THE SACRED BIRD 89 



firing on an estate in one day. I enquired of several 

 persons, some employed on the estate, as to the mean- 

 ing of all this firing, and was told that the keeper was 

 ridding the woods of some of the vermin. More than 

 that they refused to say ; but by-and-by I found a 

 person to tell me just what had happened. The 

 head keeper had got twenty or thirty persons, the men 

 with guns and a number of lads with long poles with 

 hooks to pull nests down, and had set himself to rid 

 the woods of birds that were not wanted. All the 

 nests found, of whatever species, were pulled down, 

 and all doves, woodpeckers, nuthatches, blackbirds, 

 missel and song thrushes, shot ; also chaffinches and 

 many other small birds. The keeper said he was not 

 going to have the place swarming with birds that were 

 no good for anything, and were always eating the 

 pheasants' food. The odd thing in this case was that 

 the owner of the estate and his son, a distinguished 

 member of the House of Commons, are both great 

 bird-lovers, and at the very time that this hideous 

 massacre in mid-June was going on they were telling 

 their friends in London that a pair of birds of a fine 

 species, long extirpated in southern England, had come 

 to their woods to breed. A little later the head keeper 

 reported that these same fine birds had mysteriously 

 disappeared ! 



One more case, again from an estate in a southern 

 county, the shooting of which was let to a gentleman 

 who is greatly interested in the preservation of rare 

 birds, especially the hawks. I knew the ground well, 



