38 THE ESSEX NATURALIST
22 September. Chiffchaff in song in the usual willow. 24th. Swallows and
House-Martins drifting lazily south all day; there is plenty of sunshine and
flies are numerous. 29th. The last of our shed Swallows had gone by nightfall.
2 October. Kingfisher again at our pond and Swallows are still passing
through. 3rd. Heard the first Widgeon passing over us on to the marsh tonight.
Very early for them! 9th. Twenty or thirty Swallows on phone wires at Burn-
ham today. 14th. Saw the first flight of Fieldfares.
17 October. Six Swallows were flying happily over the farm. I saw a Lesser
Spotted Woodpecker, the first for a long time. 24th. A Grey Wagtail and a
Pied Wagtail were catching flies on our roof. The Grey (a beautiful bird) was
bullied repeatedly by the Pied. 27th. A Great Spotted Woodpecker on the
farm after a long absence. Pied Wagtails catching flies on the sun-heated tiles
of our roof daily now—beautiful birds and very talkative, too.
5 November. Heard Redwing passing over at night. 7th. A Willow-Warbler
or Chiffchaff was seen in a roadside hedge. 15th. A couple of hundred Lap-
wing on our big field today. Duck are becoming more numerous as winter
approaches. 20th. Fieldfares in abundance everywhere.
To conclude this diary, perhaps it might be of interest to give a brief sum-
mary of the variation in numbers of some species locally. House-Martin—
Poor locally but I should say, judging by migrating numbers, that they had an
excellent season farther north where folk respect their nests. In this district
the nests have been smashed with long poles of late years. When I was a boy
I should say that there were at least 300 nests in this village; now I can hardly
count six! Chiffchaff—An increase. Lesser Whitethroat—A big increase.
Whitethroat—Rare here. Bullfinch—Increasing. Corn-Bunting—Increasing
fast. Song-Thrush—A good year, increasing. Blackbird—A decided decrease.
Blue Tit and Great Tit—A good year. Long-tailed Tit—Slight increase.
Hedge-Sparrow, Robin, Mistle-Thrush and Chaffinch—No change. Gold-
finch—A slight increase. Greenfinch—Increasing. Linnet—A good year.
Spotted Flycatcher—A bad set-back here. Pied Flycatcher—None nesting
locally. Yellow Bunting—A good year. Green Woodpecker—A big increase.
Lesser Spotted Woodpecker—None nesting here. Great Spotted Wood-
pecker—Rare here. Tree-Creeper—Wiped out locally by some unknown cause.
Turtle-Dove—Decrease. Wren—A good year. Nightingale—I never heard so
many before. Barn-Owl—Unfortunately disappearing fast. Little Owl—Usual
numbers and the usual nuisance. Tawny Owl—A menace to our best birds.
Sparrow-Hawk—A decrease, thank goodness! Kestrel—Doing well. Heron—
Holding its own. Moorhen—A slight increase after a few bad years. King-
fisher—Odd single birds.
I hope for a moderate winter without long spells of hard unrelenting
freezing weather. It only needs a week or so of hard frost without a break to
kill off eighty per cent of our lovely and useful Song-Thrushes; they just
cannot stand it.
Common Seal at Westcliff.—During July 1951 the daily Press contained a
report that a seal had been found stranded at Westcliff" and had been sent to
the Zoological Gardens in London. In response to our inquiry Mr. C. S.
Webb, Curator of Mammals and Birds, Zoological Society of London, very
kindly writes as follows:
The young seal is a specimen of the Common Seal (Phoca vitulina),
which is the species usually found on the east coast. It came to us from
the Dumb Friends' League, Westcliff, and I understand the animal was
caught at Shoeburyness where it was stranded.
It is not uncommon for a few young seals to be abandoned every year
by their mothers and we are frequently offered these creatures—usually
when they are on the point of starvation and there is not much hope of