102 



Bird Notes and News 



house which gives them shelter ; and since 

 May not one German missile has fallen on 

 the hut. Nor is that an isolated case, a 

 great number of soldiers' huts having 

 Swallows' nests beneath their low ceilings. 

 He adds : 



" Les reverrons nous dans les abris 

 l'annee prochaine, Dieu seul le sait ? 

 Quoiqu'il en soit, nous formons le voeu que 

 ces abris poient conserves jusqu'a la recon- 

 struction, jusqu'a la resurrection de nos 

 foyers detruits. Les hirondelles, et nos 

 paysans aussi, pourront y loger quand nous 

 serons a la poursuite des Barbares." 



• * * 



Captain R. Crawshay writes to the 

 Society, from the Headquarters of his 

 Brigade in France, enclosing the letter 

 quoted above, and adding : — 



" I have often reflected on this very 

 matter of the Swallows in the field of war. 



" Barn Owls, also, cannot but be greatly 

 affected in districts where towns are destroyed 

 and even cathedrals and churches reduced 

 to ruins. 



" Harriers are apt to come in for a hot 

 time when gun positions are located in 

 low bottoms which form favourite hawking 

 grounds for these birds, as I have remarked 

 in the section where I now am. 



" Partridges I sometimes see scared by 

 bursting shells." 



From the fighting line in France comes 

 one of those stories so numerous during the 

 present War, which throw into vivid relief, 

 amid the horrors of battle, the tenderness 

 of heart of British heroes. Tales of horses 

 rescued at the peril of men's lives, of dogs 

 and cats dug out in ruined villages and 

 befriended, have been told elsewhere. This 

 story is of a baby Owl, found by a young 

 artilleryman in a tiny cage in the house 

 where he was billeted ; it occurs in a letter 

 from a soldier-son. The owlet had fallen 



from its nest in the belfry tower, and been 

 condemned to slow death by its ignorant 

 owner. The Englishman pleaded for the 

 bird to be given him, and nailed the cage 

 up on the church wall. Next morning he 

 found the remains of three mice and two 

 sparrows in the cage and the owlet in 

 recovered health and spirits. Each night the 

 parent birds visited and fed the youngster ; 

 and before the battery received marching 

 orders the bird could fly and the young 

 soldier had the satisfaction of releasing it 



from its cage. 



* * * 



To the services of Gulls in sighting the 

 periscopes of submarines, and of Parrots 

 and other species in giving warning of 

 Zeppelins, has now to be added the statement, 

 quoted by the Manchester Guardian, that 

 soldiers have been warned, by the behaviour 

 of birds in the night, of a coming attack by 

 poisonous gas. Before the smell of the 

 fumes can be perceived in the trenches, it 

 is reported, the soldiers are awakened to 

 their danger by the noise of birds who have 

 detected the first fumes of the vile infection. 

 This is highly probable. It is well known 

 that canaries are used in mines and in mining 

 disasters to test atmospheric conditions and 

 save miners or explorers from gas-poisoning, 

 and the Government Mines Committee 

 recommended the keeping of two or three 

 birds at Rescue Stations for the purpose 

 of testing for carbon monoxide. 



* * * 



Notes regarding the behaviour of birds 

 on the approach of aircraft appear in some 

 of the Bird-and-Tree Essays from Norfolk 

 this year. A boy of only nine, writing on 

 the Moorhen, says : — 



" When a Zeppelin came over Beechamwell 



