3-039-161 - The Print Collector/Heritage Images

The months: April, 1871. 'Our Illustration of British Natural History...represents an incident familiar to...game preservers. Leverets and young pheasants have a cruel enemy in the prowling domestic cat, which returns to the habits of savage life and roves the woods as a wild beast of prey. It is in the early spring that...[they] are wont to commence their annual depredations. The knowing gamekeeper will then lay his traps for them or watch to slay them with his gun. Many a householder in the heart of the country will miss and mourn for the loss of a favourite indoor companion and trusted champion against the rats and mice. But those who walk near the woods...know what it means when they hear the chattering clamour of the birds...A cat visiting the sylvan thicket on a murderous and marauding expedition is sometimes regularly mobbed by the birds, and hustled out as an intruder. The feathered creatures of diverse races and tribes will make common cause to expel such a hated foe. The missel-thrush, the jay, and the blackbird are usually the loudest in their protestations. But their alliance and severe prosecution of the warfare against this enemy of the native Fauna must be witnessed by the human spectator with admiration no less than diversion'. From "Illustrated London News", 1871.