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PRESIDENTIAL ADDRESS "SOME BIRDS OF ESSEX"
12TH MARCH, 1988
The study of birds in Essex has been well
documented for the last 100 years. In 1890
Miller Christy wrote "The Birds of Essex",
parts of which now make sad reading with its
reports of birds shot for sport or identi-
fication. The Victorian approach is well
illustrated with the following quote (published
in a recent Essex Birdwatching Society
bulletin) from the diary of Christopher
Parsons, an Essex farmer and naturalist.
"April 6th 1839. Shot a hoopoe at Shoebury.
There were a pair of them about the trees in
Price's Field all day and although I drove them
away several times they returned to the same
spot again almost directly, as if they had
taken up their abode and perhaps would have
bred in a hallow one; that is where I found
them. The weight of the one I killed was 21/4
ounces, the male. April 10: the female still
kept about the same place and today I shot
her."
In 1929 Glegg updated our knowledge with his
"History of the Birds of Essex" and in 1968
Hudson and Pyman produced the "Guide to the
Birds of Essex". Most recently, in 1984 Simon
Cox has written "A New Guide to the Birds of
Essex". The status of many of our birds has
changed since Miller Christy and there are
several reasons for this. Some species have
increased in their occurrences in Essex as a
result of increases in continental populations
or because of the spread of continental
breeding colonies to countries bordering the
North Sea. Others have declined due to