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A PLEA FOR THE ESSEX RAVENS.
By J. H. GURNEY (Jun.), F.Z.S.
In the islands of North Britain, where they are numerous, and have
become a scourge to the farmer's sheep and ponies, it may be
perfectly right to kill ravens, but it is quite a different matter in
Essex ; hence, I confess it was with a feeling of regret that I read
of the melancholy destruction of ravens announced in the July
number of the Essex Naturalist (ante, p. 142). The time is
probably very near when ravens will become extinct—indeed, they
must be trembling on the very verge of extinction already—on the
islands of the Essex coast. They have quite ceased to rest in
Suffolk and Norfolk—a result due to the rage for game preserving.
In Suffolk, according to Dr. Babington, they nested at Stutton up to
1869, and, perhaps, later ("Birds of Suffolk." p. 252). In Norfolk
the last nest is believed to have been destroyed in 1870 or 1872.
In 1881 Mr. D. Newby, the intelligent taxidermist at Thetford,
wrote :—" There was a raven's nest annually at Shadwell, about four
miles from here ; the pair were, as I am informed, destroyed by a
gamekeeper some eight or ten years ago, since which time there
has never been another nest." Sir Robert Buxton, of Shadwell,
corroborated Mr. Newby's evidence, but without being able to fix
the exact year. Every true naturalist in Norfolk and Suffolk would
like to see the ravens reinstated and protected, but it is now too late to
think of that. Very soon the same state of things will be the case in
Essex, unless local naturalists intercede with the land-owners and
shooting tenants on behalf of these birds. Assuredly if something of
the kind is not done speedily, a very interesting feature in the Essex
avifauna will have passed away. Surely it is the peculiar province of a
local natural history journal to say a word in behalf of the moribund
race of ravens. People were not alive to the impending extinction
of the bustards in Norfolk until it was too late ; but if a Norfolk and
Norwich Naturalists' Society, with "The protection by its influence
with land-owners and others of indigenous species requiring protection"
for its object had existed in their day, the result might have been
different, and we should not now have had to deplore the loss
by wanton destruction of one of the finest species in England.
Probably all destructive birds must eventually succumb in the area
of their breeding stations to the advance of civilization, but let the
last day of the ravens in Essex be as far off as possible ! It is not at