OL: 



BIRD ENEMIES. 



bing nests and killing birds becomes a business with 

 him. He goes about it systematically, and becomes 

 an expert in circumventing and slaying our songsters. 

 Every town of any considerable size is infested with 

 one or more of these bird highwaymen, and every 

 nest in the country round about that the wretches can 

 lay hands on is harried. Their professional term for 

 a nest of eggs is " a clutch," a word that well ex- 

 presses the work of their grasping, murderous fingers. 

 They clutch and destroy in the germ the life and 

 music of the woodlands. Certain of our natural his- 

 tory journals are mainly organs of communication be- 

 tween these human weasels. They record their ex- 

 exploits at nest-robbing and bird -slaying in their 

 columns. One collector tells with gusto how he 

 " worked his way " through an orchard, ransacking 

 every tree and leaving, as he believed, not one nest 

 behind him. He had better not be caught working 

 his way through my orchard. Another gloats over 

 the number of Connecticut warblers a rare bird 

 he killed in one season in Massachusetts. Another 

 tells how a mocking-bird appeared in southern New 

 England and was hunted down by himself and friend, 

 its eggs " clutched," and the bird killed. Who knows 

 how much the bird lovers of New England lost by 

 that foul deed ? The progeny of the birds would 

 probably have returned to Connecticut to breed, and 

 their progeny, or a part of them, the same, till in 

 time the famous southern songster would have become 

 a regular visitant to New England. In the same jour- 



