COLLECTING AND TRAPPING 97 



use of that most cruel of all traps, the common steel-toothed 



one.^ 



Birds 



The literature dealing with the trapping or collecting of 

 birds is, as may be supposed, much more extensive than that 

 of mammals, and there are other books than those quoted 

 which may with advantage be consulted. 



Crows, which are difficult of approach, are said, both by 

 " High Elms " {pp. cit.) and the Hon. Gerald Lascelles {op. cit), to 

 be attracted near a concealed gunner by a tethered cat, or by a 

 roughly-stuffed cat's skin, at either of which they will swoop, 

 and in the nesting season, when they do a great deal of 

 damage to game and young lambs, they will even go to greater 

 lengths, as recounted by " High Elms" (p. 87) : — 



To show how easily carrion crows may be deceived during the 

 nesting time, I may here mention a very ridiculous imitation of a cat 

 that was constructed by the under-keeper before alluded to, and used 

 by him with great success last May. He cut the sleeve off an old 

 worn-out shirt, stuffed it full of hay, and tied a string round the wrist 

 at about six inches from the end. He filled that end also with hay, 

 and tied it again. One of the ladies in his establishment then, by his 

 direction, sewed a few black patches on different parts of the body, and 

 two black buttons made capital eyes. The whole apparatus (being 

 such a domestic cat as Guy Fawkes would doubtless have possessed) 

 was then tied to a stick, and placed leaning against the tree in which 

 a carrion crow had a nest and young ones. The keeper then hid him- 

 self, and he said it was quite ridiculous to observe the way in which 

 the old birds attacked our friend " Dummy " on their visit to the nest. 

 The long and short of it all was, that he killed them both without any 

 difficulty. 



The simplest method of decoying birds, and one which 

 some fowlers both at home and abroad are expert in, is that of 

 whistling birds nearer to the gun by the lips alone : such birds 



' Shooting (Field and Covert), Badminton Library, pp. 287-289. 

 7 



