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SUMMER 



be so full of young birds without our noticing them. If 

 the younger fledglings had yet learnt fear of man and 

 domestic animals, they would fly from us, and all the copse 

 would be in a scurry, and the thickness of its population 

 be manifest. But when a young thrush or greenfinch or 

 water-wagtail leaves the nest without disturbance, it still 

 regards man without alarm ; anxiety is left to its parents, 

 which often do their utmost in vain to wake it to a sense 

 of the perils latent in gardeners and exploring house-dogs. 

 While they screech and flutter a few yards from the object 

 of alarm, the young bird sits perfectly calm within a few 

 feet of it. Silence is eventually restored by the departure 

 of the intruder, if it is dog or man, or often in a more 

 disastrous manner if it is the cat. Young birds seem to 

 have no such instinctive fear of cats as monkeys are said 

 to have of snakes ; they will wait quite placidly for their 

 doom. This is not the numbness of fascination ; it is merely 

 the absence of perception. When 

 our attention is attracted to a young 

 robin by a sudden cry from some 

 bough close to our head, it is often 

 evident that the little bird has a 

 very vague idea of what we are, and 

 sometimes overlooks us altogether. 

 The round staring eye does not focus 

 a moving figure, or appear to dis- 

 tinguish it from the surrounding 



shrubbery; it sees men as trees. If the bird is half 

 startled by the noise of a body pushing through the bushes, 

 it will shift its position on its perch, or sometimes flutter to 

 a new one, but still without discovering the intruder by 

 sight. It is curious to watch the sudden dawn of conscious- 

 ness in the eyes of a young bird when it does first appre- 



