228 Poachers and Poaching. 



swoop at one. And seeing that as many as sixty 

 mice have been taken from the crop of a single 

 bird, surely the buzzard ought to be protected. 

 During times of severe frost the buzzard often 

 performs deeds of daring to obtain a meal. 

 When a lad, Wordsworth was in the habit of 

 setting " gins " for woodcocks, and one morning 

 on going to examine his snares he discovered a 

 buzzard near one which was struck. The bird of 

 prey attempted to escape, but being held fast 

 could not. A woodcock had been taken in one 

 of the snares, which when fluttering had been 

 seen and attacked by the buzzard. Not content, 

 however, with the body of the woodcock, it had 

 swallowed a leg also, round which the nooze was 

 drawn, and the limb was so securely lodged in 

 the latter's stomach that no force that the bird 

 could exert could withdraw it. 



In the glades and woodlands the garrulous 

 blue-jay is a sad pilferer, to say nothing of its 

 poaching propensities. In the spring it sucks 

 innumerable eggs, and makes free right and 

 warren of the peas and beans in the keeper's 

 garden, and those sown in the glades for the 

 pheasants ; and so the old man's whole know- 

 ledge of woodcraft is directed against it. In 

 addition to this, the jay does indirect harm, 

 which multiplies the cunning engines devised for 

 its destruction. For by pilfering the crops before 

 mentioned, which are planted with the object of 



