Birds of Town and Village | Page 2

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 the sward. This little comedy over, I
visited the water-fowl, ducks of many kinds, sheldrakes, geese from
many lands, swans black, and swans white. To see birds in prison
during the spring mood of which I have spoken is not only no
satisfaction but a positive pain; here--albeit without that large liberty
that nature gives, they are free in a measure; and swimming and diving
or dozing in the sunshine, with the blue sky above them, they are
perhaps unconscious of any restraint. Walking along the margin I
noticed three children some yards ahead of me; two were quite small,
but the third, in whose charge the others were, was a robust-looking girl,
aged about ten or eleven years. From their dress and appearance I took
them to be the children of a respectable artisan or small tradesman; but
what chiefly attracted my attention was the very great pleasure the elder
girl appeared to take in the birds. She had come well provided with
stale bread to feed them, and after giving moderately of her store to the
wood-pigeons and sparrows, she went on to the others, native and

exotic, that were disporting themselves in the water, or sunning
themselves on the green bank. She did not cast her bread on the water
in the manner usual with visitors, but was anxious to feed all the
different species, or as many as she could attract to her, and appeared
satisfied when any one individual of a particular kind got a fragment of
her bread. Meanwhile she talked eagerly to the little ones, calling their
attention to the different birds. Drawing near, I also became an
interested listener; and then, in answer to my questions, she began
telling me what all these strange fowls were. "This," she said, glad to
give information, "is the Canadian goose, and there is the Egyptian
goose; and here is the king-duck coming towards us; and do you see
that large, beautiful bird standing by itself, that will not come to be fed?
That is the golden duck. But that is not its real name; I don't know them
all, and so I name some for myself. I call that one the golden duck
because in the sun its feathers sometimes shine like gold." It was a rare
pleasure to listen to her, and seeing what sort of a girl she was, and how
much in love with her subject, I in my turn told her a great deal about
the birds before us, also of other birds she had never seen nor heard of,
in other and distant lands that have a nobler bird life than ours; and
after she had listened eagerly for some minutes, and had then been
silent a little while, she all at once pressed her two hands together, and
exclaimed rapturously, "Oh, I do so love the birds!"
I replied that that was not strange, since it is impossible for us not to
love whatever is lovely, and of all living things birds were made most
beautiful.
Then I walked away, but could not forget the words she had exclaimed,
her whole appearance, the face flushed with color, the eloquent brown
eyes sparkling, the pressed palms, the sudden spontaneous passion of
delight and desire in her tone. The picture was in my mind all that day,
and lived through the next, and so wrought on me that I could not
longer keep away from the birds, which I, too, loved; for now all at
once it seemed to me that life was not life without them; that I was
grown sick, and all my senses dim; that only the wished sight of wild
birds could medicine my vision; that only by drenching it in their wild
melody could my tired brain recover its lost vigour.

II

After wandering somewhat aimlessly about the country for a couple of
days, I stumbled by chance on just such a spot as I had been wishing to
find--a rustic village not too far away. It was not more than twenty-five
minutes' walk from a small station, less than one hour by rail from
London.
The way to the village was through cornfields, bordered by hedges and
rows of majestic elms. Beyond it, but quite near, there was a wood,
principally of beech, over a mile in length, with a public path running
through it. On the right hand, ten minutes' walk from the village, there