BIRDS
Untraversed by any river of importance and not containing any lakes nor any sheets of water of great extent, Leicestershire is naturally deficient in a number of birds found in more favoured counties, added to which it is also not in the line of any of the routes taken by birds on migration. Hence it follows that the coast and marine birds, together with the rarer birds, are merely occasional stragglers during severe weather on the coasts or at the vernal and autumnal equinoxes. The small and sluggish River Soar, running nearly north and south, and canalized for nearly the whole of its short course, falls into the Trent some considerable distance above Nottingham, at a point where the larger river is of some width, therefore any stragglers from the sea by that water-way naturally pass the restricted mouth of the canalized Soar in following the course of the Trent into Staffordshire. Notwithstanding that the only direct watercourse to the sea, the Welland, forms the south-eastern boundary of the county, rising close to Sibbertoft below Husbands Bosworth (exactly in the southern lobe) yet it is, as may be supposed, but a tiny rivulet, hardly swelling to a brook until it forms the southern boundary of Rutland, and it is in that county that the redshank merely a straggler to Leicester- hire occurs commonly and breeds. Small streams such as the Anker, the vivon, the Ise, the Mease, the Sence, the Swift, the Wreak, and others with "taller brooks, together with the reservoirs of Cropston, Saddington, Swith- hnd, Thornton, and the large ponds of Groby, Staunton Harold, and many
- thers, furnish their quota of duck, snipe, and so on, with an occasional rarity ;
Jut it is seldom that any large flocks of wild fowl or great quantities of snipe occur. With regard to the latter one exception must be made, for at the sewage farm situated on high ground within two miles of the centre of Leicester more snipe congregate and can be seen in their season in favourable weather than in all the rest of the county taken together. Here also may be seen thousands of lapwings, often in ' stands ' of several hundreds, with a fair amount of golden plover. No hills of greater altitude than 912 ft. (Bardon Hill) occur in the county, nor are there any moors, heaths, commons, or forests of large extent, which are unintersected by public footpaths ; added to which railways, collieries, and manufactories throughout the county are now so numerous, and have so cut up the country districts that, taken in conjunction with the enormous growth of the borough of Leicester within the last thirty years, and the consequent increase of population, birds generally, and especially those of any rarity, either cannot find suitable conditions or are so disturbed that many species are not now found or do not remain to breed as formerly. On the other hand, many species neglected by the sportsman, poacher, bird-catcher or collector, such as the sparrow and starling, have in- 114
