86 



Bird Notes and News 



purpose of the vile and abominable steel 

 trap. Every keeper has his gun ; few 

 keepers are slow to use it. That it 

 should be supposed necessary — that it 

 should even be permissible — to employ 

 in addition against the bird-life of the 

 woods the most treacherous and most 

 cruel of all methods of destroying wild 

 birds, and of using it throughout the 

 nesting - season and by the aid of the 

 nesting -instincts, is one of the crying 

 evils attendant on game-preservation 

 which entail odium on the gamekeeper 

 and the Game Laws, and which bring 

 the preserve before the public eye as a 

 veritable shambles of wild life. 



The pole-trap was made illegal eleven 

 years ago after the exposure in the Press 

 of its barbarity. That it is therefore 

 unknown at the present day no one would 

 venture to state. The nest or platform 

 trap — little, if any, inferior in cruelty — 

 lies, or is supposed to lie, outside the 

 technical phraseology of the Act of 1904, 

 though it is certain that its use in bush 

 and tree is a case of sailing very near the 

 wind. 



To quote a well-known writer and 

 authority on sport — 



" The platform -trap, whose use is clearly 

 meant to be barred as much as the pole-trap, 

 is just as cruel as the latter instrument of 

 torture. It consists of a steel trap or gin, 

 set on a platform of sticks or moss, or on the 

 edge of an artificial nest. Birds caught are 

 liable to the same miseries as those taken in 

 a trap on the top of a pole, for in their 

 endeavours to free themselves they often 

 knock the trap off the platform, and are 

 thus held suspended by the leg in mid-air, 

 the chain of the trap being of course fixed 

 to the tree or bush in which the platform or 

 artificial nest is fashioned. . . . But there 

 is a difference in the kind of victim which 

 the platform-trap and the pole-trap severally 

 ensnare. It is mostly the hawks and owls 

 which fall a prey to the latter horrible 

 device, while in the case of the platform- 

 trap, jays and magpies are the chief victims, 



and by this means thousands of jaj^s, 

 magpies, rooks, and crows are cruelly done 

 to death every year." 



It may be enough to quote one recent 

 recommendation of the practice, dealing 

 in this particular instance with Magpies, 

 birds with a very strong attachment to 

 their nests. 



" Should one of the pair be trapped . . . 

 it is an excellent plan to set a ring of several 

 traps round that placed at the bait, as the 

 mate of the magpie trapped dashes about 

 in a frantic way on seeing what has occurred, 

 and very often gets into one of the traps 

 set at a short distance." 



It is again recommended that phea- 

 sants' eggs, being to-day " extraordinarily 

 cheap," may be bought by the hundred 

 and placed in artificial nests in which 

 traps are concealed. The nest-trap is a 

 form greatly favoured , for an unprotected 

 nest is undoubtedly a strong temptation 

 not only to all birds that take other 

 birds' eggs on occasion, but fo those with 

 whom curiosity is a marked trait. 



The Magpie and Jay are bitterly hated 

 by the keeper, and he will show no merc}^ 

 in trying to exterminate these two hand- 

 some and intelligent denizens of the 

 woods. It may therefore be taken as 

 indicative of the times and of the growing 

 trend of opinion on the sacred subject 

 of game, that when a protest against 

 the trapping frenzy was made last month 

 by the R.S.P.B. in the columns of the 

 Shooting Times (a paper not unfriendly 

 to the cause of Bird Protection), the 

 defence raised was based, not on the 

 necessity for preserving the pheasants, 

 but on the deplorable cruelty of the 

 Magpie to small wild birds and the 

 consequent virtue of destroying it ! The 

 character of Jay and Magpie and Rook 

 has been blackened to the utmost ; they 

 are alluded to as " Huns " and spoken of 

 as though their beaks were habitually 



