BIRD NOTES AND NEWS. 



35 



The three species named, however, are far from 

 exhausting the number sought for caging. The 

 goldfinch has been, we know, almost exter- 

 minated in many counties owing to its popularity 

 as a cage bird, though now somewhat recovering 

 its place thanks to the Protection Acts and 

 Orders. Any country walk will discover sullen 

 jackdaws, starlings, magpies, moping within 

 wicker frameworks ; ragged blackbirds and 

 tli rushes and restless bullfinches slung at the 

 doors of cottagers who hear hundreds of free 

 song birds all day long, yet who must have 

 their captives. But the chief incentives to the 

 business are the cage bird clubs, which, like 

 the singing handicaps, bring the powerful 

 stimulus of competition and gain to bear upon 

 the matter. These clubs are said to be on the 

 increase up and down the country, twenty new 

 ones having been formed within the past few 

 months; and they promote the caging of almost 

 every British bird, however unsuitable for the 

 purpose. In the middle of Close Time the 

 fanciers' journals abound with advertisements 

 of " cock nightingales " (a bird difficult to 

 keep in health, and one that, like all migrants, 

 becomes very restless and unhappy at the 

 approach of migration time) ; chifTchaffs and 

 willow-wrens, those delicate little wanderers 

 from overseas; flycatchers, wheatears; "English 

 cock goldfinches," "larks, champion songsters"; 

 "cock brown linnets, nice red breasts, caught 

 February catching season " ; redpolls, twites, 

 buntings, greenfinches, robins, blackbirds and 

 thrushes, and so on, and so on, and even ravens 

 and kestrels. To prove that there is any breach 

 of the letter of the law in manifest breaches of 

 its spirit, it must be shown that the birds are 

 "recently taken." There are many ways in 

 which the dealer who finds it convenient to 

 replenish his stock in Close Time can render 

 such proof difficult if he chance to be dropped 

 on ; and in the " catching season " he is master 

 of the situation. 



The most amazing part of the business is 

 that we English people as a nation countenance 

 this wholesale onslaught upon the wild-bird 

 life — the brightest and cheeriest wild life — of 

 the country, with all its attendant illegalities 



{and brutalities, carried on by those who have 



i ...... 



f not the ghost of a claim to their living loot ; 

 thereby making ourselves partners of the slave- 

 raiders, and responsible for all that bird catcher, 

 bird dealer, and bird fancier are suffered 

 to do. 



In addition to British birds, immense num- 

 bers are imported from other lands to serve as 

 show birds, decorations, or pets in England. 

 A few weeks ago (May 3rd), the newspapers 

 reported the arrival in London of a steamer 

 from Australia with a cargo of 14,000 birds 

 from various parts of the colony, which were 

 being sold to fanciers and dealers. That a 

 bird is " foreign," is with some people enough 

 to excuse or commend its caging. But a bird 

 is a bird the world over ; even a cage-bred one 

 never entirely loses the passion for liberty, the 

 powerful instinct of flight, which are the glory 

 of free bird life. 



NOTES. 

 Watching. 



A remarkable story might be told in these 

 columns of the work for the protection of some of 

 our rarest birds which is being carried on at the 

 present time in several places in Great Britain ; 

 but the reasons which occasion the need for it 

 compel silence as to places and methods, if the 

 collector is not to be afforded one more incentive 

 to harry threatened nests and bribe needy natives. 

 To such a pitch has come this childish and des- 

 picable craze for laying hands on rare birds and 

 eggs that the most elaborate precautions have to 

 be taken for safe-guarding them. To obtain pro- 

 tection on paper from County Councils is a com- 

 paratively little thing : to this must be added 

 genuine interest and watchfulness on the part of 

 all in or under authority in the neighbourhood ; 

 and, on occasion, the vigilance of special watchers, 

 incorruptible in morals and muscular in body — 

 " prepared to use force," as one correspondent 

 writes who has personal experience of such 

 business. The next thing needed will be a detach- 

 ment of soldiery to guard a nest in order to prevent 

 some " oologist," as unscientific as he is unscrupu- 

 lous, from boasting that he has exterminated a 

 species and owns the last egg ; has, that is to say, 

 triumphantly inflicted an irreparable loss on the 

 country and added a curio (with money in it) to his 

 own "collection." 



