When The People Of The Place, The Squire And
Keepers And Others Who Have An Interest In The Reeds And
Osiers, Fall To Abusing Them On Account Of The Damage They Do,
I Put My Fingers In My Ears.
But at Abbotsbury I did not do
so, but listened with keen pleasure to the curses they vented
and the story they told.
This was that when the owner of
Abbotsbury came down for the October shooting and found the
starlings more numerous than ever, he put himself into a fine
passion and reproached his keepers and other servants for not
having got rid of the birds as he had desired them to do.
Some of them ventured to say that it was easier said than
done, whereupon the great man swore that he would do it
himself without assistance from any one, and getting out a big
duck-gun he proceeded to load it with the smallest shot and
went down to the reed bed and concealed hiniself among the
bushes at a suitable distance. The birds were pouring in, and
when it was growing dark and they had settled down for the
night he fired his big piece into the thick of the crowd, and
by and by when the birds after wheeling about for a minute or
two settled down again in the same place he fired again. Then
he went home, and early next morning men and boys went into
the reeds and gathered a bushel or so of dead starlings.
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