More Tales of the Birds

by W. Warde Fowler

“Is there no compromise?” asked the Poet mildly.

“Not for an enthusiast,” said the Parson, decidedly.

“Then my choice is made already,” said the Poet. And so they parted.

So the birds built where and when they pleased, and brought up crowds of hungry young ones; the old gardener kept his word and his place. They throve upon a juicy diet of grubs and caterpillars, and the garden throve in getting rid of these; so that by May it was such an Eden as even the Poet’s fancy had never dreamed of. His ear was daily soothed with a chorus of mellow song: he began to make a list of all the birds that visited his garden, to take notes of the food they seemed to love, and to record the dates of their nest-building, egg-laying, and hatching. His eyes were daily feasting on the apple-blossoms and lilacs, and there was promise of a full harvest of fruit on espaliers, standards, and garden-walls. The rowans were gay with heavy bunches of white flowers, which promised a glorious show of orange-red berries for August.

Joseph Bates had long ago given up engaging his master in conversation, and maintained in the garden an air of silent wisdom which quite baffled the Poet’s advances; but in the village, when asked by his friends about his employer, he would touch his forehead significantly, as implying that the good man was “weak in the upper storey.”

Bessie’s careful mind was already providing for the fruit-harvest; a huge cooking-vessel was procured, and scores of clean white jam-pots graced the larder shelves. The Poet wrote to a congenial friend, an ardent member of the Society for the Prevention of the Extinction of Birds, who, living in a London suburb, had come to believe that in the course of a few years the whole race of birds would be exterminated in this country through the greed and cruelty of that inferior animal Man. This enthusiast was now bidden to come in a month’s time, eat his fill of fruit, and bask in one garden where birds still built and sang and fed in unmolested freedom. Nor did the blackbirds watch the ripening treasure unmindful of the future; they, and the thrushes, and the starlings, while they did their duty towards the grubs and caterpillars, looked forward to a plentiful reward, and told their young of new treats and wonders that were yet in store for them.

And now a spell of fine sunny weather began to bring out a blush on the cherries and gooseberries and red currants; the roses burst into bloom; and the Poet and his wife were busy tending and weeding the garden they had learnt to love so well. In the warm afternoons he sat out reading, or walked up and down the path through the allotments listening to the birds and nursing his thoughts; and the villagers were quite content to see him doing this, for, as one of them expressed it to Joseph Bates, “he do make a better scarecrow than all the old hats and bonnets in the place.” So the Poet, with his white terrier at his heels (he kept no cat, I need hardly say), was all unknown to himself doing a work of grace for his neighbours.

He noticed, in these perambulations, that the birds now sang less frequently and heartily; but then there were more of them than ever, for the young ones were now all about the garden, and had grown so bold and tame that they would hardly get out of the Poet’s way as he moved gently along his paths. He loved them all, and thought of them almost as his own children; and no shadow of a foreboding crossed his mind that they, born in his garden, reared under his protection, could ever vex the even flow of his happiness.

One fine evening, just as the strawberries were ripening, the Member of the S.P.E.B. arrived on his visit. It was agreed that they should open the strawberry season next morning after breakfast; for that, as the Poet observed, is the real time to eat strawberries, “and the flavour is twice as good if you pick them yourself in the beds.” So in the fresh of the morning they all three went into the garden, and the Poet pointed out with pride the various places where the birds had built.

“We’ve had half a dozen blackbirds’ nests that we know of,” he said, “and probably there are others that we never found. See there—there’s a nice crop of blackbirds for a single season!”