It was within a stone’s throw of the sea at Lamorna, that I sat and listened to Ned’s “Tale of the Birds.”

We had been fishing the trout-stream that empties itself into the cove, and were resting on the boulders near the bridge before turning homewards. Ned is a good all-round sportsman, but his knowledge of birds is remarkable, and the reason is not far to seek. His father was a taxidermist who was regarded as an authority on British birds by Rodd and by Gould. For some twenty years Ned assisted him in his work; but his delight was, and is, to wander over the country in search of sport and specimens. To this is, perhaps, chiefly due the knowledge he possesses of the avifauna of Cornwall.

To understand the birds of Cornwall, said he, you must know that, besides those always with us, and the migrants that reach us regularly in the spring and autumn, many kinds of wild-fowl visit us in hard winters and remain whilst the frost lasts. This corner of England, owing chiefly to the warm sea about it, is milder than any other except the Scilly Isles, and when birds are frozen out elsewhere, they can pick up a living here. A good feeding-ground is the Land’s End district—what with its beaches, its boggy ground and pools on the moors, and above all the overgrown, marshy valleys, which mostly run north and south, and are sheltered from the bitter east winds. Birds of gay plumage have been shot in these bottoms which you would expect to meet with only in a tropical forest—such as the hoopoe, the waxwing, the roller, the bee-eater, and the golden oriole. Of the four hundred birds comprised in the avifauna of the British Isles two hundred and ninety have been observed in Cornwall, so you see that our bird-life is as rich as the fish-life in the sea about the promontory, or the flora that makes the face of the country so beautiful.

Now it’s out of the question my attempting to talk about nearly three hundred different kinds of birds, so I’ll pick out a few things that may interest you. Look! that’s a starling on the cottage chimney, and I’ll begin with him. A few years ago you might search West Cornwall over without seeing one—I mean in the month of August, though they came in tens of thousands in the winter. I’ve seen the osier beds along the Eastern Green and the reeds at Marazion Marsh black with them; and when I was a boy I used to fire at passing flocks with a bow and arrow, as with a great whirr of wings they skimmed over the Well field on their way to roost. I believe that starlings have regular lines of flight, as they seldom failed to pass over that field about sundown. To come to the point, no sooner was winter over than they all went up-along; but now some remain all the year round, and breed. The cause is to be found, I believe, in the enormous increase of this bird.

Then the daws—I mean the jackdaws—are ever so much more numerous than they used to be. In my young days they were scarce, and I used to be let down over the cliffs with a rope round me, to get their eggs. Now you can see them everywhere, about the old mine-ruins, about the farmhouses, and even about the villages.

The green woodpecker is also more plentiful than it used to be. Considering how bare of trees the country is, this is perhaps more surprising than the increase of the starling or the daw. It is true that some new plantations, such as those at Tregavara and Bijowans, are growing up, and who can say but that in time we shall have jays and nightingales, and perhaps squirrels?

The country-people say that the “tinner,” that is the “dishwasher” or water-wagtail, is scarcer than it was before the blizzard, which must have caused the death of tens of thousands of birds. They call it the tinner, because it builds its nest in the mouth of the old mine-shafts.

Now I’ll tell you about the last Cornish choughs I ever saw alive. It was away on the Rinsey Cliffs, a lone place between Pra Sands and Porthleven; and of course I wanted to get them. I had a gun with me—as indeed I always had, for there was no close season in those days. The birds were on a splat of fine turf near the edge of the cliff, and within gunshot of an old engine-house that lay beyond them. There was no chance of my getting near enough to these birds—shy as hawks through persecution—not even by crawling; for the surface was nearly as smooth as a bowling-green, with only a patch of vernal squill here and there. Lying in a dip of the ground, and all hidden up to my eyes, I could see every movement of the two birds—a cock and a hen they were—and more, I could hear every note they uttered. “Daw, daw,” they kept calling, a kind of bleat, a pitiful little cry I should call it; and yet I wanted to kill them both. Instead of getting closer to me, as I hoped, they were, if anything, moving nearer to the engine-house. Then, thinks I, why not get round and come at them from behind the building. This I set out to do, making a long circuit, and at last the ruin lay between me and them. I reached it without having seen the birds fly away, though I could no longer hear them calling. All of a tremble with excitement, and with the gun at full cock, I crept through a hole in the wall, made my way round the edge of the shaft, and peeped through a chink in the wall opposite. No choughs could I see. They were gone; and I was disappointed, sir, I can tell ee. I went to the edge of the cliff, and looked down. Not a bird was to be seen; nothing but a few shags on the rocks in the white water. As I said, I never saw a chough alive again. They were, I believe, the last of their race. It’s a pity they’re extinct. Handsome birds I call them, with their black glossy plumage and vermilion bill and legs. I can hear that “daw, daw” now as I sit here; plaintive it was for a love-note.

I forgot to say that the magpie is more common than it used to be, though the farm boys “strub” every nest they can find. Interesting birds I call them, and a feature of the country, a homely feature, like the pigeons I saw about the Abbey up in London, only wilder.

Yes, a magpie on a wind-clipt thorn bush, a yellow-hammer on a furze spray, gulls behind a ploughshare, a cormorant on a rock in the green water, and jackdaws about a broken mine-stack, are pictures downright Cornish; and they are always with us.

Dear me, how everything comes back when you begin to talk.

If anything would make me laugh again, it would be what I once saw at Nancothan. I was looking through a window of the farmhouse into the orchard. Perhaps it was the peculiar behaviour of a magpie that attracted my attention. There he was with his neck drawn out and head thrown back, making tremendous thrusts with his beak at something on the ground. After lunging two or three times, he turned his head on one side and looked at whatever lay there, first with one eye, then turning his head, with the other. It’s a comical sight is a magpie looking with one eye at anything. Well then, he began to dig, dig again, and after a final critical examination with each eye, flew up into an apple-tree. I ran out to see what he had been pecking at so vigorously. What do you think I found? why, a china nest-egg! I see that it amuses you, sir, as it used to amuse me. It’s the funniest thing in bird-life I ever saw.

The Home of the Cormorant.            

There’s more tragedy than comedy however about bird-life. Many young birds are stolen from the nests, to say nothing of finches, warblers, linnets, and chats killed by hawks. Of course, all this is part of the plan of nature, though to my thinking there’s a deal of cruelty in it. What crueller thing can you imagine than a falcon cutting down a hern winging home, say to Trevethoe Park, where the............