36 



BIRD NOTES AND NEWS. 



Gulls and Herrings. 



A speaker at a recent meeting of the Belfast 

 Natural History Society is reported to have made 

 the calculation that there are two million gulls 

 in the United Kingdom, and that each of these 

 destroys 12,000 herring fry in a year; that if 

 all these herring fry came to maturity, they would 

 be worth twenty-four millions sterling, and that 

 thus each gull costs the nation £12 a year. There 

 is great virtue in "if," and we all know that a 

 fine imagination can make strange use of statistics. 

 But this asks a little too much of the average 

 person's common sense. On the one hand, we are 

 to suppose that none of these small fry would be 

 snapped up by cod, dog-fish, or other enemies, and 

 that all would come to maturity ; on the other 

 hand, that every man, woman, and child of the 

 population is prepared to eat some 600 additional 

 herrings a year each, if only this rare delicacy can 

 be saved from the gulls, and that if only the sea 

 were stuffed with herrings they could all be caught, 

 brought to market, and sold at present prices. As 

 well might one argue that if all the world were 

 planted with cabbages, what fine times the market 

 gardeners would have. It would seem that some 

 persons are so constituted that even as they view 

 a glut of rotting fish or of decaying fruit that will 

 not pay to take to market, they divide their anath- 

 emas between the superabundant nature which 

 has let down market prices and the audacious 

 birds which eat what man might devour, if only he 

 had the requisite time and capacity. 



The Mayor of a certain east-coast town has been 

 quoting the learned scientist's computations with 

 additions of his own, in which he states that gulls 

 and terns are "absolute poachers," living on small 

 fish, and would evidently like Parliament to step 

 in with Game Laws for gulls. Seeing that the 

 birds are also "absolute scavengers," it is possible 

 that the east-coast residents would buy their surfeit 

 of herring's somewhat clearly. 



An "Open Door." 



By the Act of 1880, all owners and occupiers of 

 land are allowed to kill or take non-scheduled 

 birds upon their own land even during Close Time. 

 The intention of this clause was, of course, to 

 permit farmers and gardeners to destroy birds 

 injurious, or supposed to be injurious to the crops. 

 So far, it should have its uses in securing for the 

 law the support of husbandmen, as it leaves them 

 full facilities for destroying, or empowering other 

 persons to destroy, the birds to which they object, 

 while helping to keep off their land highly un- 



desirable trespassers who find bird-catching and 

 bird-nesting a convenient excuse for their presence 

 on private property. But there will have to be a 

 tighteningof thisbreach in the regulations, and some 

 proof required of bona fides in the " owner or occu- 

 pier." At present it affords an opening, not only for 

 professional bird-catching on a large scale, but 

 also for the wanton shooting, wounding, and 

 trapping, of nesting birds in any small garden- 

 plot or backyard where some idle boy or man with 

 a gun or catapault finds fun in practising upon 

 parent birds and young. The Society for the 

 Protection of Birds has many complaints of this 

 sort of thing every summer ; and only a few 

 weeks ago a young schoolmistress died in North- 

 ampton Infirmary from a bullet-wound accidentally 

 inflicted by a young man engaged in shooting at 

 nesting starlings. 



Selborne Society. 



Many people will regret that the Selborne Society, 

 which in former days was a declared opponent of 

 bird-trimmed millinery, and was regarded as work- 

 ing in the matter on similar lines with the Society 

 for the Protection of Birds, has somewhat changed 

 its attitude. The second "object" of the Society was 

 until recently stated to be : "To discourage the 

 wearing and use for ornament of birds and their 

 plumage, except when the birds are killed for food 

 or reared for their plumage." The wording of this is 

 now altered as followed : To discourage, etc., "birds 

 and their plumage, except when the birds are killed 

 for food, reared for their plumage, or are known 

 to be injurious? The words in italics (ours) are, 

 unfortunately, a begging of the whole question, as 

 they leave each person to decide according to the 

 extent of his prejudice or the limit of his knowledge 

 what bird is or is not "injurious." Herons, gulls, 

 terns, grebes, kingfishers, owls, cardinals, tanagers, 

 bullfinches, and other small birds, and even birds- 

 of-paradise, may be proscribed, by those who wish 

 so to proscribe them, as feeders more or less upon 

 grain, fruit, or fish fry, or otherwise "injurious."' 



Obituary. 



The Society for the Protection of Birds has lost 

 old and valued members through the death of two 

 eminent persons who were distinguished for work 

 in very different spheres, but who were at one in 

 their support of the objects of this Society. Miss 

 Frances Power Cobbe was among the earliest of 

 its Life Associates, joining in 1893, and though her 

 untiring energies were devoted first and foremost 

 to the anti-vivisection cause she never ceased to 



