Bird Notes and News 



15 



and over the land, denuding the pastures, 

 devastating oats and turnips, stripping the 

 trees, ruining the fruit crops. Says the 

 Times (June 17th) : 



" Bird-lovers, like Mr. W. H. Hudson, who in 

 time past has written with such indignation of 

 the wanton destruction of nests, may hear with 

 sardonic pleasure of this reminder given by the 

 caterpillar to man. There are whole districts in 

 England where it would be quite dangerous just 

 now for any well-meaning but short-sighted 

 counsellor to propose the killing of birds for the 

 saving of crops." 



Sparrow-clubs, checked by the Home 

 Office, bird-poisoning, checked by the Food 

 Controller, and Rook slaughter, checked 



now by the Board of Agriculture, have, it 

 may be hoped, had their day. 



* 4c « 



Mr. J. F. Stewart writes from Newcastle- 

 on-Tyne : 



" You may be interested to learn that I have 

 persuaded Blue Tits to nest in the boxes I purchased 

 of you, both at the front and back of my house 

 situated in a street, and I think both hens are now 

 laying. If you have any correspondent who can 

 claim a similar record I should like to know." 



The provision of nesting-boxes for these 

 and other insect-eating birds becomes more 

 and more a national service since the cutting 

 down of the trees they might have nested in . 



Birds in the War Area. 



Observers on the Western Front continue 

 to report on the apparent insensibility of 

 birds to the thunderous din of guns and 

 shells. Fleet-Surgeon C. Marsh Beadnell, 

 R.N., in the interesting impressions of his 

 visit to the trenches, pubhshed in the 

 Journal of the Roj^al Naval Medical Service, 

 writes : 



" It is most extraordinary how indifferent the 

 birds are to the noise of exploding shell. In the 

 early mornings the whole wood is asparkle with the 

 twitterings, songs and cries of the various species. 

 A shell suddenly bursts with a loud report in the 

 middle of the wood and you hear fragments crashing 

 through the branches, but the music of the birds 

 goes on without a moment's cessation. Neither 

 do they mind the shrieking of our own shells which 

 daily pass over their heads, nor the bursting of 

 the enemy's anti-aeroplane shell high up in the 

 air alx)ve them." 



He names thirteen species which came 

 under his notice, including Blue Tits which 

 reared eleven young in a Strombus horn, and 

 Nightingales singing all hours of the night, 

 and adds : 



" The Swallows would fly up and down the 

 trenches all day long despite shot and shell. In 

 one of the observation posts I visited there was a 

 nest inside the officer's dug-out and the parent 

 birds would fly in and out and even perch on the 

 table while the officer was eating his meals. 



Captain C saw a curious incident, to wit, a 



Swallow killed by the blast of a 4'9 in. howitzer. 

 The bird was flying along about fifty j'ards in front 

 of one of the guns as it was fired and was killed 

 by the blast." 



The Rev. Cyril Lomax writes in The 

 Vasculum of the scarcity of nesting-sites 

 owing to the destruction of houses and trees. 



" In consequence, in villages where every house 

 and tree is destroyed, only the wayside crucifix 

 left standing, you find as many nests as possible 

 packed in between the figure of Christ and the 

 Cross. But if the Swallows try to build there, 

 the Sparrows steal their nests, so the former trust 

 men and become wonderfully tame. Numlerless 

 dug-outs, with entrance just about five or six feet 

 high, have nests plastered to the beams overhead. 

 The Swallows flj' in and out quite fearlessly. Any 

 man could put his hand into the nest, but I have 

 never come across a single instance of the abuse 

 of the Swallows' trust. In fact, in one case a big 

 marquee was left standing in order that a Swallow, 

 whose nest was on the pole inside, might finish 

 rearing her brood." 



In the English Review for March, 1918, 

 Mr. H. Thoburn Clarke furnishes a number 

 of strange instances of nests under fire, in 

 ammunition wagons, in shell-shattered trees, 

 on the lip of a parapet, in a " camouflage " 

 tree-stump that had done dutj' as a telephone 

 exchange, and so on ; but, he adds, thousands 

 must meet an untimely death, and in one 

 wood he found hundreds of tiny songsters 

 lying dead. 



" It was at the height of the spring migration, 

 and the night had been full of the sound of tired 

 wings and the chirping of thousands of birds as 

 they dropped into the trees to rest. A German 

 strafe in the small hours had sent numerous high 

 explosives into the wood, and numberless biixls 

 lay dead when morning dawned. 



