BIRD SCARER

Wairarapa Times-Age, 15 April 1939, Page 9

BIRD SCARER

OCCUPATION FOLLOWED FOR LIFE-TIME. George Brann, last of the Kentish bird scarers, made a new clapper the other day on the doorstep of Pepperbox Cottage, his home in Fairbourne Heath, Kent, a village of half a dozeri houses on the fringe of the Weald. Seventy-three years ago he was first called out to do bird scaring at lhe age of nine. His job was to patrol the boundaries of a 20-acre field of corn swinging a clapper, blowing a penny whistle with a pea in it, turning a policeman's rattle, or ringing a ship’s bell. He also shouted out the bird charms that had come down in his family for generations. The first was this: Away, birds, away! You eat too much, You drink too much, You carry too much away. If this didn’t send the crows, pigeons, and starlings flying from the newlysown seeds, he would try this one: The master’s coming with a gun; You must fly and I must run. Away, birds, away! And if that failed he would try: Back, bird.s back! You’re on the wrong track. Back to Headcorn. Or to what ever other district they appeared to come from. There was no tune to the' charms, he explained to a correspondent of the London “News Chronicle." He didn’t sing—he "hollered.” Such was the power of his voice that at 16 he was the most sought-after bird scarer al the sowing season south of the Thames. And there’s no music like bird music, says George—especially if mixed with the sound of two or three hundred bird-scarers mocking one another from hill to hill. He woundn't give thank you for a radio. He’s never been to London, and wouldn’t go if invited by the Lord Mayor himself. __________