Field Glasses
To watch birds or study wild life at all one needs a pair of good field-glasses. Mine are old and rather battged but they are good. They belonged to a sea captain who has gone on his last voyage and they are a valued possession. I use them to watch the antics of magpies, the head-combing and affectionate behaviour of the jackdaws and the savage way a carrion crow will tear at a dead rabbit. Sometimes I examine the countryside round about, picking out landmarks and places I visit in the summer when the fly-fishing season is at its best, and sometimes I watch a man at work on some far-away slope, an old man with a pair of horses and a plough Or a young- ster sitting on a tractor turning stubble with great speed. It is perhaps a sly habit to turn glasses on a man unselfconsciously about his daily work, but I do not watch for long. Invariably a bird crosses my window and I find myself tracking it to the top Of a wood or on over the horizon, and before long I turn to check the weather signs and study the movement of clouds.
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