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Dr. A. G. Butler.



ornithologists that the goldfinch has actually decreased in numbers

owing to the activities of birdcatchers: of course to any reflecting

person such a notion is ridiculous, for it is still as abundant as

ever on the Continent, and anybody who has read with interest

Gatke’s remarks respecting the migration of birds in his “Heligoland”

must be convinced that not all the catchers in Europe could possibly

appreciably affect the numbers of the species : moreover it must not

be forgotten that in the middle ages when every man, woman and

child, at all seasons, by every means which ingenuity could suggest,

secured birds of all kinds for the cooking-pot, so that one might

marvel that any species could survive; birds were nevertheless far

more numerous than at present, and the number of species repre¬

sented in the British Isles was probably far greater ; nor is the reason

for this far to seek.'


I am not a bigoted person and have no axe of my own to

grind, but I do dislike to see kind-hearted and bird-loving individuals

led astray by ridiculous statements. It is undoubtedly true and

greatly to be regretted that in some counties the goldfinch has be¬

come much rarer than it formerly was in spite of protective laws :

but there is not the faintest shadow of doubt that the cause for the

retirement of this and many other abundant species from their

former haunts is the reclaiming of so-called waste land and the

consequent destruction of the favourite seeds of weeds upon which

they subsisted as well as suitable nesting-sites.


When I first commenced birdsnesting in Kent in 1871 it was

not at all unusual to see goldfinches and sometimes come across

their nests during a morning ramble ; but, some years later, although

then protected, one might pass a month in the country and not once

catch sight of a specimen, yet I heard of them being abundant as

ever in other counties.


The disappearance of the Kentish goldfinches synchronised

with the cutting down of numerous large woods and plantations

covering hundreds of acres, together with the grubbing up of all the

rough scrub along their margins where various forms of thistle and

sometimes teazle grew abundantly. All this land was ploughed up,


* An enlightening book for the student is Macpherson’s “ History of Fowling,”


1897.



