The birds of Shakespeare

PAGE
The Eagle	[32]
The Peregrine Falcon	[40]
The Common Buzzard	[42]
The Kite	[46]
The Cormorant	[48]
The Barn Owl	[56]
The Cuckoo	[58]
The Quail	[62]
The Lapwing	[64]
The Mallard	[72]
The Raven	[74]
The Chough	[78]
The Starling	[80]
The Magpie	[88]
The Jay	[90]
The Turtle Dove	[94]
The Song-Thrush	[96]
The Wren	[104]
The House-Martin	[106]
The Nightingale	[110]
A Friendly Chough	[119]

From the infancy of mankind no tribe of living creatures has awakened more sympathy in the human heart than the Birds of the Air. Their pairing, their nesting, their sedulous care of their young, their arrival in spring and disappearance in autumn, the endless variety of their notes, and the manifold diversity of their habits and dispositions, often so suggestive of analogies with those of human nature, have arrested the attention of even the most unobservant men. This wide range of attraction, appealing so directly to the poetic instincts of humanity, has called forth hearty recognition in the literature of every age and of every tongue. In our own literature this recognition has been more especially ample. Chaucer, the illustrious Father of English Poetry, struck the keynote of that passionate love of Nature which has been maintained among us with ever-growing devotion. “Nature, the vicar of the Almighty Lord,” to use his own expression, filled his soul with a deep, reverential and joyous delight in the endless beauty and charm of the outer world. This pleasure included an ardent appreciation of bird-life, which finds vent continually in simple but enthusiastic language all through his writings. Chaucer was undoubtedly a bookish man, much attached to his favourite authors and to meditation upon them. Yet, as he himself confesses, there were times when the open country, with all its varied sights and sounds, and especially with its exuberant life in plants and animals, had for him even greater attraction. He tells that

Chaucer’s Love of Nature

On bokes for to rede I me delyte,

And to hem yeve I feyth and ful credence,

And in myn herte have hem in reverence

So hertely, that there is game noon,

That fro my bokes maketh me to goon,

But hit be other upon the haly-day,