Page:Bird Haunts and Nature Memories - Thomas Coward (Warne, 1922).pdf/264

202 invasion of the upland pastures by the larvæ of the antler moth.

One remarkable, significant, and, in some quarters at least, unexpected result is that the stock of wild pheasants—that is to say, of birds which nested and reared their young without artificial aid—is greater than before the war. It has often been asserted that the pheasant, an introduced bird, could not exist without protection; I believe that it is so firmly established as a colonist that it has reached that position when it is fitted to maintain its own natural balance. The wild birds not only could exist, but actually benefited by the absence of competition with their hand-reared brethren; there was no longer overstocking.

Game preservation, a very ancient source of interference, has altered the constituents of the fauna more than most agencies, the cultivation of land and domestication of animals excepted; it has too often altered it for the benefit of the minority. Yet we must face the fact that the destruction of predatory creatures and the provision of shelters for game—woodlands, coverts, and moors—have proved advantageous to innumerable creatures, mammals, birds, and insects, for example, which were innocuous to game or beneath the notice of its guardians. We have no vivid faunal picture of our land before the days of forest and game laws, but we can imagine what it was like from analogy. A friend of mine who served as a doctor during the East African campaign was much struck by the apparent absence of small birds and the visible abundance of raptorial species. He argued that there must be a wealth of bird life to feed all these carnivorous vultures, kites, eagles, hawks, and falcons, and soon arrived at the correct solution of the problem; small mammals and birds sheltered in the dense jungle, the predatory birds "waited on," as the falconer would say.