Page:Vermin killer (1).pdf/21

 and easy to be framed; some of wood, some of horn, some of cane, and the like.

Having learnt first how to use this call, you shall sit and call the birds unto you, and as any of them light on your bush, step not out unto them till you see them sufficiently entangle; neither is it requisite to run for every single bird, but let them alone till more come, for the fluttering is as good as a stale to entice them more.

You may take these small birds only with lime twigs without the bush.

Some boys have taken two or three hundred small twigs about the bigness of rushes, and about three inches long, and have gone with them into a field where there were hemp cocks; upon the tops of half a score lying all round together, they have stuck their twigs, and theuthen [sic] have gone and beat that field or the next to it, where they saw any birds, and commonly such fields there are infinite numbers of linnets and green birds, which are great lovers of hemp seed.

And they flying in such vast flocks, they have caught at one fall for them upon the cocks eight dozen at a time.

But to return, there is a pretty way of taking birds with lime-twigs, by placing them near a stale or two made of living bats, placing them aloft that they may be visible to the birds thereabouts, who will no sooner be perceived, but every bird will come and gaze, wondering at the strangeness of the sight, and having no other convenient lighting place, but where the line twigs are you may take what number you list of them. But the owl is a far better stale than the bat, being bigger and more easily to be perceived, besides he is never seen abroad but he is followed and persecuted by all the birds that are near.

If you have not a living bat or owl, their skins will serve as well, stuffed, and will last you twenty years; there are some who have used an owl cut in wood, and naturally painted, with wonderful success.