Birds of Town and Village

Birds of Town and Village

The Project Gutenberg EBook of Birds of Town and Village, by W. H. Hudson #6 in our series by W. H. Hudson
Copyright laws are changing all over the world. Be sure to check the copyright laws for your country before downloading or redistributing this or any other Project Gutenberg eBook.
This header should be the first thing seen when viewing this Project Gutenberg file. Please do not remove it. Do not change or edit the header without written permission.
Please read the "legal small print," and other information about the eBook and Project Gutenberg at the bottom of this file. Included is important information about your specific rights and restrictions in how the file may be used. You can also find out about how to make a donation to Project Gutenberg, and how to get involved.
**Welcome To The World of Free Plain Vanilla Electronic Texts**
**eBooks Readable By Both Humans and By Computers, Since 1971**
*****These eBooks Were Prepared By Thousands of Volunteers!*****
Title: Birds of Town and Village
Author: W. H. Hudson
Release Date: January, 2005 [EBook #7353] [Yes, we are more than one year ahead of schedule] [This file was first posted on April 20, 2003]
Edition: 10
Language: English
Character set encoding: ASCII
*** START OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK BIRDS OF TOWN AND VILLAGE ***

Produced by Eric Eldred

BIRDS IN TOWN & VILLAGE
BY
W. H. HUDSON,
F.Z.S.
AUTHOR OF "THE PURPLE LAND," "IDLE DAYS IN PATAGONIA," "FAR AWAY AND LONG AGO," ETC.
1920

PREFACE
This book is more than a mere reprint of Birds in a Village first published in 1893. That was my first book about bird life, with some impressions of rural scenes, in England; and, as is often the case with a first book, its author has continued to cherish a certain affection for it. On this account it pleased me when its turn came to be reissued, since this gave me the opportunity of mending some faults in the portions retained and of throwing out a good deal of matter which appeared to me not worth keeping.
The first portion, "Birds in a Village," has been mostly rewritten with some fresh matter added, mainly later observations and incidents introduced in illustration of the various subjects discussed. For the concluding portion of the old book, which has been discarded, I have substituted entirely new matter-the part entitled "Birds in a Cornish Village."
Between these two long parts there are five shorter essays which I have retained with little alteration, and these in one or two instances are consequently out of date, especially in what was said with bitterness in the essay on "Exotic Birds for Britain" anent the feather-wearing fashion and of the London trade in dead birds and the refusal of women at that time to help us in trying to save the beautiful wild bird life of this country and of the world generally from extermination. Happily, the last twenty years of the life and work of the Royal Society for the Protection of Birds have changed all that, and it would not now be too much to say that all right-thinking persons in this country, men and women, are anxious to see the end of this iniquitous traffic.
W. H. H.
September, 1919.

CONTENTS
PAGE
BIRDS IN A VILLAGE:
I
II
III
IV
V
VI
VII
VIII
IX
X
XI
EXOTIC BIRDS FOR BRITAIN
MOOR-HENS IN HYDE PARK
THE EAGLE AND THE CANARY
CHANTICLEER
IN AN OLD GARDEN
BIRDS IN A CORNISH VILLAGE:
I. TAKING STOCK OF THE BIRDS
II. DO STARLINGS PAIR FOR LIFE?
III. VILLAGE BIRDS IN WINTER
IV. INCREASING BIRDS IN BRITAIN
V. THE DAW SENTIMENT
VI. STORY OF A JACKDAW

BIRDS IN TOWN & VILLAGE

BIRDS IN A VILLAGE I
About the middle of last May, after a rough and cold period, there came a spell of brilliant weather, reviving in me the old spring feeling, the passion for wild nature, the desire for the companionship of birds; and I betook myself to St. James's Park for the sake of such satisfaction as may be had from watching and feeding the fowls, wild and semi-wild, found gathered at that favored spot.
I was glad to observe a couple of those new colonists of the ornamental water, the dabchicks, and to renew my acquaintance with the familiar, long-established moorhens. One of them was engaged in building its nest in an elm-tree growing at the water's edge. I saw it make two journeys with large wisps of dry grass in its beak, running up the rough, slanting trunk to a height of sixteen to seventeen feet, and disappearing within the "brushwood sheaf" that springs from the bole at that distance from the roots. The wood-pigeons were much more numerous, also more eager to be fed. They seemed to understand very quickly that my bread and grain was for them and not the sparrows; but although they stationed themselves close to me, the little robbers we were jointly trying to outwit managed to get some pieces of bread by flying up and catching them before they touched