BIRD NOTES. 
91 
BIRD NOTES.- 
HIS little book has given me very real pleasure, and I 
commend it without hesitation to the attention of all 
who care for birds, or feed them at the window. I do 
not think my judgment is biassed by the fact that these 
notes were made at Sidmouth, a place endeared to me by many 
tender associations, as well as by its own rich and varied beauty. 
Miss Hayward had the true gift of observation, and as she was 
a woman of cultivation and an artist, she was able to record 
her observations simply and truthfully, and here and there to 
make a not unsuccessful attempt to interpret them. She had little 
or no .scientific knowledge of birds, no pre-conceived ideas as to 
the “philosophy” of their life, or the moral perfection of their 
nature : she simply noted what she saw at her window, whether 
it pleased her or displeased her. At intervals during many years 
she made these notes, never thinking of publication, and never 
saw them in print : but the friend who has edited them has 
indeed done wisely, for they will be not only delightful reading 
for everyone, but of some real value to the ornithologist. 
Few of us have the leisure or patience to sit at a window and 
watch for a whole morning, and still fewer would remember to 
write down at once what they see. Turn to p. 92 of this book, 
and you will find an instance of the way in which even the quiet 
tenant of a drawing-room may see and record something new and 
strange. Two robins were standing face to face, and going through 
a performance that reminds me of Mr. Hudson’s chapter on 
“ Music and Dancing in Nature.” The date was January 25th (it 
is here recorded, though in other cases often unluckily omitted), 
and the pair were evidently courting. “ First one and then the 
other kept up a kind of dance and song, attitudinising like ballet 
dancers or nautch girls.” I will not anticipate the reader’s 
pleasure by quoting further. 
Miss Hayward was wonderfully happy in discerning and 
drawing the characters of her birds. Her blue tits were, as a 
rule, forward and quarrelsome ; of one of them she says, “ The 
bird must be possessed by a devil of some kind : the very expres- 
sion of its face is savage, and its attitudes still more so.” Her 
coal tits, on the other hand, were always quiet and modest. 
She had, among some more amiable birds, an overbearing 
robin and an ill-conditioned old chaffinch. She saw one black- 
bird pecking out another’s eyes ; and she had strong evidence 
that a nuthatch had bored a hole through the skull of one of her 
chaffinches. She has, indeed, much to tell us of more pleasing 
traits : but she was too honest to allow herself to believe, with 
the sentimentalists, that birds are angelic in their nature, and 
that man alone is vile. 
Bird Notes : by J. M. Hayward. (Longmans & Co. 6s.) 
