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BIRDS prey, such as the kite and the buzzard, which were still fairly common a century ago. The hobby is on the verge of extinction, if not quite extinct, as a breeding species ; but sparrow-hawks and kestrels are still pretty numerous. In the central parts of the county the magpie, once common, is all but extinct, though the jay remains abundant, probably because it is a more retiring bird and builds a less conspicuous nest. Epping Forest is and long has been a stronghold for the hawfinch, which is possibly more abundant there and at Danbury than elsewhere in England. Our uplands if one may call them by that name are of small extent, being confined to the extreme north-west corner of the county, where the elevated undulating chalk downs which occupy so large an area in the adjacent counties of Cambridgeshire and Hertfordshire extend into Essex. This down country, though generally open, is wooded in places. On it the stone-curlew, which nests nowhere else in the county, still breeds occasionally. Turning from the most inland portion of the county to that nearest the sea, we find another region which, like the last-named, is of com- paratively small extent, though possessed of marked individual features namely the marshes, saltings, and mudflats of the coast. This kind of country is probably of greater extent in Essex than in any other English county. It lies chiefly round the estuaries of our rivers, especially the Crouch, the Blackwater, the Colne, and the Stour. ' Marshes ' in Essex are tracts of land which have been reclaimed from the sea and are now protected from its inroads by strong sea-walls of mud. They are grass- covered and valuable for grazing purposes. They form favourable breed- ing haunts for the redshank, the peewit, and the sky-lark ; while the wide ditches known as ' fleets,' by which they are intersected, and the quiet reedy pools which are scattered here and there, are the homes of the black-headed gull, the coot, the dabchick, the pochard, and not a few other water birds. * Saltings ' (sometimes called ' bentlings ') lie on the outer side of the sea-wall, yet are not strictly speaking sea-shore, for they are covered only by the highest tides and support a rich flora of coast plants. The saltings are intersected by innumerable muddy dykes which slowly fill and empty with the rise and fall of every tide. Out- side the saltings again and occupying, in fact, the very beds of the river estuaries are very extensive mudflats, which are left uncovered regularly at low water. Taking the whole of our coast, the area of our mudflats at low tide must approach a hundred square miles. Here during the periods of spring and autumn migration, and to a lesser extent during winter, one may meet with myriads of wading birds, of which the dunlin (called locally the * oxb'd ') is the most numerous ; while curlews, whimbrels, godwits, knots, sanderlings, ring-plovers and many others are more or less abundant, and not a few scarce and interesting species have been met with from time to time. So numerous, indeed, are the dunlins that over 300 are reported credibly to have been killed on more than one occasion by a single discharge of the gun. From 1 233 3