Jacob the Thrush by Vernon St.John 6th Viscount Bolingbroke, 1967

Jacob the Thrush was written by Vernon St.John as one in a series of nature notes for the Ringwood and Fordingbridge Journal in 1967.

Vernon had a passion for the natural world, no doubt begun as a small boy growing up at Lydiard Park, where the young lord was free to ramble and explore. Music was his other great love which perhaps explains his particular delight in bird song The Song Thrush is a favourite of his and in this article he partly attributes this fondness to an early experience:

'(It) happens to be that I once kept a tame thrush which answered to the name Jacob. He flourished on a diet of oatmeal dumplings and provided the initial interest that led me to study the thrush family in the wild.

Vernon St.John was forced to leave his ancestral home at Lydiard Park following the death of his mother, Viscountess Bolingbroke, in 1940, in straightened circumstances. He made his new permanent home at Fordingbridge in Hampshire where he continued his hobbies, becoming a well respected amateur entomologist.