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Our line is injured innocence, of course same as when the Sergeant reported us on suspicion of smoking in the bunkers. If I hadn't thought of buyin' the pepper and spillin' it all over our clothes, he'd have smelt us. King was gha-astly facetious about that. 'Called us bird-stuffers in form for a week." "Ah, King hates the Natural History Society because little Hartopp is president.
If he was not kind to the "bird-stuffers" as he called them, he was even less kind to the ringmen of the orchestra, the illustrious Kapellmeisters who toured the country to show off their flourishes and their dainty hands, those who exercised their virtuosity at the expense of the masters, tried hard to make the most familiar works unrecognizable, and turned somersaults through the hoop of the Symphony in C minor.
I have no evidence of any other Shrike occurring in the Islands, though I should think the Great Grey Shrike, Lanius excubitor, might be an occasional autumn or winter visitant to the Islands; but I have never seen a specimen myself or been able to glean any satisfactory information as to the occurrence of one, either from the local bird-stuffers or from Mr.
It is included in Professor Ansted's list, and marked as occurring in Sark only. I have not seen a specimen at Mr. Couch's, or any of the other bird-stuffers, but there is one in the Museum and some eggs, all of which are probably Guernsey. HOUSE SPARROW. Passer domesticus, Linnaeus. French, "Moineau domestique," "Grosbec moineau."
Their number, however, is, I think, rather increased in the autumn by migrants; at all events, more specimens are brought to the bird-stuffers at that time of year. I have before mentioned the incident of the Water Rail being killed by the Merlin, recorded by Mr. Couch in the 'Zoologist' for 1875. The Water Rail is included in Professor Ansted's list, and marked as occurring in Guernsey and Sark.
There is one small family the Skuas entirely unrepresented in my list; I am rather surprised at this as some of them, especially the Pomatorhine or, as it is perhaps better known, the Pomerine Skua, Stercorarius pomatorhinus, and Richardson's Skua, Stercorarius crepidatus, are by no means uncommon on the other side of the Channel, about Torbay, during the autumnal migration; but I have never seen either species in the Island, nor have I seen a Channel Island skin, nor can I find that either the bird-stuffers or the fishermen and the various shooters know anything about them.
Small dress-makers, bird-stuffers and "people who wrote" were her nearest neighbours; and further down the dishevelled street Archer recognised a dilapidated wooden house, at the end of a paved path, in which a writer and journalist called Winsett, whom he used to come across now and then, had mentioned that he lived.
I have never seen this latter bird in the Islands, however; nor have I been able to find that one has ever passed through the hands of any of the local bird-stuffers, and I cannot help thinking a mistake has been made; as both birds may, however, occur, and they are something alike, I may, for the benefit of my Guernsey readers, mention that they may immediately be distinguished; the axillary plume or long feathers under the wing, in the Green Sandpiper, being black narrowly barred with white; and in the Wood Sandpiper the reverse, white with a few dark bars and markings; the tail also, in the Green Sandpiper, is much more distinctly and boldy barred with black and white.
One of the most characteristic of their family is the Ornithorhynchus, or Duck-bill, which the early naturalists first thought was a fraud of the taxidermists, or bird-stuffers, and then, when finally convinced, deemed it a "freak-of-nature." But it is not a freak creature, but a "connecting-link" between the two great families of creatures.
Though very wild, I am sure I could easily have killed a couple had I had my gun, but I had found it necessary to reduce my party so uncompromisingly, that I could not afford a man both for my gun and instruments, and had sent the former back to Dorjiling, with Mr. Hodgson's bird-stuffers, who had broken one of theirs.
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