A VISIT TO AN ESSEX GULLERY. 195
increased to seventeen or eighteen pairs at least. It is probable, too,
that the species is increasing in the neighbourhood, for in the spring
of last year Mr. Fitch found a nest on his land on Northey Island.
This nest was at the time recorded as that of a wild duck (Essex
Naturalist, i., 150), but is now certainly identified as that of the
pochard, from the colour of the eggs and down it contained. This
year another similar nest with eleven eggs, was mown over in a field of
red clover on Northey; the eggs were put under a sitting tame duck
as soon as possible, and Mr. Fitch hopes to hatch them out. The
Rev. J. C. Atkinson, now of Danby, Yorkshire, who knew this dis-
trict very familiarly in his early days, his father having been curate of
Peldon, says in his "British Birds' Eggs and Nests" (p. 174):—" The
Dunbird does not now breed in this country." During the day, we
several times saw adult pochards about, either singly or in pairs,
while some of the females had evidently young broods among the
reeds. The keepers were naturally very chary of disturbing a sitting
bird, but they kindly took us to another nest from which the young
had only been hatched-out a day or two. It was built, like the
other, among the reeds on the edge of a pool. This nest Mr. Fitch
removed intact for presentation to the museum of the Essex Field
Club.
Wild ducks, also, were by no means scarce, and were evidently
breeding, or had bred, close at hand, their young doubtless being
concealed among the reeds, though we did not actually see any nests.
We also, on one occasion, observed a pair of shovellers flying over,
which we understood had bred in a tussock on the marsh near at
hand. We were also told of a pair of breeding sheldrakes, but did
not actually see them. These birds, though now rare on the Essex
coast, seem once to have been abundant. Albin says that in his
time (1731), they were "found about several lakes and rivers near
the sea-coast of England and Wales, but chiefly in Lancashire and
Essex."
Proceeding further on to the Marsh, we visited a second and larger
colony of gulls, which were nesting in some reed-clumps about ten
yards from the edge of another pool, known as Pennyhole Bottom.
Here were about twenty-five nests, most of them containing either
one or two eggs, though several held none, and one, three. We
reached them by wading, the water not being over eighteen inches
deep. They did not differ in any essential respect from those
already described, and the old birds, as before, were very noisy over
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