1903 Rutland Birds 45 



the Peewit are as numerous as they used to be. The Swallow 

 tribe seem to be less common than they were, but they 

 certainly vary a good deal in different seasons, and the range 

 of the Sand-martin especially is restricted by the destruction 

 of its nesting-sites. The Peewit suffers from the traffic in its 

 eggs, and also from the egg-eating propensities of the Carrion 

 Crow, the Jackdaw, the Rook, the Magpie, and the Jay. All 

 these birds are very numerous, and increasing rather than 

 diminishing. In a radius of four miles round Uppingham 

 the population of Carrion Crows at the end of the breeding- 

 season must be at least 400, and probably many more. No 

 one can take a walk round the neighbourhood of Uppingham 

 without seeing a pair of magpies, and their numbers must be 

 at least half that of the Crows. Every coppice or spinney has 

 its pair of Jays and every wood its colony of them. The 

 Rooks must number four times as many as the Crows, and 

 the Jackdaws probably nearly twice as many. We would 

 not wish to see the Magpie and Jay exterminated — far from 

 it, — but the whole tribe of Corvidae should be sternly thinned 

 down. We could do well with a fifth of their present num- 

 bers. At least one out of every three nests of Blackbirds, 

 Thrushes, &c, is destroyed by one or other of the Corvidae, 

 as I believe, though the damage is by some laid at the door 

 of the Weasels and Squirrels. 



The Lark undergoes terrible havoc at the hand of bird- 

 catchers. Hundreds of thousands have been taken on the 

 Sussex downs. In the Rutland district they are still com- 

 mon, though not too much so. 



It remains to mention the Kingfisher and the Green Wood- 

 pecker, two of our loveliest species. No one who has seen 

 the wave of glorious green and gold made by the latter as it 

 undulates through the air, when startled from its feast on 

 an appetising anthill, will readily forget it, or its strange 

 yaffle or laugh. Fortunately Rutland seems to suit it, and 

 it has become very common. The Kingfisher, our only 

 other bird of tropical plumage, generally seen as a flash 

 of most beautiful azure and the richest brown, has profited 

 by the Bird Protection Acts, and also by a series of mild 

 winters. To show how numerous it really is, and how 

 terribly it suffered from the predatory gunner, it will be 



