BIRD-LIFE NEAR GILWELL PARK, SEWARDSTONE. 69
Gilwell Park in 1920.—When I came to live at the
"White Cottage" in Gilwell Lanc, the Boy Scout Association
had come into possession of Gilwell Park only a few months
previously. For fourteen years the estate had been almost
untenanted and in 1920 it was practically a bird sanctuary,
and nests also abounded in the hedges of the then completely
rural Gilwell Lane. So much was then Gilwell Park a bird
reservation that in 1921 a pair of tree pipits nested, no doubt
as usual, in the centre of the boys' camping field. A fence was
erected around the site and labelled "Nest of Tree Pipit." The
nestlings were reared safely, though they had been constantly
watched by interested lads. In 1920 and 1921 two pairs of
nightingales nested within sight of my windows and I knew of
three more nests between my cottage and Yardley Hill.
Such things do not happen now. Civilisation has made
rapid strides and these birds have changed their nesting sites.
Looking back over ten years, I think that there arc fewer
individuals of some of the rarer birds in the district than there
were in 1920. This could hardly fail to be the case, for the
lane is now a well-made road, alive at the week-ends with
lorries, cars, motor bicycles and pedestrians. But so far as
the number of species of birds is concerned, they have almost
held their own and during the past ten years I have noted the
entire disappearance of only one species, namely the Whinchat,
and the cause of the withdrawal of this bird from its former
haunts is explained in the note on this species given later. A
counter influence to the adverse effect on bird-life of road-making
and hut-building may possibly be found in the marked diminution
to-day of the habit of bird-nesting, as compared with ten years
ago. During my first two seasons here, there was scarcely a
day in early spring when I had not to address boys and men
who were either wantonly beating the hedges to find nests or
were equipped with apparatus and cages for catching birds by
the liming process. On one occasion we watched a party of
youths rob a blackbird's nest, divide the spoils and swallow the
contents of the eggs. To-day such things rarely come before
our notice and only once this season have I had to forbid two
men the use of the catapult, with which they nearly shot me
instead of the bird. Popular opinion, the activities of the
keepers, the propaganda of the Royal Society for the Protection