36 BIRDS BENEFICIAL AND BIRDS BANEFUL 



'When the shoveller comes to a spawning-bed, in its 

 voracity it destroys the young fish in thousands before they 

 are fully hatched. Thus it is a great pest to fishermen, and 

 it is therefore fortunate that this bird belongs to the rarer 

 species.' 



This is evidently written from a German point of 

 view, for in Germany and Hungary carp and other 

 coarse fish are bred and fed for the table. No 

 objection can be made to shoveller ducks in Great 

 Britain, for they do not frequent sharp-running streams 

 where trout and salmon spawn. 



I have pleaded the cause of the owls so repeatedly 

 in these notes that readers may murmur at fresh refer- 

 ence to a much disputed theme. Nevertheless, fresh 

 evidence should not be lightly rejected, and I propose 

 to adduce some on each side of the question, for so 

 shall we most surely arrive at the truth. Evidence for 

 the prosecution is taken first, and this we have, of a 

 circumstantial, but sinister, nature from Alnwick Castle, 

 where owls have been strictly protected for many years. 

 The chase attached to that ancient feudal stronghold is 

 famous as a nesting ground for woodcocks. During 

 the bygone spring (1909) the keepers found and marked 

 seventeen nests. It was their duty to visit them 

 periodically in order to attach metal labels to the legs 

 of the young birds so soon as they could run. They 

 found that from eleven out of the seventeen nests the 

 sitting bird had been taken away by violence, as was 

 shown by the scattered feathers among the heath and 

 briars. Certain indications about one of the nests 

 seemed to implicate a brown owl as the culprit ; and, 



