28 IN A CHESHIRE GARDEN 



much courage and skill in getting at the fat 

 on the food-stand, no matter how greatly the 

 difficulties of doing so may have been multi- 

 plied. 



It has been said that robins have more 

 power than most birds to see through the 

 window into a room, and I certainly have 

 observed that though as a rule neither robins 

 nor tits take much notice if I am standing 

 close by the window, yet sometimes a robin 

 appears that will spy me out as I sit by the 

 fire quite far away and be off in an instant. 

 I have sometimes wondered if such wild 

 robins might be immigrants from the Con- 

 tinent, where by all accounts they are less 

 tame than in England. 



Robins are pugnacious, and their duels are 

 not unfrequently to the death. I have seen 

 a robin pursue a sparrow and even fly straight 

 at a great tit and knock it off the food-stand, 

 but I have nqticed that generally a robin 

 makes way for a sparrow, and seldom stands 

 up to a tit of any kind, not even a marsh or a 

 coal-tit, birds hardly half its size. I remem- 

 ber one, however, in the winter of 1900-01 

 who indiscriminately attacked all tits on the 

 food-stand. He was very friendly with me, 

 and used to watch as I filled the receptacles, 

 when he would come close up and wait for a 

 bit to be thrown to him, and often as he saw 

 me coming he would sit on a corner of the 

 porch roof and warble a little song of wel- 



