92 



Bird Notes and News 



BIRDS IN WAR TIME. 

 The following letter from the Secretary 

 of the R.S.P.B. has appeared in a 

 number of London and provincial news- 

 papers : — 



A good deal has been written with regard 

 to the birds of the war area and the antici- 

 pated migration of bird - fugitives to this 

 country — an anticipation not fulfilled. But 

 something remains to be said as to the 

 birds of our own country in war time. 



The Times has recently pointed out that 

 thousands of acres of common and other 

 open land, where larks and linnets and many 

 other and rarer species have been wont to 

 nest, have been turned into camps and 

 marching ground, and trodden down by 

 man and horse. Ground-nesting birds can 

 no longer nest there ; cover has been 

 destroyed ; the old-time solitude is peopled ; 

 there is no secret place for the brooding bird. 



This is inevitable, but to some extent the 

 loss can be counteracted if landowners and 

 others will give additional security to 

 nesting-birds elsewhere. 



Is it too much to ask, for instance, that 

 golfers will strictly prohibit their caddies 

 from the destruction of nests and eggs with 

 which caddies too often amuse themselves ; 

 that farmers will, where possible, spare 

 nests on their fields ; that teachers will 

 make a special point of restraining their 

 scholars from Hun-like smashing and despoil- 

 ing of bird-homes ; that those responsible 

 for the care of commons will tighten up 

 their by-laws for the protection of birds 

 and see that such by-laws are so exhibited 

 that he who runs may read, instead of 

 being an unheeded portion of a more or less 

 illegible inscription on a defaced board ? 



Anti-Fly Campaign. 



Attention has been called, and more 

 insistently, to the dreaded danger caused 

 by flies of various kinds carrying germs of 

 infection. The efforts of man to combat 

 this danger are, however, puny compared 

 with the work of the many birds which 

 destroy these creatures by the million, at 

 this season of the year in particular to 

 feed themselves and their nestlings. He 

 who has a swallow's nest in his barn, or 

 house -martin's under his eaves, is serving 



the cause of sanitary science better than 

 he who adorns every room in his house with 

 poisonous fly-cemeteries. 



Birds, again, are the natural enemies of 

 the host of flies, caterpillars, and weevils, 

 which five upon vegetation. Here, too, 

 science with its insecticides and fumigations, 

 expensive and troublesome as these may be, 

 cannot compete with the hungry beak of 

 the sharp-eyed bird. The present shortage 

 of field-labour and the trebled importance of 

 crops, emphasises the farmer's need of all 

 his allies. A French ornithologist has re- 

 marked that France, when the Germans have 

 ceased to harry the land, will have pressing 

 need of all her bird-life to fight the insect 

 invaders and ravagers of her fields. The 

 need is the same in our own case, though 

 less tragically imperative. 



The Feathered Woman. 



May I add one word more ? The feather 

 trade is at present making a desperate effort 

 to reinstate the discredited " osprey " and 

 other wild bird plumes on women's heads. 

 At such a time as the present, women may 

 well reflect (1) that this trade has its roots, 

 not only in German commercial profits, but 

 in German barbarity ; (2) that ostentatiously 

 expensive ornaments are an offence and a 

 disgrace when military needs and civilian 

 misery call on all sides for help ; (3) that no 

 excuse can be made on the score of providing 

 employment, since feathers give less of this 

 than does any other form of trimming ; 

 (4) that the flaunting of these badges of 

 cruelty and death in a world anguished with 

 slaughter and suffering speaks little for the 

 refinement or the taste of the wearer. 



NOTES FROM ABROAD. 



The Society has received the Annual 

 Reports of the Danish Society " Svalen," 

 with interesting bird-notes ; of the Sophia- 

 Vereeniging tot Bescherming van Dieren, of 

 Amsterdam, and of the Vereeniging tot 

 behoud vanNatuurmonumenten in Nederland, 

 with fine photographs of nature-reserves 

 and of Spoonbill, Avocet, and Short-eared 

 Owl. In Spain, Senor Wynn is actively 

 carrying on the work, and has recently 

 organized exhibitions, with lectures, at Vido 

 and, in oonnexion with an agricultural 

 congress, at Balaguer. 



