Other countries, other customs. Shooting thrushes is big in French hunting circles. In fact the thrush family, listed in the magazine Le Chasseur Francais as covering fieldfare, mistle thrush, song thrush, redwing and blackbird, can number as many as 13 million. This would be at the height of the incursion, especially of fieldfare and redwing. Which, it is said, makes them the most numerous of any species hunted in France. The really serious, it appears, make huts or hides - for example in vineyards, to be used after the grape harvest. The hut system is especially favoured in Provence, says the magazine, and it interviews one Marius, apparently the prince of them all. He sits in his hut waiting for the thrushes of various kinds to drop down, lured by live decoy birds, which he keeps in cages.
These are so placed as to lure the others onto bird-limed bushes, or to be shot. His main interest is in the migratory flocks, i.e. the big targets. He has to know not only the places where the birds traditionally come in, but also, he says, the lunar quarters which the birds follow. The autumn and winter migratory channels, are, he explains different, so he has to have more than one site - sometimes, it may be they are dozens of kilometres apart. And the decoy birds, do they have to be looked after in any particular way? Yes, and daily, is the answer. They have to be protected from wind, and you have to feed them at once, when you catch them. The recipe is dried figs cut small, mixed with flour. That recipe, he says solemnly, "comes down to us from the time of the Roman Expire. So you see, this hunt is traditional."
As to water for these birds, it should not be from the tap but from the well or spring. And you must keep the birds free of parasites - he gives the name of a suitable powder. And the cages have to be cleaned daily. Twenty five birds, of various species should make up a decoy team. Are young people interested in these old practices? Unfortunately not, he says. The lure of the towns and cities and all that. But in the departement of Var, on the Mediterranean, westwards, the hunting organisations have set up competitions about wildlife, and teachers are following suit. This should be extended to all of France, says this upholder of the old order. In Ireland, according to David Cabot in his Irish Birds (Collins), we have an estimated nearly two million pairs of blackbirds; some 90,000 pairs of mistle thrushes, 390,000 pairs of song thrushes. All protected, of course?