Page:The Zoologist, 4th series, vol 6 (1902).djvu/483

Rh the Reed-Bunting, though rare elsewhere, swarmed in these marshes; and here also we saw one or two Whinchats.

At one place on the marshes—near the site of some old colliery workings—are two or three fair-sized shallow pools, fringed with extensive beds of rushes and a few patches of reed. A Cormorant was fishing in the open water, a Heron in the shallows, and on an old spoil-bank, by the margin of the pools, a solitary Whimbrel was feeding. Swifts and Sand-Martins were hawking above the water, whose surface was dotted with Coots and Moorhens. Many of the Coots were attended by young, and one nest, in a patch of rushes, contained a young bird and some unhatched eggs. The little creature, which was actively scrambling about in the nest, constantly uttered a querulous wheezing pipe. Its whitish beak, brilliant scarlet forehead, shading into orange on the sides of the head, and vivid blue crown, together with its hairy black down, rendered it strikingly different from an adult bird. A female Mallard with downy young took refuge in the reeds as we approached, and a pair of Teal rose from the water; on another pool we saw a second Teal drake. On the marsh contiguous to the pools about a hundred Mallards, mostly drakes, were resting; some standing, others lying on the short turf. With them was a pair of Shovelers, the white on the neck and back and the chestnut breast of the drake making it conspicuous amongst the darker-plumaged Mallards. When the birds rose, the Shovelers flew apart, their low "tuk tuk" sounding very different from the noisy "quack" of the commoner species as they passed over.

Newborough Warren, a desolate waste of blown sand, whose unstable dunes are but partially held in place by the roots of maram-grass and dwarf willow-scrub, provides, in its innumerable Rabbit-burrows, nesting-holes for Wheatears, Stock-Doves, Starlings, and Sheld-Ducks. In the hollows between the dunes, where after heavy rain the water lodges and where butterwort and other marsh-plants abound, the Snipe and Lapwing were nesting. On the edge of the Warren, a little llyn, pink at one end with the flowers of buckbean, was inhabited by several pairs of Coots and Moorhens; and on its sandy margin we saw a pair of Sandpipers. We only observed this bird elsewhere, on the Cefni, in Malldraeth Marsh, and on the shore of the Straits near