58 



BIRD NOTES AND NEWS. 



as do rooks, blackbirds, and thrushes. The 

 ' protection ' of these birds involves a loss 

 of 20 per cent, of the fruit-farmer's profits." 

 Without pausing to consider the pros and cons 

 of the argument, it need only be said that 

 no fruit-farmer in any fruit-growing county in 

 England is prohibited from killing any of these 

 birds. If they were so prohibited it would be 

 by the act of the local County Council, which 

 is answerable to its constituents for what it does. 



Again, we have a leading London daily 

 (February 8th, 1905) asking, in an article of 

 excellent intention, " What do County Councils 

 expect to gain by prohibiting the taking of all 

 birds' eggs ? " and recording its conviction that 

 "Edicts against egg-taking in general we hold 

 to be an instance of excessive zeal, while they 

 tend to check the growth of that love of natural 

 history among peasant children which it is so 

 desirable to encourage." Whether the adorning 

 of " every cottage wall with strings of eggs " 

 proves the love of natural history, as the writer 

 appears to think — any more than a necklace of 

 teeth proclaims the student of zoology — is an 

 open question. The excessive zeal may be 

 granted ; but no County Council ever has 

 issued or is likely to issue an edict against 

 "egg-taking in general." Either every species 

 of egg it is proposed to protect has to be 

 named in the Order applied for, or the area 

 in which it is proposed to protect all eggs must 

 be exactly and minutely defined ; the latter 

 form of protection being generally reserved for 

 portions of the coast, in order to guard sea-birds 

 and such persecuted species as the Chough, the 

 Raven, and the Peregrine. 



A third writer, commenting most sym- 

 pathetically on Bird Protection in a country 

 paper (February, 1905), observes that "a few, 

 too few, species are protected during the whole 

 of the year," the " four enumerated " for such 

 protection being, it appears, the Goldfinch, King- 

 fisher, Owl, and Great Crested Grebe. Here the 

 writer is obviously speaking generally from the 

 particular instance of his County Council Order. 

 The time may come, and the sooner it comes the 

 better, when certain species will be protected 

 in the whole country throughout the year, 



either by statute or by concerted County Counci. 

 action ; but at present no bird is in that happy 

 position. 



Yet another instance is afforded by an excep- 

 tionally well-informed weekly, which allows its 

 angling correspondent to deplore the scheduling 

 of Cormorant and Black-backed Gull ; neither 

 species is scheduled by the Act or by any 

 Order. 



Perhaps the most curious example of these 

 comments upon an imaginary law is afforded by 

 a County Councillor who recently (February, 

 1905) brought before his Council a motion that 

 the county Order " should be modified by 

 exempting servants, while engaged in protecting 

 orchards, from prosecution," and stated that 

 he had written to the Home Secretary on the 

 matter as " something must be done to protect 

 the cherry- orchards." As no "servant em- 

 ployed in protecting orchards " can be prose- 

 cuted for killing a non-scheduled bird, and as 

 no cherry-eating bird is scheduled by Act of 

 Parliament, it follows that the County Council 

 themselves must have scheduled the offending 

 species, and that the County Councillor now 

 appeals to the Secretary of State and to his 

 fellow-councillors to save the county from the 

 effects of their own measure, a position of affairs 

 bordering on a Gilbertian absurdity. All the 

 Council have to do, instead of setting to work 

 to exempt servants employed, etc., is to cease 

 from including the cherry-eaters in their list of 

 scheduled birds. In all probability, however, 

 they are not so included. 



On March 5th the Field printed a letter from 

 a writer who considered it " incomprehensible " 

 that a County Council Order should prohibit 

 Sunday bird-catching merely between August 

 and February ; apparently he was not aware that 

 the Act of 1896 gives this power to a Council 

 only for non-Close Time, and that the Act of 

 1880 covers all the other Sundays in the year. 



Bird-protection law may not be perfect; bird 

 protectionists fully admit that point ; but this is 

 no reason why ignorance or carelessness should 

 constantly place to its discredit any enormity or 

 vagary which they may imagine to exist as 

 substitutes for its actual provisions, 



