lo BIRDS, BEASTS, AND FISHES 



the lowest berries, catching the fruit in their bills and 

 hanging on till the slender stem gives way — in fact, pulling 

 them olT by sheer weight. 



After the breeding season the cock-bird stops his song 

 — it was used for selfish ends, for he is now content ; and 

 when the family "can do for themselves" they separate, 

 seeking the gardens dotted over the marshes or fringing the 

 villages. Nor do they do much good to the gardens, as do 

 the thrushes, starlings, and robins, but they merely gorge 

 strawberries, cherries, currants, gooseberries, &c. ; in many 

 a garden, moreover, they seek out the choicest peaches, 

 nectarines, and dearly love ripe figs — having the impudence 

 to fly into the fig-tree on one side whilst you are actuall}^ 

 getting fruit on the other. Peas, too, they delight in as 

 much as does the sparrow. He is a bold bird the blackbird, 

 but he weeps when his nest is robbed, wailing cJii-chi-chi, 

 though he does often fly boldly at the robber's head and 

 face. In truth, his audacity knows no bounds. One of 

 these pleasant thieves built his nest in an old English 

 codlin-tree growing in the middle of my strawberry patch, 

 which nest I was glad to rob, for I have never yet seen a 

 blackbird do good in the garden. 



Most insulting, too, is his vulgar cry as he flies away 

 over the wall — a mingled vulgar cry of alarm and derision — 

 a chortling that makes one glad when the winter cold drives 

 him to the homely fruit of the hawthorn — a dish too good, 

 however, for any but thrushes, who gratefully repay their 

 pilferings of fruit by killing snails. So much do I detest 

 him, that I have often wished an old peasant's love of black- 

 bird pie was a common taste. This old man used to fre- 

 quent the berried hedgerows with an old blunderbuss killing 

 blackbirds, and so peculiar was this taste, that the keeper 

 of those hedgerows began to suspect the blackbird-killer, 

 and one day he followed him up a lone hedgerow. The old 

 fellow went along calling " Pie, pie, pie ! " until at last a 

 fine cock blackbird flew out. " Fine cock ! fine cock ! " mut- 



