230 BIRDS IN TOWN AND VILLAGE 



chiffchaff, and greenfinch were occasionally heard j 

 outside the wood the buntings, chats, and the sky- 

 lark were few and far between. 



This scarcity of small birds is, I think, due in 

 the first place to the extraordinary abundance of 

 the jackdaw, the diligent seeker after small birds' 

 nests, and to the autumn and winter pastime of 

 bush-beating to which men and boys are given in 

 these parts, and which the Cornish authorities refuse 

 to suppress. 



After a time, when, owing to increasing debility, 

 I was confined more and more to the village, I began 

 to concentrate my attention on a few common species 

 that were always present, particularly on the three 

 commonest — ^rook, daw, and starling; the first 

 two residents, the starling, a winter visitor from 

 September to April. 



In October, I started feeding the birds at the 

 house where I was staying as a guest, throwing the 

 scraps on a lawn at the back which sloped down 

 towards the estuary. First came all the small birds 

 in the immediate neighbourhood — robin, dunnock, 

 wagtail, chaffinch, throstle, blackbird, and blue and 

 ox-eye tits. Then followed troops of starlings, and 

 soon all the rooks and daws in the village began to 

 see what was going on and come too, and this 

 attracted the gulls from the estuary — I wished that 

 it had drawn the curlews ; and all these big ones were 



