NOTES — ORIGINAL AND SELECTED. 2g7 



shot it. The falcon was a very fine specimen ; it weighed 2lbs. 

 8|ozs., length iS^ inches, from tip to tip of wings 42 inches; 

 the tarsus or metatarsus 2|, the longest toe from base to tip of 

 claw 3 inches. — (Rev.) A. Bertram Hutton, The Rectory, Pitsea, 

 April 8th, 1904. 



Protective Colouring among Birds. — At the meeting 

 of the Club on February 13th last, the Rev. A. Bertram Hutton, 

 Rector of Pitsea, Essex, brought up some photographs and 

 lantern-slides showing how the young Oyster-Catcher [Hcema- 

 topus ostralegiis), the eggs of the same bird, and those ot the 

 Ringed Plover {/Egialitis hiaticula) and the Lesser Tern {Sterna 

 mwnta), are protectively coloured. The photograph of the young 

 Oyster-Catcher was perhaps the most striking, and was one of 

 those shown as a lantern slide. Mr. Hutton said : " It was taken 

 on June 3rd, 1903, at the bird colony near Ravenglass, off the 

 coast of Cumberland. My wife and I had visited the place for 

 the purpose of bird photography, and as we were walking over a 

 stretch of sand, in which coarse grass, such as is usually found 

 on sand-hills, was growing, my wife espied this young Oyster- 

 Catcher shamming death. So well did he do it, that she really 

 thought he was dead ; however, a little prod sent him running 

 for dear life, with the photographer carrying the camera after 

 him. He soon subsided, however, and again ' played possum,' 

 lying, as still as death, with closed eyes. I took a negative of him 

 in this position, and then said to myself, ' Yes, you match your 

 environment marvellously now, but what if I turn you over and 

 show your little white breast and body ? ' So I gently turned him 

 over and there he lay, still like death, with his little feet waving 

 in the air quite limply, the sun pouring down on him sufficiently 

 strongly to induce him to jump up and run to escape the heat, one 

 would have thought, but no, the other instinct was the stronger, 

 and I secured my second negative." 



Notes on Essex Shore-Birds. — Mr. C. J. Cornish, in the 

 course of a very interesting article on "The Results of Wild 

 Bird Protection" in The Cornhill Magazine for March, 1901, 

 makes some valuable remarks on our Essex shore-birds, which 

 will be welcomed by our ornithological readers: — 



" Though the Essex coast is so inaccessible and remote, the steady ' egging ' 

 for market threatened many kinds of birds with extermination. It had been as 



