288 



SUMMER 



eccentricities of diet. Many visitors to one orchard were 

 shown as a marvel of growth a line of plum-trees which 

 had come out into fresh green leaf in August instead of in 

 May. Many conjectures were offered. The real one, only 

 known to the owner of the trees, was that every single bud, 

 leaf, or flower, had been quite cleared off by finches, not as 

 one might have expected by tits or bullfinches or haw- 

 finches, all of which have at 

 times a natural taste in buds, 

 but chaffinches. 1 1 was feared 

 that the trees would die, so 

 complete was the clearance. 

 In May they were as winter 

 trees, robbed of all leafage by 

 the sudden unexpected onset 

 of these finches. Were the 

 birds overcome with desire 

 for green food, or were the 

 buds infected with some in- 

 sect plague ? It is a question 

 unanswered in this case, and 

 in most of the instances where 

 finches still attack fruit-buds. 



Doubtless a garden interferes with the feeding instinct of 

 birds. These exotic and artificial tit-bits are a disturbance 

 of wild ways. In one part of the Isle of Wight the egg- 

 sucking, bird-killing jays descend every year upon the rows 

 of peas. They rip up the pods, and are so fond of what they 

 find inside that they can scarcely be frightened off the rows 

 even by sight of a gun. 



A more steady unbroken instinct possesses the summer 

 visitors, indeed all the migrants. The warbler and swallows, 

 the cuckoo and flycatchers, leave us first and foremost 



'THEY RIP UP THE PODS' 



