228 BIRDS IN TOWN AND VILLAGE 



country of the feeling or desire for birds during the 

 last two or three decades* In place of this discarded 

 matter I propose to give here the results of recent 

 observations on the bird life of a Cornish village* 



My residence in the Cornish village (or villages) 

 was during May and June* 191 5, and again from 

 October of the same year to June* 1916* These 

 were months of ill-health, so that I was prevented 

 from pursuing my customary outdoor rambling 

 life ; but, like that poor creature the barnyard fowl 

 that can't use its wings, instinctively, or from old 

 habit, I used my eyes in keeping a watch on the 

 feathered (and flying) people about me* 



The village, Lelant, is on the Hayle estuary, and 

 to see the Atlantic one has but to walk past the grey 

 old church at the end of the street, where the ground 

 rises, to find oneself in a wilderness of towans, as 

 the sand-hills are there called, clothed in their 

 rough, grey-green marram grass and spreading on 

 either hand round the bay of St* Ives* A beautiful 

 sight, for the sea on a sunny day is of that marvellous 

 blue colour seen only in Cornwall ; far out on a rock 

 on the right hand stands the shining white Godrevy 

 lighthouse, and on the left, on the opposite side of 

 the bay, the little ancient fishing-town of St* Ives, 



The river or estuary, in sight of the doors and 

 windows of the village, was haunted every day by 

 numbers of gulls and curlews* These last numbered 



