FEEDING BIRDS 



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Cowper's happy family, whose playful and affectionate ways 

 assuaged the melancholy of his madness, less deserve fame 

 than her household of birds and mammals, from which she 

 drew intense satisfaction to within a few minutes of her 

 death. Falstaff — not in Shakespeare perhaps, but in a 

 brilliant emendation of Shakespeare — ' babbled o' green 

 fields ' as he lay dying ; and there is 

 something Shakespearean in the last 

 hours of this modern naturalist. ' In 

 her dying moments,' wrote Mr. Gosse, 

 ' she was attended by those wild 

 creatures, who had long been accus- 

 tomed to her presence. When I 

 took farewell of her, two squirrels 

 were gambolling and struggling on 

 the toilet-table, and a robin was 

 seated on the edge of her cup. Her 

 last conscious moments were glad- 

 dened by the sound of the cuckoo 

 calling from the height of the great 

 tulip - tree opposite her bedroom 

 window, and awakening one more 

 flash in her sympathetic eyes.' She 

 laid great stress on winter feeding, 

 which ' gave her great insight into 

 the habits and traits of otherwise shy birds, as then, to a 

 lesser extent, and at all times, a large collection of birds 

 were to be seen in front of the windows, in size ranging 

 from a pheasant to the tiny tits ; even the fussy water birds 

 were enticed on to the lawn and under the tulip-tree.' 



If the birds are hungry and you have food, all the 

 'conditions precedent' to a common understanding exist 

 and will exert a compelling influence. There is virtue in 



BLUE-TITS 



