274 ADVENTURES AMONG BIRDS 



safe from the destroyer. A few years of indifference 

 or kindly toleration or love of birds on the owner's 

 or tenant's part may serve to people the grove, but 

 the shooting may be let any day to the landlord or 

 shooting- tenant of the adjoining property, whereupon 

 his gamekeeper will step in to make a clean sweep of 

 what he calls vermin. 



Last summer I visited a hill-grove which was new 

 to me, about thirteen miles distant from the one where 

 I met with owls and sparrow-hawks and other perse- 

 cuted species ; and as it was an exceptionally large 

 grove, surrounded by a growth of furze and black and 

 white thorn, and at a good distance from any house, 

 I hoped to find it a habitation of interesting bird life. 

 But there was nothing to see or hear excepting a pair 

 of yellowhammers, a few greenfinches and tits, with 

 two or three other feathered mites. It was a strictly 

 protected grove, as I eventually discovered when 

 I came on a keeper's gibbet where the pines were 

 thickest. Here were many stoats, weasels, and moles 

 suspended to a low branch : crows and rooks, a magpie, 

 and two jays and eleven small hawks ; three of these 

 were sparrow-hawks — one in full, the others in im- 

 mature plumage — and eight kestrels. 



This, judging from the condition of the corpses — 

 one or two newly killed, while the oldest were dried up 

 to bones and feathers — was probably the harvest of a 

 year or more. The zealous keeper had no doubt ex- 

 hibited these trophies to the noble sportsman, his 

 master, who probably rejoiced at the sight, though 



