COUNTRY LIFE
AMONG the letters that arrived on the same morning were, first, a most welcome and surprising suggestion from the Ministry of Agri- culture that birds should be fed, as indubitable benefactors to hus- bandry, and, second, an account of a display of redwings, blackbirds and thrushes in a butcher's shop. Such a sight, which has become too common, is pitiful, and it might well be made illegal. Even owls have been shot as food, and urban populations are so ignorant that they may take any large bird for game, as curlew are freely sold for woodcock. As to the Ministry, it seems to be arriving at the general belief that one of the very few birds that is harmful on the farm is the pigeon, with the sparrow as a runner-up. The crow is a menace, so is the magpie, where chickens are kept in the open ; and controversy still hangs about the rook. I adhere to the theory (estab- lished after careful study by a group of Hungarian ornithologists) that the rook is beneficial till its numbers become very large, when it is wont to extend its dietary. It is both cursed and blessed on golf links. In its zeal for leather-jackets it will tear up the turf in great chunks, while the starlings neatly dibble after the same prey.
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