66 BIRDS IN TOWN AND VILLAGE 



back by such simple means ; but so long as they came 

 not in battalions, but singly, they could have their 

 fill, and no notice was taken of them. 



I was surprised to hear that on the large plantation 

 the men employed were not allowed to use shot, 

 the aim of the fruit-grower being only to scare the 

 birds away. I had a talk with my old friend of the 

 wryneck on the subject, and told him that I had 

 seen one of the bird-scarers going home to his 

 cottage very early in the morning, carrying a bunch 

 of about a dozen blackbirds and thrushes he had 

 just shot. 



Yes, he replied, some of the men would buy shot 

 and use it early in the morning before their master 

 was about ; but if the man I had seen had been 

 detected in the act, he would have been discharged 

 on the spot. It was not only because the trees would 

 be injured by shot, but this fruit-grower was friendly 

 to birds. 



Most fruit-growers, I said, were dead against the 

 birds, and anxious only to kill as many of them as 

 possible. 



It might be so in some places, he answered, but 

 not in the village. He himself and most of the 

 villagers depended, in a great measure, on the fruit 

 they produced for a living, and their belief was that, 

 taking one bird with another all the year round, the 

 birds did them more good than harm. 



