A Year with the Birds / Third Edition, Enlarged

BY W. WARDE FOWLER AUTHOR OF “TALES OF THE BIRDS,” ETC.
“L’uccello ha maggior copia di vita esteriore e interiore, che non hanno gli altri animali. Ora, se la vita è cosa più perfetta che il suo contrario, almeno nelle creature viventi: e se perciò la maggior copia di vita è maggiore perfezione; anche per questo modo séguita che la natura degli uccelli sia più perfetta.”—Leopardi: Elogio degli uccelli .
WITH ILLUSTRATIONS BY BRYAN HOOK
THIRD EDITION ENLARGED
London MACMILLAN AND CO. AND NEW YORK 1891
Richard Clay and Sons, Limited, LONDON AND BUNGAY.
First two editions published elsewhere. Third edition, 1889; Reprinted, 1891.
PATRI MEO QVI CVM AVCVPIS NOMINE AVIVM AMOREM FILIO TRADIDIT
This little book is nothing more than an attempt to help those who love birds, but know little about them, to realize something of the enjoyment which I have gained, in work-time as well as in holiday, for many years past, from the habit of watching and listening for my favourites.
One word about the title and the arrangement of the chapters. We Oxford tutors always reckon our year as beginning with the October term, and ending with the close of the Long Vacation. My chapters are arranged on this reckoning; to an Oxford residence from October to June, broken only by short vacations, succeeds a brief holiday in the Alps; then comes a sojourn in the midlands; and of the leisurely studies which the latter part of the Long Vacation allows, I have given an ornithological specimen in the last chapter.
Some parts of the first, second, and fifth chapters have appeared in the Oxford Magazine , and I have to thank the Editors for leave to reprint them. The third chapter, or rather the substance of it, was given as a lecture to the energetic Natural History Society of Marlborough College, and has already been printed in their reports; the sixth chapter has been developed out of a paper lately read before the Oxford Philological Society.
The reader will notice that I have said very little about uncommon birds, and have tried to keep to the habits, songs, and haunts of the commoner kinds, which their very abundance endears to their human friends. I have made no collection, and it will therefore be obvious to ornithologists that I have no scientific knowledge of structure and classification beyond that which I have obtained at second-hand. And, indeed, if I thought I were obtruding myself on the attention of ornithologists, I should feel as audacious as the Robin which is at this moment, in my neighbour’s outhouse, sitting on eggs for which, with characteristic self-confidence, she has chosen a singular resting-place in an old cage, once the prison-house of an ill-starred Goldfinch.