Bygone birding (7): It's so important to avoid eye contact

From The Gamekeeper At Home: Sketches of Natural History and Rural Life (1878) by Richard Jefferies

The secret of observation is this: Stillness, silence and apparent indifference.

In some instinctive way, wild creatures learn to distinguish when one is not intent upon them in a spirit of enmity.

And, if very near, it is always the eye they watch

So long as you observe them, as it were, from the corner of the eyeball, sideways, or look over their heads at something beyond, it is well.

Turn your glance full upon them to get a better view and they are gone.

Keep your glance on a frond of the fern just beyond him, and the creature will stay.

The instant your eye meets his, he plunges out of sight.

It is so with birds.

Walk across a meadow swinging a stick, even humming, and the rooks calmly continue their search for grubs within 30 yards.

Stop to look at them, and they rise on the wing directly.

So, too, the finches in the trees by the roadside.

Let the wayfarer pass beneath the bough on which they are singing, and they will sing on if he moves without apparent interest.

Should he pause to listen, their wings glisten in the sun as they fly.