52 



Bird Notes and News 



stands best chance, or to forecast the 

 winner of the coming year from the achieve- 

 ments of the present. Events depend not 

 only on the teacher (powerful as is his or 

 her influence and inspiration) but on the 

 individual children ; not on what is poured 

 into the child's mind, but on what the young 

 mind has been trained and encouraged to 

 gather for itself. Large schools and small 

 schools, young Teams and older ones, 

 schools in remote villages and schools in 

 populous towns, alternately come to the 

 fore. There are schools with four or five 

 hundred children on the books who enrol 

 perhaps fifty " cadets " for the work, and 

 schools which have enough to do to scrape 

 together the necessary Team of nine. The 

 neighbourhood of Wigan is scarcely one to 

 suggest Nature Study ; yet it produces 

 several excellent Teams, including Lanca- 

 shire's champion, and promising work comes 

 from a district thus described by the 

 Teacher : — 



" The school is situated on the main road. 

 We have only two field paths in the whole 

 district, and although a wood is in sight it 

 is not open to the public. Our land is so 

 highly cultivated that the hedges are kept 

 low and close-cut, so that even wild flowers 

 are scarce. You will easily see that we can 

 only study the ordinary common birds. 

 We just have to do the best we can." 



To plucky schools like this the ordinary 

 common Birds should be left by the more 

 fortunate boys and girls who can ramble 

 through the meadows and by the streams 

 of rural Hampshire, Somerset and Warwick. 

 Yet in Warwick the mining districts do 

 exceptionally well ; while some of the most 

 charming and bird-haunted regions of almost 

 every competing county are unrepresented 

 in the Competition. The familiar is the 

 unappreciated and unheeded ; possibly for 

 the same reason the abundant Essays on 



Robins and Thrushes are rarely so good as 

 those on species which the young observer 

 has had to seek with diligence and watch 

 with difficulty. 



To those acquainted with the limited 

 range of bird-knowledge alike in town and 

 country, among adults and children, it may 

 be a surprise to learn that boys and girls 

 have written for the Society's Competition 

 original accounts of not less than a hundred 

 species. The number of different Trees 

 chosen has also been very large. 



The comment of Mr. Cox, quoted above, 

 as to the work of the younger children, is 

 equally applicable to every county. There 

 is often a charming freshness and simplicity 

 about their writing which is missing in the 

 more elaborate and self-conscious work 

 natural to those in their 'teens, when the 

 effort (often successful) to compose a well- 

 written paper is apt to take away attention 

 from the matter. A notable difference also 

 is observable between boys and girls, 

 generally speaking. The girls write the best 

 compositions, express themselves best, and 

 often show a very pretty grace of style. 

 The boys slog away at the facts, display 

 infinite patience in detail-work, and take 

 keen interest in correlated matters, such as 

 insect-life. The girl dwells on the dainty 

 form and colouring of a bud ; the boy cuts 

 it open and coimts the layers. The boy, 

 it may be added, takes also an unholy joy 

 in the bellicose tendencies of Birds, referring 

 even courting displays to pugilistic en- 

 counters, and rarely writes on the Robin 

 without serving up the old fable that every 

 young Robin kills its father. 



Both boys and girls show an intelligent 

 appreciation of the value of Trees and of the 

 various uses of their wood. More than one 

 Team recounts and deplores the felling and 



