Preface. 



This work originated in the idea that, amongst the 

 thousand-and-one books upon British birds, there 

 might be room for yet another which should treat of 

 their habits and mode of life as influenced by the 

 varying seasons of the year. For each change — of 

 strengthening light, increasing temperature and 

 lengthening days, or the converse in the second half 

 of the year — marks the epoch of some accompanying 

 event in the bird-world so closely associated with it 

 in the mind of the naturalist " who loves to lie i* the 

 sun " that he cannot imagine the one without the other. 

 What would the first genial day in February be without 

 the first soaring skylark, or October's roaring gale with- 

 out the fieldfares and redwings which drift overhead 

 with the flying leaves ? 



In Southern France, where an earlier spring than 

 ours treads on the heels of a winter which has passed 

 with scarcely a hint of damp and chill, we are conscious 

 of something wanting. The shower is past, and we 

 listen, for what ? On reflection we know what the ear 

 expects — the song of the thrush. Alas, the French- 

 man knows him better and appreciates him more 

 in the form of grive rdti than as the full-throated 

 chorister who pipes the onward march of spring. For, 

 spite of bird-catchers, idle hedge-poppers and larks 

 netted by the thousand for the table, birds meet on the 

 whole with a fairer and more sympathetic treatment 

 in this country than they do across the Channel. A 



