Scouting for Boys

by Baron Robert Stephenson Smyth Baden-Powell Baden-Powell of Gilwell

A good many birds are almost dying out in Great Britain, because so many boys bag all their eggs when they find their nests.

Birds'-nesting is very like big game shooting—you look out in places that, as a hunter, you know are likely places for the birds you want; you watch the birds fly in and out and you find the nest. But do not then go and destroy the nest and take all the eggs. If you are actually a collector, take one egg and leave the rest, and, above all, don't pull the nest about, otherwise the parent birds will desert it, and all those eggs which might have developed into jolly young birds will be wasted.

Far better than taking the eggs is to take a photo or make a sketch of the hen sitting on her nest, or to make a collection of pictures of the different kinds of nests, made by the different kinds of birds.

Aberdeen in Scotland is supposed to be specially well off for skylarks, for the following reason.

A few years ago there came a very severe gale and snowstorm late in March—and all the high ground inland was so buried under snow and ice, that the birds were all driven to the lower land near the coast. The fields by the seashore were covered with them.

Numbers of people went out to catch them with bird-lime, nets, snares, and guns. Large numbers were taken alive to be sent to market in London and other towns.

One gentleman found a man selling a big cage full of them. They were crowded up to a fearful extent and all fluttering with terror at their imprisonment, struggling over each other in their frantic desire to escape. He felt so sorry for them that he bought the whole lot and took them to his warehouse where he was able to give them plenty of room and food and water.

Then he offered to buy all the larks that were being captured for the market at market prices. In this way he received over a thousand—and these he put in a big room where they had comparative freedom and plenty of food. It is said that the noise of their singing in the morning was almost deafening and crowds of birds used to gather over the house to hear them.

At last the bad weather passed off, the sun shone out again and the fields became green and bright, and then the kind man who had housed the birds opened the windows of the room and all the birds flew out in a happy crowd chirping and singing as they mounted into the bright warm air or fluttered off to the adjoining fields and woods. And there they build their nests and hatched out their young so that to-day the song of the lark is to be heard everywhere round Aberdeen.

Through ignorance of natural history many keepers and others see no difference between sparrow-hawks, merlins, and kestrels, and destroy all of them as mischievous to game. Sparrow-hawks and merlins do, no doubt, kill young game, but a kestrel hardly ever, if ever. He lives principally on field mice. You can tell him by his flight—he spends much of his time hovering in the air looking out with his sharp eyes for a mouse upon which to swoop down. The sparrow-hawk flits in and out round rocks and over fences hoping thus to come on prey by surprise. The merlin is a very small but very plucky little hawk and hunts down his prey by fast flying.