CAGES AND SNARERS
TN " the sweet o' the year," when between the half- L opened leaves we catch glimpses of silver wings and hear the silver notes of mating birds, when a million little singers and great fliers come from a thousand miles away to enjoy this England, then is the right moment to take some thought on behalf of those birds " whom towns immure "—and much worse places than any town. The Lords perhaps felt this when they chose May the First to pass the Second Reading of a Bird Protection Bill.
Now Britain is a model to the world in the protection of wild birds, in the provision of sanctuaries. Most of our gardens and orchards are the cloisters of a real sanctuary for birds, where they may feed and nest and breed in quiet and in gay security. We make the rounds of the nests in .the same spirit as we patrol the beds of the garden ; and admire the sky blue of the hedge sparrow's clutch not less than the gentian we brought from a Swiss mountain.
• England itself is a spacious sanctuary in which even London is included.. This British reputation accords ill with the prevalent and open cruelty of the traffickers in caged birds. The writer of this, more by accident than by intention, has seen a good deal of the snarers at work in this country and in the Antipodes. We have nothing in the British Isles that can compare in bulk with the netting of countless finches in the Northern Territories of Australia, or of the taking of Bower Birds and Birds of Paradise ; but trapping is so common as to be a recog- nized profession. A great many of those dainty mice of the trunks, as they might be called, the engaging tree- ' creepers, are taken with bird-lime smeared on arched wires under which they creep, some to their death, some to captivity. Not once, nor twice, not only here and there, May you come upon some furtive thug of a man, of the " Third murderer " type in appearance, setting 'up his atmaratus for snaring linnets and goldfinches on the wilder heaths and commons of the Hothe Counties. The neighbourhood of Luton, in Bedfordshire, is one favourite " pitch," as they say. Among the most regular haunts of professional trappers are certain stretches of meadow and reed in the Cambridgeshire and Huntingdonshire fens and along the banks of the Ouse, a river most magnetic to birds. That ingenious lecturer, who advised his audience on the best ways of " catching and killing our Feathered Friends," had an ample theme, for the ways are many, though all are cruel. The ways are many ; but there is one common lure. It is to attach a small bird to a wooden lever, which is agitated by a string controlled from a cache at some distance. The bird, tightly trussed under the wings, is thus made to dance up and down, like a mechanical marionette. The instrument and the method have their own technical words. " The Flurry " is one. You would have thought that this painful and artificial skip, repeated endlessly through a long day, would have acted as a warning ; but birds are inquisitive as well as shy. It may be that some come to see what is the matter. At any rate, the decoy does its work, and the nets that fall on the inquirers secure their scores of victims.
It is not a crime to snare birds or to keep them in cages. It need not be cruel. Some of us who exult daily in the joy of watching flight may at times feel with W. H. Hudson—himself for half his life a caged creature—that the bird prisoned indoors, without room to fly, is " an outrage on Nature, an acted blasphemy." But many caged birds are contented enough. They give pleasure and taste it. When once attuned to it, they would cer- tainly, like the Prisoner of Chinon, almost " regain their freedom with a sigh." Aviculture is and has been prac- tised with zest by some of the best of our field naturalists, the late Lord Lilford for example ; and by those who have been most active in securing protection and Sanctifying sanctuaries. The scale of the industry, as it may be called, is very large. The Sydney Zoo, one of the best in the world, is also one of the richest, because it takes profit from the purchase and sale of birds for captivity. It would be useless and unwise, and perhaps too sentimental, to make any such protest as Hudson's against the practice of depriving a bird of the chance of flight. "The free play of life " is a philosopher's definition of pleasure that not many birds or men can quite attain ; and however " cabin'd, cribbed, confined " they may be, both reach sonic degree of happiness nevertheless. But birds as well as men feel pain ; and some of the accompaniments of bird-caging are utterly brutal. To see bird-lime once used is to have a picture of cruelty etched deeply into the tablets of memory for the rest of life. The " flurry " is • confessed brutality. But worse than either is the small cage. A bird, if it is not a confirmed migrant, may accustom itself to the loss of long flight, but no bird that cannot stretch its wings to the full has any pleasure in existence. The small and the crowded cages—wretched examples were once to be seen both in the City and the purlieus off Shaftesbury Avenue and in most provincial towns--entail all sorts of minor cruelties. Wings and legs are broken, and growth is prevented. Dirt destroys the use and beauty of the feathers and induces a particular malady akin to " trench feet." Such cages arc as ver- minous as they are malodorous. They may even be causes of infection to the world outside the cage.
In the Protection of Birds Bill that the Lords have been discussing with approval and good sense two of the most useful clauses are aimed at bird-lime and the small cage.
We may presume that the Bill will become an Act this summer ; but the Act is not the end of the business. " In the beginning was the act," said Goethe in Faust, and this most admirable Act will only do the good it should do if the cause appeals to local councils, and the snarer has to face a good intelligence system. It is not only in sanctuaries that " bird watchers " are needed. No Act has yet scotched the collector, and only con- tinuous activity will stop the snarer.
W. B. T.
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