In a Cheshire Garden; Natural History Notes - 1912 - PREFACE - These Notes appeared from April to June this year in The Warrington Guardian and afterwards came out in a de-localised form in The Staffordshire Weekly Sentinel. I am indebted to the kindness of Mr. P. Ramsdale, of Heatley , for the photographs of The Old Church, The Yew-tree, and The Flower Garden as it was some years ago. My thanks are due also to Mr. Garrett for kindly allowing me to use his very interesting photograph of The Two Nests referred to on page 94. CONTENTS. CHAP. I. I I. 111. IV. v. VI. VII. VIII. I X. X. X I. PAGE Introductory - - - - - I Weeds and Alien Plants - - - - 5 Birds-Thrushes - - - - - 1 1 Chats, Robins, and Warblers - - - 26 Tits and Wrens - - - - - 37 Wagtails, Flycatchers, Swallows, and other Insect-eaters - - - - - - 46 Sparrows and other Finches - - - 57 Finches, Starlings, and Crows - - - 67 Other - - - - - Birds-77 British Mammals - - - - - 95 Dogs and Cats - - - - - 103 Index - - - - - - - I 1 3 LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS. Flower Garden - - - - - FY o n tispiece FACE PAGE Old Church - - - - - - - 6 The Old Yew - - - - - - 23 The Sundial - - - - - - 38 A Corner in the Garden with Allium Dioscorides - 55 Two Nests - - - - - - - - 70 The Foodstand - - - - - - 87 Although much of the neighbourhood has become semi-urban and anv idea of rural seclusion is destroyed, at least in summer, by the crowds that find their way to it from Manchester and other large towns, yet the Cheshire village of Warburton in which this garden is situated is a real country place still. How long it will remain so is another thing. One salt works has been set up at Heatley about a mile away and we are now 1912 promised another, while there is every prospect of land being let for works in Warburton itself. Who knows, in a few years perhaps the whole place may be reduced to the desolation of another Widnes. Then, when it has become a rare thing to find ev a blade of grass on the dreary black waste or to see any bird but a grimy sparrow, a record of what was once here may be strange reading. The garden itself about which I write is quite onthe northern boundary of Cheshire, in old days divided from Lancashire by the Mersey only. The soil is light and sandy, not fa from the rock in and in places with water at a very little depth below the surface. It is well suited to hollies and rhododendrons, both of which grow abundantly and luxuriantly, as also do yews. There are a good number of ordinary deciduous trees, chiefly on the old bank of the river, such as oak, sycamore, chestnut, birch, beech, and alder, but no conifers of any age except one or two Scotch firs. There is one flourishing deadara which I planted myself and a few young Austrian pines that seem to be doing well. A spruce fir that I once planted behaved in an extraordinary way instead of growing straight, it shot up in a zigzag fashion, the leading shoot one year going off at an angle of 60 degrees or so, and the next year harking back and starting in the opposite direction at about the same angle. Few of the trees can be more than 80 years old. I think most of them would have been planted by my father, who was rector from 1833 to 1849. There is however a remarkable old yew in the adjoining churchyard. The half of it, just below where the branches spring, measures nearly nine feet round. The other half has entirely gone, so has practically the whole of the substance, the wood of the trunk, and what is left of the still standing side is little more than a shell with a coating of bark... --This text refers to an alternate Paperback edition.