9.
pellets sent will need to be complete and
have a note of when found and the O.S. Grid
Reference. Further information about remains
around the nest or roosting site will be of
great importance. The cost of postage of
the pellets will be refunded by return of
post.
Thanking you for your time in reading
this appeal and hoping for your help in the
future.
Yours sincerely,
R. S. Stirman
---oOo---
TEN MINUTES TO WAIT. SO ...
No prize is offered to solving the
completion, origin, and date of the title of
this nature note, for it refers to ten hastily
swallowed minutes consumed before fulfilling
an agreed venue with car and wife after the
shops closed in Colchester on Friday 27th
August 1976. At 17.35 I crossed the foot-
bridge bearing the signboard "Plaxman's
Pool. Free Fishing for Colchester Juveniles
under the Age of Fifteen Years". Indeed, a
succession of plops confirmed that fish were
there, jumping for flies, and an excited
juvenile claimed, in appropriate fisherman's
style, that he had only just missed a bite
from a fish, so big -, no, SO big ---, well,
so big anyway.
It is necessary to admit that this
report is compiled from what I scrawled at
the time inside the back cover of a "penny"
notebook; the writing and crude shorthand
are almost indecipherable, and if there were
a Natural History Misdescriptions Act, it is
fairly certain that its provisions would