Bird Notes & News 



ISSUED QUARTERLY BY THE ROYAL SOCIETY 

 FOR THE PROTECTION OF BIRDS :: 



Vol. IX.] 



AUTUMN. 1921. 



[No. 7. 



'' Farewell, Swallow " 



It is natural that the general cry "Where are 

 the Swallows ? " which went up from nearly 

 all parts of England in the early summer, 

 should have weakened in autumn days, when 

 all those who came to our shores in April and 

 all who have been hatched out since then, are 

 seen in their full strength on roofs and tele- 

 graph wires. That large proportion of the 

 public which does not regard Nature until it is 

 advertised in the Daily Mail are possibly 

 satisfied by the sight of a few hundred migrants 

 that after all the Swallows are not disappearing ; 

 particularly if they include in the term not only 

 House-Martins but Swifts. 



The gradual decrease in the British Swallows 

 has, however, been going on, with occasional 

 recoveries, for more than twenty years. In 

 1898 a paper on the subject was read at the 

 Conference of Hon. Secretaries of the Royal 

 Society for the Protection of Birds, by Mr. 

 J. H. Allchin (Maidstone), who had obtained 

 reports from 62 correspondents in different 

 counties, and who quoted from official publica- 

 tions of the Zoological Society of France and 

 the Agricultural Society of France, as to the 

 massacre of millions of the birds while on 

 passage. The question was again to the front 

 in 1904, when the destruction in France, and 

 also in Italy, was admitted by many naturalists 

 in those countries, in replv to inquiries con- 

 ducted by the R.S.P.B. "'Dr. Eagle Clarke 

 suggested the Delta of the Rhone as the 

 district where the greatest amount of netting 

 probably took place during the autumn 

 migration ; and Professor Oustalet, Presidenb 

 of the Zoological Society of France, reported 

 that, though the catchers and those who bought 

 the birds for the feather-trade refused informa- 

 tion, he believed the districts to lie in the 

 departments of the Bouches-du-Rhone, Var, 

 the Pyrenees, and the Gironde, while destruc- 

 tion probably likewise went on in Tunis, 

 Egypt, Spain, Greece and elsewhere. 



As a result of the Society's investigation 

 preparations were made for the visit of a dis- 

 tinguished traveller and naturalist to the 

 south of France during the autumn migration 

 season ; but when the question was brought 

 forward at the International Ornithological 

 Conference in London in 1905, representatives 

 from Switzerland, Italy, France and Belgium 

 strongly discouraged this course, believing that 

 nothing could be discovered owing to the 

 secrecy observed. M. Gans, of Geneva, who 

 declared that the Swallow had decreased 80 

 per cent, in ten years in Switzerland, attributed 

 this to their slaughter in Italy, which had 

 refused to join the International Convention 

 for Bird Protection. As, however, British 

 Swallows are believed not to pass through 

 Italy but through Spain and France, the 

 undoubted massacres in that country may be 

 put on one side. In every instance, also, 

 where birds are killed mainly for the pot, 

 Warblers suffer more than Swallows ; and 

 there is no apparent decrease in England's 

 Warblers. 



Inquiries through foreign societies and 

 correspondents again went on, and in 1913 

 appeared to be coming to a definite point. 

 M. Severin Baudouy, in his book " Grace pour 

 les Oiseaux," published in 1912, stated that 

 in the Department of Var three millions of 

 Swallows were taken in one season* ; and in 

 reply to a letter from the R.S.P.B. he added 

 certain other information with regard to the 

 destruction of the birds in France, the bodies 

 going, he said, to the restaurants, the wings to 

 the milliners. He stated, however, that the 

 destruction was decreasing, thanks to the 

 progress of the Bird-Protection movement. 



By the assistance of Sir Edward Grey (now 

 Viscount Grey of Falloden), then Foreign 



* This is the figure which has been so largely quoted 

 of late as if referring to the present day. 



