Bird Notes and News 



13 



Scientific orniphobists have been making 

 an effort to attribute the outbreak of foot- 

 and-mouth disease to birds bringing the virus 

 across the North Sea, apparently on the theory 

 that as birds have been known to carry seeds 

 why not virus ? Evidence there is none, and 

 a strong protest against this accusation was 

 made recently at a sectional meeting of the 

 Yorkshire NaturaUsts' Union. Nothing can 

 be less scientific than the popular rushing 

 forward of doctrines which have not a tittle of 

 evidence for their support. 



Every member of the R.S.P.B. will agree 

 with the comments made on birdcatching by 

 Dr. James Ritchie, of the Royal Scottish 

 Museum, in the Scottish Naturalist (Jan. -Feb., 

 1922), and rejoice the more especially that they 

 should be made by a distinguished naturalist 

 in a scientific journal. Many people, he says, 

 find interest and pleasure in keeping and 

 tending cage-birds, but birdcatching is a very 

 different matter, and birdcatching has much 

 increased of late. 



In the British Islea the law lag8 behind public 

 opinion. The greater part of our birdcatching is 

 carried on during the autumn migration and through- 

 out the winter months, after the cessation of the 

 legal close-time and at a period when only such birds 

 are protected as are mentioned in Special Orders. 

 Unless, therefore, the birdcatcher is capturing specially 

 protected birds, or is contravening (where it has been 

 adopted) Sunday protection, he may catch how and 

 when he pleases, so far as the Wild Birds Protection 

 Acts are concerned. This state of affairs is far from 

 satisfactory, for it is incontestable that birdcatching 

 often involves a considerable amount of cruelty. 



As remedies, Dr. Ritchie looks to the inclusion 

 of persecuted birds in the lists of species 

 protected all the year by County Orders, " but 

 such inclusion must be followed by rigorous 

 application of the law " ; to prosecution for 

 cruelty under the Protection of Animals Act, 

 and to the adoption in future legislation of the 

 recommendations of the Departmental Com- 

 mittee. Part of these recommendations are 

 embodied in Sir Harry Brittain's Bill, which 

 ought to be carried through this year. Lord 

 Tavistock, the Rev. J. G. Tuck, Mr. A. H. 

 Patterson, and Mr. C. B. Horsbrugh contribute 

 to the first number of Dr. Graham Renshaw's 

 quarterly, Natureland, which is on popular 

 lines, and appeals to a wide circle of readers. 

 (Manchester : Sherratt & Hughes.) 



The terrible boll- weevil of the United States, 

 to whose ravages Professor Maxwell-Lefroy 

 referred in a recent lecture, has, like every insect 

 pest, its bird enemies. Prominent among 

 them is the Egret, and it is largely due to the 

 destruction of this bird for its plumage that 

 the insect has multiplied at such an enormous 

 rate as to have eaten, according to the U.S. 

 Department of Agriculture, one-third of the 

 cotton crop of 1921. First heard of in Texas in 

 1893, this weevil has since spread to other 

 cotton-growing States, advancing a hundred 

 miles in three months and, declining to eat 

 anything but cotton, skipping over belts of 

 non-cotton growing region fifty miles broad. 

 Nearly every kind of crop in Great Britain 

 also has its special weevil enemy, and each 

 weevil its bird enemies. The common custom 

 of the farmer who sees the birds among the 

 crop is to shoot the birds. 



Sir John Cockburn's suggestion, at the 

 Society's annual meeting, that groves of trees 

 would be a far finer memorial to the gallant 

 dead than monstrosities of stone which are 

 neither beautiful nor useful, found probably 

 few opponents among his hearers. The late 

 Mr. Till, in his Gold Medal on introducing 

 Bird and Tree Day into England, showed how 

 trees have been made to serve as individual 

 memorials in Eynsford by speUing names in 

 acrostic fashion. In the United States a 

 memorial to John Burroughs, the American 

 naturalist, is to consist of a forest near the 

 place where he was born in the Catskills. 

 Some ten thousand trees are being planted by 

 schoolboys in co-operation with the New York 

 Conservation Commission. 



One of the lots at a sale of birds' eggs, etc., 

 held in January by Mr. J. C. Stevens, at his 

 Covent Garden Rooms, included a clutch of 

 Kite's eggs taken in South Wales, and a clutch 

 of Peregrine Falcon's eggs, taken at Loch 

 Buie. As the eggs of both species were pro- 

 tected by law at the time and place where they 

 were taken, a letter of protest was addressed 

 by the R.S.P.B. to Mr. Stevens, and, as on 

 previous occasions, he supported the law by 

 withdrawing these illegally-taken clutches 

 from sale. 



