Are we hypocrites to admire lovely wild birds, to see to the protection of some, and yet to shoot and then eat with relish others? Well, are we hypocrites or worse to keep chickens for eating in hideously confined cages, and to have them on every menu in every restaurant and on our own tables? The new industrial system of rearing has made them available to people who, in the past, could not afford them.
But now to game birds. It's topical. One shop in Dublin a few days ago had pheasant, wigeon, teal, pigeon, of course - and woodcock. Now woodcock is, for the epicure, as for the shooting person, the number one bird. David Cabot tells us in his invaluable pocket size Collins Guide to Irish Birds, that we have about 4,500 nesting pairs, but that there is a massive winter immigration in November from England and a wide area of Europe to the east of the Urals. Severe weather brings more. Unless disturbed, he writes, it is seldom seen. And it is so camouflaged that you would walk over it on a woodland floor. At evening they come out to the fields to feed. The old fowler Sir Ralph Payne Gallwey claimed they had an insatiable appetite. He had a tame bird which "has often eaten before my eyes a cupful of garden worms and then looked wistfully for more."
There is an odd piece in a Swiss newspaper which gave a half page to game birds and their eating. Changing the sex from the Irish habit of calling it just The Cock, it names it "the queen of game birds". The article maintains that the bird is forbidden on French tables, meaning possibly that it may not be sold on the market, though hunters may shoot and eat. Or there may be a temporary ban. Anyway, in Switzerland there is no bar. (If you are at all squeamish, you may not like the next bit.)
They tell you to roast the whole carcass, not "drawing" or eviscerating it. After cooking, you mix the intestines with foie gras and Armagnac, apply the mixture to toast, to accompany your consumption of the bird. The real lovers of woodcock crunch the head and suck the brains out. Experts will wait until December, because your toast should be accompanied by a fine slice of black truffle, which only then is apparently available in Switzerland. And there are instructions for consuming other birds. The lark. Again not eviscerated, and the real gastronomes make only one mouthful of it, "munching slowly to extract all the juices."
Then there are thrushes on skewers en brochette. Enough? Well, there are the ortolans or bunting, but it wouldn't be fair to go on.