XIV Railway Birds and Flowers 



RAILWAYS have helped to lessen the numbers of 

 British birds and plants, by opening up remote 

 districts to traffic and cultivation ; but they also 

 provide them with some of their safest refuges. 

 The slopes of railway cuttings and embankments, 

 and the strips of land which border the course of 

 the line, present in very many cases exactly those 

 natural features which birds find most to their 

 liking, as well as a greater freedom from disturbance 

 at nesting-time than can be found in most fields 

 and hedgerows, and in many woods. Birds and 

 animals soon learn that, for all their rattle and 

 roar, the passing trains do not in the least interfere 

 with their own life ; while, as for the real dangers 

 to themselves, their nests, and nestlings from farm- 

 stock, dogs, and boys, the waste and fenced-off 

 margins of the railway form a sanctuary where 

 the monstrous bodies and blundering hooves of 

 horses and cattle do not threaten them, and upon 

 which the bird's-nesting village boy is, as a rule, shy 

 of trespassing. 



There are many different features of a line of 

 railway through ordinary undulating country which 

 make it attractive to the birds. Steep cuttings, on 

 the whole, do not offer many advantages to bird 

 life ; they are apt to be damp, cold, and bare 

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