76 IN A CHESHIRE GARDEN 



She lived by herself not far from the railway 

 station, and every day, summer and winter 

 alike, she fed a number of rooks that habitu- 

 ally waited on her bounty. One winter's 

 day, it appears, she threw down food for a 

 few rooks that were in a tree behind her 

 house. The next day they were there again, 

 and again she fed them, and so it grew into 

 a regular thing, and they came expecting to 

 be fed like so many fowls every day of the 

 year. My informant often watched the pro- 

 ceeding, and said that the birds seemed to 

 know their benefactress quite well and not 

 to be at all afraid of her, though they were 

 as shy of strangers as any other rooks. 



Skylarks are abundant in the neighbour- 

 hood, and often in the garden we hear one 

 singing overhead. I have seen a lark sing- 

 ing his regular song on the ground, and have 

 seen one perched on iron railings by the side 

 of a road holding a largish brown moth in its 

 bill, and at the same time uttering repeatedly 

 two or three notes of its song. 



Larks are very fond of dusting in roads. 

 I remember being struck one hot day in June 

 by the number of dusting larks I met with 

 in a ten-mile ride. Without any exaggera- 

 tion there must have been one every twenty 

 yards on an average for the whole distance. 



