-,-■> 







BIRD NOTES 



3ND NEWS. 



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 fsr tire -protection of litres. 



CONTENTS 



A Story of Extermination. 

 Pole Trap Bill. 



Annual Meeting of the Society. 

 Notes — 



"Nine Points of the Law. 



A Box of Linnets. 



County Protection. 



Birds in the Philippines. 



The Plume Trade. 



Trees and Climate. 



The Plume Sales. 

 Birds in tbe Parks. 

 Bird and Tree Festivals. 

 The North African Ostrich. 

 Schools and Egg-Collections, 

 In the Courts. 

 News from Branches, 

 Lectures. 



No. 5.] 



London, 3, Hanover Square, W. 



[APRIL, 1904. 



A STORY OF EXTERMINATION. 



HE last place in Great Britain 

 where the Great Auk was seen 

 was St. Kilda ; and I have very 

 little doubt that, if there had been 

 a Bird Protection Society in those 

 days, we should have the Great Auk 

 with us now." These words were 

 spoken at the Annual Meeting of the Society 

 for the Protection of Birds, by MacLeod of 

 MacLeod, when dealing with the threatened 

 extinction of the St. Kilda wren. 



The story of the auk belongs to a different 

 chapter in the history of vanished and vanishing 

 birds from that in which the little wren figures. 

 For the wren is an entirely local variety, confined 

 to one small island; and it is patent to everyone 

 that, since its persecution has become a matter 

 of profit, it must either be protected, and that 

 quickly, or it must disappear. No such appre- 

 hension was entertained for the Great Auk ; it 



inhabited a wide range of country, and it existed 

 in enormous numbers. Unfortunately, it was so 

 unused to man in its seaboard homes that it 

 had no fear of him ; neither had it wing-power 

 to escape him. Consequently, as soon as their 

 main haunts were discovered, the birds were 

 easily butchered by the boat-load for food, and, 

 when not needed for food, were done to death 

 for " sport," or slaughtered wholesale for 

 their feathers and the bodies used for fuel. 

 Before naturalists realized what was happening, 

 the Great Auk had been blotted out of existence 

 for ever. It is said that, fifty or sixty years 

 ago, one of the last of its race — the last seen in 

 Britain — visited the Isle of St. Kilda, formerly 

 one of the breeding places of its kind. The 

 inhabitants, not knowing what to make of the 

 strange creature, promptly captured and tethered 

 it. During the night its wild cries made clear 

 to their minds that it was a witch, and, by 

 unanimous verdict, the last Auk was stoned to 

 death. 



