88 THE BIRDS OF OXFORDSHIRE. 



are frequent sufferers, being often ejected from their nests, 

 and this in some places has been carried to such an extent as 

 to seriously affect the numbers of these graceful and most 

 beneficial insect-eaters. The Sparrow is all very well in its 

 place, but it has clearly increased out of all due bounds, and 

 the sooner properly managed Sparrow Clubs are revived in 

 every parish the better for the farmer, the gardener, and the 

 bird-lover; combined effort alone can thin the Sparrow^s 

 numbers, and make way for an increase of other more useful 

 species. 



Many birds are taken in Oxfordshire at night with ' Bat- 

 fowling,' or as they are always called with us, ' Clap-' nets, a 

 name more properly applied to the nets spread on the ground 

 and used with call-birds in the daytime. Bat-fowling nets 

 are figured by Yarrell (4th edition, vol. ii. p. 97), but as the 

 mode of using them practised in this part of the country 

 differs from that there depicted (which is, I believe, the most 

 usual one, viz. with a lantern on a dark night), a description 

 of the Oxfordshire method is here given. 



A bright, clear, still, moonlight winter's night is chosen, the 

 lighter the better, the few nights preceding the full moon 

 being considered the most favom-able, as the moon is then 

 high early in the night. Four or five men or boys generally 

 go out together. One carries the net, one is freehanded, being 

 employed in taking the birds, when caught, out of the net, 

 and the others are furnished with long poles. Arrived at their 

 hunting-grounds, the great tall straggling hedges, unlaid for 

 some years, wdiich sej)arate many of our pastures, the man 

 with the net and his helper go on one side of the hedge, and 

 the pole men on the other. The former, keeping the hedge 

 as far as possible between him and the moon, and carrying the 

 net open, the poles over his shoulders and his head inside the 

 lower part of it (his hat being firmly tied on to prevent its 

 being pulled off), proceeds quietly down the hedge side, and 

 is thus enabled to see the birds as they sit at roost on the 



