106 



Bird Notes and News 



written home of Swallows and Starlings and 

 Sparrows nesting amid ruins not yet free 

 from shell-fire, and of Larks and Nightingales 

 singing serenely in the pauses of artillery 

 bombardment. Mr. Oliver Pike tells such a 

 tale of a Whitethroat in the present number 

 of Bird Notes and News. Partridges and 

 Magpies have been described strutting 

 fearlessly in No Man's Land ; and a sudden 

 vivid interest in the fate of the birds of 

 the shattered villages has sprung up in 

 the mind of many a soldier. As M. le Dr. 

 Cathelin puts it, in the graceful French way, 

 in the article already alluded to, " How 

 greatly must our young soldiers of the front 

 lines feel themselves upheld and sustained on 

 the eve of an attack when they see fl^^ng 

 all about them these gracious little birds, 

 symbolical of the tenacity, the courage, 

 and the hope of France ! " 



The effect on birdlife is not, however, to 

 be measured by the inexperienced indiffer- 

 ence of the birds. They must have been 

 slaughtered by the thousand. A corre- 

 spondent of the Scotsman gave recently two 

 instances worth quoting. One relates to 

 apparent shock only — 



" I wonder if it is possible for birds to 

 suffer from shell-shock ? A day or two 

 ago a shell burst not very far away, and 

 afterwards I saw two Starlings roaming 

 listlessly over the ground, every now and 

 then staggering as if weak and unsteady on 

 their legs. I caught one quite easily, but 

 could see nothing wrong with it. It lay 

 perfectly still in my hand looking at me 

 w.th glazed, lustreless eyes. I caught the 

 other and placed both in an old box to see 

 what would happen. They settled doAATi 

 contentedly enough, but the next morning 

 they had recovered sufficiently to protest 

 vigorously against their imprisonment. 

 When liberated they both flew off apparently 

 none the worse for their experience." 



The other is a different tale, and concerns 

 flocks of Gulls feeding on a marshy area, 

 enjoying the worms and insects turned up 

 by shell-fire — 



" I have sometimes found dead birds at 

 rare intervals, but I have never seen a bird 

 struck by a shell until yesterday. I was 



watching a flock of gulls circling at a little 

 distance in front of our position. Suddenly 

 I heard the whine of a 9-inch shell, and, to 

 my astonishment one of the gulls appeared 

 to dissolve into a cloud of feathers that 

 floated about in the air. A minute later the 

 shell burst. Apparently the shell left nothing 

 of the gull's body. That vanished, for only 

 the feathers came drifting down. I was 

 talking to a naval man upon the subject, and 

 he said that he had occasionally seen the 

 same thing happen when the cruisers were 

 engaged at gun practice at sea. The gunfire 

 seems to attract the gulls, for they collect 

 in hundreds, perhaps to feed upon the fish 

 killed by the concussions. Strange to say, 

 a few hours later I was examining the hole 

 made by either a 10- or II -inch shell, and 

 to my surprise found a poor little sparrow 

 lying dead at the bottom of the hole. It 

 was quite uninjured, and had probably been 

 flying over when the shell burst, and the 

 blast had killed it. It was rather interesting 

 to see on one day such evidences of the 

 destruction of birds by shell-fire." 



Yet another of the dangers is the presence 

 of asphj'Xiating poisonous gases ; the French 

 Bulletin instances numbers of birds picked 

 up dead in the woods, overcome by gas 

 fumes. 



The real tragedy of birdlife in the war is, 

 however, not on the battle-ground itself, 

 but on the familiar homeland ; not in shell 

 or shock or poison-gas, but in the hideous 

 destruction of trees and woods and every 

 sort of cover in the progress of war. And 

 it is this tragedj^ which Great Britain, the 

 country that has narrowlj^ enough escaped 

 the horrors of war on its own soil, is crazily 

 threatening to perpetrate by intention. 



In every part of Britain noble and glori- 

 ous old woods have been and are being sacri- 

 ficed : perhaps to national necessity, perhaps 

 to a greed anxious to make something/ out 

 of pressing wants ; perhaps to a perverted 

 sense of patriotism in placing all that is 

 beautiful under the Juggernaut of war. 

 Possibly for these reasons. But most cer- 

 tainly for lack of national foresight in plant- 

 ing and providing peremiial supplies of timber 

 by scientific and systematic forestry. 



