Bird Notes and News 



Commenting on Lord Buxton's speech in 

 the Illustrated London News, Mr. W. P. Pycraft 

 writes : — 



" In the course of an effective survey of the 

 Society's work, Lord Buxton had occasion to 

 make several grave comments on some of the 

 aims of the Oologists' Club, of the B.O.U., 

 which, so far, has stood for all that is best 

 in the study of ornithology in this country. 

 And it is hoped that those concerned will give 

 careful consideration to his complaints. 



" Briefly, he deplored the application of 

 methods which Timothy aptly described as 

 ' science falsely so called,' but which have now 

 apparently become the standards of ' oolo- 

 gists ' — or rather, one should say, of a certain 

 school of oologists, who seem not only to have 

 lost perspective, but judgment. 



" They profess, and doubtless believe them- 

 selves to be, on the way to discover the causes 

 of variation in the coloration and size of birds' 

 eggs, more especially in regard to particular 

 species. This end, they contend, is only to 

 be attained by the collection of huge numbers 

 of eggs within given areas. To attain their 

 evidence, every egg laid by a particular bird 

 during one whole nesting season is taken and 

 duly labelled. After the first clutch is taken 

 she will lay another, and yet another — some- 

 times three, or more. If there are six birds 

 laying within that area, each is in like manner 

 robbed, so that not only for that year, but for 



a succession of years, not a single one of these 

 victims rears offspring. 



" The cabinets of one such collector, he 

 remarked, contain no less than 500 clutches of 

 the Eed-backed Shrike. How much has science 

 gained by this orgy of collecting ? It is 

 doubtful whether a single fact has been added 

 to our knowledge either of the factors of varia- 

 bility in this species or of the wider cause in 

 the supposed interest of which this collection 

 was made. But we can be quite sure that 

 harm has been done by this exacting strain on 

 the birds thus victimised, and this in turn 

 re-acts upon the well-being of the species. 



" Unfortunately, many such experiments 

 on this grandiose scale are being made upon 

 species which are far from numerous. If the 

 whole science of oology is not to be brought 

 into disrepute, these all-devouring schemes 

 must be abandoned. They are intemperate 

 and exasperating. They can only be carried 

 on by flagrant breaches of the law, often 

 possible only by the exercise of a low cunning 

 disgusting to all reasonable men. That the 

 collecting of birds' eggs is an essential part of 

 the study of ornithology is beyond dispute. 

 But the collector must exercise discrimination. 

 All that the oologist has been able to tell us 

 so far, after a hideous waste of life, is that the 

 eggs of birds vary in their coloration, some 

 of them to a very remarkable degree. But so 

 far what they tell us as true isn't new, and 

 what they tell us as new isn't true." 



The Keeper and the Kestrels 



Under the heading of " The Unsentimental 

 Keeper " the following account of Kestrels 

 acting the part of foster-parents is contributed 

 to the Morning Post (March 18th, 1922) by 

 "M. W." 



" A keeper has been telling me this strange 

 story of a hawk adventure last June : — 



" In a squirrel's old ' drey,' five or six 

 years old, he discovered four very young 

 kestrels. He went into ambush and shot the 

 female parent, and the following night shot 

 the male. To determine whether the young 

 ones might prove a lure for other hawks. 



which he might also destroy, he left them to 

 their fate. On the third night, when again 

 lying in wait, sure enough a male kestrel flashed 

 into the nest with food for the orphans, and in 

 turn fell to this keeper's merciless gun. And 

 then he saw, to his amazement, what he de- 

 scribes as ' a reg'lar shoal of hawks ; ' that 

 is to say, four or five were in the air above the 

 nest-tree, but out of range. One or more of 

 this ' shoal ' must have taken compassion on 

 the orphans. A week later the young were 

 still flourishing. He found them perched on a 

 branch running from the nest. As he watched 

 yet another male kestrel came in with food. 



