In 1918 the cuckoos were exceedingly numerous here, and round my house
they were calling all day long. Owing to the terrible winter and early
spring months of the previous year, so many of the insectivorous birds
had been destroyed, that the caterpillars had escaped, and were more
numerous than ever in the following spring. The oaks in places were
completely stripped of their foliage by the larvae of _Tortrix
viridana_, almost as soon as the leaves were out. The cuckoos
discovered them, but were not in sufficient numbers to keep them down,
and it was midsummer before the trees recovered. I have referred to
the damage in my plum orchard at Aldington from the attack of the
larvae of the winter-moth; the damage is not confined to the actual
year of its occurrence, the crop suffers the following year owing to
the previous defoliation of the tree, which is weakened and is unable
to mature healthy fruit buds. At Aldington, in a hot summer, the
cuckoos used to call nearly all night, and I have heard them when it
was quite dark.

For some years, until 1918, goldfinches were quite common in Hampshire
and Dorsetshire. I have seen a flock of over forty together. I had
seven nests on my premises here one summer; they go on breeding very
late, and I have found their nests with young birds half-fledged while
summer-pruning apple trees in August. They come into my garden close
to the windows in May, after the ripening seeds of the myosotis
(forget-me-not) in the spring-bedding. I never remember seeing a
goldfinch at Aldington, which should show that the thistles were well
under control, for the seed is a great attraction. One often hears the
practice of allowing thistles to run to seed condemned as criminal,
for everybody knows that each thistle-down, carried by the wind,
contains a seed, and that the attachment of a light structure of
plumes is one of Nature's methods of ensuring dissemination. But, in