Bird Populations
May I offer a suggestion to those many people, young and old, who will doubtless compete for the Do prize offered by the Royal Society for the Protection of Birds? The subject is the changes in the bird population of any particular district. A good many birds enjoy dusting. The dust bath is more popular with some of them than the water bath. Such birds, notably in my experience the yellow hammer, have been quite driven from the roadside in which once they rejoiced ; and a certain number have shifted from road to railway, where dust baths are freely supplied between the sleepers. Some few have found their way to hard tennis-courts! Certain birds have been quite exiled by certain changes in agricultural methods. The corncrake, for example, has wholly vanished from wide districts as a nesting inhabitant ; and this is probably due to earlier and completer mowing. Is it a sign of adaptation to the new conditions that corncrakes have been craking vigorously by a cornfield in Hertfordshire?
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