igo BIRD LIFE THROUGHOUT THE YEAR 



whether its use is more than checked. Upon the 

 moors it not only catches the merlins for which it 

 is intended, but cuckoos, nightjars and ring-ouzels 

 fall victims as well. The harmlessness, not to say 

 utility of the owl tribe, whether barn, tawny or long- 

 eared, is now so generally recognised that the game- 

 keeper will usually tell us that he does not care about 

 destroying them, but that he sets the traps for hawks 

 and that the owls blunder into them. The result in 

 either case is much the same. 



Considering how long continued and systematic have 

 been the efforts of gamekeepers as a body, it is remark- 

 able how few species have disappeared from our avi- 

 fauna. The fork-tailed kite, once the scavenger 

 of the London streets, has gone. The buzzard has 

 vanished from the lowlands, but it is still plentiful in 

 the north and west. The blue-grey harrier is now 

 rarely seen beating over fen or moorland. But the 

 sparrow-hawk, though hard pressed, is nowhere 

 exterminated, and, though the magpie has become 

 a rare bird in some game-preserving districts, the 

 numbers of the jay show little, if any, diminution, 

 probably because its nest is not easily found, while the 

 stick-built edifices of crow and magpie are so evident 

 as to offer an easy means of destroying them at one 

 particular time of year. But even in the lowlands 

 there are estates which are not strictly preserved or 

 outlying covers which are neglected. As we reach the 



