William Collins
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Source ISBN 9780007308323
Ebook Edition © JANUARY 2019 ISBN: 9780007403691
Version: 2019-01-09
TO MY PARENTS
CONTENTS
Chapter 2: Ecological Considerations
Chapter 3: Some Predators and Their Prey
Chapter 5: Birds on the Farm: The Community
Chapter 6: Birds on the Farm: The Animal Feeders
Chapter 7: Birds on the Farm: The Seed-Eaters
Chapter 8: Birds on the Farm: The Grazers
Chapter 9: Bird Problems in Horticulture
Chapter 10: Birds and the Fisherman
Chapter 11: Birds and Industrial Man
Chapter 12: Wild Life Management
WE can only speculate on the impact of the stone-age hunters of Europe on birds: they must have had some effect at least on those species which were easy to catch. Certainly the larger mammals seem to have felt the pressure of man the hunter as long ago as the Pleistocene. Using molar tooth remains, Soergel has calculated the ages of Pleistocene elephants found at sites where either Heidelberg or Neanderthal man was present and at comparable sites where no human remains were found. In each case the age structure of the elephant population is much lower where man abided, suggesting that he was cropping the populations sufficiently heavily to increase the need for a high rate of replacement by young animals. Some indication of the importance of birds to these ancient hunters may be gleaned from the cave drawings at Lascaux, France. Fisher and Peterson give good reason for believing that they depict a fauna existing in a warm inter-glacial, 100,000 years ago. Flamingo, spoonbill, geese, crane, eagle and raven are all shown, together with a dead hunter wearing a bird mask and sporting a hunting stick adorned with birds.
The earliest indications of man’s interest in cereal culture date back in the Near East to about 8,000 BC. Remains of sickles, pestle and mortar have been found in mesolithic caves of Palestine, and arable farming had reached an advanced stage in the Near East by 3000 BC. This later neolithic culture did not spread to Britain until around 2000 BC and throughout the early and middle bronze ages men were still very much hunters rather than pastoralists, living a semi-nomadic life. Settlement brought man a new relationship with birds, because instead of loose contacts during hunting expeditions, conditions now existed for confining wild creatures and breeding them in captivity, leading to selective breeding and domestication. It is probably no coincidence, as the late F. E. Zeuner points out, that all the important domesticated birds are seed-eaters (pigeons and fowl), grazers or vegetable-eaters (geese and ducks), which could have gained an early association with man through their croprobbing habits. Hence, the first use of birds was as a direct food substitute, their value as egg-producers and for pleasure and sport was not exploited until later. Nonetheless, as early as the Iron Age, in the Hallstatt culture which flourished on the Austrian shores of Lake Constance, there is evidence in the form of a crude carving that man had established a ritualistic link with what was probably a goose. The goose-herd survives as an important element in the rural economy of the Balkans today.
The ancient Greeks and Egyptians had domesticated grey-lag
