Today, it’s Day 4 of 12 Days of Victorian Christmas Cards and we return to the anthropomorphic theme – I did warn you!

This card from the late 1880s is signed RD for Robert Dudley and it’s published by Castell Bros. In case you can’t read the verse, it says:

In spring the cuckoo calls, in summer swallow twits.
Plump goose to autumn falls, winter brisk robin fits. 

The sender has hand-written in the ‘from’ section:

The Town Friend the swallow
To the Country Friend the cuckoo.