Occasionally a wild hybrid—between a Greenfinch and Linnet, Goldfinch and Greenfinch, Goldfinch and Linnet, Twite and Linnet—is caught.

Sparrow-hawks and other members of the Falconidæ are sometimes caught in the act of stooping at the poor little "Jackey" or "flur" birds, and short shrift quickly follows their entanglement in the fatal meshes. Rooks, too, are occasionally bagged as they fly low over the nets, which suddenly rise like a pair of huge, all-enveloping jaws to encompass their destruction.

Bullfinches are caught by many cottagers in Kent and Sussex during the winter months with the kind of trap shown on page 287. A call-bird is placed in the lower compartment of the cage, and the upper one is baited with privet berries, which can be easily reached by the unwary victim through the open doorway shown in the picture. The trap is hung up in a tree, and as soon as a bird enters to partake of the good things provided by the benevolent peasant, its weight

286

WITH NATURE AND A CAMERA.

releases a small door above its head which instantly closes, and eventually the little prisoner finds its way, along with five or six others, to a bird dealer's shop in the nearest town.

Larks are caught on dark nights, as they roost upon the ground, by means of a net fifty yards long and eighteen feet deep. It is mounted on two poles, one at either end, and carried along by a couple of men with the top about four feet off the ground and the bottom just touching the grass, so as to disturb the sleeping birds and make them rise. Directly a Lark flutters upwards the net is dropped, and the victim, discovered by its efforts to escape, is taken out. Sometimes several birds are secured at one drop of the net, and often Partridges, Fieldfares, and Coots have also been taken. Of course, it is of no use attempting this kind of nocturnal sport where fields have been "bushed" by gamekeepers to prevent poachers from netting Partridges.

There are some favourite bird-catching places during the autumn migration at considerable distances from Brighton, and when the men intend to visit these they start the night before so as to be on the ground they intend to work by dawn the following morning.

Most of the birds caught on the Downs find their way to the London markets; the live ones to such quarters as Great Andrew Street, Seven Dials, and the dead ones to Leadenhall.

The character of the ground upon which we found nets spread did not appear to exercise any influence, as might have been supposed, over the men in the selection of their pitches. We found some on stubble and land from which root crops had been removed, whilst others were trying their

FINCH TRAP.

luck upon grass and fallow-fields; in one or two cases, where dung- had been spread. One couple of young fellows, who must I think have been entirely devoid of olfactory nerves, occupied an upland slope which was thickly manured with pieces of fish in all stages of decomposition. My brother made our friend Swaysland laugh heartily by gravely inrpiiring of the men whether they were catching Cormorants humour of the idea being suggested by the—the similarity of the smell to that encountered where these birds breed. Bird-lime is hardly ever used now amongst Sussex bird-catchers, but is still employed in the West of England and on the Continent for taking Goldfinches, Siskins and Redpolls.

Cock Chaffinches are caught in some parts of the country by means of bird-lime during the early spring, when they are bubbling over with song and pugnacity. The method adopted is to take out a tame bird in a small cage tied up in a handkerchief, where the little creature will continue to rattle off its defiant notes all day long, and hide it amongst some bushes close by where a wild bird is singing. A stuffed bird is then set up just over the caged one, and, although well in view, is surrounded by a number of twigs and sticks liberally besmeared with bird-lime. The unsuspecting free bird on hearing the song of the hidden captive, at once concludes that it i)rocee(ls from the stuffed one, at which he instantly dashes in a storm of anger, and, knocking it over, becomes entangled amongst the smeared twigs. In order to see this kind of birdcatching in actual operation we went out with a crack Seven Dials man one day, but he was not at all successful during the time we spent with him. When we came to the

corner of a meadow where a Cliaffiiicli was singing, the man stuck a dilapidated dmiimy, which he fished out of the crown of his bowler hat, into an old field rail, and two little pieces of flat steel Aveighted at the base with lead and besmeared with birdlime over it, in such a position that any Chaffinch descending- to do battle would be likely to touch one or both of them with its wings and become entangled. His call-birds were placed just beneath, and their cages hidden by a few handfuls of grass. One Cock Chaffinch came, but he was either too wary or cowardly to attack with sufficient vigour to be caught, and contented himself with sitting uneasily beside the disreputable counterfeit dummy, and listening to the defiant challenges of the poor little prisoners hidden amongst the grass just below. ^[y brother succeeded in photographing him in this position. A strange j^eculiarity of the male Chaffinch in confinement is that the gloomier its surroundings are the lighter its heart appears to grow, for it sings best when kept in continual darkness. In less humane times the Germans used to take an unspeakably cruel advantage of their knowledge of this peculiarity and destroy the poor bird's sight with a red-hot wire. A friend of ours has a small allotment garden on the outskirts of Brighton, which he has arranged in such a cumiing manner that it forms a haven of rest for little feathered wanderers who land on that part of the coast when they are journeying northwards in the s])ring to their breeding haunts. It is here, too, that many of our sunnner visitors take a last rest before flvin*!' across the Channel and away to their winter quarters in the sunny South. This little ornithological oasis is hemmed

in on every hand by thick hedges, and surroinided l)y other g-ardens, in some of which trees of moderate size are gTowing*. In the centre is an ideal little pool, that looks as natural as peat-smoke in a Highland glen. It is commanded by a })air of small clap-nets, which are worked from a neat little smnmer-house at the bottom of the garden. Our friend, who is justly proud of his home-made miniature loch, informed us that migratory birds are particularly fond of stopping to wash and refresh themselves at it; and in evidence of the way it is appreciated, it need oidy be mentioned that he has caught pied, grey, and yellow Wagtails whilst they have been running al)out on its pebbly WILD CHAFFINCH STUDYING EIRD- banks in a single CATGHERS DUMMY. season. He used to catch Nightingales in his garden in great numbers by means of a trap baited with mealworms. One of our illustrations on pag-e 29-'] represents the engine set ready to receive a visitor. Directly the unwary bird hops on to the raised, circular kind of perch in the centre^ with a view to devouring the tempting gruljs within it, he releases a spring, which swiftly carries a net oven- him and renders his chances of escape exceedingly snudl, as a reference to our second pi(;ture of a similar traj) with a Robin in it will show. Although not exactly the same kind of trap, it works on the

WILD CHAFFINCH STUDYING EIRDCATGHERS DUMMY.

CATCHING CHAFFINCHES.

same principle, and is exceedingly effective amongst the members of some species when baited with what they like. lledbreasts and Hedge Sparrow^s are easily caught w4th it in w-inter-time, but its temptations are seldom great enough to overcome the sagacity of a House Sparrow.

Such is the rush of Nightingales southwards between the last week in July and the last week in August that our friend says he could easily catch a hundred specimens in his hand- Ijreadth of garden alone. On one occasion he secured as many as seventeen Redstarts in a sinole mornino-, which is an astonishing performance when it is taken into consideration that it occurred in the early spring.

It is an interesting fact that there is nearly always a morning, during the first or second week in May, when every garden in and around l^righton swarms with newly-arrived migrants, such as A\ liite-throats, Nightingales, Lesser Whitethroats, Redstarts, and Willow Wrens. No sooner, however, have the little travellers rested themselves than they are off again, and next morning there is not one of them to be seen. As an instance of the dangers encountered by some of our summer visitors in journeying l)ack to their old haunts, Booth mentions that Whitethroats in crossing the flying low^ to avoid Channel—when the full force of a fresh north-westerly wind— are often struck down by the spray from a wave breaking just ahead oi them, and drowned.

It is strange to note how much a bird may modify its liabits in a journey of only two or three lunulred miles. Having l)een familiar with the Ring Ouzel and its shy habits nearly all my life in the mountain regions of the North, I was

NIGHTINGALE TRAP

ROBIN IN BIRD TRAP.

astonished to find that, when journeying- south in the autumn, the bird has, hy the time it reaches ]3rightoii, become so bold that it visits streets ahiiost in the heart of the town in order to feed off elderberries and rowans overhanging the pave-ments.

Birdcatching on the Sussex Downs ai)pears to be an inherited kind of instinct amongst some families, whose members have followed the sport for generations.

SNA'L ON GrrASS-STEM.

CHAPTER IX.

- D E C O Y I N G . THE ART OF D U C K

all the contrivances invented by the ingenuityOF of man for the caj^ture of wildfowl, I think a Duck decoy is at once the most interesting and the most deadly. The first one made, and worked by enticing the birds into it, in this country was, it is believed, that constructed by Charles II. in St. James's Park. Some idea may be gathered of the effective natm^e of this engine of destruction when it is mentioned that about a century ago no less than 81,000 wildfowl of various species were taken in a single season by ten Lincolnshire decoys.

The precision of modern firearms and the great increase of gunners of all kinds have almost reduced decoying to a lost art. However, there are still a few pipes, as the contrivances are called, worked in different parts of the country; and the man who inlooks after those I am about to describe—three last winter in killing 1,500number—succeeded head of wildfowl, despite the fact that he was not working upon an ideal piece of water, and was continually harassed by a number of flight shooters, who waited for his birds in some adjoining property, over which he had no control, and blazed off at them almost every morning and evening, as they came in from and left again for the mud flats by the sea.

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