Page 119 - Our Vanishing Wild Life

SLAUGHTER BY ITALIANS
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Horrors! Whatis this?
Threads! Invisible, interlacing threads; tangled and full of pockets, treacherously spanning the open space. It is a fowler's net ! The linnet is entangled. It flutters frantically but helplessly, and hangs there, caught. Itsalarmcryisfranticallyansweredbythetwostrange,invis- ible bird voices that come from the top of the tower
The grove and the tower are A ROCCOLO! A huge, permanent, merciless, deadly trap, for the wholesale capture of songbirds ! The tower is the hiding place of the fowler, and the calling birds are decoy birds whose eyes have been totally blinded by red-hot wires in order that they willcallmorefranticallythanbirdswitheyeswoulddo. Tliewhistling wings that seemed a hawk were a sham, made by a racquet thrown throughtheairbythefowler,throughaslotinhistower. Hekeepsby him many such racquets.
The door of the tower opens, and out comes the fowler. He is low- browed, swarthy, ill kept, and wears rings in his ears. A soiled hand seizes the struggling linnet, and drags it violently from the threads that entangled it. A sharp-pointed twig is thrust straight through the head of the helpless victim at the eyes, and after one wild, fluttering agony—it is dead.
The fowler sighs contentedly, re-enters his dirty and foul-smelling tower, tosses the feathered atom upon the pile of dead birds that lies upon the dirty floor in a dirty corner,—and is ready for the next one.
Ask him, as did Mr. Astley, and he will tell you frankly that there are about 150 dead birds in the pile,—starlings, sparrows, linnets, greenfinches, chaffinches, goldfinches, hawfinches, redstarts, blackcaps, robins, song thrushes, blackbirds, blue and coal tits, fieldfares and red- wings. He will tell you also, that there are seven other roccolos within sight and twelve within easy walking distance. He will tell you, as he did Mr. Astley, that during that week he had taken about 500 birds, and that that number was a fair average for each of the 12 other roccolos.
This means the destruction of about 5,000 songbirds per week in that neighborhood alone! Another keeper of a roccolo told Mr. Astley that during the previous autumn he took about 10,000 birds at his small and comparatively insignificant roccolo.
And above that awful roccolo of slaughtered innocents rose a wooden cross, in memory of Christ, the Merciful, the Compassionate
Around the interior of the entwined sapling tops that formed the fatal bower of death there hung a semicircle of tiny cages containing live decoys,—chaffinches, hawfinches, titmice and several other species. "The older and staider ones call repeatedly," says Mr. Astley, "and the chaffinchesbreakintosong. ItistheonlysongtobeheardinItalyat the time of the autum migration."
And the King of Italy, the Queen of Italy, the Parliament of Italy and His Holiness the Pope permit these things, year in and year out. It is now said, however, that through the efforts of a recently organized
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