I HAVE always been a lover of i)iid.s. 'riieir sweet 

 songs and interesting- liaMts were the chief charm 

 of my hovhoods days, and still continue 1o .i^ive nie 

 unalloyed pleasu re. 



When quite a tiny toddler, I used to sit on my 

 ca-andfather's knee, and listen open-mouthed to the 

 old man's wonderful stori<_'s ahout our feathered 

 friends, and chq) my hands with ,L;lee whenever he 

 imitated the cries of Owls and Peewits for me. As 

 a special treat he u.sed to mak(' up cunning little 

 rhymes about binK L'xrhanginu ilnir n(.'sts. in order 

 to show me what a world of coufusion would 1)0 

 likely to arise out of species ..f ditlerent habits tryuig 

 to manage each other's atiairs. He was a lover of 

 all living things, and I never heard of his trying to 

 shoot a bird but onre, and that single attempt, 

 curiously enough, i^'uded only in a great smashing 

 of crockery. It came about in this way. An im- 

 pudent and troublesome (Aarrion (Jrow alighted in 

 a row of trees in front of his house, and he took my 

 father's single-barrelled gun from its moorings along- 

 side a beam in the old farm kitchen. The piece 

 and my grandfather being strangers to each other, 

 so to speak, it went off bang before he had time to 

 leave the house, and broke every plate in the oak 



