In his autobiography, "Still Digging", Sir Mortimer Wheeler told of
being given an air-gun as as small boy - on condition that he ate
everything he shot. Farmers were happy to let him shoot sparrows along
the edged of cornfields. Half a dozen sparrows, cooked in a lump of fat
in a stone jam-jar, on a camp-fire, made an excellent tea for a small boy.
Anthea
On 7/02/2019 3:27 PM, Michael Hunter wrote:
The decline of house sparrows must be multifactorial. Although probably
irrelevant in their overall population, small birds such as sparrows apparently
made delicious pies, slowly cooked entire for hours until bones and all were
soft enough to eat. These pies were responsible for the carnage of migrating
songbirds in Southern Europe, which still goes on despite being forbidden by
the EU , The generally shyest birds I have ever tried to see were in the
Camargue in S France.
Pie shy .
Had we had today's multicultural society in the 1930s when sparrows were
collected , perhaps the starving workers of the Depression era might have
gourmet dined occasionally,
And what did the Chinese do with all the sparrows when Mau decreed that they be
exterminated?
Food for thought,
Sent from my iPho
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