41 



WHOLESALE DESTRUCTION OF MIGRATORY BIRDS. 



When a bird is considered useful for food, we usually find 

 that it is slaughtered, and the farmer has to do without its 

 services however useful it may be to agriculture. In such cases 

 the slaughter generally takes place during migration, when the 

 members of the species are gregarious ; and the deadly certainty 

 with which migration follows the same routes year by year has 

 rendered the task of the fowler with regard to many species a 

 comparatively easy one, and the success which attends his efforts 

 is often staggering. 



In England this wholesale destruction of migrating birds, as 

 practised in some parts of the European Continent, does not 

 take place. Time was when in autumn there was a great capture 

 of Wheatears for food on the South Downs, but these birds are 

 not now taken in large numbers ; and though in certain places 

 many birds are still netted for caging, it is doubtful whether 

 this is done on the same scale as formerly, when near Worthing 

 alone over 1,100 dozen Goldfinches were said to have been 

 caught annually.* 



The Paris Convention forbids the construction and employment 

 of traps, cages, nets, lime-twigs and any other instruments 

 used to facilitate the capture or destruction of birds " en masse. "f 

 This provision has no parallel in our law, but is amply justified 

 by what goes on in South Europe, and to a lesser extent even 

 in France, where, as Ave have seen, " la chasse des oiseaux de 

 passage " receives statutory recognition. 



An instance may be given of the havoc played amongst the 

 Thrushes in the Bouches-du-Rhone, which has been recorded by 

 two French authors. { The birds, chiefly Song Thrushes, are 

 practically all obtained on their autumn migration during the 

 last week of September to the middle of October. It was calculated 

 that 326,000 are annually shot, while many thousands more 

 are caught by bird-lime. But these figures, startling as they are, 

 fade into insignificance when we turn to the records of North 

 Italy. It has been stated by Professor Vallon that in October, 



* " Zoologist," 1860, p. 7144. 



f Article 3. See also evidence of W. Swaysland in Report of Select Com- 

 mittee of House of Commons on Wild Birds Protection, 1873, pp. 102- 

 108; also G. D. Rowley, Ornithological Miscellany, Vol. II., p. 84. 



J Jaubert and Barthelemy-Lapommerage in " Richesses Ornithologiques 

 du Midi de la France." See also " Zoologist," 1898, p. 285, on the 

 report of Mr. Consul Hearn on the trade of Bordeaux, in which he 

 comments on the disastrous effects on the vineyards of the destruction 

 of insectivorous birds ; also E. C. Mitford in " Zoologist," 1889, 

 p. 185, as to slaughter of birds in Biarritz. 



