37 
SIR PETER EADE ON “ MY CITY GARDEN.” 
this way : the Hedge Sparrow (or Dunnock or Accentor) does 
not often visit my garden, but one of these pretty birds did come 
at this time, and having incautiously entered the open door of my 
greenhouse, got shut up in it. Next morning, on my entering, it 
was, of course, somewhat frightened. But instead of violently 
fluttering about, and dashing itself against the window, as the 
House Sparrow will do in like circumstances, it very quietly and 
gently flew away from me, and then at once dropped down behind 
the brick flue, where it remained quiet and concealed, in spite of 
my efforts to find it, as I desired to do in order to give it its 
liberty. The same thing exactly happened on some following 
mornings ; and being fed regularly, it has remained there to the 
present time. 
There are plenty of other birds whose visits and whose peculiarities 
would provide abundant material for a paper much longer than 
I can venture now to inflict upon you. But they are all welcome 
for the sake of the varieties of life and habits they present — as 
well as for what Tennyson so prettily describes as their “singing 
and calling.” 
My grass-plot is the feeding-ground of the greedy and quarrelsome 
Starlings , which will often come for their meal of worms or other 
food at quite regular hours, usually at ten or eleven o’clock in the 
morning, and three to four in the afternoon. And occasionally the 
Jackdaws, from our neighbouring church-steeple, where they live 
and breed, will venture — most carefully and cautiously — to alight 
on the grass in search of food. Whilst even the Norwich Rooks 
will, when hard pressed in bad weather, occasionally dart down 
from a tree for crusts of bread or other edible matter obtainable in 
the garden. 
Thrushes and Blackbirds are chiefly in evidence during the 
nesting season ; and it is noticeable how tame or rather incautious 
they appear to become during this period. It would almost seem 
as if the sitting process produced in them (as has been noted 
of other birds) a dulness or partial stupor of their intelligence. 
Whilst after hatching, the urgent and continuous calls of their 
young ones for food evidently render their desire to satisfy these 
imperative and destructive of prudence. This very year a full-grown 
Blackbird ventured along the grass in search of worms almost up to 
the house verandah, in which, unfortunately, a cat lay basking ; 
