Yet another of the springle traps which I have seen used with very great success for the capture of flesh-eating birds is shown in Fig. 11. A and B are two sapling oak or ash-trees, growing near each other. Two holes are bored in A with a large gimlet; at C, in B, a wire loop is attached, and the loop E is passed through the upper perforation, as shown. At D a piece of cord with a round knot in it is passed through after B is bent toward A. F is a piece of wood, the point of which is shaped like a blunt cone, and this is sustained on the knot in the position shown by the spring of B, being similar, in fact, to the tongue of a wooden mole-trap, shown in a previous number. On this piece of wood is tied a fresh lump of meat, or a pigeon’s egg may be blown and stuck on. Indeed, any bait may be used, providing it is not too heavy. The bird, of course, pecks strongly at it through the loop E, and is instantly caught, or if it attempts to alight, which is often the case, the noose catches it alive by the legs. My drawing is a rough one, but sufficiently explains what is meant.

I have thus given a brief sketch of what boys can do in bird-catching with no more expense than a few cents—if we except the net, and that need not cost much if one is disposed to make it. There are many other traps which are variously successful. There is, for example, the trap-cage, which contains on one side a decoy bird, and a very useful one it is, and easily procured from a bird-fancier. Then there is the old sieve and string and brick trap, about which no boy needs to be told. I have taken twenty and thirty wild fowl in a night by baiting with pieces of sheep’s lights or lungs a large eel-hook. Then again for kingfishers there is a round spring-trap, which catches them by the legs, and is cruel therefore. Herons may be taken on a baited hook—the bait-fish, of course. When all is said and done, however, for general bird-catching, where sport and not torture is the means here set forth are decidedly the most satisfactory.

First and foremost, however, if you would be successful, take this practical counsel to yourself. Study the natures and habits of the birds; the droppings and footprints will always indicate a favorite resort. Why, I took a dozen birds the other day with half a dozen of Figure 9 traps in less than four hours by simply setting and resetting in the right places, and then retiring out of sight.

And not merely out of sight, let me tell the tyro, but out of the range of the sense of smell. Never get to windward of any birds if you are intent on catching them. It is a curious fact amongst the lower animals, especially those brought under domestication, that they perceive and appreciate at its value against themselves the presence of man by smell as well as sight. Creatures of prey, from the hatred with which they are held, seem to possess this faculty in the highest degree. Were it not so, indeed, the struggle for existence with them would soon end, and many at least of the species—whether fish, flesh or fowl—would become extinct as the dodo.

The bird-lime itself is the next consideration under this heading. I do not advise any boy to make it himself, but if he nevertheless chooses to do so, here is a recipe which will produce a very good “lime.” Half a pint of Linseed-oil should be put into an iron pot and carefully boiled over the fire for four hours, or, in fact, till it thickens sufficiently, stirring it repeatedly the while with a stick. The oil is smooth when it boils. In order to ascertain when it is done take out the stick and immerse it in water, after which see if it sticks to the fingers. If it does, the oil is ready to be poured into cold water, and thereafter placed in little flat tin boxes—the most convenient receptacles, as they fit in the waistcoat pocket, and can be used as required.

Birdlime is also made from holly bark, but according to the directions given in the “EncyclopÆdia Britannica” the process is much too troublesome for boys, and as one can buy birdlime enough to stick a flock of rooks together for a few pence from a professional bird-catcher, life may be considered too short for that process at this time. As I am some distance from a town, much less a professional bird-catcher, I make mine as above, and find it little if any inferior to that I have been in the habit of buying.

During winter time, when frost and snow cover the earth, birdlime is very useful, for at that time the “clap” net is of very little use. A good plan then is to sweep a bare place anywhere near a plantation or wooded garden, or even in the farm-yards, and having anointed a few dozen wheat ears with the straw attached—or rather, having anointed the straw for about a foot nearest the ear—to spread them about in the patch. The birds will attempt to take the ears away, and will so get limed and drop to the ground. You must very quickly pick them up or you will lose some, as their struggles not infrequently release them, at least partially, and they flutter out of reach.

Sometimes it will be found that a few handfuls of oats, barley or wheat thrown down where the limed straws are will be of service when they do not seem to care for the wheat ears themselves. There is the probability of the little fellows coming in contact with the ears, and so getting limed. These methods are chiefly applicable, as I have said, to cold weather.

A different mode of procedure may be practiced when the weather is very hot. Cut, say, a hundred twigs of some smooth, thin wood, such as withy, and after liming, stick them down by the side of any rivulet of water near woody growths, and of course not near a large tract of water such as a lake or river. Cover over the stream with brush or fern, so that the birds can come only by where your limed twigs are placed. I have had remarkable sport in this way when the birds have been coming to drink during the forenoon and afternoon.

I tried an experiment for rooks with bird-lime some little time ago. We all know that in winter, during a thaw, rooks will frequent pastures in great numbers, especially if cattle be present. About fifty yards to the west of where I am now sitting is a long waterside pasture, and thousands of rooks could be seen digging right lustily. Rooks are too strong and wily to be limed in the usual way with bristles or twigs, so I made some paper cones—funnel-shaped, you know, like the grocers use for packing sugar—and anointed the inside with bird-lime, sticking also a few grains of wheat round the inner side. The result was ridiculous in the extreme. After scattering a few grains of corn about and placing about a dozen of these limed brown-paper funnels in a likely manner, I retired to a distance, and with my field-glass watched. A flock soon found out the scattered grain, and one after the other the cones were inspected, but for some time no one ventured to do more. Presently, however, after the loose grain was apparently all eaten, one of the wily birds had the temerity to poke his head inside a cone. The result was much to his evident surprise, for the cone stuck tight, and there he was tumbling and attempting to fly with a foolscap on which blindfolded him, and which stuck tight enough to allow me time to go up and release the poor fellow. I did not kill him, for old rook pie is by no means palatable. I tried this plan for a heron which continually frequented a little pond wherein my last year’s trout are kept, but did not succeed in capturing him, though he took both the cone and fish used for a bait away somehow. Anyhow it has most thoroughly frightened my gentleman, for I have not seen him since.

One fine morning some time since I had a delightful ramble with a quaint old character living hereabouts who gets his living by mole and bird catching. Old “Twiddle” he is familiarly called. One faculty he has, and that is a natural love for nature’s works and a gift of observation which has, perhaps almost unknown to himself, forced him into being a natural naturalist, if I may so use the expression. He can tell any bird on the wing by its flight, he knows all the fancies—some of them old, imagined fancies—of bees, each fly as it flits from the water’s edge has a name, though far from being that given it by science. No matter for that; a rose by any other name would smell as sweet and old Twiddle can tell something of its life-history. Well, Twiddle and I started on our ramble, and this was how he was equipped. A cage containing a beautiful little cock gold-finch duly and comfortably furnished with food and water, and protected from the sharp though clear air of the bright November day by means of an old silk handkerchief. Some dozen or two of prepared bristles, a small box of birdlime, and a “dummy” or stuffed gold-finch set up on a branch of wood with one end sharpened so that the latter could be stuck in the ground and then the bird retained in any position deemed desirable. The bristles were of the best shoemaker’s kind, and, were arranged in bunches of three on a stout carpet-needle.

By the by I have improved on these by substituting a fish-hook straightened (see Fig. 6). To do this take an ordinary eel-hook and make it red-hot in the gas or candle flame, holding it the while by means of a pair of pliers. It can be readily straightened after this, whether hot or cold, as the heating softens the wire. The utility of the barb lies in the fact that the bird cannot by any chance fly away with the bristle or lose it for you in its struggles, because of the barb’s holding power when thrust into the branch of a tree, etc.

But to return. Chatting about this and that we journeyed along till after old Twiddle had craned his neck over a ledge to regard the other side of a field he announced our walk for the present ended. On creeping through a hole in the hedge this field turned out to be a piece of evidently waste water meadow, so-called because the crops are, as it were, manured with water from the neighboring river, and a perfect little forest of thistles with their downy heads swaying in the breeze indicated the probable presence of the goldfinch. Some thorn-trees grew in a row down the center of the field, and hither and thither the sparrows flitted amongst their branches busily chattering the news of sparrowdom. But I saw no finches. “Twiddle,” said I, “where are the goldfinches?” “Ye’ll see where they be, sir, presently,” he answered, setting down the caged bird near the largest of the thorns. “Now, Billy,” he added, speaking to the bird, “crow away,” and with that he removed the handkerchief. Billy needed no second bidding, and his little throat quivered and trembled with the glad song which came thrilling forth.

Twiddle now placed the dummy bird just beneath a branch of the thorn close to the cage and so as to be easily seen, and all around it and round the cage the bristles carefully limed were stuck. All was now ready. We retired behind the hedge where we could see and not be seen.

Presently the singing was answered and we saw a gold-finch hopping about amongst the branches of the thorn. Suddenly it caught sight of the dummy bird and with a pleased swiftness flew towards it. In another second it had touched a limed bristle and was rolling over and over hopelessly liming its wings with every fresh bristle it touched.

Very carefully the little chap was dusted with a little fine earth to mitigate the stickiness and placed in another cage which the bird-catcher always carries for the wild birds. It is flat and long and well supplied with food and water; in the upper part of it is a hole sufficiently large to admit the hand, and to the two edges of this hole is tacked the leg of an old stocking, which falls inwards. Then the bird can easily be placed inside, but cannot escape, because the folds of the stocking fold together.

We caught five there and, as the market value of the birds was about twenty-five cents, Twiddle, it must be owned, had a very profitable morning’s work. Let me express a hope that my readers may be so successful.