Introduction 17 



or our lack of appreciation or understanding, that so 

 often results in the woeful condemnation of this or that. 

 Prove to me up to the hilt that any one thing that lives 

 does not fulfil some useful link in the immense chain of 

 existence, and to my mind the whole scheme of creation 

 falls toppling to the ground. But enough of this moralis- 

 ing. Let us to the fields and woods to listen to the 

 birdland orchestra, or to be conducted by the Author to 

 the rockgirt shores of our treasure island home so as to 

 watch the seabirds both at work and play. There one 

 shall find respite and relaxation from the busy turmoil 

 of a topsey-turvey world at a period when the mind 

 sorely demands some solace and stimulant such as Nature 

 alone can offer. 



Birds, as I have stated in ' ' My Life as a Naturalist," 

 and several other volumes which have met with so much 

 encouraging success from an appreciative Nature loving 

 public, were my early love and I shall always retain a 

 warm place in my affections for these cheery heralds of 

 the Spring and Winter's frost and snow 



The nightingale visits my dining-room every Summer, 

 the Redbreast persists in curtseying to me and feeding 

 from my hand, and I have noted over sixty different 

 species of birds in and around my home-made garden at 

 Letchworth Garden City. These feathered visitors 

 afford me unfeigned delight at all times, and are so con- 

 scious of protection that, my ire during the fruit season, 

 is frustrated because of the good they otherwise do and 

 the immense pleasure they afford during my country 

 pilgrimages. 



In the great play that's never done birds occupy a 

 very important part, and it is difficult to conjure up 

 those far off days when there were no birds and no flowers, 

 a birdless and a flowerless world. We live to-day in the 

 most beautiful period in the world's history, and when 

 civilisation awakes to its real sense of proportion we 

 shall all, as Ruskin predicted, return to Nature. Then, 

 let us fervently hope, we shall, in the words of Ralph 

 Walds Emerson, ' ' walk with her trustingly, scorning 



