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THE ESSEX NATURALIST
some 5 years earlier that he wrote the following in a letter to
Heysham: —
"I am happy in being able to send one rarity, viz.: two eggs
of the Hawfinch, which till this spring I never saw. The
nest is built in the most careless manner, and consists of
a few coarse sticks, then a layer of that coarse lichen which
grows on the stems of oaks, and (is) lined with a few roots.
It is also extremely shallow. They seem to build in any
situation. The nest I took was in a whitethorn, about 4
feet high, and I saw one on the top of a tall spruce fir ... .
I have now a full-grown young Hawfinch in confinement,
which was caught in our forest about a fortnight ago".
Until Doubleday recorded finding the bird all the year round
at Epping it was thought to be purely migratory.
The great variety of country met with in our county has
resulted in the number of species of birds occurring in it to be
well above the average for the whole country; the ponds in the
Epping Forest area provided from time to time a variety of
uncommon birds: for example, he was given a Wood Sandpiper
in May 1840, in full summer plumage, which had been shot at
a pond near Epping by "a fellow celebrated for poaching". His
observations on many other Essex birds were contained in
numerous private letters to fellow naturalists, and in correspond-
ence to scientific magazines, particularly The Zoologist.
We must not pass from the subject of birds without men-
tioning that he was responsible for first noting the Little Ringed
Plover in this country. This was in the year 1845 and it was at
Shoreham that the bird was obtained. The Blue-headed Wagtail
was first taken by Doubleday in this country, at Walton-on-the-
Naze, on October 3rd, 1834. A description of the bird was given
to Heysham, and the event was briefly recorded by Doubleday
in Loudon's Magazine of Natural History. Shortly after it was
shot he wrote:
"When I came to London I took it to Bruton Street (where
the Museum of the Zoological Society then was) and there
I met with Bennett, Gould and Yarrell, all of whom at once
pronounced it Neglecta".
This bird was kept in his own collection until all his birds were
sold in 1871.
In 1836 Doubleday attempted to revise the classification of
British birds by publishing A Nomenclature of British Birds. He
was unhappy about the existing catalogues, and it was an effort
systematically to classify all the species found in Great Britain
and Ireland. Although it ran through four editions in ten years,
it was not received very enthusiastically, and came in for a good
deal of criticism.
It was undoubtedly his accounts of seasonal plumage changes,
nesting habits and bird behaviour, that put him in the forefront
of ornithologists in his early years.