The Birds of Leicestershire

Abstract

THE Leicester Literary and Philosophical Society has formed an Ornithological Society for Leicestershire and Rutland, which is compiling a report on past and present field records, to be issued in 1942 as a preliminary to bringing up to date Montagu Browne's 1889 “Fauna of Leicestershire”. A meeting in Leicester Museum last September decided to form an Ornithological Society, as a sub-section of the Leicester Literary and Philosophical Society, to meet monthly, Mr. F. Brady being elected chairman and Mr. A. E. Jolley secretary. A duplicated December bulletin, just issued, records the little owl, kestrel, partridge, red-legged partridge and a flight of grey geese within Leicester City bounds, and at the sewage farm a flock of tree sparrows, while a pectoral sandpiper is reported from Northampton Sewage Farm. At a large starling roost at March Covert, near Lockington, the ground was found to be littered with rubber bands believed to have been swallowed by the birds and later either vomited or passed in their exereta. They varied from fruit bottle to tobacco tin bands. Similar instances of this type have been recorded elsewhere with arctic terns, gulls and rooks, and it is probable that the birds mistake them for food, afterwards ejecting them as undigestible. At the flooded Wanlip osier beds, teal, pochard, shoveler and wigeon have been observed among the duck, as well as snipe, curlew and a peregrine. A sheldrake is recorded inland from the River Sence near Kilby Bridge. Although only opened in 1941 the Eye Valley Reservoir has already proved an important bird haunt.