CHAPTER III 



TWO COMMON BIRDS 



No garden, however small, is without its 

 blackbirds and thrushes. Wherever we go we 

 meet the blackbird and the thrush. Every- 

 body knows them, the former in his smart 

 black uniform with contrasting orange bill, 

 and the latter in more sober brown set off by 

 his daintily spotted waistcoat. They raid the 

 fruit in our gardens, allotments, and orchards, 

 the former being by far the worst thief of the 

 two ; they make their nests in the shrubs at 

 our very doors, bringing up their families and 

 displaying their housekeeping ways under our 

 eyes; and they pour forth the joy of life in 

 glorious song from the tree-tops by our 

 windows. Yet these two birds are not, like the 

 house-sparrow, the rat, and the house-mouse, 

 pests, that live entirely on what they can steal 

 from us, following mankind as parasites aU over 

 the world, and hardly able to exist where there 

 are neither people nor houses, but are really 



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