PECULIAR POSTCARDS

JAN BONDESON shares another deltiological discovery from his prodigious collection of postcards. This month’s pictorial blast from the past recounts the touching story of Parisian ecccentric Monsieur Pol and his feathered friends

50. THE BIRD-MAN OF THE TUILERIES Monsieur Henri Pol was born in the Department of the Somme some time in the 1830s. In 1857, he was employed as a clerk by the French telegraphic service at their office at the Rue de Grenelle in Paris; fast forward 40 years, and he was still there, now a rather dotty bachelor in his sixties, busy at his duties in the telegraph office. His prime amusement in life was to take a stroll in the Tuileries gardens during his lunch break, to read the newspaper and to feed the sparrows with breadcrumbs. It soon struck him that the sparrows had been done a great injustice by the naturalists: these humble Parisian birds were in fact highly intelligent. When M. Pol gave his favourite…

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Fortean Times (Digital) - 1 Issue, 454

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