But if the robin sings in the barn

Then the weather will be warm.

A DOVECOTE IN A SUSSEX GARDEN.

I must confess that I have not found this come true of robins, any more than I have found waterwag-tails coming on the lawn to be a harbinger of rain, or that thrushes eat more snails than worms in the dry season. Of this last I get enjoyment enough, for there is a stone in my garden to which the fat thrushes come dragging snails. They give them a mighty heave, and down come the snails, “crack” on the stone, until the shell is burst asunder and the delicious morsel is down Master Thrush’s gullet in the twinkling of an eye. The thrush is certainly my favourite garden bird, both for his looks and his song, and the blackbird I like least, for they are bundles of nerves, screaming away at the slightest suggestion of danger. The robin is a fine impudent fellow and friendly in a truly greedy way, following the smallest suggestion of digging with an eye for a good dinner, so that if you are only pulling the earth up in weeding you will have the brisk little gentleman at your elbow, head cocked on one side, and an eye of the greatest intelligence sharply fixed on you. Pigeons I regard as an absolute nuisance, their voices sentimental to a degree, in this way quite at variance with their selfish, greedy and destructive characters. So they say:

If the pigeons go a benting

Then the farmers lie lamenting.

Starlings are very handsome birds but as they live in congregations, or like regiments, one can have no personal feeling for them, though I love to watch them on winter evenings when they come in thousands from the fields and fly to their roosting place, making the air rustle with the quick beat of their wings.

The bullfinch is a gardener’s enemy, for he will strip the fruit buds from a tree out of pure wantonness, and yet he is a brave bird and nice to see about.

All the small birds give one joy though they be robbers or enemies to young plants, or bee eaters like the blue-tit, or strawberry robbers, or drainpipe chokers like the house-sparrows, or murderers of the summer peace like the woodpecker with his quick insistent “tap, tap.”