Abundant, haunting old brick–pits and unfrozen brooks; plentiful about Gorton, Belle Vue, and Cheetham Hill.
The Jack Snipe (Scolopax Gallinula), iv., 228.
A smaller bird than the common snipe; not so plentiful, but often seen in company with it.
The Woodcock (Scolopax rusticola), iv., 225.
Formerly very plentiful about Hough–end, but now rare, owing to the filling up of the pits and the clearing away of the brushwood.
III. CASUAL, STRAY, AND OCCASIONAL BIRDS.
Several of the birds named below are permanent residents in the British Islands, and others are regular visitors to this country. They are put in the present place because seen near Manchester only at uncertain intervals, or as casuals, the only one that can be looked for with any degree of probability, being the sea–gull. The visits, as will be seen from the dates, have in some cases occurred at periods so far back, that except for completeness’ sake, they would scarcely be worth mention. I quote them from standard works upon ornithology, and from the late Mr. John Blackwall’s paper upon the migrations of Manchester birds in the “Transactions of the Literary and Philosophical Society for 1822,” the observations having been made during the eight years 1814–1821.
The Little Crake (Crex pusilla), v., 244.
One at Ardwick in 1807.
The Golden Oriole (Oriolus galbula), iii., 133.