2524 Bird*. 



surrounding my garden, I had three nests of the nightingale this year. Being sur- 

 rounded by footpaths, I am of course subjected to the depredations of rascally boys, 

 cats, &c. The first of my three nests got on very well, and hatched off their young. 

 The second being built close to the path, I took the eggs, substituting those of the 

 chaffinch, which were next morning gone ; but the old birds built again near the 

 same spot, and have now young ones. The third nest, for some reason or other (pro- 

 bably the destruction of the female) was abandoned when upon the verge of hatching. 

 There is now, however, a nest with young ones near the same spot ; so that, notwith- 

 standing two mischances, I shall have three nests hatched off, — the produce thereof 

 to visit me I trust another year. If it is cruel, and causes a diminution of the spe- 

 cies, to take the eggs, how much more cruel and unnatural is the practice of shooting 

 every bird that has the slightest pretension to rarity. One of your correspondents 

 (Zool. 2497) describes how he killed the old ones and took away the young of a family 

 of that beautiful bird, the lesser spotted woodpecker. Another equally intelligent 

 correspondent describes seventeen specimens of the pied flycatcher as having been 

 shot near Norwich. Every page, in fact, of your Journal describes captures of this 

 kind. I confess I read these communications with pain : they do not serve the pur- 

 poses of Natural History ; for what do we want to know in the plumage or anatomy 

 of the little woodpecker, the pied flycatcher, or any of the beautiful and useful bir.'s 

 of prey, from the king of birds— the golden eagle— to the luckless kestrel ? — all or each 

 of which are becoming rarer and rarer, until many of them in a few years, like the 

 bustard, will be extinct in our island. If naturalists have an opportunity of seeing 

 our rarer birds in the county and national museums, and in the numerous private 

 collections scattered in every town in the kingdom, where is the good of continuing 

 the work of extirpation ? It is for these reasons that I have for some years ceased to 

 collect birds, and confined myself to Oology instead. I can only boast of 9 acres of 

 ground and garden, but I am happy to say that no bird of any kind is allowed to be 

 shot there ; and had I 900 instead, I should take the same pride in offering to the 

 most beautiful and most persecuted of God's created things a home and a refuge. I 

 do not understand Natural Science to consist of a mania for collecting : I look upon 

 it rather as a study of God's works in the world which he has created and peopled, — 

 as a system of observation into the habits and peculiarities of living Nature. Let me 

 advise all who love such pursuits not to encourage the wholesale slaughter of rare 

 birds : if people would cease to buy, the price upon their heads would become nomi- 

 nal, and we might again see the eagle, with his 9 feet of wing, soaring over our rocky 

 mountains, — and the peregrine falcon remain undisturbed at Beachy Head, — and the 

 lesser woodpecker and pied flycatcher become happy, gay, lively, beautiful additions 

 to our national fauna. — C. R. Bree ; Stoivmarket, July, 1849. 



Rare Birds near Thetford. — The white-tailed eagle I have before alluded to (Zool. 

 2383), as having haunted this neighbourhood for the past autumn and winter, was at 

 last shot at Downham, the first week in March : it was first seen October 19th. Ano- 

 ther \v;is killed at Bliekling, near Aylsham, in Norfolk, in December last. A pair of 

 adult peregrine falcons were killed near here this last spring ; the male at Euston, the 

 female at Cavenham. Speeimens in immature plumage are by no means uncommon, 

 but I never met with adults near here before. The Euston bird was about the finest 

 I ever saw. A great gray shrike was shot at Merton, near Watton, in Norfolk, the 

 third week in April. — Alfred Newton ; Elveden, Thetford, June 6, is 19. 



