It’s fitting, therefore, that it was also the subject of the first popular monograph dedicated to the study of a single species of British bird, David Lack’s The Life of the Robin (1943). Whereas Edgar Chance’s much earlier The Cuckoo’s Secret (1922) had also been devoted to one species, it had restricted itself to a single issue, that of the cuckoo’s parasitic nesting behaviour. Lack’s book was a wide-ranging study, embracing all aspects of the robin’s lifestyle.
Lack was a biology teacher at Dartington Hall School, near Totnes, Devon, when he carried out his fieldwork on robins in 1934–38. Dartington was an unconventional boarding school, where pupils could decide for themselves whether to attend classes. Initially, Lack started the fieldwork to stimulate their curiosity, but he became increasingly absorbed in the subject on a personal level. The Life of the Robin, written in an accessible, although, by modern standards, distinctly unflowery style for the lay reader, was completed during free evenings when on wartime service in the Army Operation Research Group.
An ornithological colleague of Lack’s once mentioned how he considered himself the last of the amateur bird ecologists, but he was also one of a new generation who put the study of birds on a more rigorous scientific footing in the mid 20th century. Although his book was anecdotal in style, Lack noted in his preface that his behavioural observations were set down only where an action had been observed on at
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Save our family farms
IT Tremains to be seen whether the Government will listen to the more than 20,000 farming people who thronged Whitehall in central London on November 19 to protest against changes to inheritance tax that could destroy countless family farms, but the impact of the good-hearted, sombre crowds was immediate and positive.
A very good dog
THE Spanish Pointer (1766–68) by Stubbs, a landmark painting in that it is the artist’s first depiction of a dog, has only been exhibited once in the 250 years since it was painted.
The great astral sneeze
Aurora Borealis, linked to celestial reindeer, firefoxes and assassinations, is one of Nature's most mesmerising, if fickle displays and has made headlines this year. Harry Pearson finds out why
'What a good boy am I'
We think of them as the stuff of childhood, but nursery rhymes such as Little Jack Horner tell tales of decidedly adult carryings-on, discovers Ian Morton
Forever a chorister
The music-and way of living-of the cabaret performer Kit Hesketh-Harvey was rooted in his upbringing as a cathedral chorister, as his sister, Sarah Sands, discovered after his death
Best of British
In this collection of short (5,000-6,000-word) pen portraits, writes the author, 'I wanted to present a number of \"Great British Commanders\" as individuals; not because I am a devotee of the \"great man, or woman, school of history\", but simply because the task is interesting.' It is, and so are Michael Clarke's choices.
Old habits die hard
Once an antique dealer, always an antique dealer, even well into retirement age, as a crop of interesting sales past and future proves
It takes the biscuit
Biscuit tins, with their whimsical shapes and delightful motifs, spark nostalgic memories of grandmother's sweet tea, but they are a remarkably recent invention. Matthew Dennison pays tribute to the ingenious Victorians who devised them
It's always darkest before the dawn
After witnessing a particularly lacklustre and insipid dawn on a leaden November day, John Lewis-Stempel takes solace in the fleeting appearance of a rare black fox and a kestrel in hot pursuit of a pipistrelle bat
Tarrying in the mulberry shade
On a visit to the Gainsborough Museum in Sudbury, Suffolk, in August, I lost my husband for half an hour and began to get nervous. Fortunately, an attendant had spotted him vanishing under the cloak of the old mulberry tree in the garden.
