vi PREFACE. 



by Life precisely the same as his own, and to allow 

 these feathered creatures that important share of intel- 

 ligence which their high mental qualities demand, 

 Too long have birds been regarded as mere machines; 

 yet their little lives, far from being the prosaic, auto- 

 matic existence we have been so accustomed to suppose 

 them, are full of poesy and intellectual fire. To appre- 

 ciate thoroughly the habits and the ways of birds we 

 must never lose sight of their mental attributes. 



I have so arranged the present volume that the 

 student may readily acquaint himself with what is 

 going on among the birds during every month of the 

 year. I make no pretensions to completeness ; the 

 subject is too vast and varied to be exhausted in a 

 single volume. In many cases the dates given can of 

 necessity only be approximate ones an allowance of a 

 few days either way must often be made for differ- 

 ences of latitude, state of the weather, and other local 

 influences. 



Should this little volume serve to increase the 

 interest taken in Natural History, or prove an incentive 

 to the keeping of local records of the ways and move- 

 ments of birds, the labour of compiling it from the 

 note-books filled during twenty years of field and 

 forest errantry will not have been altogether a vain 

 or a fruitless one. 



CHARLES DIXON. 



6, INGATESTONE TERRACE, 



WARREN ROAD, TORQUAY. 



