THE MIGRATION TO BRITAIN.

Forest and Bird, Issue 31, 1 October 1933, Page 10

THE MIGRATION TO BRITAIN.

A couple of nightingales had hurried back from Africa, in honour of the occasion. From dawn the fierce competition for the best Preislied was in full swing under my bedroom window among the small Meistersinger. There was a soft murmur of bird voices and an incessant fluttering of wings in the thicket of laurel bushes; there seemed to be some talk between a pair of blackcaps of starting building their nest there. But I told them that until the miracle man Mussolini had seen his way to provide Capri’s thirsty birds, flowers, and creeping things with more water in the summer they had better come on with me to England, and spend their honeymoon there. But will they all be safe there, my beloved birds? Can it be possible that among your bird-loving people is still to be found a man. a woman, or a child who has the heart to capture and imprison any of these messengers of joy, who ask for nothing but to sing to you ? What would your English summers be without them; how could you live on without them ? It was high time indeed that your House of Lords should have voted Lord Buckmaster’s Bird Protection Bill as the first step to put an end to this degrading slave traffic in small wild birds. Let your House of Commons not be slow in giving their unanimous sanction to this act of mercy! Birdlovers all over the world expect that every man will do his duty.