BIRDS WHICH TELL THE TIME

Manawatu Times, Volume XLIX, Issue 3308, 31 March 1926, Page 15

BIRDS WHICH TELL THE TIME

There is a story of a dog who knew when it was Sunday. Incarcerated W’hiio the family went to church, he formed a Sunday morning habit of avoiding capture, so that he could secretly run ahead to church, where he would try to ensconce himself in the family pew. Some birds appear to -know the time of day, and the day of the week. Anyone who feeds birds in gardens at a regular time knows how punctually they assemble, and how the garden robin will tap at the breakfast room window- if breakfast is late. Edward Jesse, the naturalist, tells a story of magpies which knew when Sunday arrived. As a boy he would shoot the magpies which gathered in his home garden. Only on Sundays would they hop fearlessly about the lawn, as if knowing there was a truce and that a gun would not be fired. Gamekeepers have observed that on Sundays rooks fearlessly haunt places which they shun on week-days for fear of gun-flro. Hence the old Kentish saying, “As happy as a rook on Sunday.” A circumstantial story, also related by Jesse, is of a timekeeping gull. Someone threw the bird a piece of bread from a window at Haylyn, Cornwall. The next day, at the same hour, the gull appeared at the window, and was fed, and from •that time, for a period of eighteen years, he arrived for his breakfast every morning at the same hour, except w-hen called from home for pil-chard-fishing.