HAMLYN'S MENAGERIE MAGAZINE. 
63 
The bird dealer can really claim to be its best 
friend, nevertheless, lor if goldfinches had not been 
captured lor caging it would not have been possi- 
ble to send them to Australlia and New Zealand, 
as was done many years ago, with the result that 
they are now far commoner out there than over 
here, and are well secured against extinction, even 
if they were blotted out of Europe and Western 
Asia, which, with North Africa, constitute their 
normal range. 
When peace returns, our dealers might bear 
in mind this fact and order goldfinches amongst 
other Australian stock; and it might also be borne 
in mind that the goldfinch, although an alien at 
the Antipodes, has kept up his character as a 
harmless and useful bird, thus disposing of the 
idea that a British bird, sent abroad, necessarily 
developes into a "detrimental." One esteemed 
"scientific" writer, trying to press this supposed 
objection to the introduction of British birds into 
British Collumbia, even went so far as to say the 
goldfinch could not be called a singing bird, which 
only shews how far imagination will lead people 
astray when they have a theory to maintain. 
As to the supposed danger of exterminating 
our commoner birds by catching, I am reminded 
of an amusing episode which occurred to me some 
years before the war. I was having lunch at an 
Oxford Street tea-shop, when a very thin lad}', 
with what I suppose a novelist would call "the 
soul's hunger" in her eyes, came in and sat down 
opposite to me. There were daffodils in a glass 
on the table, and she leant over and kissed them; 
then she turned on the -waitress and demanded 
what the proprietor meant by having" larks on the 
menu — did he want the poor birds to be exter- 
minated? Now here she was only showing off 
her ignorance; for the skylark is one of the most 
abundant birds in the world, ranging all across the 
temperate zone of the Eastern Hemisphere. Even 
with us it is probably more abundant than the 
sparrows, which far away from buildings is a 
rare bird; and, like the goldfinch, the lark has 
been successfully introduced into New Zealand, 
so that, no matter how many appear in cages or 
on toast, there is not the slightest danger of the 
birds' extinction, especially as the species is a 
particularly hardy one and a strong flyer and 
very skilful at concealing its nest. 
Both here and at the Antipodes, indeed, far- 
mers find they can have too much of the skylark, 
Whose attentions to. the sprouting corn are apt to 
be rather overpowering- where it is present in 
numbers. In this connection it must be remem- 
bered that all the birds exported in any numbers 
have their destructive side; fruit growers do not 
welcome an abundance of blackbirds and bull- 
finches, and both greenfinches and linnets can be 
very destructive to field crops. Woodpigeons 
would be gladly dispensed with if they could only 
be caught in numbers, but though the war be- 
tween man and pigeon has been going on since 
the days of Nero and no doubt for centuries lon- 
ger, the bird more than holds its own. In a 
pitched battle some years ago, when thousands 
of men engaged in a simultaneous attack on 
pigeons in Devon, the score was a mere fraction 
oxer one pigeon per man of the human force that 
too!-: tiie field with their guns ! 
One hard winter like the last does more dam- 
age to bird life than a generation of human perse- 
cutors; but that the country has been, or going to 
be, devoured by insects because of the undoubted 
temporary dearth of birds I do not believe. I 
have seen no evidence of this damage by vermin 
in the country to compare with what I have wit- 
nessed this year in London, where the birds have 
not suffered either from nature's onslaughts or 
from man's during last winter, and yet the 
ravages of insects, etc., have been most obvious 
the culprits being "woolly bears" and the cater- 
pillars of the large white butterfly, which are not 
liked by birds. Similarly, some years before the 
war, the pretty tufted caterpillars of the Vapourer 
Moth wrought great havoc on the London trees 
one year, and were not checked by the birds, al- 
though sparrows are keen hunters of caterpillars 
in general, and will take this moth itself when in 
the perfect state. In fact, hardly any birds but 
cuckoos will eat hairy caterpillars at all. 
The best bird to use against insects in general 
and other small vermin in an enclosed space is 
the common duck. Give this humble creature a 
companion, a bucket of water, and a few scraps, 
and he will clear your garden well during the 
winter, and the pair will make a nice dinner later 
on if you cannot ward off their attentions to the 
tender vegetables and bush fruits, having let you 
in for no expense but their original cost. As far 
as wild birds go, the sparrow and starling, for all 
their faults, probably do as much good as any, 
since their numbers make their work important; 
and these at least are in no danger of extermina- 
tion anyhow. 
There is one thing to be borne in mind as to 
the position of British birds, -and that is, that with 
one exception, they don't exist as such. The only 
bird confined to these islands is the common red 
grouse, which is in no danger unless we get so 
democratised that all game shooting' is abolished; 
in any case the live stock trade has practically 
no interest in it, though it has been exported and 
naturalised in some adjacent parts of Europe, 
such as Belgium and North Germany, where, no 
doubt, the enemy, between hunger and hatred, 
have long ago "strafed" the lot. 
(To be continued.) 
