on the European goldfinch.



103



cleared of stones and converted into hop-gardens and orchards.

One landowner, whom I knew personally, levelled a hundred acres

of wood in a single year and subsequently planted it with serried

rows of young cherry and apple-trees with currants and gooseberries

planted between to supply the market while the more profitable

trees were maturing. Year after year I saw beautiful woods cut

down, banks and hedgerows covered with weeds beloved of birds

swept away, and it did not in the least surprise me that goldfinches

no longer elected to settle there as aforetime, but strayed farther

afield in search of what they needed.


It is many years now since I went birdsnesting: indeed my

great object in collecting nests and eggs was to enable me to wrfte a

much needed book on the subject, illustrating not one or two but

many varieties of the eggs of our commoner birds, so as to enable

young naturalists to identify any eggs which they might come across,

which from personal experience I had found impossible with the

help of the books previously published in this country. When my

object had been attained I at once gave up birdsnesting and have

never resumed it: yet undoubtedly the occupation is most fascina¬

ting and instructive: it not only teaches one much about the habits

of birds, but it trains the eyesight and judgment, so that as one

becomes expert one knows just where to look for a nest and at once

detects it when present; whereas the ordinary wayfarer, even though

keen-eyed in some matters, entirely overlooks it and even fails to see

it when it is pointed out to him.


We none of us wish the British avifauna to decrease ; but if

we are to retain many of our birds the only chance is to set aside

more and more enclosures of wild and well-timbered land for sanc¬

tuaries and give them every encouragement to settle there, not only

by providing numerous building-sites but abundance of the food

which they most delight in. You cannot bind birds to the land by

law, nor in my private opinion does the taking of a few nests make a

halfpenny-worth of difference numerically to the species of any

common or prolific bird, although undoubtedly in the case of rare

birds, such for instance as the golden eagle, it matters a good deal.



