Small Birds' Struggles. 41 



" Frost and the absence of gamekeepers have played havoc with the 

 balance of English bird life. In very many English districts we have 

 now that scarcity of small birds which is characteristic of the woods and 

 fields of France, and the comparative abundance of large birds which is 

 closely bound up with it. Magpies, carrion crows, jays, and sparrow- 

 hawks all feed on small birds, their eggs, or their young ; and as these 

 birds of prey increase, song-birds and the insect-eaters, so welcome in 

 gardens, inevitably diminish. Even the kestrel-hawk, which has also 

 verj' much increased, is an enemy to small-bird life, for though kestrels 

 seldom touch small birds of any kind, the small birds' puny wits do not 

 distinguish between kestrels and more dangerous hawks, and fly from 

 them. The mousing windhover is so fascinating as well as beneficial a 

 bird that his involuntary bird-scaring should not l)e pressed against him. 

 It is pleasant to see him hovering motionless, or circling, with his fine 

 falcon's outlines, on almost every country walk in these days. Sparrow- 

 hawks are hardly yet abundant enough in most districts to be a serious 

 check on the recovery of small birds. But it is high time to wage w'ar 

 once more on magpies, carrion crows, and jays, which are largely birds 

 of prey by habit, although they are all crows by race, and not of the 

 hawk or eagle tribe. Another bird of prey which modern science has 

 pushed far away from the " raptores " is the little owl. This is not a 

 native British species, but has now spread over more than half England 

 as the result of some doubtfully judicious, but extremely successful, 

 experiments in acclimatization. It preys occasionally, and as it were for 

 a pretext of virtue, on a few rats and mice; but it has a far keener 

 appetite for small birds. Its cat-like screams at dusk are as untuneful 

 as the hoot of the brown owl is pleasing, and instead of calling, like the 

 brown owl, in the solitude of distant woods, it delights to shout " Boo " 

 or " Yow " at one's very elbow. This original, but on the whole 

 objectionable, bird has thriven mightily during the suspension of game- 

 preserving, and is becoming a widespread bane. 



" The frosts of 1917 mainly affected our resident birds, such as 

 thrushes, finches, and robins, although the return of bitter weather in 

 April killed some of the summer birds of passage, and interfered with 

 the nesting of others. But the excess of birds of prey bears tyrannously 

 on most small birds alike. The future of game-preserving in this country 

 is uncertain ; it is unlikely ever to be as widespread and Draconian as it 

 was some years before the war. From the bird-lover's point of view, 

 this is not so satisfactory as it might seem. Gamekeepers and their 

 masters were very hard on the birds of prey ; but a strictly preserved 

 pheasant cover was a wonderful paradise of nightingales, and of all such 

 birds as the most ignorant and prejudiced keeper did not accuse of 

 interfering with his pheasants. Crows are as well hated by farmers and 

 shepherds as by gamekeepers, and when jays once attack a garden no 

 pest is worse. As country life settles down into its new routine there 

 will be a widespread determination again to reduce the numbers of these 



