TO THE READER ix 



would hesitate to do so; for, as is well known, colours 

 depend upon surroundings, and to have the " unlettered 

 scientist" running off the delicate colours of a bird's 

 plumage as if the creature were a diagrammatic colour- 

 sheet, is too ludicrous for science, and only permissible to 

 poets. For a diagnostic key. Colonel Irby is capital. 

 Should the young student be a sportsman, let him read 

 any and every book Sir Ralph Payne-Galway has written, 

 and he will need no others ; though for standard works he 

 may buy Macgillivray, and perhaps Seebohm ; and if he 

 reads German, Naumann — cataloguer-in-chief Booth's 

 Rough Notes, in a cheap reprint, without illustrations, 

 would be acceptable. Mr. Bowdler Sharpe's new book 

 {ivithout the illustrations) and Mr. Harting's Otir Summer 

 ]\Iigraiits should be added. And he will find these books 

 sufficient ; for your true bird lover must avoid too much of 

 the man of measurement. Let his task merely be to be able 

 to distinguish the birds by sight and by their voices, and all 

 England will have a new interest for him ; for your real 

 lover of birds is your artist who observes with no idea of 

 making " copy," but because birds are beautiful and attrac- 

 tive, and their little lives full of interest. And to such a 

 student of Nature the " scribbler " with the note-book is 

 abracadabra — a veritable thorn in the flesh. 



My little essays have been written from things observed 

 by myself; and though it were possible to contradict every 

 existing authority on certain minor details, I question whether 

 it is worth while to point out that the " true royston crow " 

 does often sit still for hours in misty weather, as a recent 

 writer has denied ; that a rail's groans and grunts are no 

 more " sharming " than the chortling of a blackbird, as Mr. 

 Saundere^ asserts — sharming having no specific meaning, every 

 animal crying is said to be sharming in Norfolk ; that the 

 brambling often stays here till April, and that the red-leg 

 resides all winter in parts of the British Isles, as is denied 

 by most writers, and so on, and so on; but cui bono? And 



