COUNTRY LIFE
Birds and Raids My attention is constantly being drawn to the fact that "the birds hate the air-raids." But oddly enough, though I must by now have watched some hundreds of dog-fights, frequently accompanied by machine-gun fire too close to be pleasant, I have not yet seen any reliable signs that birds are distressed by or even aware of intense local air activity. The average air-battle takes place at a height of four, five or even six miles. Is it con- ceivable that birds can be affected by air disturbance from that height? Bombs are a different thing. Pheasants set up an immediate croaking at the sound of a neighbouring explosion: but this has always been their natural reaction; and as I recently described on another page of The Spectator, fish will leap high out of the water at the impact of a bomb. But I have no evidence of bird distress generally. It is possible that many people have been misled simply by the seasonal activities of such birds as rooks, starlings, jackdaws and plovers, which constantly exhibit signs of communal excitement and agitation. But if any readers of this column can give reliable instances of birds behaving strangely during raids it would be very interesting to have them.
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