INTRODUCTION. 



IN these pages I have attempted to give a somewhat uncon- 

 ventional view of bird life in England and her sister kingdoms 

 to north and west. The naturalist may smile at a monograph 

 so incomplete as this, but in Yarrel, Morris, Gould, Grey, 

 and a score of others, he will find exhaustive authors who 

 have gone with infinite care and pains through the whole 

 list of British birds and epitomized each. No attempt of 

 this sort has been made here. There are, to begin with, 

 more than three hundred birds nesting with greater or 

 lesser frequency in our islands, and even at such modest 

 allotment as two pages to each, we should have at once a 

 bulky volume of six hundred pages. But the greater part 

 of these wild fowl of meadow and marsh are the curator's 

 birds alone, and lovers of country side and the life of copse 

 and dingle can only hope to meet with but a very much 

 reduced selection from the formidable list which professors 

 and students have put together. It is of these birds, the 

 more familiar ones, I write. 



Nor, though loving the gun and a long day in the open 

 over heather or rushes, illogical as it may seem to the 



