A CHESHIRE BIRD
FROM the standpoint of the London and south-country ornithologist Cheshire is not a good county for birds. But if it cannot compare with certain eastern and southern counties, with coastwise areas of considerable size, in the number of rare and accidental wanderer; which are included, with or without justification, in the avian fauna, it has a large and varied bird population. Within the county boundaries are hills with extensive moorlands, marsh and bog, extensive grazing land with numerous woods and coverts, a Royal forest, and a coastline, short it is true, but including sandhills, estuarine mudflats, and saltings. Best of all the whole county is well watered, and that means insect life in abundance, the great attraction for many birds; rivers, streams, innumerable ponds or "pits" as they are locally called, cross and dot the cultivated land, and there are very many larger waters, known as meres. It is, perhaps, these meres which account for the majority of the interesting Cheshire birds, and no bird is more characteristic of the meres, and of the county, than the great crested grebe. Many students of bird life believe that in Norfolk only is this bird common, though, as a matter of fact, this grebe leaves the Broads in winter, whereas in Cheshire, Shropshire, Yorkshire, and perhaps other haunts it is an all-year resident.
It is true that I have had no lengthy experience of the Broads, but whenever I have been there in summer I have been surprised at the comparative scarcity of grebes on these much-talked-of waters. In England, without
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