The Lure of Cox's
Birds, to my thinking, are the most delightful creatures to watch and study, and should be most rigorously protected ; but it has to be confessed that they may also be a good deal less than " half-angel." For example, there stands in a charm- ing garden a large Cox's apple-tree loaded this year with fruit. Each morning a large number of apples are found on the ground with deep wounds inflicted, it is plausibly believed, by the beaks of starlings. I had a good-sized tree of Blen- heims (which, after Cox's and its parent, are as sweet as any apple), where moorhen used to perch and destroy quantities of this unlikely food. One expects cherries to vanish, and one cages or nets raspberries and strawberries ; but apples used to be more or less immune. The savour of Cox's Orange seems to be so delectable that it has converted both birds and mammals to an apple dietary. Rats will run heedless over less succulent fruit to gnaw the Cox's laid in the back rows of a store-house. Even a robin has been known to eat these apples, and these only. Some say that even insects, especially ants, enjoy Cox's above other fruit if they cannot find pears. In this regard, I once had an enormous pear-tree, up which ants used to climb in quantity to the topmost and most extensive branches in order to gnaw at the fruit, always choosing a spot close to the stalk. These insects are as fond of pears as wasps of plums or jam.
Previous page
