FIELD NOTES ON ESSEX ORNITHOLOGY. 93
The Hawfinch is unquestionably abundant in Essex, but
still evades most eyes, although its ravages amongst our peas
are evident enough. Occasionally a bird will throw off its tradi-
tional shyness, and I have followed one around the garden,
watching it feeding on the path, or flying like a sparrow to the
safety of the chimney top to await my going.
An unexpected habit of the Reed Bunting in Essex has
already been recorded.6 The birds pass the winter days con-
sorting with finches in the drier parts of the Forest; and, I
find, they congregate to roost in such places as the reedbed at
Birch Hall, sleeping here by scores or hundreds. But during
the past two seasons their numbers have decreased, and on the
27th January 1918 only one or two were noticed, in company
with hundreds of Pied Wagtails.
The Magpie, fairly common near Southminster, and occurring
in regular but small colonies around the Willingales, has been
represented in the Roding Valley, below Ongar, since the summer
of 1918 by a single bird. Some years ago I directed attention
to the curious "marriage ceremonies" of the Magpies as ob-
served on the Pennines7, and, in Essex, have tried to identify
the same habits in the Jay. But the latter bird is most difficult
to watch, and up to the present I can do no more than express
my belief that the business of the restless parties of Jays met
with in the Forest from December to February is on a parallel
with the "ceremonies" of the Magpie. I understand that the
habit has been observed in reference to the Jay on the Continent;
and Macgillivray gives a note relating vaguely to the Hooded
Crow. So far I have not had the chance of searching the literal
ture of the subject, but I recommend the careful watching of
the Forest Jays in winter. What are they doing at this season?
Obviously not migrating, and as obviously neither feeding nor
fighting, nor engaged in preparations for nesting; yet, at the
same time, these noisy, restless congregations have some import-
ant bearing on the life of the birds.
The Carrion Crow is so very much like the Rook that the
two species are often confounded, even by professed ornitholo-
gists and in public museums. I do not know of any English
work which gives adequate descriptions of these two birds, but
6 Trans.. London N.H. Soc., 1916, pp, 8, 20, 93, 96.
7 British Birds, iii, p. 334.