grass Bunting=Common Bunting, ‘
Alston. |
Grayling, 518.
Gravye or Gravel Duck=Goosander,
306.
Grebe, Hared, 452.
,, Great Crested, 451.
», Little, 453.
,, Red-necked, 451, 532.
Sclavonian, 452. ~
Green back=Coalfish, 486. {
Greenfinch, 136.
Greenshank, 398.
Grey Duck= Mallard, 270. b

Grouse, Black, 327; analysis of
number supplied to Naworth,
ibid. ; introduction into Rusland
Valley, 329,

Grouse, Pinnated, xe.

,,. Red, 331; sent to New
Zealand, 332.

Grouse, Pallas’s Sand, history, 317;
first local immigration, 318 ;
second ditto, 318-321; habits,
321; cry, 323; wintering, 325.

Gudgeon, 492.

GENERAL INDEX AND GLOSSARY OF LOCAL NAMES

Guelder, 1xxxiii.
Guillemot, Black, 445.
is ‘Common, 444.

Gull, Black-headed, 421; nesting
on salt-marsh, 423; used for
table, 427.

Gull, Bonaparte’s, xcvii.

., Common, 427.

,, Glaucous, 435.

», Great Black-backed, 432.
», Herring, 428.

,, Lceland, 436.

», Lvory, 437.

», Lesser Black-backed, 429.
», Little, 420.

Gulleries, of Black-headed Gull :—
In Lancashire, at Walney Island,
422. In Westmorland, at Clib-
burn, 422; at Sunbiggin, ibid.
In Cumberland, at Bolton Fell,
422; Bowness, ibid.; Denton
Fell, ibid. ; Greystoke, ibid. ;
Moorthwaite, ibid.; Newton
Reigny, ibid. ; Ravenglass, ibid. ;
Salta Moss, zbed. ; Solway Flow,
ibid.

Gurnard, Grey, 479.

Ks Red, 479.

Gwyniad, 515, 533.

Jal
Haaf net, 502.
Haddock, 485.
Hag-worm = Ringed Snake, or
Viper, 462.
Hake, 486.
Hammer-bleat } =snipe.
Heather-bleat
Hare, 84.
5g, | blue, xc.
Hare-hunting, 85, 530.
Harrier, Hen, 179.
= Marsh, 177.
ee Montagu’s, 183.
Hawfinch, 136.
Hedgehog, 4.
Hemplin= Hedge
Linnet, 103.

Sparrow, or

547

Heron, 220 ; fattened for table, 221.
», Great White, xcvii.
UNIO hb 226,

» Purple, 225.
33 Squacco, 225.

Heronries in Lakeland, viz. :—In
Lancashire, Roudsea, 223; Rus-
land, ibid; Whittington, «bid.
In Westmorland, Dallam Tower,
222; Ingmire Hall, 224; Killing-
ton, ibid. ; Rydal, 222. In Cum-
berland, Crofton, 24; Edenhall,
ibid.; Floriston, ibid.; Greystoke,
wbid.; Muncaster, ibid.; ; Nether-
by, zbid. ; Wythop, ibid.

Heronsue= Heron, 221.

Herring, 519.

Hind, the dying Red Deer, 529.

Hobby, 212.

Hoopoe, 169.

Housie = House Sparrow.

Hump-backed Trout, 507, 532.

Hybrid Birds, viz. :—Finches, xxix;
hybrid Sparrows, Ixxx ; Crows,
lxxxi; Grouse, Ixxxli; Geese,
ibid.

I

Inglewood Forest, 55.

Introduced species, viz. :—Mam-
mals, xc; Birds, zbid. ; Reptiles,
xceil.

Ivron= Erne= Eagle, 187.

Iron Crag = Erne Crag = Eagle
Crag.

J

Jack Curlew= Whimbrel.
Jackdaw, 154.

Jay, 153.

Jennie Redtail = Redstart.
Judcock=Jack Snipe, 378.

K

Keeling or Killing =Cod, 483.
Kellat= Pollack, Whitehaven.
Kestrel, 214.

Kingfisher, 168.

Killdevil = Swift.

548

Kite, 203; formerly nested, viz. :—In
Cumberland, near Armathwaite,
203; Keswick, 204; Watermil-
lock, 204. In Westmorland, at
Sawrey, 204; how exterminated,
XXXVI.

Kittiwake, 437.

Knot, 387.

L

Lake-hen= Coot, 346.

Lampern, 526, 533.

Lamprey, Sea, 525.

Land Rail, 339.

Lapwing, 361.

Lark, Shore, 163.
ky, Lol:
», Wood, 162.

Leporarii= Harriers, 530.

Ling, 487.

Linnet, 139; Cuckoo laying in
Linnet’s nest, 170.

Lizard, Common, 462.

Loach, 496.

Longevity of Rabbit, 86; of Ring
Dove, 313.

Long-tailed Duck, 228.

Lough Duck=Wigeon, 281.

Lumpsucker, 480.

Lydekker, Mr. R., on the Auroch,
lvi; on Bird bones, lviii.

M

Mackerel, 475.

Magpie, 153.

Maigre, 474.

Mallard, 269.

Mammals, extinct, xl.

Marking Salmon, early practice of,
502.

Marten, Pine, 17; local distribu-
tion, 18; decrease of, 25; hunt-
ing, 20; Mr. F. Nicholson on,
Ix; trapping, 23; early records
of, Inix, 25.

Marterne \ :
Martern f = Pine Marten, lxx, 17.

VERTEBRATE FAUNA OF LAKELAND

Martin, House, 129.

> wand ist:
Martindale Forest, 61.
Merganser, Hooded, xxviii.

se Red-breasted, 310.

Merlin, 212.
Miller's thumb = Willow Wren.
Minnow, 494.
Mire Duck= Mallard.
Miredrum= Bittern, 227.
Mole, 5 ; in churchyard, Ixiv.
Monkfish= Angler, Whitehaven.
Moor Buzzard = Marsh Harrier,

XkKVI, Ss
Moor-Hen, 344.
Mowdiwarp = Mole, 6.
Mouse, Harvest, 79.

», House, 79.

», Long-tailed Field, 79.

», Short-tailed Field, 82.
Mullet, Lesser Grey, 482.

3 60 Red 473.

N

Nanny = Whitethroat.
Natterjack Toad, 464.
Naturalists of Lakeland, the, xvii.
Nets, illegal, to be burnt, 501.
Newt, Great Crested, 463.
», Palmate, xeviii.
»» Smooth, 463.
Nicholson, Mr. F., F.Z.S., on the
Pine Marten, lx.
Night Hawk = Nightjar.
Noctule, 2.
Nuthatch, 108.

O

Old wife=Common Guillemot, on
Solway.

Oriole, Golden, 116,

Osprey, 214.

Otter, 35; head-money paid for,
36; habits of Otters, 38; skins
used for hat-making, 39.

Owl, Barn, 171; how butchered, 81.
5 Latttle- V7

GENERAL INDEX AND GLOSSARY OF LOCAL NAMES

Owl, Long-eared, 172.
»> Short-eared, 173.
oan COPS, -L 16;

», “Lawny, 175.
», Tengmalm’s, 175.

Oystercatcher, 365.

Pp

Paddock= Frog, 465.
Partridge, 336.
aA Red-legged, 336.

Patrick= Partridge.
Peesweep
Peewit
Perch, 471.
Peregrine, 208.
Petrel, Fork-tailed, 455.

» Frigate, 457.

» Storm, 456.

WWilson’s, 45/7.
Phalarope, Grey, 368.

= Lapwing.

ce Red-necked, 367.

Pheasant, 334.
Pigeon, Wood, 313.
Pigmy Curlew, 384.
Pike, 497.
Pintail, 276.
Pipe-fish, Greater, 524.
a Worm, 524.
Pipistrelle, 2.
Pipit, Meadow, 113.
fe Evichard s, 114.
mae eOck, 115.
me ree, 113:
Plaice, 490.
Plover, Golden, 358.
a Green, 362.
a Grey, 309.
fs Ringed, 361.

Plover-provider=Dunlin, Alston.

Pochard, 284.

Pogge, 479.

Pollack, 485.

Porbeagle, 466.

Porpoise, 49, 521. |
Pratincole, Collared, 347.

Prickly Dick=Ten-spined Stickle-

back, 483.

Ptarmigan, 333.
Puett= Lapwing, 362.
Puffin, 447.

Purr= Duulin, 380.
Pyat= Magpie, 154.

Q

Quail, 338.
oo) Vinginia, xcr,

R

Rabbit, 85.
Rail, Land, 338.

», Water, 343.
Rat, Black, 80.

»5, Brown, 81.
Ratten= Rat, 81.
Raven, 156.

Ray, Starry, 469.

», Lhornback, 469.
Razorbill, 444.
Redbreast, 95.
Redbreasted Snipe, 378.
Redpoll, Lesser, 140.

6 Mealy, 140.
Redshank, 395.

ws Spotted, 397.
Redstart, 94.

Ha Black, 94.
Redwing, 88.
Review of species, xciv.
Ring Dove, 313.
Ring Ouzel, 89.
Ringtail=Hen Harrier, 179.
Roach, 493.
Robbin=Cod, 484.
Rock Dove, 315.

Rockling, Three-bearded, 487.

Roe-deer, 72.

Roller, 169.

Rook, 155.

Rorqual, Common, xlvii.
Rose-coloured Starling, 151.

Rotgeese=Brent Goose, 244,

Rudd, 494.
Ruff, 289.

549

550

S

Salmon, 497 ; diseased, 504; enter-
ing lakes, 503; how marked,
502; largest Eden Salmon, 504 ;
sent to London, 503.

Salmon Fisheries, Rights of, 498-
502.

Sanderling, 390.

Sand-grouse, Pallas’s, 317.

Sandlark= Common Sandpiper.

Sand-launce, Greater, 488.

S Lesser, 489.

Sandpiper, Buff-breasted, 392.

mr Common, 392.
AS Curlew, 384.
a Green, 394.

‘ Pectoral, 379.
Br Purple, 386.

5 Wood, 395.

Saury, 496.

Scaup, 290; inland, 531.

Scoter, Common, 301.

Re eilro iy esi ls)
» Velvet, 304.

Sea-Bream, Common, 474.

Scobby, Scoppy=Chaffiinch, 138.

Sea Bellet = Ringed Plover, Solway.

Sea Eagle, 194.

Sea-grey= Knot, Walney.

Sea-hen = Lumpsucker, 480.

Sea-mouse = Dunlin.

Sea-pie = Oystercatcher.

Sea-swallow =Common Tern.

Seal, Common, 46.

», Greenland, 46.

Shad, Allis, 520.

» waite, 521.

Shag, 219.

Shanny, 481.

Shark, Porbeagle, 466.

Shearwater, Manx, 454.

Sheldrake, 264.

Shell-apple = Chafiinch, 138.

Shepster= Starling, Furness.

Shoveller, 272.

Shreak = Buzzard.

Shrew, Common, 6.

VERTEBRATE FAUNA OF LAKELAND

Shrew, Lesser, 7.

»» Water, 7.
Shrike, Great Grey, 116.

»» Red-backed, 120.
», Woodchat, 120. '

Shrite = Missel Thrush, 87. .

Siskin, 134.

Skate, Common, 470. |
», Long-nosed, 470.

Skelly, in Eden=Chub, 493.

» in Ulleswater = Gwyniad,

515.

Skins :—Of Foumart, 32; of Fox,
12; of Marten, 24; of Otter,
39; of Squirrel, 77; of Wild
Cat, 9.

Skua, Arctic, 440.

,, Buffon’s, 441.

», Great, 438.

,, Pomatorhine, 439.
Skelduck=Shelduck, Solway.
Slowworm, 462.

Smelt, 514.

Smew, 310.

Snake, Common, 461.

Snipe, Common, 376.

», Great, 376.

oy ack, saline

», Sabine’s, 1xxvii.

Sole, 491.

», Lemon, 492.

Sparling =Smelt, 514.

Sparrow, House, 137.

i Hybrid, Ixxx.
re Tree, 138.

Spearing Eels, 522; Otters, 36;
Salmon, 503.

Spoonbill, 231.

Spoonbill = Shoveller.

Sprat, 520.

Sprint, 372.

Sprug = House Sparrow.

Squirrel, 76.

Starling, 150.

Ms Rose-coloured, 151.

Stickleback, Fifteen-spined, 48 .

PP Four-spined, 483.
ne Rough-tailed, 482.

6 ee

GENERAL INDEX AND GLOSSARY OF LOCAL NAMES

Stickleback, Ten-spined, 483.
as Three-spined, 482.
Sting-fish = Viper Weever, Silloth.
Stint, Little, 382.
», Temminck’s, 384.
Stoat, 26.
Stock Dove, 314.
Stockdove=Ring Dove in
Lancashire, 314.
Stonechat, 93.
Stork, White, 230.
Strawmear=Garden Warbler, 97.
Sturgeon, 471.
Sucker, Unctuous, 480.
», Montagu’s, 480.
Swallow, 129.
Sweet Mart = Pine Marten, 25.
Swift, 163.
», Alpine, 164.
Swan, Bewick’s, 259.
>» Mute, 251.
2. Holish, xev, 252:
>, ' Whooper, 253.
Swine, Wild, xlix.
Swirl = Squirrel, 77.
Swordfish, 474.

North

iy
Tadpole Hake, 487.
Teal, 279.
Tench, 495.

Tern, Arctic, 417.

», Black, 408.

», Common, 414.

», Lesser, 418.

»» Roseate, 412.

»» sandwich, 410.
Teufit = Lapwing.
Thornback Ray, 487.
Three-bearded Rockling, 487.
Thrush, Missel, 87.

a 6pong, 37.
Titmouse, Blue, 108.

53 Coal, 107.

5 Great, 106.

js Long-tailed, 106.

‘9 Marsh, 107.

551

Titmouse, White - headed,
tailed, 105.
Toad, Common, 463.
», Natterjack, 464.
Tom Carle= Bullhead, 478.
Tope, Common, 466.
Topknot, Miiller’s, 490.
Torpedo, 468.
Trapping, Foumart, 32.
ys Marten, 23.
Trout, American Brook, 508.
», Common, 505.
», Great Lake, 506.
,, Loch Leven, 507.
» sea, 505.
Twite, 141; Cuckoo layingin Twite’s
nest, 170.
Tufted Duck, 285; curious court-
ship, 288.
Turbot, 489.
Turnstone, 364.
Turtle Dove, 316.

Long-

U

Urchin = Hedgehog, 5.
Utick= Whinchat.

Vv

Variation of colour in Birds, lxxvi;
in Mammals, lxxiv; in Reptiles,
lxxviii.

Vendace, 517.

Viper, 461.

Vole, Bank, 83.

», Common Field, 82.
», Water, 82.
Vulpicide, lxvii, 12.

W

Wagtail, Grey, 112.
sp Sebieds aii:
», White, 110.
a Yellow, 112.
Warbler, Blackcap, 96.
A Garden, 97.

552

Warbler, Grasshopper, 101 ; female
singing, 102.

Warbler, Reed, 100.

ie Sedge, 100.

Water Court, 502.

Water Nannie=Sedge Warbler.

Water Ouzel, 103.

Water Rail, 343.

Waxwing, 121.

Weever, Viper, 477.

Weight of Birds, viz. :—of Brent
Goose, 246; of Dotterel, 357 ;
of Grey Geese, 235, 239, 242 ; of
Long-tailed Duck, 299 ; of Sand-
Grouse, 325; of Shelduck, 267;
of Smew, 312; of Swans, 252;
260, 261, 263, 264; of Wood-
cock, 375.

Weight of Fishes, viz. :—of Charr,
514; of Salmon, 504.

Weight of Mammals, viz. :—of
Badger, 44; of Foumart, 32; of
Marten, 24; of Otter, 37; of
Wild Cat, 11.

Wet-me-feet = Quail.

Whale, Common Beaked, 48.

c). Pilot, xii.
»» Rorqual, xlvii.
»> Sperm, 47.

Wheatear, 90.

Wheatear, Isabelline, 92.

VERTEBRATE FAUNA OF LAKELAND

Whimbrel, 408.

Whinchat, 93.

White-eyed Duck, xeviii.

White Fallow Deer, Ixxy, 71.

Whiterump = Wheatear.

Whitethroat, 95.

Aa Lesser, 96.

Whiting, 485.

Whiting of Esk=Sea Trout, im-
mature, 505.

Wigeon, 281. 7

Wild Cat, 8.

Wile, ixxxv.

Willie Liltie

Willie Wicket y

Willow Wren, 99.

Woodchat Shrike, 121.

Woodcock, 369 ; migration, ibid. ;
how netted, 371 ; snared, lxxxvi,
371; first nesting in Lakeland,
373 ; gradual extension of breed-
ing range, zbid.

Woodpecker, Green, 167.

Os Great Spotted, 165.
oA Lesser at 166.

Wood Pigeon, 313.

Wood Wren, 99.

Wolf, xli.

Wren, 109.

Wryneck, 167.

= Common Sand-
piper.

Note.—The Eagle Eyrie at Buck Crag, referred, as ‘a nebular hypo-
thesis,’ to the Golden Eagle on page 189, proved at the last moment to
have been tenanted by the Sea Eagle ; a most surprising contingency, after

the statement of the Rev. W. Richardson (page 188).
covery, the remarks about Buck Crag printed in the article on the Golden
Eagle must please be transferred by the reader to the White-tailed or Sea
We owe the portrait of two Dotterel chicks of the Lakeland race
to the kindness of the Rev. F. O. Pickard-Cambridge, whose etching is
based upon a photograph taken by Mr. D. L. Thorpe.

Eagle.

Printed by T. and A. ConsTABLE, Printers to Her Majesty,
at the Edinburgh University Press.

In view of this dis- |

MAP TO ILLUSTRATE

A VERTEBRATE FAUNA
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SCALE 3 MILEE TO AM INH:

REFERENCE TO CONTOURS OF ALTITUDE
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