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Dr. A. G. Butler,



of fact it affects the birds very little indeed. If a House-Martin’s

nest containing eggs be knocked down (a frequent event in country-

places where good housewives sometimes object strongly to this

form of mural decoration) you may see the old birds busy within

the hour building again, and so it is with many other birds. Unless

it is the last nest of the season which is taken, it makes no

difference to the number of young reared. Many of our wild birds,

if materials are handy, can build a nest in a day (as I have proved

on several occasions) and few of the smaller birds, unless cold or

heavy rains intervene, take more than three days ; of course the

Long-tailed Tit is a notable exception, but his nest is a marvel of

beauty when completed, and not built in the slap-dash mechanical

fashion adopted by a Finch or a Thrush.


To take nest after nest of eggs produced by the same bird is ?

of course, abominably cruel; but even that cruelty, practised in

1872 upon the Wryneck by a collector who took no less than forty-

two eggs from one nest, proved at least that the removal of a single

sitting could have no injurious effect upon such fertile creatures as

birds ; if it did, how could poultry-farmers be excused for robbing

their fowls continuously ? but, of course, that detail would not

occur to the wild bird protection faddist, besides to call in question

the morality of robbing the poor domestic hen would interfere with

the agitator’s own comfort. Depend upon it, the laws of Moses

were quite stringent enough, but even they permitted birds-nesting.


I never encouraged cottagers’ children to take eggs, because

they either collected them in order to indulge in the foolish game of

hop-egg, in which the child who smashed the greatest number as he

hopped across them was proclaimed the victor ; or they threaded

them on strings to hang up as ornaments ; but the amount of actual

harm done by even these thoughtless collectors was infinitesimal,

inasmuch as they rarely found any but the commonest and most

easily discovered nests, such as those of the Blackbird and Thrush


Then again I never took nests needlessly ; and at the present

time nothing gives me more pleasure than to discover nests in my

own garden, to watch the growth of the young birds, to guard them

(so far as it is possible) from the murderous attacks of feline vermin,

and hail with delight their flight from the parental home; even



