The great thing about St Ann’s Allotments is the opportunity they provide for personal enjoyment and time with family and friends. Even a little quiet time, with just the song of the birds and the buzzing of the bees, can improve our mental state. One bird we don’t see or hear these days is the nightingale. It’s hard to believe that the nightingale was once a visitor to the Hungerhill Gardens:
“The first Hungerhills have also been charmed with one of these birds [nightingale], but ere it had located long in that neighbourhood, some malevolent wretch took it in his head to shoot it. What a pity it is that such beings should be permitted to have firearms in their possession at all. We would caution the perpetrator of this wanton act of cruelty, against being seen trespassing again in the Hungerhill gardens, for the purpose of gratifying his barbarous propensities – a sharp look out will be kept for him.”
(Nottinghamshire Review, May 1833)
As this news report states, this cruel act was carried out by some “malevolent wretch”. In some cases, however, the authorities consider it necessary to cull birds and animals, often for controversial reasons. At the start of World War One, for example, the police visited a pigeon fancier’s loft on the Hungerhill Gardens:
“The loft of a Nottingham pigeon fancier acknowledging Germany as the land of his birth, though he is a naturalised Englishman, has recently been visited by the police, and as a result several of the birds have been killed, whilst the remainder have been disposed of. The loft was situated on one of the Hunger Hill gardens, and the owner, who has lived in the city for over thirty years, is the proprietor of a substantial business and has considerable property….. The police were satisfied that none of them came from German lofts……. Other local lofts have also been visited, as a matter of precaution, and the owners have been advised not to give the birds liberty.”
(Nottingham Journal, 1st September 1914)
Any homing pigeons cooing in German clearly had to be rooted out at a time of national crisis.
By Paul Freeborough, volunteer
Image by Kev Chapman
