OCTOBER. 157 



SPARING THE SMALL BIRDS. 



This week the bang-banging is continuous ; and 

 it is a safe assertion that if firearms had come into 

 fashion soon after the glacial epoch, or whenever else 

 birds first learned to migrate, England would now be 

 a birdless land. But we are not so bad as some of 

 our neighbours. In spite of the nursery rhyme, 

 blackbird pie is not now commonly regarded as a 

 dainty dish to set before a king or any one else. We 

 do not kill one per thousand of the foreign skylarks 

 which come over every autumn to eat our clover to 

 the ground ; nor does any one, for larder purposes, 

 think of emptying a double charge of sparrow-hail 

 into a flock of linnets or the congregated swallow- 

 birds that cluster, thicker than flies, upon a barn-roof 

 in September. So we are able to rejoice in a wealth 

 of British small bird-life which is denied to certain 

 greedy foreigners ; and, though we would like 

 avocets and spoonbills, bitterns and great bustards, 

 to be common again in England wherever local 

 circumstances might suit them, still it is something 

 to know what multitudes of many kinds of birds are 

 permitted to arrive among us unscathed, and to 

 enjoy for a season such hospitality as our treacherous 

 climate affords. 



A DIARY OF MIGRANTS. 



Taking the middle of the North Norfolk coast as 

 a point of observation, and disregarding sea and 

 shore birds, a diary for the last week in September, 

 1902, would be somewhat as follows : On September 



