ESSEX BIRD PROTECTION SOCIETY.
195
are only too easily found, and from the indiscriminate shooting
of the young birds just on the wing by the cockney sportsmen
shooting from boats at the beginning of August. By the exten-
sion of the close season to August 15, the young birds and
flappers have the advantage of an extra fortnight, which enables
them to get fairly strong on the wing before shooting commences,
and the total prohibition of Sunday shooting along the coast
gives them a further chance. All eggs are now also protected
along the coast, and here the Bird Protection Society is fortunate
in securing for a small fee the services of 11 persons, mostly
fishery inspectors, whose duties and avocations take them con-
stantly about the coast, who kindly undertake to act as watchers
to see that the provisions of the Order are enforced, and to
report offences.
From the reports made by these watchers, extracts from
which are given in the Society's annual report, it will be seen
that a distinct increase is to be noted in the numbers of shore
breeding birds, and that the provisions of the Protection Order
are now fairly well observed. Blackheaded gulls perhaps show
the greatest increase, and several new gulleries have been
formed; terns breed regularly still in one or two places,
and will it is to be hoped, hold their own; that
beautiful bird the lesser tern breeds in at least one place
and the colony which a few years ago was all but extinct
is now thriving and on the increase. Redshank and plover abound
and ring plover are common enough on the shingle. There are
few pleasanter places on a summer's day for an ornithologist
than the marshes and sandhills when the saltings are all flushed
with thrift, and the air is full of the cries of the blackheaded gulls
or terns, redshanks and plover.
In the south-western part of the County, Epping Forest,
with its 6,000 acres, more or less, of woodland and plain, provides
a sanctuary for quite a different class of birds, but in its way
quite as interesting. To this 6,000 acres must now be added the
800 acres of Hainault, on the east of the Roding Valley. Here
the protection of birds is looked after by the keepers, under the
bye-laws made for the regulation of the Forest, but the lanes and
waste strips of the adjoining parishes until lately were the
hunting-ground of swarms of East-End bird-catchers. The
Protection Order now extends the close time for certain wild