COSTLY BIRDS

Evening Star, Issue 23717, 26 October 1940, Page 3

COSTLY BIRDS

The private report of the Eif* Preservation Fund, to which more than 300 bird lovers in Great Britain, and ten nature societies, subscribe, not only gives some strange information about. Britain’s rarest hawks, but shows that ; it-costs nearly £SOO a year to protect' half a dozen nesting pairs in their lonely mid-Wales hill woods. Information has to be collected' of their whereabouts in spring so that their nests can be located when they settle down, and day and night watchers —even camp-, ing on the nills in lonelier districts—are paid wages, with a bonus for every,’ pair successfully hatching off without''' egg collectors climbing the trees. a dozen pairs were located last year—the names of their haunts are being kept secret for obvious reasons—one young pair was not found to have nested, one pair definitely reared a young kite, while young kites seen in another locality after a pair had moved from a tree by a public footpath may have been their offspring reared elsewhere. Despite the careful watch maintained, with a motor car patrol, there were a number of raids by collectors, chiefly at dawn and dusk. There even seems to be a system of spying to discover the date when the paid watchers are to take up residence by the nest and forestall them.