Birds in the Calendar

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              BIRDS
         IN THE CALENDAR

         BY F. G. AFLALO

          [Decoration]


      LONDON: MARTIN SECKER
 NUMBER FIVE JOHN STREET ADELPHI




_First Published 1914_


Transcriber's Note:

    Minor typographical errors have been corrected without note. Common
    bird names remain as originally printed. Inconsistent hyphenation
    has been standardised. The oe ligature is represented by [oe].




CONTENTS


                                          PAGE

 January: The Pheasant                      11

 February: The Woodcock                     21

 March: The Woodpigeon                      33

 April: Birds in the High Hall Garden       45

 May: The Cuckoo                            55

 June: Voices of the Night                  67

 July: Swifts, Swallows and Martins         79

 August: The Seagull                        91

 September: Birds in the Corn              103

 October: The Moping Owl                   113

 November: Waterfowl                       125

 December: The Robin Redbreast             137




NOTE


These sketches of birds, each appropriate to one month of the twelve,
originally appeared in _The Outlook_, to the Editor and Proprietors of
which review I am indebted for permission to reprint them in book form.

                                                            F. G. A.

EASTER, 1914.




JANUARY

THE PHEASANT




THE PHEASANT


As birds are to be considered throughout these pages from any standpoint
but that of sport, much that is of interest in connection with a bird
essentially the sportsman's must necessarily be omitted. At the same
time, although this gorgeous creature, the chief attraction of social
gatherings throughout the winter months, appeals chiefly to the men who
shoot and eat it, it is not uninteresting to the naturalist with
opportunities for studying its habits under conditions more favourable
than those encountered when in pursuit of it with a gun.

In the first place, with the probable exception of the swan, of which
something is said on a later page, the pheasant stands alone among the
birds of our woodlands in its personal interest for the historian. It is
not, in fact, a British bird, save by acclimatisation, at all, and is
generally regarded as a legacy of the Romans. The time and manner of its
introduction into Britain are, it is true, veiled in obscurity. What we
know, on authentic evidence, is that the bird was officially recognised
in the reign of Harold, and that it had already come under the aegis of
the game laws in that of Henry I, during the first year of which the
Abbot of Amesbury held a licence to kill it, though how he contrived
this without a gun is not set forth in detail. Probably it was first
treed with the aid of dogs and then shot with bow and arrow. The
original pheasant brought over by the Romans, or by whomsoever may have
been responsible for its naturalisation on English soil, was a
dark-coloured bird and not the type more familiar nowadays since its
frequent crosses with other species from the Far East, as well as with
several ornamental types of yet more recent introduction.

In tabooing the standpoint of sport, wherever possible, from these
chapters, occasional reference, where it overlaps the interests of the
field-naturalist, is inevitable. Thus there are two matters in which
both classes are equally concerned when considering the pheasant. The
first is the real or alleged incompatibility of pheasants and foxes in
the same wood. The question of rivalry between pheasant and fox, or (as
I rather suspect) between those who shoot the one and hunt the other,
admits of only one answer. The fox eats the pheasant; the pheasant is
eaten by the fox. This not very complex proposition may read like an
excerpt from a French grammar, but it is the epitome of the whole
argument. It is just possible--we have no actual evidence to go on--that
under such wholly natural conditions as survive nowhere in rural England
the two might flourish side by side, the fox taking occasional toll of
its agreeably flavoured neighbours, and the latter, we may suppose,
their wits sharpened by adversity, gradually devising means of keeping
out of the robber's reach. In the artificial environment of a hunting or
shooting country, however, the fox will always prove too much for a bird
dulled by much protection, and the only possible _modus vivendi_ between
those concerned must rest on a policy of give and take that deliberately
ignores the facts of the case.

More interesting, on academic grounds at any rate, is the process of
education noticeable in pheasants in parts of the country where they
are regularly shot.