Bird Notes and News 



23 



away. When surprised or about to be fed 

 they made a strange hissing noise not unlike 

 that of a cat. Their food consisted mainly of 

 bread and milk, and hard boiled eggs, young 

 Greenfinches and Sparrows taken from the 

 nest, and young rabbits, which they consumed 

 in toto. The rabbits' fur seemed beneficial to 

 them to help to form their pelts. When 

 rabbit fur was unobtainable meat wrapped 

 in cotton wool made a perfectly good substitute 

 and helped them to form pelts, but undoubtedly 

 they preferred their diet of eggs and bread and 

 milk. They became so tame that they could 

 be carried about on the finger — Hawk fashion 

 — anywhere, both in and out of doors. 



"It is hardly likely that so fine a naturalist 

 as the late Lord Lilford (who introduced the 

 Little Owl into Kent in 1872) would have done 

 so had he any anxiety as to its damage to 

 game to a large extent." 



PROTECTION OF THE PLOVER 



In the House of Commons, on May 8th, 

 Colonel Sir Charles Yate asked the Minister 

 of Agriculture whether his attention had been 

 called to the question of the great diminution 

 in the numbers of plovers in the country 

 owing to the sale of the birds and their eggs 

 during the breeding season ; and whether, 

 considering the usefulness of these birds, he 

 would introduce legislation limiting the time 

 when the birds and their eggs might be exposed 

 for sale. 



Mr. Shortt (Home Secretary) said his 

 attention had not been drawn to the alleged 

 decrease, but the Government was fully 

 alive to the usefulness of the Lapwing to 

 agriculture, and it was proposed to insert 

 provisions for the protection of the bird and 

 its eggs in the draft Wild Birds Protection 

 Bill now under consideration. 



In answer to a further question from Sir 

 Charles Yate (May 18th) as to when the Bill 

 would be introduced, Mr. Shortt said he 

 hoped it might be possible to introduce it soon 

 after Whitsuntide, but he could at present 

 make no promise. 



In the Times (May 10th), Mr. H. D. Astley 

 writes : — 



The green plover — the lapwing — one of the most 

 beautiful and intensely useful birds, is becoming 

 dangerously less in numbers. I have received testi- 

 mony of this fact from many parts of England. The 

 birds themselves are killed in the winter, and their 

 eggs (often both clutches) are stolen in the spring. 

 How can any species withstand so continuous an 

 onslaught for ever ? 



Letters have also appeared in the Field from 

 Mr. J. R. B. Masefield, "Cheviot," Dr. 

 Hammond Smith, and other correspondents. 

 The last-named says (May 8th) : — 



We have an annual crusade carried on against 

 the plover merely for the sake of providing a luxury 

 for those who are probably entirely ignorant of the 

 value of the bird that they are helping to exterminate. 

 Further, the plover is probably the only bird that is 

 attacked both by being killed in the breeding season 

 and at the same time by the wholesale destruction 

 of its eggs. It is to be hoped that all who take any 

 interest in the preservation of this, one of our most 

 useful and beautiful wild birds, will do all they can to 

 promote measures for its protection. If this is not 

 done, there is every probability that the peewit will 

 soon become as scarce as the bittern or others of our 

 once common birds. On May 2nd in a large stores 

 I saw both birds and eggs being offered for sale. 



" Cheviot " comments (May 15th) : — 



But the worst of the business is that so many 

 people seem never to have heard of the bird as being 

 either beautiful or useful, but think of it solely from 

 the point of view of the stomach. There was an 

 article in the Times of Saturday last in which the 

 writer, a lady, expressed vague longings for the time, 

 which she appeared to think was unfortunately never 

 likely to arrive, when plovers' eggs shoidd " flood the 

 market." She would seem never to have considered 

 what would be the result of this desirable inundation, 

 in the destruction of so many potential destroyers 

 of grubs and slugs. . • . Has not the time come 

 when these Acts, which were designed originally 

 to preserve the Uvea of beautiful and useful birds, 

 should be strengthened and made effective by the 

 logical process of forbidding the destruction of the 

 egg which holds the potential bird ? If, in addition, 

 it were made illegal to kill the bird outside the limits 

 of the ordinary game shooting season, I am sure that 

 shooting men who are also naturalists would welcome 

 the prohibition. 



BIRD PROTECTION IN S. AFRICA 



The new Wild Birds Protection Society of 

 South Africa, which will have the best wishes 

 of every reader of Bird Notes and News, is 

 offering a number of prizes for essays by school 

 children in the Union of South Africa, the 

 subject being " Why I should not kill Wild 

 Birds or destroy their Eggs." Last year a 

 School Teachers' Competition was promoted, 

 and the first prize essay was published in the 

 Natal Witness (December 1921). It dealt with 

 both the economic and the aesthetic value of 

 birds, and urged that teachers should take the 

 lead in training children to observe and love 

 birds, that farmers should encourage them by 

 planting trees and shrubs for their nesting and 

 food, and that ladies should boycott the trade 

 in wild birds' plumage. 



