BIRDS IN A TOWN GARDEN.
[To THE EDITOR OF THE " SPECTATOR." J
Sra,—Your interesting paper on "The Balance of Wild Life in a Garden" in the Spectator of May 30th suggests to me that my experience may be worth recording, and I have no doubt it will be surprising to many bird-lovers. My garden and orchard comprise about one and a half acres, situated in the middle of a small provincial town, and are nearly surrounded by streets of workmen's dwellings. There is no exaggeration in saying that this garden is the daily and nightly playground of at least fifty cats. And yet I will undertake to say that in my hedges and trees we batch and rear as many of the commoner sorts of English birds as in any garden of similar extent in my Eastern county. My own belief is that our birds during the thirty years I have possessed this garden have become specialised,—have evolved special methods of dealing with cats. Certain it is that the birds have more than quadrupled in numbers since I came to this house in 1878, and that they treat cats with the utmost disdain and contempt. Of course they scold them fiercely, and it must be admitted they pass a week or two of great anxiety while giving their young ones lessons in the art (or is it science ?) of circumventing the cats. Our birds are chiefly blackbirds. thrushes, robins, hedge-sparrows, starlings, chaffinches, tom- tits, wrens, greenfinches, and garden warblers. Occasionally rarer birds give us a flying call, but evidently decide that a cat garden is too risky for them. Perhaps I ought to add that the garden is full of trees and shrubs of almost every kind that will flourish in our somewhat smoky atmosphere. House sparrows we have too, of course, but they have a long ancestry of intimate acquaintance—one might almost say friendship—with cats.—I am, Sir, &c., W. M. COOPER.
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