Chirps and 
Chatter. 
(137) THE BIRD WORLD. 
Birds and Cats. 
Cats and birds are proverbially an¬ 
tagonistic. It is usually, however, the 
cat who intimidates the bird; but re¬ 
cently the positions were completely 
reversed. The cat, a young tabby, has 
by no means a clean record with regard 
to Robins, young Thrushes, and even 
too-trusting Pigeons, but he was as 
innocent as a shut-eyed kitten of intent 
to offend the particular Swallow who 
went for him in style so pugnacious. 
There was no possibility of a nest being 
near^ as the cat was crouched at the 
edge of a flower-border “ bedded-out ” 
iu the geometrical manner beloved of 
gardeners. Again and again the Swal¬ 
low swooped down on poor puss, only 
just not touching him, flying up to circle 
round, uttering angry little cries, and 
swoop down again towards the terrified 
cat, who seemingly tried to squeeze 
itself flat against the ground. Six or 
eight times was this repeated, with the 
same terrifying swoop of the Swallow, 
until the scared cat took advantage of 
a slightly longer circle made by the bird 
to rush for shelter behind some laurels. 
Snaring Wild Birds. 
To those who take long country 
rambles, especially on Sundays, no 
figure is more familiar than that of the 
bird-snarer spreading his net, not in vain, 
in the sight of the bird. This not un¬ 
interesting character very frequently re¬ 
calls Low Covey in “ No. 5, John 
Street,” the gentleman who was so 
clever in imitating bird-calls; his ruses 
are adaptable both to night and day. 
Confederates who go forth after dark 
will be armed, one with a bull’s-eye 
lantern, one with a hand-net; and, while 
a third beats the hedges with a stick, 
the first will flash the lantern into its 
recesses, and the terrified birds, flying 
wildly towards the light, fall an easy 
prey for the fowler’s meshes. The limed 
twig stuck in the ground, and the trained 
decoy-bird chirping innocently near the 
drop-net, are other well-known wiles. 
Both for liming and shooting fowlers em¬ 
ploy the Owl-snare, which exhibits the 
sagest of birds in the sorriest of plights. 
The Owl in daylight, as everyone knows, 
is as blind as a bat; and when he ex¬ 
poses himself to view after sunrise he 
becomes the sport of smaller birds. Of 
this the snarer takes advantage by set¬ 
ting up a chained Owl on a perch in 
broad daylight. There Minerva’s bird 
shortly becomes a sort of feathered 
Titus Oates in the pillory, but his 
mockers meet a speedy doom either from 
the fowler’s lime or small shot. 
Herr Pralle’s Eggs. 
In Mr. Whitaker’s recently published 
volume on the “ Birds of Nottingham¬ 
shire ” the following observation occurs: 
—“ Once or twice I have been shown a 
nest of the Hedge-sparrow with an egg 
in it of the same beautiful blue colour 
as the others, but almost twice as large, 
the finder taking it for that of a Cuckoo, 
but on being blown it has always turned 
out to be a double-yolked egg of the 
Hedge-sparrow.” On the other hand, 
it has been satisfactorily established 
that Cuckoos do sometimes lay blue 
eggs. One of the best instances is that 
recorded by the late Mr. Seebohm, who 
found in a Redstart’s nest five blue eggs 
of the rightful owner, and one larger 
blue egg, which, from its size, was sup¬ 
posed to be that of a Cuckoo. As all 
were highly incubated it was easy to dis¬ 
tinguish the slender feet of normal type 
in the embryo Redstarts and the larger 
feet of the embryo Cuckoo, “ with the 
toes arranged two in front and two 
behind.” The large blue egg in this 
case was not a double-yolked egg of the 
Redstart, but a veritable Cuckoo’s egg, 
as blue as those of the foster-parent. 
That this was not an exceptional case 
was proved by the fact that in the fine 
collection of eggs of Herr Pralle, of 
Hanover, which contained a remarkable 
series of 92 eggs of the Cuckoo, Mr. 
Seebohm remarked that twelve of them 
were blue, and of these eight were taken 
from nests of the Redstart. As five of 
them were found in different nests in the 
same district (Anhalt), it is probable 
that they were all laid by the same hen 
Cuckoo, which goes to show that the 
same bird will always lay eggs of the 
same pattern. 
