on Birds in. Towns.



99



Cuckoos too, during the summer, are heard and seen

frequently, but more especially in the parts where there are the

largest and most secluded gardens.


Jackdaws are very busy about the Church spires in the

early spring, but whether they actually breed in the town I have

not ascertained, though I am inclined to think they do.


One can draw many conclusions in explanation of this

feathered invasion, but perhaps, in our ignorant groping after

the truth, none of them would prove to be the right one. Are the

birds becoming more numerous each year through the operation

of the Wild Birds’ Protection Act, and, finding the surrounding

country contains as many birds as there is food for, they are

thus impelled to seek fresh fields ? It cannot be that here

amongst human-kind they find fewer natural enemies. It is true

we have no stoats, weasels, or marauding rats, and other vermin

to rob their nests and destroy their young, but we cannot be said

to be without cats, and where is the cat, however well fed at

home, that will not spend the greater portion of its time

prowling beneath hedges, and lurking amongst shrubberies on

the chance of getting a fat young Thrush or Blackbird or

Starling, not even despising a Sparrow.


Burroughs, the American ornithologist, and one of our

most fascinating writers on birds and bird life, says that birds

love the vicinity of human habitations. He relates how in one

of his excursions he penetrated into the American wilderness,

miles from any settlement, and how struck he was by the com¬

parative scarcity of bird life, and how disappointed he felt, as he

was expecting to find amongst the quiet woodland glades, almost

untrodden by the foot of man, a kind of bird paradise, such an

abundance of bird life in fact as he had never seen in the

vicinity of the towns he had lived near.


If such a bird lover as Burroughs advances such an

opinion, surely we are justified in adopting it in this instance as

one explanation of the increase of birds in Southport and

Birkdale, and, inasmuch as the explanation is flattering to our

vanity to think that the birds return the affection some of us

lavish upon them, it will be all the more agreeable.



