1903 Correspondence 357 



this year (sparrows, starlings, and swallows excepted). ... I must give 

 the boys their due here, as I find they seldom take a nest. ... My 

 young cuckoo fell a victim to the magpies.' I suppose I needn't at this 

 time of day frame an indictment against the 'carrion crow,' and no one 

 can deny that the jackdaw and rook are much commoner here than 

 their services to mankind would justify. Hear Lord Lilford on the 

 'carrion crow': 'We have not a word to say in defence of the 

 " carrion crow." His habits appear to us to be purely noxious, and 

 neither his personal appearance, voice, nor manners in captivity offer 

 anything in extenuation of his evil propensities.' Again, on the grey or 

 hooded crow : 'We have no plea to urge in defence of the grey crow, 

 and hold him as a sturdy vagrant to be summarily dealt with at all 

 times and in all places.' Again, on the rook : 'We cannot defend our 

 friends from the charges brought against them, with perfect truth, by 

 farmers and gamekeepers of the damage done by their taste for corn, 

 both in grain and blade, and for eggs fresh and incubated. . . . Our 

 partridges especially owe their safety to the abundance of vegetation, 

 and not to any lack of searching on the part of the rooks . . . oophagous 

 rascals. . . . We annually lose great numbers of the eggs laid by the 

 pinioned ducks from the raids of these black robbers, who will even 

 penetrate into the nesting hutches, and fly off with the eggs in their 

 beaks. . . . In such a rook-haunted neighbourhood as ours it is certainly 

 absolutely necessary to keep down their numbers.' On the jackdaw : 

 'This amusing but most pernicious bird . . . we found it absolutely 

 necessary to wage war upon them in the interests of our garden, 

 poultry, and game, to say nothing of those of the barn owl. . . . The 

 daws not only carried off numbers of young chickens, pheasants, and 

 partridges, . . . but in several instances, to our knowledge, took posses- 

 sion of the owls' nests, destroyed their eggs, and piled up their own 

 nests in the cavities.' The jackdaw disputes the palm for noisy and 

 obtrusive impudence with the house-sparrow, and does not, to our 

 knowledge, compensate us in any way for his misdoings. 



"The beauty of the jay and his sprightly ways may cause voices to 

 be raised in their favour, and the jay is a favourite bird of mine ; but 

 their evil propensities are hit off in one sentence by Lord Lilford : 'We 

 have found that more than one of these birds in our possession preferred 

 the eggs of small birds to any other food.' 



" Lord Lilford's evidence is the more to the point in that Lilford is 

 close to the borders of Rutland, and the conditions of bird life are 

 similar here and there. 



"The cheap sneer about the chough does not require an answer. 

 It is obvious that this bird could not have been referred to. No doubt 

 it has suffered from the rapacity of collectors. The remark about 

 I "mI 1 1 iv 11 . 1 ■;■ . I <!<> not follow. 



"The exponent of the 'sacrcdness of scientific accuracy' should be 

 himself above the reach of criticism, but his article on "Common Birds " 

 has several disputable statements in it. 



" 1. The note of the sparrow is not like 'chur-chur ' 



