But in the majority of cases the motive is a mercenary
one; the collector expects to sell these spoils of the groves and
orchards. Robbing the nests and killing birds becomes a business with
him. He goes about it systematically, and becomes expert in
circumventing and slaying our songsters. Every town of any
considerable size is infested with one or more of these bird
highwaymen, and every nest in the country round about that the wretches
can lay hands on is harried. Their professional term for a nest of
eggs is "a clutch," a word that well expresses the work of their
grasping, murderous fingers. They clutch and destroy in the germ the
life and music of the woodlands. Certain of our natural history
journals are mainly organs of communication between these human
weasels. They record their exploits at nest-robbing and bird-slaying
in their columns. One collector tells with gusto how he "worked
his way" through an orchard, ransacking every tree, and leaving, as he
believed, not one nest behind him. He had better not be caught working
his way through my orchard.
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