TWO COMMON BIRDS 



bits, extract the snail and swallow it. After 

 long trying he had found out how to deal with 

 snails, and henceforward he practised daily 

 (when I could find him snails), so that he was 

 soon an expert on the anvil, opening a snail 

 with a few blows, whereas to begin with it had 

 taken him ages to break one. It was very 

 evident that he learnt by experience, and that 

 the snail-cracking habit of the thrush is not 

 a specialised instinct, but arises from the 

 tendency of this bird to beat on the ground and 

 thus kill any food, like a big worm, which 

 cannot easily be managed. My thrush would 

 beat and hammer anything that was at all 

 troublesome or which he did not understand ; I 

 have even seen him pick up a pill-box and hit 

 it against the leg of the chair ! A roll of paper 

 was treated in the same way, or indeed any 

 little thing which was strange to him. 



In conclusion, I must remind those who may 

 read this that, though blackbirds and thrushes 

 are some of the commonest birds we have, they 

 are not therefore any the less interesting, and 

 that there is still much we might learn about 

 them. When we watch them from our windows 

 pulling worms out of the lawns, or carrying 

 away bits of hay and grass with which to make 



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