94 



Bird Notes and News 



Some of the old Bird-and-Tree Cadets now 

 with the Colours were alluded to in the Spring 

 Number of Bird Notes and News. Three 

 members of the Middleton (Tarn worth) 

 Team which won the Warwickshire Shield 

 in 1909 are now serving King and country, 

 one of them being, very appropriately, in 

 the Flying Corps. It would be interesting 

 to have records from other schools. 



The effect of Bird-and-Tree work in the 

 schools of the United States and of Australia 

 is the same as in this country. The attitude 

 of children towards animals and birds, 

 and also the general intelligence of the young 

 students, are influenced as by no other 

 experiment in " Nature Study." As a 



teacher in one of the Portland Schools 



(Oregon) writes : — 



" The interest of my pupils in their wild 

 bird-friends is sho^n remarkably in their 

 schoolroom work. They are more wide- 

 awake and sympathetic. The experiences 

 with the birds which they relate form the 

 most interesting lessons of the day. Three 

 of the boys who were the most difficult to 

 manage are now the easiest to handle, 

 since they have begun to build and rent 

 bird-houses." 



The making of nesting-boxes is a great 



feature of the work in Portland, the children 



of the schools having made the huge number 



of 8,000 for the parks and private gardens 



of the city, under the auspices of the Board 



of Education. Bird-tables, and the feeding 



of birds in winter, are no less important a 



part of the work. 



Notes. 



Tentsmtjib, in Fifeshire, where an enter- 

 prising egg-collector recently bagged some 

 670 eggs before being caught by the keepers, 

 is a fine seaside moor, extending from the 

 Tay to the Eden, which is finely situated 

 for the purpose of a bird-sanctuary ; and 

 the portion on which the raid took place 

 has been keenly protected for five and twenty 

 years by Mr. William Berry. Hence the 

 prosecution. When he first rented it, scarcely 

 an egg was allowed to hatch, hordes of men 

 and boys raiding the place by boat and road 

 and train, and taking everything they could 

 find ; and as at that time there was no law 

 to protect eggs it was a hard matter to cope 

 with the state of things. A few years later 

 the Act of 1894 was passed, and Mr. Berry 

 made speedy use of it to obtain an " area " 

 order which has since been merged in the 

 general egg-protection clause of the Fifeshire 

 Order. The number of both species and 



of birds has since that time immensely 

 increased. Under Mr. Berry's keepers the 

 moor has become a great nesting-place of the 

 Black-headed Gull (previously unknown 

 there), and also for Terns, Eider-ducks, 

 Plovers, Curlews, and other species. It has 

 to be remembered, however, that this 

 result, so welcome to naturalists, depends 

 wholly on Mr. Berry's personal efforts. 

 The rest of the moor is entirely unpreserved, 

 and though certain eggs are " protected " on 

 paper, there is no one to enforce the law. 

 Bird-Protectors know too well what that 

 means. „. * * 



Some of the Tentsmuir Gulls gave evidence 

 on behalf of their kind to the Suffolk and 

 Essex Fishery Board in 1913. Twenty-two 

 of them, from a gullery not far from high- 

 water mark and little over a mile from 

 several artificial trout-lochs, were killed and 

 their crop-contents sent to the Board for 



