136 ON THE DESTRUCTION OF BIRDS. 
This summer just opposite a window, a pair of Sparrows have 
hatched successive broods under the shelter of a broken slate; 
morning and noon are the pair busily engaged in supplying their 
hungry family with food, and as they pause and carefully look 
round before they enter, I am enabled to see that their beaks are 
crammed with what are familiarly called ‘‘ Daddy long-legs,” and 
other flies. In March last, when the snow lay thick and long on 
the ground, my attention was directed towards a tapping just 
outside the room window near whereI stood. Peeping through 
the half-drawn blind I saw a Blackbird with a large garden snail, 
which he was busily engaged in smashing against a large stone. 
By repeated blows the shell was removed, and the snail soon 
became a choice feast for the sorely-pressed bird. Just after my 
park was mown it was found to be unusually full of new colonies 
of ants, their hills raising great impediments to the operations of 
my mowers. The hay being carried the rooks came for several 
days and seemed extremely busy. I was curious to know what they 
were after; and on searching I found the anthills pecked open and 
destroyed ; the eggs were devoured, except in a few places of long 
standing, which formed fortresses defying all attacks. Some 
amateur sportsman, tempted by a good shoot from the road, gave 
warning to my friends to quit, since which they have not visited 
me. Partridges are real farmers’ friends ; their food, when young, 
consists wholly of insects. Small birds are evidently on the 
decrease, and many birds formerly known in this district, as the 
White or Screech Owl, and the Brown Owl, are seldom seen; 
whereas 50 years ago there was not a barn or steeple without its 
inhabitants, and nightly were they seen flitting silently round the 
fields in pursuit of mice. The numerous flocks of Pigeons that 
formerly visited the beech woods of this locality each winter have 
disappeared. One thing is clear,—the unlimited destruction of 
birds will assuredly hand us over to a worse enemy in the shape 
of aphides, grubs, and flies. 
Henry Gipzons. 
Loxboro’ House, 
Bledlow Ridge. 
