218 THE ZOOLOGIST. 



BIRDS. 



Small Birds and the Fruit Crops. — The following letters, addressed 

 to the Editor of * The Standard,' appeared in that journal on April 14th : — 



" Allow me to give a head gardener's experience of small birds in fruit 

 gardens. Taking charge here twelve years ago, orders were given that no 

 birds' nests were to be taken, nor the eggs destroyed, and no birds to be killed 

 except the Bullfinch. Consequently I began to provide protecting materials, 

 such as wire pea-guards, and fish-netting. The pea-guards, purchased twelve 

 years ago, are as sound now as when bought, and likely to wear a lifetime. 

 The first cost seems rather a drawback ; but they are essential to the kitchen- 

 garden crops, to protect the peas, and also the cabbage-lettuce, radishes, 

 and a host of small seeds. These wire-guards are constantly in use during 

 the spring and summer months for the protection of all seeds against 

 the small birds, and I am happy to say they answer the purpose well. 

 Garden-netting is used for strawberries and currants (red and white), also 

 for ripe gooseberries. The buds of these small fruits are protected by dusting 

 the small or large bushes with lime and soot, when the trees are damp 

 enough to allow it to stick to the branches, just before or after Christmas, 

 or during the month of January. Large standard plum trees should have 

 powdered lime thrown over the heads on a foggy morning every year, either 

 in December or January. It is a mistake to think the first rain will 

 wash the lime off the trees. I do not observe any increase of our feathered 

 songsters here with all our protection. Nature seems to provide her own 

 way of limiting the numbers of small birds. I may say we have a man on 

 Sunday duty. During the nesting season we take the precaution not to 

 have the birds' nests interfered with, if possible. We are surrounded by 

 large forest trees, and also woods here and there round the park, and have 

 many small birds' nests in the fruit trees in the kitchen garden. Yet we 

 have had an abundance of hardy fruit every year, and have escaped, or 

 nearly so, from the attacks of caterpillars, and also the maggots in the apple 

 trees, these last few years — scourges which have been so prevalent all over 

 the country. I attribute this to keeping the orchard apple trees clean by 

 liming, — both old and young are kept clean, — and we must not forget 

 the help we receive from the small birds. We have a great wealth of blossom 

 at the present time on the wall trees, and a great promise of apple and 

 cherry to come in the orchard. — Robert Smith, one of the Committee of 

 the British Fruit Growers' Association (Yalding, Kent)." 



"I have read with much interest the very conflicting opinions of your 

 correspondents on the subject of the destructiveness of small birds. My 

 father, the late Mr. Alfred Ellis, was a friend and contemporary of the late 

 Charles Waterton, and, like that eminent naturalist, he was a great 

 protector and observer of all our British birds, and yet his gardens, both 



