The keepers tell me they get even with these kill-birds later in the
year, when they take to roosting in the woods, a mile away in the
valley. The birds are waited for at some point where they are accustomed
to slip in at dark, and one keeper told me that on one evening alone
assisted by a friend he had succeeded in shooting thirty birds.

On Winterbourne Bishop Down and round the village the magpies are not
persecuted, probably because the gamekeepers, the professional
bird-killers, have lost heart in this place. It is a curious and rather
pretty story. There is no squire, as we have seen; the farmers have the
rabbits, and for game the shooting is let, or to let, by some one who
claims to be lord of the manor, who lives at a distance or abroad. At
all events he is not known personally to the people, and all they know
about the overlordship is that, whereas in years gone by every villager
had certain rights in the down--to cut furze and keep a cow, or pony, or
donkey, or half a dozen sheep or goats--now they have none; but how and
why and when these rights were lost nobody knows. Naturally there is no
sympathy between the villagers and the keepers sent from a distance to
protect the game, so that the shooting may be let to some other
stranger. On the contrary, they religiously destroy every nest they can
find, with the result that there are too few birds for anyone to take
the shooting, and it remains year after year unlet.

This unsettled state of things is all to the advantage of the black and
white bird with the ornamental tail, and he flourishes accordingly and
builds his big, thorny nests in the roadside trees about the village.

The one big bird on these downs, as in so many other places in England,
is the rook, and let us humbly thank the gods who own this green earth