The birds here are a great delight. The blackbird, the finches, the blackcap, the chaffinch, sing in all the fields. I seldom hear the lark, save on the sunny uplands, and never the nightingale; but the blackbird pipes his flute in every bush. The larger sort of birds especially love the mountain: the great buzzard with his brown eagle-wings and wailing melancholy cry, the crow, the rook, flocks of friendly magpies, and in every spinny the bright blue flash of the jay. How I love the jay! Its harsh gay laughter seems to me an integral part of spring--as much so as the sunny winds of March. No bird is so handsome. I have a friendship for its fierce, bold eye, its short, proud head of a winy grey, its breast and pinions so blue, spotted with black, with penfeathers of black and dazzling white. No creature seems more wild, and none, in fact, is easier to tame. This very summer I tried to rear a nestling which a wanton shepherd took. I fed it hour by hour, and the little creature warmed itself in my hands. I watched it develop with a religious sense of the mystery of life. The first day I had it, the nestling was blind, naked, motionless, half stunned from hunger and exposure; yet even then, mere lump of jelly as it was, the creature had instincts of decency, and never would defile its nest of snow-white wadding. The second day, it gave voice to a cry, and afterwards it knew me, screaming for food when I passed; on the third, its wings and half its breast were covered with the first blue feathers; on the fourth, it could rear on its legs, and began to buck and jump in the quaintest fashion. On the fifth day, alas! it fell from a table and died. My cousin had better luck, and reared a jay who lived to haunt the woods about her country house, and often fluttered to her shoulder. When, in November, she drove home to Aurillac, a matter of eleven miles, the jay, flitting from tree to tree, accompanied her carriage all the way!