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or farmer's journal as "even worse than the rook." Even the ornithologists who are interested in birds as birds haven't a good word to say of the daw. According to them he alone is responsible for the disappearance of his distinguished relation, the chough. (The vulgar daw is of course devoid of any distinction at all, unless it be his grey pate and wicked little grey eyes.)
The ornithologists were wrong about the chough, just as they had been wrong about the goldfinch, during the late years of the nineteenth century, and as they were wrong about the swallows and martins in later years. Of the goldfinch, they said, and solemnly put it down in their books, that owing to improved methods of agriculture the thistle had been extirpated and the bird, deprived of his natural food, had forsaken this country. But no sooner did our County Councils begin to avail themselves of the powers given them by the Bird Act of twenty years ago to protect the goldfinch from the bird-catcher, than it began to increase again and is still increasing, year by year, all over the country.
Of the decrease of swallows and martins, they
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said it resulted from the action of the sparrows in ousting them from their nests and nesting-sites. But we know the true cause of the decline of these two species, the best loved and best protected of all birds in Britain, not even excepting robin redbreast. The French Government, in response to representations on this matter from our Foreign Office, have caused enquiries to be made and have found that our swallows are being destroyed wholesale in France during the autumn migration, and have promised to put a stop to this deplorable business. They do not appear to have done so, since the promise was made three years ago, and I can say from my own observation in the south and west countries that the decline has continued and that we have never had so few swallows come to us as in the present summer of 1916.
The daw--to return to that subject--has always been regarded as an injurious species, and down to a quarter of a century ago every farm lad in possession of a gun shot it in the interests of the henwife, even as he had formerly shot the kite, a common British species and a familiar feature in the landscape down to the early years