266 BIRDS IN TOWN AND VILLAGE 



it presented itself at that time and is now out of 

 date, thanks to the legislation of recent years and 

 to the growth in this country of the feeling or 

 desire for birds during the last two or three de- 

 cades. In place of this discarded matter I pro- 

 pose to give here the results of recent observations 

 on the bird life of a Cornish village. 



My residence in the Cornish Village (or vil- 

 lages) was during May and June, 1915, and 

 again from October of the same year to June, 

 19 1 6. 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, in- 

 stinctively, 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 wilder- 

 ness 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 



