The Stourbridge Observer, Cradley Heath, Halesowen & District Chronicle.
Stourbridge, West Midlands, England, 1873-04-26 00:00:00

WILD BIRDS' PROTECTION ACT.

On this subject, which has recently shared public atten-
tion, the Rev. F 0 Morris, writing from Nunbarnhohne
Rectory, Ilayton, York, has sent the following letter to The
Times for publication :

Mr. Auberon Herbert wrote me word a ehort time
since that he had moved in the Houseof Commons for
a Select Committee to inquire into the subject of ex-
tending further protection during the breeding seaeon
to our Brjtj.h turds.

A " West Riding Msgistrate" addressed a letter to
The Times recently to point put the difficulties which
occur in the internretation of the penal clauses of the
Act of last Session. .

Will you allow me a short portion of your space to
show how deficient the Act le in itself, and how much
it needs amendment, especially in the way of enlarge
went?

It iv no fault of mine that the Act ia so faulty as it
thus is. I was written to by the Secretary of the
Royal Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to
Animals some year or more ago to revise and correct
the draught of it before it went to the HMIs, which
I at once did in all essential particulars • but when it
passed through Committee it was verbatim and We-
ratim in the original form as to the names and num-
ber of the birds included in its urn VilliollB.

First., as to its faulta of commission. It names some
birds as to be protected which are so rare or so local,
more or less, that although I should be the last person
to quarrel with their being included in the general law,
yet, while they are thus included to the exclusion of
commoner sorts, no one can say they belong to those
kinds which are in danger from the nefarious practices
of the birdcstcher,, the just outcry against which. so
often mieed in Vie Times and elsewhere, has beyond
all doubt been a main cause of the passing of the recent
Act—such, I mean, as the avocet, cross-bill, Dartford-
warbler, dotierel, hawfinch, nuthatch, phalarope, ruff,
spoonbi.l, stint stone curlew, bearded titmouse, wood-
wren, wrynecli, and woodpecker (tome species of).
Then several birds are given as distinct kinds, when,
in fact, they are all the time one and the same specie,.
Thus the purre is only the dunlin in its winter plu-
mage. It, too, is the same bird that is meant by the
" ploverspage ;" but this, I should suppose, most per-
8011s would be utterly at a loos to know. I can find no
such name in Montagu or Macgillivray, or any other
book to which I have access. I have no d tobt that
theze is such a name of the bird, but it can only be a
very local ore, given as that of cuckoo's mate to the
wryneck in some parts of the country. Thus we have
three names given to one bird, as if three distinct spe-
cies. kelvin, the curlew is the same as the whaup (ins
correctly thus spelt for whitap), which is merely a tri-
vial name for it, no doubt from some fancied reams
blance to its note ; and, moreover, it need not be cet.
tioned, is equally applicable to the whinbrel, which is
exactly like it in appearance, though of smaller size.
The same remark app] lee to the mallard and the wilds
duck, the former being only the male bird under a
different name, the stone-curlew and the tbicknee, the
sandpiper and the sqmmer snipe, the sealark and the
oxbird (as I suppose), the stone-chat, and, I conclude,
the stone-hatch—but it is a name with which I am un-
acquainted—the peewit and the plover, the dumbird
and the pochard, of which the former Is merely the
female—all duplicate names or synonyms of the same
birds. _ . .

But the gravest fault of the Act Le in the way of
omis,don. . .

For %hat earthly reason have the following birds
been excluded :—The ox eye, the dipper, the ring-
ouzel, blue-tittnonse, cole-titmouse, mamh-titmonse,
tree sparrow, siskin, starling, yellow-hammer, white-
throat, lesser white-throat, the garden-warbler —one of
the very finest songsters we have—the willow-warbler,
turtle-dove, and many others ; the though, for instance,
of which there are only too few left already. Eeen
the jay, the wood-pigeo., rock-dove, stock-dove, rook
(a clause might be inserted to allow the young to be
shot as an article of food, and to prevent the birds un-
duly increasing), jackdaw, and magpie, should not be
excluded from the pale of the law without a hearing.
What, too, of the very few remaining eagle• and the
hawks?

And why has not protection been afforded to those
splendid-plumaged birds the golden-oriole, the bee.
eater, the roller, and the hoopoe, each of which has no
often visited this country in the spring with the evi-
dent intention of building, and which in that rage, if
only allowed to breed, would have become indigenous
and been by this time a frequent grace and ornament
to our woods, groves, sod fields? The waxwing, also,
and the nuteraoker No one bar ever even pretended

that these birds do any harm whatsoever ; why, then,
have they been omitted from the lit?

That many of the birds which ought to have been
included are not, will only be to put other kinds into
the trap of the fowler, as, under pretence of catching
theft which are left to his mercy, he will make all
that " come to his net" his prey, lawful or unlawful,
no one being a hand t say him Day ; and, even if
any one should be, he will have a ready excuse.. though
a false one, on his lips, that he is only trying to take
those which the law has not forbidden hint to capture.
I hope that the word "pipit" will be held to include
all birds of the lark kind, even If a point has to be
strained in their favour, and though it may not have
been no intended by the most defective Act.
_ _

In like manner, as one of your coerespondente has
pointed out that the linnet is still captured by the bird-
catchers, as if lawful prey, it l well to remind these
gentry that both species, the greater and the lesser are
included under the name, common to both, of "red-
poll," which the Act gives, so that " Birdostchers be-
ware" is a motto they had better adopt without loss of
time.
The harmless, or all but infinitesimally harmless,
chaffinch ought to have been included within ths four
oorners of the Bill, to save it from those of the fowler's
net, or from his wretched limed twigs, when he goes
"pegging for chaffinches," and under that pretence
will destroy many and many • kind nominally pro-
tected, whose young ones will in vain look out for the
return of their parents with food for them in the nest.
I could say much, too, for the mistletoe thrush, the
thru-h, and even the blackbird, and still more for that
most beautiful bird the bullfinch, which, often as it
has visited my garden in the spring, and then only as
it periled on from wood to wood, has never done me
any damage to the value of the head of a pin that I
have been able to find out.

Nay, have even a good word to say for the sparrow;
but I must conclude, not to run the risk of losing the
opportunity, if you will kindly afford it to me, of
saying even part of what I would say in behalf of my
clients by saying too much, if I have not already done
so; but, as The Times has more than once admitted
from me even a longer letter than this, I will hope
that if I end here I may end well.