After my musings about all those rarities that got shot in the grim-and-gripping pages of "The Birds of Lancashire" in the previous post, I thought I'd amass some examples of the mass destruction of rare birds in years gone by. If you haven't read it already, nip back one and have a gander .... Let's have some examples this litany of destruction ...this is about ¼ of a ¼ of a % of the actual frequency of "shootings" in the book.... here's a jolly start .... You can't help wondering how much of a Shore Lark would be left after it had been shot... and you've got the added bonus of a Skylark getting killed by a golf ball, and "large numbers" being trapped and killed for food. Terrific. That's before you even get to the Shore Lark section ... which has two bits of its own ..... all packed with lots of shooting etc..... Here's another top bit of shooting .... I wonder if it is still in the "Liverpool Museum" ... and while we're at it, where are those two "specimens" of Little Bustards eh ? Aha ! Pallas's Sand Grouse ... on the previous page they use the euphemism " obtained" instead of the more truthful " blasted into oblivion" .... I wonder if "the museum "at St. Michael's- on- Wyre is still there [yes it is ] ... complete with a "specimen." Oh look ! A Gull-billed Tern was swooshing around Blackpool in the no doubt lovely summer of 1832 when some bastard shot it. Woo ! I see that H.P.Hornby shot 4 Great Snipes "for" that St.-Michael's-on-Wyre Museum .... it must be stuffed with stuffed stuff by now ! Are they implying that birds were shot "to order" by hordes of pot-shotters ? Closely related, no doubt, in pre-indoor-toilet-days, to pit-shitters. This is all very jolly is is not ? What fun they all must have had..... And now the noble Chough .... and lo and behold, one got shot near Wigan in 1908. Incidentally, there's a lot of "qualifiers" in that little passage ... "no evidence", "assertion", "probably", "possibly", " in part", "based on", " said to have been", "appears to be" .... do you think there might be a slight frisson of doubt about some of that ? "Preserved" ... that's another euphemism .... it was most likely shot. Here's another nifty use of the word " obtained" ..... and obviously he wasn't going to stop at that first one ... no ...he ploughed on "securing" further examples. ..... I believe his nickname was Potshot Arsehole Clancey. I hope so anyway. This is all about Black Terns.... and amazingly, most of them survived .... and I see that that H.P. Hornby of "Four Great Snipe" infamy was at it again with his musket, fife and drum..... that's Halfwit Peabrain Hornby as far as I'm concerned. And now ,the Bittern. ! At the start of the ( long) Bittern article, the author bemoans all the shooting of Bitterns that has gone on. Well well. But throughout the rest of the book, he hardly puts in a word of criticism. And here, at the end of the account,he expresses his pleasure in noting that one was "watched" by ..oh no ! ...a gamekeeper... but ONLY watched. Mind you, who's to say he didn't come back later and shoot it ? ... and our last example is, of course ... American Bittern. For some unknown and inexplicable reason, that one went to Preston Museum. Perhaps that one in St. Michael's-on-Wyre was full up ! As we have seen, for some, life is short, but hopefully sweet .... This is a Roy Harper song, and this is the David Gilmour version ...
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AuthorThat's the author up there ... I was young and sprightly then. Archives
October 2022
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