boyhood's old favourite, the brick trap, or the sieve and
string, both very well in their way in hard weather; but a notice may
be required as to the uses to which the next simplest trap, or springe
(the horsehair noose), may be applied. For the very few people who do
not know how to set it, I will, in the manner of Col. Hawker, who did
everything at the time which he wished to explain in writing, proceed
to make one.

Fig. 1--Loop in wire.

Here, then, I have a black horsehair about two feet long; I double it,
holding it between the right-hand finger and thumb, leaving a little
loose loop of about half an inch long; from this point I proceed by an
overhand motion of the thumb to twist it up; on reaching the bottom I
make a small knot to prevent its unrolling; then, pushing the knotted
end through the eye of the loop, I thus form a loose noose. I then
attach a piece of wire to the free end by a twisted loop (see Fig. 1).

With about half a dozen of these springes coiled in an oval tin box I
am ready to snare any small bird whose haunt I may discover. Birds
which are nesting can easily be caught by placing one noose in the
nest and others round the edge or mouth, making fast the end wires to
any contiguous branch or twigs. Moorhens or water-rails, which swim or
run through the constantly frequented tracks which they have made in
dense undergrowth or rushes in bogs, may be captured by attaching
these nooses to a string stretched across--indeed, a writer in the
Field, of July 8, 1876, says, speaking of Turkestan:

"Ducks are caught by rather a clever arrangement with horsehair nooses
attached to a string, which is stretched over the ditches and canals
used for irrigation, and so close to the water that the ducks are
compelled when swimming under the string to stretch out their necks,
when they are easily caught in the hanging nooses."

Also a useful plan for catching plovers or snipes, which haunt the
edges of streams having a narrow margin between the bank and the
water, is described by him as used for catching quails:

"One method is simplicity itself: a hair noose is fastened to a lump
of clay well worked together; a number of these appliances are
scattered about the lucerne fields, which the quails are fond of
frequenting; the bird caught in the noose is prevented from flying
away owing to the weight of the lump of clay and its getting easily
entangled in the grass."

Wheatears and ortolans are caught by suspe