150 WILD LIFE IN CHINA. 



We can no more understand it than we can stop it. 

 Besides, many of the preying birds are of great use to man. 

 Some have developed a taste for all forms of reptile life, and 

 wage incessant war on snakes, lizards, frogs, and the like. 

 Others take to vermin, and decimate the ranks of rats and 

 mice. Not a few have lost all taste for "red meat" and 

 live on fish. Still others pursue insects. Few indeed there 

 are which are dangerous to domesticated animals. The 

 golden eagle finds it at times easier to get an unprotected 

 lamb than a scurrying hare, and so takes toll from the 

 sheepfold, and has even been known to go so far wrong as to 

 assault the children of the shepherd himself. That, of course, 

 gets him into trouble, for regal as he is, and proud as any 

 land-owner may be to have such a tenant on his property, 

 human life is sacred, and a rifle bullet or a charge of buck- 

 shot is apt to be the avenger of the child and the mentor of 

 better manners. 



Another point which makes the birds of prey part and 

 parcel of the bird lore of all climes is their practical ubiquity. 

 The sparrow is easily acclimatized anywhere. One sees him 

 beneath the vertical rays of an equatorial sun: one finds him 

 at home in Siberia with the very soil frozen feet deep, and 

 wherever it is possible for the sparrow to live, it is possible 

 for the sparrow-hawk to live on him. And not only the 

 sparrow-hawk but many others. Crossing Siberia in the first 

 flush of the year's early warmth, say in May, the keen 

 observer is astonished at the wealth of bird life, and not 

 least in that section of it which we are now considering. 

 Many of these birds have crossed from distant Malaya, from 

 the Indian Archipelago, from India itself, and even from 

 Southern Africa. What are such distances to the falcon 

 family to some of whom a hundred miles an hour is child's 

 play? So it is that the spring and autumn migrations of 

 which we have already spoken do not consist merely of the 

 ducks and geese, the snipe and plovers, the finches, warblers, 

 fly-catchers, etc. but of those also which prey on them. It is in 

 bird life as a humourous poet described it amongst the insects : 

 Big fleas have little fleas upon their backs that bite 'em, 

 And little fleas have lesser fleas, and so ad infinitnm. 

 Of the many varieties of rapacious birds the world over 

 we in China have no fewer than 65 species as described by 

 Pere David. These include both the diurnal and the nocturnal 

 kinds, the former being in the ratio of forty-six to nineteen 

 of the latter. China is, therefore, well represented in the 

 raptorial kingdom, and a visit to the Shanghai Museum will 

 show that the collection there bears evidence to our wealth 

 in this respect. We have vultures and eagles, hawks and 

 harriers, falcons, buzzards, kites and so on. The owls, too, 



