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Frances Pitt

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Frances Pitt FLS (25 January 1888 – 26 April 1964) was an English naturalist, author, and wildlife photographer. In 1951 she was elected a Fellow of the Linnean Society. In 1954 Brooke Bond & Company marketed Edglets Tea, a loose leaf black tea, sold with 1 card per package; there were 20 different illustrated cards showing British birds photographed by Frances Pitt.

Quotes

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  • Though the whole trend of modern scientific thought is to lay stress on the fact that animals differ from us in degree rather than in kind, yet the moment we go out into the open the widespread fear, the overwhelming horror, that most undomesticated creatures display at the approach of a human being, the panic with which nearly all flee, show what an awful and fearsome thing he is to them. Man is an object of horror, the dealer of death and destruction, with which they have nothing whatsoever in common. The wild animals that one moment were feeding happily in company with horses and cattle, the rabbits nibbling the grass, the starlings perching on the beasts' backs, or hopping in and out between their legs, have fled for their lives at the mere sound of a human footfall.
  • It is because they kill the tiresome mice that people should not shoot, or trap, or allow the eggs to be taken, of hawks and owls. Owls, and the kestrel in particular, live almost entirely on mice and young rats, and when we kill a barn owl (the barn owl is the white owl which files about so silently over the fields) we are allowing hundreds of mice to live and thrive and eat our things.
    • "Chapter II. The Bank Vole". Wild Creatures of Garden and Hedgerow. London: Constable & Company. 1920. pp. 24–44.  (quote from pp. 43–44; 284 pages)
  • The white park cattle are undoubtedly direct descendants of the " forest bulls " of Norman times, but we have no evidence to prove, and a good deal to disprove, that these were the aboriginal wild cattle. The animals which roamed about the country in the Middle Ages, and which evidently were wild and fierce enough, were not the original indigenous species, the Urus that was common during the Neolithic period, but merely " gone wild " or feral beasts that had escaped from domestication.
    Far from being of pure primigenius descent, they were certainly related to the tiny Bos longifrons, otherwise the Celtic shorthorn. This was the domestic breed of the Neolithic and early Celtic peoples. The existing Kerries, Dexters and black Welsh cattle are its descendants. It was the only domestic ox known in these islands up to the time of the Romans, but afterwards became mixed with larger breeds of the Urus type that were brought over by the Romans, Saxons, Danes, Normans, etc.
    • (September 1920) "Wild White Cattle". The National Review 76 (451): 120–130. (quote from p. 123)
  • The Greater Spotted, like all the woodpeckers, lays pure white eggs, with the faintest flush of pink from the yolk showing through the thin shell. The colourlessness of tis eggs is a characteristic that the woodpecker shares in common with most other birds that nest in holes and dark places. Colour in eggs is usually associated with exposed nesting sites, and apparently serves to camouflage the dainty morsels from the hungry gaze of the many creatures that are always ready to raid a nest. In a dark hole colour is useless, and it is a significant fact that the eggs of the majority of birds that nest in holes are white.
  • Glorious with the hues of the tropics, a living gem of colour that seems strangely out of place beside our quiet English rivers and babbling streams, the kingfisher is well and aptly names, for it is indeed clad in royal robes, a very king of birds and a prince of fishers. There is no bird on the British list to compare with it for brilliance of colouring, but of its hues bird-books give us little idea.
    • (September 1921) "The Kingfisher". The National Review 78 (463): 80–87. (quote from p. 80)
  • Carries the Horn, to say a person "carries the horn" signifies that he hunts the pack. It is often said of a Master that he "carries the horn," meaning that he acts as huntsman, or contrawise that he "does not carry the horn" which means he employs a huntsman to hunt hounds for him.

Nature Through the Year (1950)

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  • Another small bird that has to find shelter these winter nights is the common wren, or 'Jenny Wren' as we call it in the countryside, and it likes snug quarters, a really good place being often patronised by several birds. A hayrick is a popular dormitory.
  • The kestrel, that common small hawk, may also be known and instantly distinguished from the sparrow-hawk — which is more of a woodland bird — by it manner of hovering in the air. The sparrow-hawk glides along, dashes round bushes, sweeps over a hedge and disappears; but the kestrel mounts to a fair height, quivers its wings, spreads its tail like a fan and hangs poised in mid-arie for what seems to the watcher a considerable time.
    It is watching for field-voles in the herbage below.
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