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The Lady William Cecil,



and travellers cannot manage to write more details of the habits of

birds than they often do. Looking through the Ibis from the years

1859 to 1912, I can only find the Celebean Ground-Thrush little

more than mentioned , some three or four times. Surely, Dr. Meyer,

for instance, could have stated whether he heard this species sing, etc.

since he observed it in more than one place, and on more than one

occasion. It is tiring, to say the least of it, to search through

volume after volume of some periodical, and find for one’s pains—

' G. erythronota ” on the page to which one has been guided, when

the index filled one with hope ! All the more reason for one of our

Members to try to secure this fine Ground-Thrush alive.



A FEW BIRD NOTES

FROM SOUTHERN PROVENCE.


By The Lady William Cecil

(Baroness Amherst of Hackney).


It has often been said, and again and again repeated, that

there are very few birds in France, and that nearly all are shot as

game ” by the sportsman who goes out walking with a small

gun charged with small cartridges, and who “ pots ” every “ cock-

sparrow that sits on a twig ! ” Perhaps to some extent this sweep¬

ing statement is true, for certain it is that annually hundreds,

perhaps thousands of small birds are destroyed for mischief, fun, or

sport, by those whose best interest it would be to preserve these

little “ feathered friends,” who feed on the grubs and insects, by

which the crops are so often ruined.”


The well-to-do sportsman stalks his quarry carefully and, I

am told, that it needs considerable skill to shoot even a Bobin

sitting on a branch in a leafy tree ? The small birds are shot sitting

either on a tree or on the ground, very rarely on the wing. The

peasant shoots for food, or anyhow as an addition to his frugal meals.


A man once showed me triumphantly the result of his

day’s sport ; it consisted of two Lesser Whitethroats and a

Sparrow. He was taking them home to be roasted for supper !


One evening we had driven some distance along an unfre¬

quented country road and stopped to rest in the shade of some big



