One fine morning some time since I had a delightful ramble with a quaint old character living hereabouts who gets his living by mole and bird catching. Old “Twiddle” he is familiarly called. One faculty he has, and that is a natural love for nature’s works and a gift of observation which has, perhaps almost unknown to himself, forced him into being a natural naturalist, if I may so use the expression. He can tell any bird on the wing by its flight, he knows all the fancies—some of them old, imagined fancies—of bees, each fly as it flits from the water’s edge has a name, though far from being that given it by science. No matter for that; a rose by any other name would smell as sweet and old Twiddle can tell something of its life-history. Well, Twiddle and I started on our ramble, and this was how he was equipped. A cage containing a beautiful little cock gold-finch duly and comfortably furnished with food and water, and protected from the sharp though clear air of the bright November day by means of an old silk handkerchief. Some dozen or two of prepared bristles, a small box of birdlime, and a “dummy” or stuffed gold-finch set up on a branch of wood with one end sharpened so that the latter could be stuck in the ground and then the bird retained in any position deemed desirable. The bristles were of the best shoemaker’s kind, and, were arranged in bunches of three on a stout carpet-needle.
By the by I have improved on these by substituting a fish-hook straightened (see [Fig. 6]). To do this take an ordinary eel-hook and make it red-hot in the gas or candle flame, holding it the while by means of a pair of pliers. It can be readily straightened after this, whether hot or cold, as the heating softens the wire. The utility of the barb lies in the fact that the bird cannot by any chance fly away with the bristle or lose it for you in its struggles, because of the barb’s holding power when thrust into the branch of a tree, etc.
But to return. Chatting about this and that we journeyed along till after old Twiddle had craned his neck over a ledge to regard the other side of a field he announced our walk for the present ended. On creeping through a hole in the hedge this field turned out to be a piece of evidently waste water meadow, so-called because the crops are, as it were, manured with water from the neighboring river, and a perfect little forest of thistles with their downy heads swaying in the breeze indicated the probable presence of the goldfinch. Some thorn-trees grew in a row down the center of the field, and hither and thither the sparrows flitted amongst their branches busily chattering the news of sparrowdom. But I saw no finches. “Twiddle,” said I, “where are the goldfinches?” “Ye’ll see where they be, sir, presently,” he answered, setting down the caged bird near the largest of the thorns. “Now, Billy,” he added, speaking to the bird, “crow away,” and with that he removed the handkerchief. Billy needed no second bidding, and his little throat quivered and trembled with the glad song which came thrilling forth.
Twiddle now placed the dummy bird just beneath a branch of the thorn close to the cage and so as to be easily seen, and all around it and round the cage the bristles carefully limed were stuck. All was now ready. We retired behind the hedge where we could see and not be seen.
Presently the singing was answered and we saw a gold-finch hopping about amongst the branches of the thorn. Suddenly it caught sight of the dummy bird and with a pleased swiftness flew towards it. In another second it had touched a limed bristle and was rolling over and over hopelessly liming its wings with every fresh bristle it touched.
Very carefully the little chap was dusted with a little fine earth to mitigate the stickiness and placed in another cage which the bird-catcher always carries for the wild birds. It is flat and long and well supplied with food and water; in the upper part of it is a hole sufficiently large to admit the hand, and to the two edges of this hole is tacked the leg of an old stocking, which falls inwards. Then the bird can easily be placed inside, but cannot escape, because the folds of the stocking fold together.
We caught five there and, as the market value of the birds was about twenty-five cents, Twiddle, it must be owned, had a very profitable morning’s work. Let me express a hope that my readers may be so successful.
[The Art of Stretching and Curing Skins.]
The market value of skins are greatly affected by the care used in skinning and curing. We take the following from The Trapper’s Guide, the best known authority on these matters: