88 ADVENTURES AMONG BIRDS 



mid-June day I heard the sound of firing in the 

 woods, beginning at about eight o'clock in the morn- 

 ing and lasting until dark. The shooters ranged over 

 the whole woods; I had never, even in October, 

 heard so much firing on an estate in one day. I 

 inquired of several persons, some employed on the 

 estate, as to the meaning of all this firing, and was 

 told that the keeper was ridding the woods of some 

 of the vermin. More than that they refused to say; 

 but by-and-by I found a person to tell me just what 

 had happened. The head keeper had got twenty or 

 thirty persons, the men with guns and a number of 

 lads with long poles with hooks to pull nests down, 

 and had set himself to rid the woods of birds that 

 were not wanted. All the nests found, of whatever 

 species, were pulled down, and all doves, woodpeckers, 

 nuthatches, blackbirds, missel- and song-thrushes, 

 shot; also chaffinches and many other small birds. 

 The keeper said he was not going to have the place 

 swarming with birds that were no good for anything, 

 and were always eating the pheasants' food. The odd 

 thing in this case was that the owner of the estate 

 and his son, a distinguished member of the House 

 of Commons, are both great bird-lovers, and at the 

 very time that this hideous massacre in mid-June 

 was going on they were telling their friends in London 

 that a pair of birds of a fine species, long extirpated 

 in southern England, had come to their woods to 

 breed. A little later the head keeper reported that 

 these same fine birds had mysteriously disappeared! 

 One more case, again from an estate in a southern 



