140 A BIRD COLLECTOR’S MEDLEY: 
CHAPTER XXVII. 
BRD RO st 2 CanwO iN: 
A CHAPTER on the subject of bird protection is not unlikely to be received 
with scepticism when coming from the pen of that béte nozre of all fashionable 
naturalists, the Collector. But without laying any claim to an impregnable 
position, so far as bias is concerned, I propose, nevertheless, to make one 
or two remarks and suggestions on a subject now so frequently discussed. 
The persistent slaughter of birds towards the end of the last century, and 
the consequent decrease in the number of our British species, created 
in due time a perfectly natural and justifiable reaction; but, as is the way 
with all reactions, there seems at the present moment a danger of common 
sense being swamped in a blind zeal for protection, which is likely in 
the end to overshoot itself. Witness the recent successful protest of 
the Aldeburgh fishermen. 
Let us see how matters actually stand. The birds of prey and the 
Raven at the present moment are a class reduced to the verge of extinction, 
but unless game-preservers can be induced, either by persuasion or by 
legal penalties, to spare them, their case must be regarded as past curing— 
they are doomed. It is a thousand pities, but it is so, and if the ravages 
of the game-preserver are to go on unchecked, the killing of an odd bird or 
so by collectors is a matter of very small moment, after all. 
Of the remaining British birds, despite the talk on the subject, very 
few are in real danger. Drainage and land-reclaiming have banished for 
ever as breeding species such birds as the Ruff, the Avocet, the Black- 
tailed Godwit, the Black Tern, the Bittern, and the Bustard. The shooting 
of such stragglers as turn up on migration in the autumn does not make 
the slightest difference to the chance of their breeding in England again. 
They belong to another branch of the family, with another habitat and 
another breeding area. 
We come next to a small class of birds which still breed sparingly 
in the British Isles, and whose numbers, in two cases at all events, are 
unlikely ever to be recruited from abroad. These two are the Bearded 
