Chirps and 
Chatter. 
(218) THE BIRD WORLD. 
of small-garden birds is made up • of 
certain birds that stay all the year in 
England, but only visit the garden and 
shrubbery for an hour or so at a stretch 
from time to time during the season. 
The Bullfinch, three of the Titmice, 
and the Missel Thrush are in this class. 
The Bullies in Pairs. 
The Bullfinches come in pairs on a 
few days in the year to search out, not the 
buds, but some trifling flower seed, and 
the sight of the rosy plump breast and 
the bold black and white, at the edge 
of the grass, is very choice. Through 
much of the year the paired Bullfinches 
are as inseparable as the very Linnets— 
and it is as if the Linnets in spring and 
summer could not live out of each 
other’s company for five minutes. A 
few days in the year a pair of Bull¬ 
finches come for small seed, months 
between each visit; whereas the Missel 
Thrush will almost live in the garden, 
a week or fortnight at a stretch, when 
yew fruit reddens. Some seasons the 
Goldfinches will nest in the yew; but, 
when they do not nest there, their visits 
remind us of the Bullfinches : they come 
with that refined little “ twit ” of theirs 
for half an hour on a few late summer 
mornings to pick up grit from the gravel 
paths—a digestive—and here again is 
the inseparable pair. 
A Rare Bird. 
A writer has had his interest aroused 
by watching the magnificent flight of a 
Kite in Morocco, and deplores the in¬ 
creasing scarcity of this bird in Britain. So 
rare is the bird now that it is difficult to 
realise that in Henry VIII. s time Kites 
were common even in London, where 
they were allowed to devour butchers’ 
and poulterers’ offal, often amid crowds 
of people, and were not permitted to be 
killed. Game preservation has, of 
course, led to their downfall, and their 
ceaseless destruction by keepers and 
sportsmen during the nineteenth century 
has been so successful that few, indeed, 
are the “ gleds ” left to England. One 
can see Peregrine Falcons any day along 
the cliffs of East Sussex, but in twelve 
years’ residence in that part of the 
countrv I have never set eyes on a Kite. 
Many years ago, at a farmhouse near 
Hastings, a servant girl, hearing an 
uproar among her poultry, ran out, and 
seeing a big bird in the act of attacking 
some youthful Ducks and Chickens, 
made at it with her broom. Thd bird, 
which was a Kite, took so little notice 
of her that she was able to knock it down 
.and despatch it. The Kite’s breeding- 
places in this country are now very few 
and far between. In Lincolnshire, 
according to Mr. Howard Saunders, it 
nested so recently as 1870; its last 
strongholds were, and I believe still are, 
in Wales, where here and there a few 
pairs of these fine birds are allowed to 
breed. 
Protection of Egrets 
The prosecution by the Rangoon Port 
Trust Police of two natives for illegal 
possession of Egrets’ feathers and im¬ 
porting them into Rangoon municipal 
limits, should have a salutary effect 
upon this trade. The action was 
brought as a test to determine whether, 
under the Wild Birds’ Protection Act, 
the possession of the feathers without 
the body of the bird, dead or alive, was 
illegal, and resulted in the imposition 
of a nominal fine on one of the accused. 
The export trade in these feathers must 
be very considerable, in addition to the 
local demand for them, for in England, 
as much as on the Continent, they are 
still a cherished ornament of the 
fashionable, in spite of the good work 
done by the Royal Society for the Pro¬ 
tection of Birds. That society, as is 
well known, requires of its members 
that they shall not wear the feathers of 
any bird not killed for the purpose of 
food, the Ostrich only excepted. The 
Egret, however, is a tropical bird which 
requires particular protection, since its 
pure white plumage is considered to be 
at its best for ornamental purposes in 
the breeding season. The Rangoon 
case, we trust, will lead to the ultimate 
discouragement of the trade in these 
beautiful feathers. 
