156 WILD BIRDS 



and the greater spotted woodpecker, the " French 

 pie/ 1 has also a red eye and a red crown, whereas 

 the green woodpecker's eye is inconspicuous. But 

 the English warblers, finches, larks, buntings, pipits, 

 and other orders of small birds have nothing remark- 

 able about their eyes. I should say a skylark's 

 eye is brown, somewhat like its plumage ; but I 

 have no notion what is the colour of the chaffinch's 

 or the goldfinch's or the linnet's ; probably few 

 people who have kept such birds in cages for years 

 could say what their eyes were like, unless they 

 looked carefully at them. It is much the same 

 with many of the middle-sized birds. The cuckoo 

 is an exception. Here the yellow eye amid the 

 ash-grey plumage is striking. A friend writes to me 

 of the " mild blue " of the jackdaw's eye belying the 

 villainy of the bird's character. The jackdaw's eye 

 is uncommon, though I am not sure it is really blue. 

 He goes on to speak of the wonderful arrangement 

 of bone in the eyes of the raptores, and he asks, 

 " Did you ever examine the iris of the grebe ? 

 Those I used to kill in the Falklands had a gold rim 

 at the pupillary margin. When the pupil was con- 

 tracted this was thrown into folds, and looked like 

 gold beads." 



Apart from the hawks, falcons, and owls, some of 

 which have very hard and vivid eyes, the families 

 of birds that strike one most in this feature are 

 the ducks, the divers, the grebes, the cormorants, 

 the spoonbill, several of the herons, the oyster- 

 catcher, the crane, and the bittern. To only a few 



