Bird Notes and News 



107 



Beyond this, in part unavoidable, mis- 

 fortune, come the cries of the shortsighted 

 cranks who are ever ready to preach to 

 agriculture. Grub up the hedgerows is one 

 cry ; they are beautiful, beauty is a senti- 

 mental folly, hedges drink up the good from 

 the soil, away with them ! Let us have wire 

 fences and ugliness ! Cut down the trees ; 

 they too live on the land that should support 

 only cattle and crops ; leave beast and plant 

 alike without shelter or shade. Above all, 

 destroy the birds ; they are seen eating corn 

 and fruit, and if what they take is as a popgun 

 to a howitzer compared with the amount 

 they save from noxious grubs, do not heed : 



have we not poison-sprays and a Board of 

 Agriculture to deal with wireworm and 

 leather -jacket and turnip-fly and antler-moth 

 and weevil and green-fly and woolly aphis, 

 and the thousand and one more pests of the 

 field 1 Better give the whole land to the 

 caterpillar we do not see than a square yard 

 to the bi. ^'^ we do see ! 



It is here that the blight of war endangers 

 England's country-side ; not in the inevitable 

 loss, but in the blundering, panic-born 

 obsession of the official scaremonger, and 

 in the dangerous ignorance of a country 

 unaccustomed and unable to apprehend its 

 real riches and to conserve them. 



Birds in the War Area. 



The following extracts from letters written 

 by Mr. Oliver G. Pike, of the " Birdland" 

 books, now on active service with the 

 Royal Flying Corps, are published by kind 

 permission. The first is dated from " Some- 

 where in France," May, 1917 : — 



" Although I am in the country, there is 

 not a great deal of bird life around here. 

 The chief thing of interest is a Magpie's nest 

 in the village. I have noticed that this 

 bird is quite common, and each village that 

 I have seen has one or two pairs. The birds 

 usually choose a tree right in the village 

 itself, and seem very tame. Each night we 

 have a pair of White Owls fl\dng around, and 

 I often watch them : they come right on to 

 the roof of oui- workrooms. Close by I have 

 a Hedge- sparrow's nest with five young, and 

 in the same hedge 1 have heard a Whitethroat 

 and Garden Warbler singing, and, in an 

 orchaid near by, a Blackcap. There are 

 plenty of Swallows and Martins, and of course 

 the Sparrow, and a few Larks. 



" A few days ago I paid a visit to a town 

 not far away, and made a point of visiting 

 the churches. The cathedral was wrecked, 

 with tlie exception of some of the great walls, 

 and these were still standing, and they 

 reminded me very much of some of the lesser 

 white cliffs of the Yorkshire coast, for the 

 walls at some period had been covered with 

 white plaster, and this was all spotted and 



broken b}^ pieces of shell, and in the holes 

 many birds had taken up their abode. 

 Here were lots of Jackdaws, and Pigeons 

 and screaming Swifts v/eTe also searching for 

 nesting sites. It was a weird sight to stand 

 below on a vast heap of debris and charred 

 wood, and to find that this once fine cathedral 

 was now the home of numerous birds. I 

 went from there to another church, a much 

 smaller one, and just the four walls were 

 left standing, witli big shell-holes for windows. 

 The actual windows, of course, were blown 

 to fragments ; through one of these there 

 was a waving branch of a tree clothed in the 

 beautiful green of spring, and just beyond, 

 on a higher branch, there sat a Thrush. The 

 setting sun was throwing a beam of light 

 on to him, and the notes of his beautiful song 

 rang through these sad ruins. Everywhere 

 there was wreckage - the altar, organ, and 

 once fine paintings on the walls were all 

 simply blown to obli^^on, and the only 

 bright things in that desolate scene were 

 that green branch framed by a shell- 

 broken window, and that loud, pure song. I 

 have listened to the music of the Thrush in 

 some strange places, but never have I heard 

 it under more tragic circumstances. WTiat 

 a whole world of tragedy could be written 

 about that line building since the last 

 ' Evensong ' was heard there. The destruc- 

 tion left beliind by the Huns is awful — it is 

 all so needless and wanton, and priceless 

 buildings are just a heap of broken rubble." 



