Page:Bird Haunts and Nature Memories - Thomas Coward (Warne, 1922).pdf/133

Rh them quietly sunning themselves we grabbed, but usually either missed them or only gripped the far too fragile tail. Then, as the late owner thankfully escaped amidst the tangled stems, we held the violently wagging caudal appendage in our fingers, watching the reflex struggles grow weaker and weaker. Vipers occurred, but we refrained from familiarities, though we treasured the cast sloughs when we found them.

Almost in the centre of the Moss was a pole-trap, cruel, but legal forty years ago, and near by, on some stunted birches, the keeper hung his "vermin"; when we were sure that the coat was clear we also visited the trap and gibbet. To the top of this solitary post, a tempting perch for any passing hawk, was chained an unbaited circular tooth-trap; many an innocent victim alighted for a rest and remained, hanging in agony, until the keeper chose to make his rounds. We found the mangled corpses of nightjar and cuckoo, even of thrushes and titlarks, on or near the fatal trap, but we were better pleased when we could recover the fairly fresh body of a kestrel or merlin for examination or efforts at the taxidermal art. That arch-robber, the carrion crow, avoided the fatal pole, but we found and annexed one which the keeper had nailed to a tree. Probably the marsh harrier formerly nested in the Moss, as it did on many of the wilder moors; about this time a young bird, perhaps visiting the home of its ancestors, was shot as it quartered the moor. Short-eared owls nested regularly, but in that wilderness of overgrown ling were hard to discover; we longed for but never found the nest.

In the previous spring the short-eared owls nested, probably for the last time, and a young bird was shot in the autumn. Carrington Moss was in transition; the last