Birds in the Calendar — A Reader’s Guide

(0 User reviews) 644

In Category - Birds

Authors: Aflalo, Frederick G. (Frederick George), 1870-1918 Digital Source: Project Gutenberg Gutenberg Release Year: 2008 First Publication Year: Not confirmed

Key Word: Birds -- Great Britain Target Reader: Readers of public-domain and historical texts

Book Edition: Project Gutenberg digital edition Book Language: en

Edition facts

Words 23,382

Reading time 102 min

Text sections 3

For Birds in the Calendar — A Reader’s Guide, the stored edition analysis reports 23,382 words, 1 hr 42 min estimated reading time, and 3 detected text sections.

The text analysis averages about 33.0 words per sentence, while the detected sections provide another way to judge how the source is divided.

Project Gutenberg metadata also associates the work with “Birds -- Great Britain,” connecting these edition facts with the source record’s subject description.

Source: Project Gutenberg record #27465

A month-by-month series of essays on British birds, blending natural history observation with literary and historical asides, from the pheasant's Roman origins to the seagull's flight and the swallow's hibernation myths.

Read the complete public-domain text at its original source.

Read on Project Gutenberg

F. G. Aflalo's Birds in the Calendar (1914) is a collection of twelve essays, each keyed to a month and originally published in The Outlook. The author announces at the outset that he will consider birds 'from any standpoint but that of sport,' a deliberate constraint given the pheasant's prominence as a game bird. This decision shapes the book's tone: Aflalo is a naturalist who values observation over the chase, yet he cannot entirely avoid the sportsman's vocabulary, as when he notes that the pheasant 'appeals chiefly to the men who shoot and eat it.' The tension between these perspectives runs through the volume, lending it a distinctive voice that is at once learned, anecdotal, and occasionally wry.

Historical Threads and the Pheasant's Origins

Aflalo opens with the pheasant, a bird he calls 'not a British bird, save by acclimatisation.' He traces its introduction to the Romans, though he admits the evidence is 'veiled in obscurity.' The essay moves from Harold's reign to Henry I, when the Abbot of Amesbury held a licence to kill pheasants—'how he contrived this without a gun is not set forth in detail.' This dry aside typifies Aflalo's method: he leavens factual recitation with a quiet humour that never undercuts the seriousness of his natural history. He also notes that the original dark pheasant has been altered by 'frequent crosses with other species from the Far East,' a remark that hints at the artificiality of the British countryside he describes.

Swallows, Myths, and Gilbert White

The July essay on swifts, swallows, and martins confronts a persistent folk belief: that swallows hibernate at the bottom of ponds. Aflalo dismisses this as 'an innocuous indulgence,' noting that even Gilbert White 'toyed with this curious belief.' He points out that occasional skeletons found in dredged ponds are merely 'careless individuals that, in passing over the water, got their plumage waterlogged and were then drowned.' The passage reveals Aflalo's respect for evidence and his impatience with rustic credulity, yet he tolerates the myth because it 'brings no harm to the bird itself.' This measured rationality is characteristic of the book's tone.

The Seagull's Flight and the Limits of Science

The August essay on the seagull opens with a striking rejection of 'dry-as-dust theories of mechanism of flexed wings, coefficient of air resistance, and all the abracadabra of the mathematical biologist.' Instead, Aflalo celebrates the gull's flight as 'a sight so inspiring.' He contrasts the bird's fearlessness of the sea—'that protean monster'—with the terror it inspires in land animals. The essay also notes the absence of seafowl in the Bible, a curious omission given their abundance near Jaffa. Aflalo's prose here is at its most lyrical, yet he remains precise: the gull's voice 'may have no great range, but at any rate it is not lacking in variety.'

Aflalo's essays reward readers who enjoy a blend of natural fact, historical anecdote, and personal reflection. The book is best approached not as a field guide but as a series of contemplative sketches, each anchored to a month and a bird. Pay attention to the author's asides—his dry humour, his occasional irritation with superstition, his admiration for flight—for they reveal the naturalist behind the calendar.

I remember how Birds in the Calendar would pause at the swallow's old winter-sleep fables, smiling at our ancestors' kindly errors. That same gentle patience lingers in Birds and Bees, Sharp Eyes, and Other Papers — Edition Insights, where wonder never rushes to judgment. Side by side on my shelf, they whisper that watching is its own quiet form of love.