EVENING RED AND MORNING GREY 



I must confess that I have not found this come 

 true of robins, any more than I have found waterwag-tails 

 coming on the lawn to be a harbinger of rain, or that 

 thrushes eat more snails than worms in the dry season. 

 Of this last I get enjoyment enough, for there is a stone 

 in my garden to which the fat thrushes come dragging 

 snails. They give them a mighty heave, and down 

 come the snails, " crack " on the stone, until the shell 

 is burst asunder and the delicious morsel is down Master 

 Thrush's gullet in the twinkling of an eye. The thrush 

 is certainly my favourite garden bird, both for his looks 

 and his song, and the blackbird I like least, for they 

 are bundles of nerves, screaming away at the slightest 

 suggestion of danger. The robin is a fine impudent 

 fellow and friendly in a truly greedy way, following the 

 smallest suggestion of digging with an eye for a good 

 dinner, so that if you are only pulling the earth up in 

 weeding you will have the brisk little gentleman at 

 your elbow, head cocked on one side, and an eye of the 

 greatest intelligence sharply fixed on you. Pigeons 

 I regard as an absolute nuisance, their voices sentimental 

 to a degree, in this way quite at variance with their 

 selfish, greedy and destructive characters. So they say : 



If the pigeons go a benting 

 Then the farmers lie lamenting. 



Starlings are very handsome birds but as they live 

 in congregations, or like regiments, one can have no 

 personal feeling for them, though I love to watch them 

 on winter evenings when they come in thousands from 

 the fields and fly to their roosting place, making the air 

 rustle with the quick beat of their wings. 



The bullfinch is a gardener's enemy, for he will strip 

 the fruit buds from a tree out of pure wantonness, and 

 yet he is a brave bird and nice to see about. 



209 2D 



