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A VISIT TO THE BLACK-HEADED GULLS
IN ESSEX (1898).
By PERCY CLARK, BA.
[Read, December 17th, 1898.]
THE great inundation by the sea which took place on the
Essex coast last winter has not only sadly interfered with
the feed of the cattle on the parts that were submerged, but has
also apparently deprived a large portion of the bird world of the
like means of subsistence.
In the following remarks I will confine myself entirely to the
curious case of the Black-headed Gulls (Larus ridibundus).
In former days Essex was the great breeding place of these
birds. This we know not only from written records, but from the
number of the marshy islands along its borders which are called
after the Black-headed Gulls' local name of Putt, now misleadingly
spelt Pewit in most county maps.
The enormous stretches of marshes, swamps and saltings
which once abounded near the coast and estuaries of the province
were infested with every sort of water-loving bird, although
the Black-headed Gulls were probably from time immemorial
the most numerous. This is shown by the frequency with
which the local name of Cob is still attached to various places
(cf., Mr. Miller Christy's valuable work, The Birds of Essex,
E.F.C. Special Memoirs, vol. ii., p. 267).
But the wholesale draining of the flats in later times has
caused many species entirely to desert their former breeding
grounds, and at the present day of sea-birds, the black-headed
gulls alone remain to nest there in any numbers.
These gulls, so well known in all the reaches of the Thames,
from its mouth to Kew Gardens: the hungry visitors who in
winter fly in hundreds along the Victoria and other embankments
asking to be fed: the daring invaders of the sacred wild fowl
enclosures on the lakes of our London parks; these, within the
last few years, have become regular frequenters of the Metropolis,
and added, by their presence and confiding demeanour, consider-
able charm to the bird life which there is only too rare. They
have made themselves quite at home on the lake in St. James's
Park, where they come in flocks to pick up the scraps left by the