98
THE ESSEX NATURALIST.
My only record for the Spotted Crake is the late date of
the 19th November 1916 at Birch Hall; summer is said to be
the more usual season. I flushed the bird at close quarters, and
it half ran, half flew, into the shelter of the rushes, the short bill
and distinctly spotted back making identification easy. This
was my first experience of a living Spotted Crake; and, in 1911,
near Shonk's Mill, I saw a small bird which must have been either
Baillon's or the Little Crake. The bird took refuge in a bush
on the wrong side of the river, and refused to emerge in spite of
a prolonged fusillade of the scanty missiles that the local geology
afforded. The Corncrake has already been treated at sufficient
length in the Essex Naturalist (xviii., p. 189.)9
First on the Mardyke, and later in other places in Essex, I
was delighted to find the Moorhen weaving a sort of transparent
canopy to its nest, a habit long known to me from the description
given by Sir Thomas Browne more than two centuries ago; but
I have not observed the habit in the Coot. I have seen nests
of the Coot at Birch Hall and at Navestock; and, I fancy, else-
where. On the 14th May a newly-hatched Coot was clothed
in black down; the back of the head was crimson, the space in
front ultramarine blue, both areas set sparsely with black
bristly hairs. The tip of the bill was black, then a band of
white, followed by a patch of bright scarlet meeting the blue of the.
crown. Between eye and bill was a patch of vivid scarlet warts,
fleshy in texture (and, as I find by specimens in the Essex
Museum, retaining their tints fairly well after death); a patch
of chrome yellow down beneath the gape, and around the neck a
broad collar of orange down. A young Moorhen examined at
the same time had faint traces of blue and crimson on the head,
the beak being red, tipped with green, this again tipped by the
pale yellow "egg-tooth."
At the lake at Navestock Old Park on the 2nd May 1912 I
met with a beautiful adult Turnstone, which uttered its trilling
lark-like song as it flew over the water.
On the 21st April 1916 we flushed, more than once, a handsome
Jack Snipe on the Sewage Farm at Theydon Bois. This is
sufficiently late a date to be worth recording. The Common
Snipe breeds here, and in several localities in the Roding Valley.10
9 The Corncrake was again observed at Theydon on the 2nd June, 1919.
10 Zool. 1912, p. 196, and E.N. xviii., p. 109.