Chirps and 
Chatter. 
(5) 
THE BIRD WORLD. 
to our neighbourhood, says a Newcastle 
writer, as used to come; and, in all pro¬ 
bability, they are right who say that the 
smaller number of these birds is largely 
due to the smaller number of insects be¬ 
cause of the factory smoke and the 
chemical effluvia. But who is to deny 
that the Sparrow is greatly to blame for 
the decrease of Swallows? The ubiqui¬ 
tous Sparrow, the pugnacious and over¬ 
bearing little Sparrow, is a tyrant to the 
Swallows, driving these insectivorous 
friends of the human race from their 
nesting-places. What is wanted to be 
revived, both for the Swallow’s sake and 
for the sake of the farmer and gardener, 
are the Sparrow shooting clubs. Then 
the cooking and eating of Sparrows 
ought to be encouraged among the 
people, for these birds, when in good 
condition, are very tasty and comfortable 
to be digested. It would be a Hedge- 
Sparrow’s nest that Wordsworth looked 
into:— 
Behold within the leafy shade, 
Those bright blue eggs together laid ! 
On me the chance-discovered sight 
Gleamed like a vision of delight. 
The Lindfield Swans. 
The domestic affairs of the Lindfield 
Swans greatly interest the public. The 
Parish Council—and the Swans—are 
now the proud possessors of six cygnets. 
It is the custom to transfer the happy 
family from their nesting retreat in the 
brookland to the village lake when the 
cygnets are large enough. It is a task 
of some magnitude for a Parish Council. 
The male bird, of course, shows fight, 
but with the aid of a hay rake and a 
corn sack, he is “ bagged ” and taken 
away. The cygnets are next carried off 
by the Swanmaster, the female bird de¬ 
murely following her offspring. The 
procession from the swannery to the 
village lake took place recently, and 
once more the villagers are serenely 
happy, and are ready to supply the world 
at large with young Swans in the hope 
of relieving the rates. 
Feathered Architects. 
Probably it has happened to everyone 
living in the country, whether a keen 
observer of Nature or a comparative 
Gallio towards her ways, to be surprised 
now and then by the apparition, sudden, 
and, as it seems, with no preparation, of 
the fully constructed nest of a bird— 
walls, lining, and everything quite com¬ 
plete, perhaps, even, an egg or two 
already laid—in a hedge or a bush which 
he passes every day. It seems to have 
come like a miracle, not to have been 
built by common processes of bird archi¬ 
tecture, but to have been called into 
being as if some transcendent power 
must have exclaimed, “Let there be a 
bird’s-nest,” and there was a bird’s-nest. 
It appears frankly absurd to suppose it 
possible that a bird, or two birds, could 
have been coming and going all the days 
that must have been required for the 
construction of such an edifice, twig by 
twig and hair by hair, and yet that we 
should not have seen it. However 
absurd, it is, of course, perfectly and 
obviously true; this nest has been built, 
the building has been going on, before 
our very eyes, and there it stands to con¬ 
front those eyes with its testimony to 
their faculty of failing to observe what 
is so plainly put before them. 
A Yorkshire Curiosity. 
One of the curiosities of bird-litera¬ 
ture is of Yorkshire origin. Bulwer’s 
Petrel (Bulweria columbina), an acci¬ 
dental visitant from the Atlantic, of 
extremely rare occurrence, owes its in¬ 
clusion in the lists of British Birds to 
one isolated fact. On May 8th, 1837, 
a bird was picked up dead on the banks 
of the Ure, near Tanfield. It was 
described and figured by Gould in his 
“ Birds of Europe,” and subsequently 
in the latest edition of Yarrell’s British 
Birds. “ It is now,” said Gould, “ in 
the possession of Colonel Dalton, who 
doubtless regards it as one of the 
greatest treasures in British ornitho¬ 
logy.” The years went by, the Colonel 
died, and his collection was broken up. 
It then occurred to a certain Leeds or¬ 
nithologist to ask himself what had 
become of the famous Bulwer’s Petrel. 
He found it in a lumber room at Ripon, 
where it had been purchased for a mere 
trifle, with other stuffed birds, at the 
Colonel’s sale. 
