Birds analysis

             Du Maurier tells us that Nat lives next to the sea where there is a wide, open space. The reason for her picking Cornwall as the setting is so that Nat is where he can see everything primarily, so that he can see everything at first hand. Du Maurier gets her readers interested straight away by saying that the birds are very restless and are mixing in strange combinations. I.e. birds that normally did not flock together were. That night the birds find a way into the children's bedroom where they are attacked viciously and had Nat not stepped in, the children would have been killed by the birds. Du Maurier is telling us that if the birds can attack the most vulnerable of humans: children, then what hope have the rest of us got. Nature is not going to take pity on anyone; it plans to continue with this war until the destruction of civilization.
             The next morning Nat goes down to the farm to see if anyone else had had trouble during the night. He speaks to the Triggs and a few other villagers and each one said they had not heard or seen anything. They all try and come up with logical explanations though; suggestions such as the cold weather may have drove them to do such thing. Nat is dissatisfied; he feels that no one is really listening to him and he compares this situation with the air raids during the war. Until people had been personally affected by the bombing they would not take on board what was happening. This shows how seriously Nat is taking the incident. .
             The ground was frozen solid although no snow had fallen and the east winds were more severe than ever. Nat tries to connect both of these changes to the Arctic Circle but deep inside he knows that something is terribly wrong. Nature was coming at the humans in two different forms, through the birds and through the elements. The previous night had been a turn of the tide for mankind. It was bitterly cold and the hard ground was covered in black frost.