NOT ROMANTIC, MERELY CRUEL

Forest and Bird, Issue 42, 1 November 1936, Page 15

NOT ROMANTIC, MERELY CRUEL

Is nest-robbing by boys a peculiarly English institution? Do the English-speaking boys compare unfavourably with Continental boys in respect for the breeding bird? One would be very unwilling to answer Yes to that question. And yet! Well, read what E. M. Nicholson has to say in his book, “Birds in England.”

When the British Army was in occupation of part of Germany after the Great War, Mr. Nicholson spent two seasons there, and kept nests under observation.

They were robbed of eggs. But who did it? He writes:—

“One afternoon, quite late in the season, I learned the cause. I had just left a third icterine warbler’s nest when I found myself in the midst of a gang of ragged, merry-faced urchins, who were talking English as I

approached, but (taking me for a German) besieged me clamorously with the question: ‘Haben sie eier?’ I disclaimed all knowledge of eggs, but I knew now what had happened to my precious nests. Within a quarter of a mile of the wood were the married quarters of a large part of the British Army of the Rhine; these were the younger generation of the colony developing true to type in an alien environment. “Bird-nesting among children seems, in fact, to be a peculiarly English instinct. Abroad it is different. There little is

done for sport, though much with some other motive—food, cruelty, and the rest.” But bird-nesting, however instinctive in boys, is always cruelty. Cannot schoolmasters and scoutmasters present it in its cruel, unsporting light and take the false romance out of it?