The sins of the little owl have certainly been exaggerated
and its good acts unrecognized. Compared with the carrion crow it is angelic. Mr. Gilbert, who is one of the most thorough and enterprising of the world's bird observers, is at issue with the R.S.P.B. over the relative delinquencies of the collector and the crow. He accuses the crow of being the worst enemy, the old-style gamekeeper excepted, of the kite, whose virtual extinction we all deplore. He has previously accused the jackdaw of decimating if not exterminating the Welsh choughs. Both marauders, like the sparrow, are helped by civilization. The crow is most numerous round about the suburbs. He has, to my knowledge, destroyed the eggs of greater crested grebes which attempted to nest on the metropolitan reservoirs. The jackdaw finds its optimum of conditions round and about our churches, as Thomas Hood, a notable observer, recorded sardonically ; "The daw's not reckoned a religious bird Because it keeps a-cawing from a steeple."
The time will probably come when we shall have to take measures to cancel this sort of one-sided protection.
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