IMPRESSIONS OF ENGLISH BIRD-LIFE 



Next to our native birds, there are probably none of 

 more general interest to the average American nature- 

 lover than the birds of England. Personally, I confess that 

 my desire to see and hear the Nightingale, Skylark, Black- 

 bird, Redbreast, and other characteristic English species, 

 in their haunts, has been more intense than that which has 

 led me to the distant homes of tropical birds. I say ' ' in 

 their haunts," with emphasis, for I have at times with diffi- 

 culty avoided hearing these birds in cages; an unfortunate 

 enough experience in itself, and one which, having long in 

 mind a pilgrimage to their home, would have deprived a 

 first impression of half its force. 



This longing to meet English birds at home is in part 

 due to the fact that they live in England, in part to the place 

 they occupy in English literature, and in part to a desire to 

 compare them with our own birds. 



A meeting with the same birds in France or Germany 

 would not possess half the charm of an initial acquaintance 

 in England. Nearly, if not all, that we know and have read 

 of English birds, leads us to associate them with pastoral 

 England, with copse and hedgerow, down and moor; with 

 thatched roof and gray spire. For these attractive mental 

 pictures, we have to thank Wordsworth, Shelley, Coleridge, 

 Cowper, and other makers of English literature, to whose 

 influence we must largely attribute the widespread interest 

 in English birds, which, until recently, at least, have been 

 better known by name to most Americans than have been 

 our commonest native species. 



So far as birds are concerned, however, the poets can 

 only stimulate our desires without gratifying them, and the 

 comparison of English birds with ours is obviously out of 

 the question until one has seen and heard both. Even then 



