BLACK-HEADED GULLS IN ESSEX.
389
tame ducks; and they are to be met with on the whole length of
the Thames below Richmond a good six months of the year.
(Only recently I saw several flying about Battersea the second
week in September.) Their fearless confidence in visiting the
smoky and multitudinous city so far inland has, it must be con-
fessed, met with a ready and kindly response. The birds have
won a place in the cockneys' heart, and are sure whenever they
appear to be welcomed with warmth and even enthusiasm.
It speaks well, too, for the manner in which the London
drainage is now disposed of, that the gulls should penetrate the
river so far, for it means, I think, that the smaller fry and fish are
appearing again in increasing quantities in waters from which
they had almost entirely vanished.
Every evening at sunset the gulls take wing and fly away
over the miles of sooty chimneys down stream, and spend the
night on the quieter mud flats at the mouth of the Estuary. In
summer they entirely desert the upper reaches and repair to their
favourite breeding haunts.
The nearest of these lies on the Essex coast not 50 miles from
London, and it was to this, the most famous of them, that I made
my way this summer for the first time. Here I wish to apologise
for an act of trespass which, however, I feel sure the courteous
owner would be the first to forgive.
Great expectations are often disappointed; but I had not
been prepared for such a falsification of all my hopes as I there
experienced.
I landed in the first week of July from a small boat on the
Tollesbury marshes, and made at once for a great stretch of water
lined with rushes called Pennyhole Fleet, where I expected to find
my friends.1
A great white flock of common gulls and some larger ones
rose at my approach, but they were only there apparently resting
and were not what I was in search of.
Bye and bye I caught sight of a few of my quarry circling
high in the air over a spot some distance off. Advancing rapidly,
I discovered that this was the colony I was looking for, and
simultaneously I had to bear the brunt of a determined attack by
these brave and fearless birds. Perceiving where my path was
1 A very full and interesting description of this Gullery in 1888 was given by Mr.
Fitch and Mr. Christy in a paper, "A Visit to an Essex Gullery, with Notes on the Birds
frequenting the Marshes round Tollesbury," in the Essex Naturalist, vol. ii., pp. 193-
198.—Ed.