Page 118 - Our Vanishing Wild Life

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96 OUR VANISHING WILD LIFE
hundred miles toward the sunny Barbary coast of North Africa. This great southward highway has been chosen by the birds of central Europe as their favorite migration route. Especially is this true of the small song-birds with weak wings and a minimum of power for long-sustained flight. Naturally, they follow the peninsula down to the Italian Land's End before they launch forth to dare the passage of the Mediterranean.
Italy is the narrow end of a great continental funnel, into the wide northern end of which Germany, Austria, France and Switzerland an- nually pour their volume of migratory bird life. And what is the result ? For answer let us take the testimony of two reliable witnesses, and file it for use on the day when Tony Macchewin, gun in hand and pockets bulging with cartridges, goes afield in our country and opens fire on our birds.
ThelinnetisoneofthesweetsingersofEurope. Itisasmall,deli- cately formed, weak-winged little bird, about the size of our phoebe- bird. It weighs only a trifle more than a girl's love-letter. Where it breeds and rears its young, in Germany for example, a true sportsman would no more think of shooting a linnet than he would of killing and eating his daughter's dearest canary.
To the migrating bird, the approach to northern Italy, either going or returning, is not through a land of plenty. The sheltering forests have mostly been swept away, and safe shelters for small birds are very rare. In the open, there are owls and hawks; and the only refuge from either is the thick-leafed grove, into which linnets and pipits can dive at the approach of danger and quickly hide.
A linnet from the North after days of dangerous travel finally reached Lake Como, southward bound. The country was much too open for safety, and its first impulse was to look about for safe shelter. The low bushes that sparsely covered the steep hillsides were too thin for refuge in times of sudden danger.
Ah! Upon a hilltop is a little grove of trees, green and inviting. In the grove a bird is calling, calling, insistently. The trees are very small but they seem to stand thickly together, and their foliage should afford a haven from both hawk and gunner. To it joyously flits the tired lin- net. As it perches aloft upon a convenient whip-like wand, it notices for the first time a queer, square brick tower of small dimensions, rising in the center of a court-yard surrounded by trees. The tower is like an old and dingy turret that has been shorn from a castle, and set on the hilltop without apparent reason. It is two stories in height, with one window,dingyanduninviting. Adooropensintoitsbase.
Several birds that seem very near, but are invisible, frequently call and chirp, as if seeking answering calls and companionship. Surely the grove must be a safe place for birds, or they would not be here.
Hark! A whirring, whistling sound fills the air, like the air tone of aflyinghawk'swings. Ahawk! Ahawk!
Down plunges the scared linnet, blindly, frantically, into the space sheltered by the grove