A Quiet Street
At daybreak the village street belongs to the prowling cats, the stray dog and all the birds that come boldly down to scavenge in the gutter. On my way to fish the other morning I stopped to watch. Half a dozen gulls were in the road among a collection of daws and sparrows. The daws were brave enough to go up the steps of the public house and even under the porch. The gulls, bard-eyed and ruthless, gave no quarter in the stabbing business of picking up morsels dropped by passers-by the day before. In the spring the daws would have been more interes- ted in the refuse for nest-building, but now, their numbers strengthened by so many hungry offspring, they do the clearing up of brcadcrusts and crumbs, hurrying along the narrow pavement, toddling to and fro in their eagerness to get to the titbits before the gulls or the impudent sprinkling of sparrows who own the street and resent the intrusion of the bigger birds, black or white. While this scramble for food goes on the cats slink across the road making no attempt to stalk a breakfast, for where there are many birds there are many alarmists and stealth would be useless.
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