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Birds in Town & Village

by W. H. Hudson · English · Gutenberg #7353 · 377,092 chars · public domain (US)

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Title: Birds in Town & Village

Author: W. H. Hudson


        
Release date: January 1, 2005 [eBook #7353]
                Most recently updated: August 24, 2012

Language: English

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Credits: Produced by Eric Eldred and David Widger


*** START OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK BIRDS IN TOWN & VILLAGE ***




Produced by Eric Eldred






BIRDS IN TOWN & VILLAGE

BY


W. H. HUDSON,

F.Z.S.

AUTHOR OF "THE PURPLE LAND," "IDLE DAYS IN PATAGONIA," "FAR AWAY AND
LONG AGO," ETC.


1920



PREFACE

This book is more than a mere reprint of _Birds in a Village_ first
published in 1893. That was my first book about bird life, with some
impressions of rural scenes, in England; and, as is often the case with
a first book, its author has continued to cherish a certain affection
for it. On this account it pleased me when its turn came to be reissued,
since this gave me the opportunity of mending some faults in the
portions retained and of throwing out a good deal of matter which
appeared to me not worth keeping.

The first portion, "Birds in a Village," has been mostly rewritten with
some fresh matter added, mainly later observations and incidents
introduced in illustration of the various subjects discussed. For the
concluding portion of the old book, which has been discarded, I have
substituted entirely new matter-the part entitled "Birds in a Cornish
Village."

Between these two long parts there are five shorter essays which I have
retained with little alteration, and these in one or two instances are
consequently out of date, especially in what was said with bitterness in
the essay on "Exotic Birds for Britain" anent the feather-wearing
fashion and of the London trade in dead birds and the refusal of women
at that time to help us in trying to save the beautiful wild bird life
of this country and of the world generally from extermination. Happily,
the last twenty years of the life and work of the Royal Society for the
Protection of Birds have changed all that, and it would not now be too
much to say that all right-thinking persons in this country, men and
women, are anxious to see the end of this iniquitous traffic.

W. H. H.

September, 1919.



CONTENTS

PAGE

BIRDS IN A VILLAGE:

I

II

III

IV

V

VI

VII

VIII

IX

X

XI

EXOTIC BIRDS FOR BRITAIN

MOOR-HENS IN HYDE PARK

THE EAGLE AND THE CANARY

CHANTICLEER

IN AN OLD GARDEN

BIRDS IN A CORNISH VILLAGE:

I. TAKING STOCK OF THE BIRDS

II. DO STARLINGS PAIR FOR LIFE?

III. VILLAGE BIRDS IN WINTER

IV. INCREASING BIRDS IN BRITAIN

V. THE DAW SENTIMENT

VI. STORY OF A JACKDAW




    BIRDS IN TOWN & VILLAGE



BIRDS IN A VILLAGE I

About the middle of last May, after a rough and cold period, there came
a spell of brilliant weather, reviving in me the old spring feeling, the
passion for wild nature, the desire for the companionship of birds; and
I betook myself to St. James's Park for the sake of such satisfaction as
may be had from watching and feeding the fowls, wild and semi-wild,
found gathered at that favored spot.

I was glad to observe a couple of those new colonists of the ornamental
water, the dabchicks, and to renew my acquaintance with the familiar,
long-established moorhens. One of them was engaged in building its nest
in an elm-tree growing at the water's edge. I saw it make two journeys
with large wisps of dry grass in its beak, running up the rough,
slanting trunk to a height of sixteen to seventeen feet, and
disappearing within the "brushwood sheaf" that springs from the bole at
that distance from the roots. The wood-pigeons were much more numerous,
also more eager to be fed.  They seemed to understand very quickly that
my bread and grain was for them and not the sparrows; but although they
stationed themselves close to me, the little robbers we were jointly
trying to outwit managed to get some pieces of bread by flying up and
catching them before they touched the sward. This little comedy over, I
visited the water-fowl, ducks of many kinds, sheldrakes, geese from many
lands, swans black, and swans white. To see birds in prison during the
spring mood of which I have spoken is not only no satisfaction but a
positive pain; here--albeit without that large liberty that nature
gives, they are free in a measure; and swimming and diving or dozing in
the sunshine, with the blue sky above them, they are perhaps unconscious
of any restraint.  Walking along the margin I noticed three children
some yards ahead of me; two were quite small, but the third, in whose
charge the others were, was a robust-looking girl, aged about ten or
eleven years. From their dress and appearance I took them to be the
children of a respectable artisan or small tradesman; but what chiefly
attracted my attention was the very great pleasure the elder girl
appeared to take in the birds. She had come well provided with stale
bread to feed them, and after giving moderately of her store to the
wood-pigeons and sparrows, she went on to the others, native and exotic,
that were disporting themselves in the water, or sunning themselves on
the green bank. She did not cast her bread on the water in the manner
usual with visitors, but was anxious to feed all the different species,
or as many as she could attract to her, and appeared satisfied when any
one individual of a particular kind got a fragment of her bread.
Meanwhile she talked eagerly to the little ones, calling their attention
to the different birds. Drawing near, I also became an interested
listener; and then, in answer to my questions, she began telling me what
all these strange fowls were. "This," she said, glad to give
information, "is the Canadian goose, and there is the Egyptian goose;
and here is the king-duck coming towards us; and do you see that large,
beautiful bird standing by itself, that will not come to be fed? That is
the golden duck. But that is not its real name; I don't know them all,
and so I name some for myself. I call that one the golden duck because
in the sun its feathers sometimes shine like gold." It was a rare
pleasure to listen to her, and seeing what sort of a girl she was, and
how much in love with her subject, I in my turn told her a great deal
about the birds before us, also of other birds she had never seen nor
heard of, in other and distant lands that have a nobler bird life than
ours; and after she had listened eagerly for some minutes, and had then
been silent a little while, she all at once pressed her two hands
together, and exclaimed rapturously, "Oh, I do so love the birds!"

I replied that that was not strange, since it is impossible for us not
to love whatever is lovely, and of all living things birds were made
most beautiful.

Then I walked away, but could not forget the words she had exclaimed,
her whole appearance, the face flushed with color, the eloquent brown
eyes sparkling, the pressed palms, the sudden spontaneous passion of
delight and desire in her tone. The picture was in my mind all that day,
and lived through the next, and so wrought on me that I could not longer
keep away from the birds, which I, too, loved; for now all at once it
seemed to me that life was not life without them; that I was grown sick,
and all my senses dim; that only the wished sight of wild birds could
medicine my vision; that only by drenching it in their wild melody could
my tired brain recover its lost vigour.




II


After wandering somewhat aimlessly about the country for a couple of
days, I stumbled by chance on just such a spot as I had been wishing to
find--a rustic village not too far away. It was not more than
twenty-five minutes' walk from a small station, less than one hour by
rail from London.

The way to the village was through cornfields, bordered by hedges and
rows of majestic elms. Beyond it, but quite near, there was a wood,
principally of beech, over a mile in length, with a public path running
through it. On the right hand, ten minutes' walk from the village, there
was a long green hill, the ascent to which was gentle; but on the
further side it sloped abruptly down to the Thames.

On the left hand there was another hill, with cottages and orchards,
with small fields interspersed on the slope and summit, so that the
middle part, where I lodged, was in a pretty deep hollow. There was no
sound of traffic there, and few farmers' carts came that way, as it was
well away from the roads, and the deep, narrow, winding lanes were
exceedingly rough, like the stony beds of dried-up streams.

In the deepest part of the coombe, in the middle of the village, there
was a well where the cottagers drew their water; and in the summer
evenings the youths and maidens came there, with or without jugs and
buckets, to indulge in conversation, which was mostly of the rustic,
bantering kind, mixed with a good deal of loud laughter. Close by was
the inn, where the men sat on benches in the tap-room in grave discourse
over their pipes and beer.

Wishing to make their acquaintance, I went in and sat down among them,
and found them a little shy--not to say stand-offish, at first. Rustics
are often suspicious of the stranger within their gates; but after
paying for beer all round, the frost melted and we were soon deep in
talk about the wild life of the place; always a safe and pleasant
subject in a village. One rough-looking, brown-faced man, with iron-grey
hair, became a sort of spokesman for the company, and replied to most of
my questions.

"And what about badgers?" I asked. "In such a rough-looking spot with
woods and all, it strikes me as just the sort of place where one would
find that animal."

A long dead silence followed. I caught the eye of the man nearest me and
repeated the question, "Are there no badgers here?" His eyes fell, then
he exchanged glances with some of the others, all very serious; and at
length my man, addressing the person who had acted as spokesman before,
said, "Perhaps you'll tell the gentleman if there are any badgers here."

At that the rough man looked at me very sharply, and answered stiffly,
"Not as I know of."

A few weeks later, at a small town in the neighbourhood, I got into
conversation with a hotel keeper, an intelligent man, who gave me a good
deal of information about the country. He asked me where I was staying,
and, on my telling him, said "Ah, I know it well--that village in a
hole; and a very nasty hole to get in, too--at any rate it was so,
formerly. They are getting a bit civilized now, but I remember the time
when a stranger couldn't show himself in the place without being jeered
at and insulted. Yes, they were a rough lot down in that hole--the
Badgers, they were called, and that's what they are called still."

The pity of it was that I didn't know this before I went among them! But
it was not remembered against me that I had wounded their
susceptibilities; they soon found that I was nothing but a harmless
field naturalist, and I had friendly relations with many of them.

At the extremity of the straggling village was the beginning of an
extensive common, where it was always possible to spend an hour or two
without seeing a human creature. A few sheep grazed and browsed there,
roaming about in twos and threes and half-dozens, tearing their fleeces
for the benefit of nest-building birds, in the great tangled masses of
mingled furze and bramble and briar. Birds were abundant there--all
those kinds that love the common's openness, and the rough, thorny
vegetation that flourishes on it. But the village--or rather, the large
open space occupied by it, formed the headquarters and centre of a
paradise of birds (as I soon began to think it), for the cottages and
houses were widely separated, the meanest having a garden and some
trees, and in most cases there was an old orchard of apple, cherry, and
walnut trees to each habitation, and out of this mass of greenery, which
hid the houses and made the place look more like a wood than a village,
towered the great elms in rows, and in groups.

On first approaching the place I heard, mingled with many other voices,
that of the nightingale; and as it was for the medicine of its pure,
fresh melody that I particularly craved, I was glad to find a lodging in
one of the cottages, and to remain there for several weeks.

The small care which the nightingale took to live up to his reputation
in this place surprised me a little. Here he could always be heard in
the daytime--not one bird, but a dozen--in different parts of the
village; but he sang not at night. This I set down to the fact that the
nights were dark and the weather unsettled. But later, when the weather
grew warmer, and there were brilliant moonlight nights, he was still a
silent bird except by day.

I was also a little surprised at his tameness.

On first coming to the village, when I ran after every nightingale I
heard, to get as near him as possible, I was occasionally led by the
sound to a cottage, and in some instances I found the singer perched
within three or four yards of an open window or door. At my own cottage,
when the woman who waited on me shook the breakfast cloth at the front
door, the bird that came to pick up the crumbs was the nightingale--not
the robin. When by chance he met a sparrow there, he attacked and chased
it away. It was a feast of nightingales. An elderly woman of the village
explained to me that the nightingales and other small birds were common
and tame in the village, because no person disturbed them. I smile now
when recording the good old dame's words.

On my second day at the village it happened to be raining--a warm,
mizzling rain without wind--ind the nightingales were as vocal as in
fine bright weather. I heard one in a narrow lane, and went towards it,
treading softly, in order not to scare it away, until I got within eight
or ten yards of it, as it sat on a dead projecting twig. This was a twig
of a low thorn tree growing up from the hedge, projecting through the
foliage, and the bird, perched near its end, sat only about five feet
above the bare ground of the lane. Now, I owe my best thanks to this
individual nightingale, for sharply calling to my mind a common
pestilent delusion, which I have always hated, but had never yet raised
my voice against--namely, that all wild creatures exist in constant fear
of an attack from the numberless subtle or powerful enemies that are
always waiting and watching for an opportunity to spring upon and
destroy them.  The truth is, that although their enemies be legion, and
that every day, and even several times on each day, they may be
threatened with destruction, they are absolutely free from apprehension,
except when in the immediate presence of danger. Suspicious they may be
at times, and the suspicion may cause them to remove themselves to a
greater distance from the object that excites it; but the emotion is so
slight, the action so almost automatic, that the singing bird will fly
to another bush a dozen yards away, and at once resume his interrupted
song. Again, a bird will see the deadliest enemy of its kind, and unless
it be so close as to actually threaten his life, he will regard it with
the greatest indifference or will only be moved to anger at its
presence.  Here was this nightingale singing in the rain, seeing but not
heeding me; while beneath the hedge, almost directly under the twig it
sat on, a black cat was watching it with luminous yellow eyes. I did not
see the cat at first, but have no doubt that the nightingale had seen
and knew that it was there. High up on the tops of the thorn, a couple
of sparrows were silently perched. Perhaps, like myself, they had come
there to listen. After I had been standing motionless, drinking in that
dulcet music for at least five minutes, one of the two sparrows dropped
from the perch straight down, and alighting on the bare wet ground
directly under the nightingale, began busily pecking at something
eatable it had discovered. No sooner had he begun pecking than out
leaped the concealed cat on to him. The sparrow fluttered wildly up from
beneath or between the claws, and escaped, as if by a miracle. The cat
raised itself up, glared round, and, catching sight of me close by,
sprang back into the hedge and was gone. But all this time the exposed
nightingale, perched only five feet above the spot where the attack had
been made and the sparrow had so nearly lost his life, had continued
singing; and he sang on for some minutes after. I suppose that he had
seen the cat before, and knew instinctively that he was beyond its
reach; that it was a terrestrial, not an aerial enemy, and so feared it
not at all; and he would, perhaps, have continued singing if the sparrow
had been caught and instantly killed.

Quite early in June I began to feel just a little cross with the
nightingales, for they almost ceased singing; and considering that the
spring had been a backward one, it seemed to me that their silence was
coming too soon. I was not sufficiently regardful of the fact that their
lays are solitary, as the poet has said; that they ask for no witness of
their song, nor thirst for human praise. They were all nesting now. But
if I heard them less, I saw much more of them, especially of one
individual, the male bird of a couple that had made their nest in a
hedge a stone's throw from the cottage. A favourite morning perch of
this bird was on a small wooden gate four or five yards away from my
window. It was an open, sunny spot, where his restless, bright eyes
could sweep the lane, up and down; and he could there also give vent to
his superfluous energy by lording it over a few sparrows and other small
birds that visited the spot. I greatly admired the fine, alert figure of
the pugnacious little creature, as he perched there so close to me, and
so fearless. His striking resemblance to the robin in form, size, and in
his motions, made his extreme familiarity seem only natural. The robin
is greatly distinguished in a sober-plumaged company by the vivid tint
on his breast. He is like the autumn leaf that catches a ray of sunlight
on its surface, and shines conspicuously among russet leaves. But the
clear brown of the nightingale is beautiful, too.

This same nightingale was keeping a little surprise in store for me.
Although he took no notice of me sitting at the open window, whenever I
went thirty or forty yards from the gate along the narrow lane that
faced it, my presence troubled him and his mate only too much. They
would flit round my head, emitting the two strongly contrasted sounds
with which they express solicitude--the clear, thin, plaintive, or
wailing note, and the low, jarring sound--an alternate lamenting and
girding. One day when I approached the nest, they displayed more anxiety
than usual, fluttering close to me, wailing and croaking more vehemently
than ever, when all at once the male, at the height of his excitement,
burst into singing. Half a dozen notes were uttered rapidly, with great
strength, then a small complaining cry again, and at intervals, a fresh
burst of melody. I have remarked the same thing in other singing birds,
species in which the harsh grating or piercing sounds that properly
express violent emotions of a painful kind, have been nearly or quite
lost. In the nightingale, this part of the bird's language has lost its
original character, and has dwindled to something very small.
Solicitude, fear, anger, are expressed with sounds that are mere
lispings compared with those emitted by the bird when singing. It is
worthy of remark that some of the most highly developed melodists--and I
am now thinking of the mocking-birds--never, in-moments of extreme
agitation, fall into this confusion and use singing notes that express
agreeable emotions, to express such as are painful. But in the
mocking-bird the primitive harsh and grating cries have not been lost
nor softened to sounds hardly to be distinguished from those that are
emitted by way of song.




III


By this time all the birds were breeding, some already breeding a second
time. And now I began to suspect that they were not quite so undisturbed
as the old dame had led me to believe; that they had not found a
paradise in the village after all. One morning, as I moved softly along
the hedge in my nightingale's lane, all at once I heard, in the old
grassy orchard, to which it formed a boundary, swishing sounds of
scuttling feet and half-suppressed exclamations of alarm; then a
crushing through the hedge, and out, almost at my feet, rushed and
leaped and tumbled half-a-dozen urchins, who had suddenly been
frightened from a bird-nesting raid. Clothes torn, hands and faces
scratched with thorns, hat-less, their tow-coloured hair all disordered
or standing up like a white crest above their brown faces, rounded eyes
staring--what an extraordinarily wild appearance they had! I was back
in very old times, in the Britain of a thousand years before the coming
of the Romans, and these were her young barbarians, learning their
life's business in little things.

No, the birds of the village were not undisturbed while breeding; but
happily the young savages never found my nightingale's nest. One day the
bird came to the gate as usual, and was more alert and pugnacious than
ever; and no wonder, for his mate came too, and with them four young
birds. For a week they were about the cottage every day, when they
dispersed, and one beautiful bright morning the male bird, in his old
place near my window, attempted to sing, beginning with that rich,
melodious throbbing, which is usually called "_jugging_," and following
with half-a-dozen beautiful notes. That was all. It was July, and I
heard no more music from him or from any other of his kind.

* * *

I have perhaps written at too great length of this bird. The nightingale
was after all only one of the fifty-nine species I succeeded in
identifying during my sojourn at the village. There were more. I heard
the calls and cries of others in the wood and various places, but
refused, except in the case of the too elusive crake, to set down any in
my list that I did not see. It was not my ambition to make a long list.
My greatest desire was to see well those that interested me most. But
those who go forth, as I did, to look for birds that are a sight for
sore eyes, must meet with many a disappointment. In all those fruit and
shade trees that covered the village with a cloud of verdure, and in the
neighbouring woods, not once did I catch a glimpse of the green
woodpecker, a beautiful conspicuous bird, supposed to be increasing in
many places in England. Its absence from so promising a locality seemed
strange.  Another species, also said to be increasing in the
country--the turtledove, was extremely abundant. In the tall beech woods
its low, monotonous crooning note was heard all day long from all sides.
In shady places, where the loud, shrill bird-voices are few, one prefers
this sound to the set song of the woodpigeon, being more continuous and
soothing, and of the nature of a lullaby. It sometimes reminded me of
the low monotone I have heard from a Patagonian mother when singing her
"swart papoose" to sleep. Still, I would gladly have spared many of
these woodland crooners for the sake of one magpie--that bird of fine
feathers and a bright mind, which I had not looked on for a whole year,
and now hoped to see again. But he was not there; and after I had looked
for myself, some of the natives assured me that no magpie had been seen
for years in that wood.

For a time I feared that I was to be just as unlucky with regard to the
jay, seeing that the owner of the extensive beech woods adjoining the
village permitted his keeper to kill the most interesting birds in
it--kestrels and sparrowhawks, owls, jays, and magpies. He was a new
man, comparatively, in the place, and wanted to increase his preserves,
but to do this it was necessary first to exclude the villagers--the
Badgers, who were no doubt partial to pheasants' eggs. Now, to close an
ancient right-of-way is a ticklish business, and this was an important
one, seeing that the village women did their Saturday marketing in the
town beyond the wood and river, and with the path closed they would have
two miles further to walk. The new lord wisely took this into
consideration, and set himself to win the goodwill of the people before
attempting any strong measures. He walked in the lanes and was affable
to the cottage women and nice to the children, and by and bye he
exclaimed, "What! No institute! no hall, or any place where you can meet
and spend the long winter evenings? Well, I'll soon see to that." And
soon, to their delight, they had a nice building reared on a piece of
land which he bought for the purpose, furnished with tables, chairs,
bagatelle boards, and all accessories; and he also supplied them with
newspapers and magazines. He was immensely popular, but appeared to
think little of what he had done. When they expressed their gratitude to
him he would move his hand, and answer, "Oh, I'm going to do a great
deal more than that for you!"

A few months went by, then he caused a notice to be put up about the
neighbourhood that the path through the wood was going to be closed "by
order." No one took any notice, and a few weeks later his workmen
appeared on the scene and erected a huge oakwood barrier across the
path; also a notice on a board that the wood was strictly private and
trespassers would be prosecuted. The villagers met in force at the
institute and the inn that evening, and after discussing the matter over
their ale, they armed themselves with axes and went in a body and
demolished the barrier.

The owner was disgusted, but took no action. "This," he said, "is their
gratitude"; and from that day he ceased to subscribe to the local
charities or take his walks in the village. He had given the institute,
and so could not pull it down nor prevent them from using it.

It was refreshing to hear that the Badgers had shown a proper spirit in
the matter, and I was grateful to them for having kept the right-of-way,
as on most days I spent several hours in the beautiful woods.

To return to the jay. In spite of the keeper's persecution, I knew that
he was there; every morning when I got up to look out of the window
between four and five o'clock, I heard from some quarter of the village
that curious subdued, but far-reaching, scolding note he is accustomed
to utter when his suspicions have been aroused.

That was the jay's custom--to come from the woods before even the
earliest risers were up, and forage in the village. By and bye I
discovered that, by lying motionless for an hour or so on the dry moss
in the wood, he would at length grow so bold as to allow himself to be
seen, but high up among the topmost branches. Then, by means of my
binocular, I had the wild thing on my thumb, so to speak, exhibiting
himself to me, inquisitive, perplexed, suspicious, enraged by turns, as
he flirted wings and tail, lifted and lowered his crest, glancing down
with bright, wild eyes. What a beautiful hypocrisy and delightful power
this is which enables us, sitting or lying motionless, feigning sleep
perhaps, thus to fool this wild, elusive creature, and bring all its
cunning to naught! He is so much smaller and keener-sighted, able to
fly, to perch far up above me, to shift his position every minute or
two, masking his small figure with this or that tuft of leaves, while
still keeping his eyes on me--in spite of it all to have him so close,
and without moving or taking any trouble, to see him so much better than
he can see me! But this is a legitimate trickery of science, so innocent
that we can laugh at our dupe when we practise it; nor do we afterwards
despise our superior cunning and feel ashamed, as when we slaughter wild
birds with far-reaching shot, which they cannot escape.

* * *

All these corvine birds, which the gamekeeper pursues so relentlessly,
albeit they were before him, killing when they killed to better purpose;
and, let us hope, will exist after him--all these must greatly surpass
other kinds in sagacity to have escaped extermination. In the present
condition of things, the jay is perhaps the best off, on account of his
smaller size and less conspicuous colouring; but whether more cunning
than the crow or magpie or not, in perpetual alertness and restless
energy or intensity of life, he is without an equal among British birds.
And this quality forms his chief attraction; it is more to the mind than
his lifted crest and bright eyes, his fine vinaceous brown and the patch
of sky-blue on his wings. One would miss him greatly from the woods;
some of the melody may well be spared for the sake of the sudden,
brain-piercing, rasping, rending scream with which he startles us in our
solitary forest walks.

It is this extreme liveliness of the jay which makes it more distressing
to the mind to see it pent in a cage than other birds of its family,
such as the magpie; just as it is more distressing to see a skylark than
a finch in prison, because the lark has an irresistible impulse to rise
when his singing fit is on. Sing he must, in or out of prison, yet there
can be little joy in the performance when the bird is incessantly teased
with the unsatisfied desire to mount and pour out his music at heaven's
gate.

Out of the cages, jays make charming and beautiful pets, and some who
have kept them have assured me that they are not mischievous birds. The
late Mark Melford one time when I visited him, had two jays, handsome
birds, in bright, glossy plumage, always free to roam where they liked,
indoors or out. We were sitting talking in his garden when one of the
jays came flying to us and perched on a wooden ledge a few feet from and
above our heads, and after sitting quietly for a little while he
suddenly made a dash at my head, just brushing it with his wings, then
returned to his perch.  At intervals of a few moments he repeated this
action, and when I remarked that he probably resented the presence of a
stranger, Melford exclaimed, "Oh, no, he wants to play with you--that's
all."

His manner of playing was rather startling. So long as I kept my eyes on
him he remained motionless, but the instant my attention wandered, or
when in speaking I looked at my companion, the sudden violent dash at my
head would be made.

I was assured by Melford that his birds never carried off and concealed
bright objects, a habit which it has been said the jay, as well as the
magpie, possesses.

"What would he do with this shilling if I tossed it to him?" I asked.

"Catch it," he returned. "It would simply be play to him, but he
wouldn't carry it off."

I tossed up the shilling, and the bird had perhaps expected me to do so,
as he deftly caught it just as a dog catches a biscuit when you toss one
to him. After keeping it a few moments in his beak, he put it down at
his side. I took out four more shilling pieces and tossed them quickly
one by one, and he caught them without a miss and placed them one by one
with the other, not scattered about, but in a neat pile. Then, seeing
that I had no more shillings he flew off.

After these few playful passages with one of his birds, I could
understand Melford's feeling about his free pet jays, magpies and
jackdaws; they were not merely birds to him, but rather like so many
delightful little children in the beautiful shape of birds.

* * *

There was no rookery in or near the village, but a large flock of rooks
were always to be seen feeding and sunning themselves in some level
meadows near the river. It struck me one day as a very fine sight, when
an old bird, who looked larger and blacker and greyer-faced than the
others, and might have been the father and leader of them all, got up on
a low post, and with wide-open beak poured forth a long series of most
impressive caws. One always wonders at the meaning of such displays. Is
the old bird addressing the others in the rook language on some matter
of great moment; or is he only expressing some feeling in the only
language he has--those long, hoarse, uninflected sounds; and if so, what
feeling? Probably a very common one. The rooks appeared happy and
prosperous, feeding in the meadow grass in that June weather, with the
hot sun shining on their glossy coats. Their days of want were long past
and forgotten; the anxious breeding period was over; the tempest in the
tall trees; the annual slaughter of the young birds--all past and
forgotten. The old rook was simply expressing the old truth, that life
was worth living.

These rooks were usually accompanied by two or three or more crows--a
bird of so ill-repute that the most out-and-out enthusiast for
protection must find it hard to say a word in its favour. At any rate,
the rooks must think, if they think at all, that this frequent visitor
and attendant of theirs is more kin than kind. I have related in a
former work that I once saw a peregrine strike down and kill an owl--a
sight that made me gasp with astonishment. But I am inclined to think of
this act as only a slip, a slight aberration, on the part of the falcon,
so universal is the sense of relationship among the kinds that have the
rapacious habit; or, at the worst, it was merely an isolated act of
deviltry and daring of the sharp-winged pirate of the sky, a sudden
assertion of over-mastering energy and power, and a very slight offence
compared with that of the crow when he carries off and devours his
callow little cousins of the rookery.

* * *

One of the first birds I went out to seek--perhaps the most medicinal of
all birds to see--was the kingfisher; but he was not anywhere on the
river margin, although suitable places were plentiful enough, and
myriads of small fishes were visible in the shallow water, seen at rest
like dim-pointed stripes beneath the surface, and darting away and
scattering outwards, like a flight of arrows, at any person's approach.
Walking along the river bank one day, when the place was still new to
me, I discovered a stream, and following it up arrived at a spot where a
clump of trees overhung the water, casting on it a deep shade. On the
other side of the stream buttercups grew so thickly that the glazed
petals of the flowers were touching; the meadow was one broad expanse of
brilliant yellow. I had not been standing half a minute in the shade
before the bird I had been seeking darted out from the margin, almost
beneath my feet, and then, instead of flying up or down stream, sped
like an arrow across the field of buttercups. It was a very bright day,
and the bird going from me with the sunshine full on it, appeared
entirely of a shining, splendid green.  Never had I seen the kingfisher
in such favourable circumstances; flying so low above the flowery level
that the swiftly vibrating wings must have touched the yellow petals; he
was like a waif from some far tropical land. The bird was tropical, but
I doubt if there exists within the tropics anything to compare with a
field of buttercups--such large and unbroken surfaces of the most
brilliant colour in nature. The first bird's mate appeared a minute
later, flying in the same direction, and producing the same splendid
effect, and also green. These two alone were seen, and only on this
occasion, although I often revisited the spot, hoping to find them
again.

Now, the kingfisher is blue, and I am puzzled to know why, on this one
occasion, it appeared green. I have, in a former work, _Argentine
Ornithology_, described a contrary effect in a small and beautiful
tyrant-bird, _Cyanotis azarae_, variously called, in the vernacular,
"All-colored or Many-colored Kinglet." It has a little blue on its head,
but its entire back, from the nape to the tail, is deep green. It lives
in beds of bulrushes, and when seen flying from the spectator in a very
strong light, at a distance of twenty or thirty yards, its colour in
appearance is bright cerulean blue. It is a sunlight effect, but how
produced is a mystery to me. In the case of the two green kingfishers, I
am inclined to think that the yellow of that shining field of buttercups
in some way produced the illusion.

Why are these exquisite birds so rare, even in situations so favourable
to them as the one I have described? Are they killed by severe frosts?
An ornithological friend from Oxfordshire assures me that it will take
several favourable seasons to make good the losses of the late terrible
winter of 1891-92. But this, as every ornithologist knows, is only a
part of the truth. The large number of stuffed kingfishers under glass
shades that one sees in houses of all descriptions, in town and country,
but most frequently in the parlours of country cottages and inns, tell a
melancholy story. Some time ago a young man showed me three stuffed
kingfishers in a case, and informed me that he had shot them at a place
(which he named) quite close to London. He said that these three birds
were the last of their kind ever seen there; that he had gone, week
after week and watched and waited, until one by one, at long intervals,
he had secured them all; and that two years had passed since the last
one was killed, and no other kingfisher had been seen at the place. He
added that the waterside which these birds had frequented was resorted
to by crowds of London working people on Saturday afternoons, Sundays
and other holidays; the fact that hundreds, perhaps thousands, of pairs
of tired eyes would have been freshened and gladdened by the sight of
their rare gem-like beauty only made him prouder of his achievement.
This young man was a cockney of the small shop-keeping class--a
Philistine of the Philistines--hence there was no call to feel surprise
at his self-glorification over such a matter. But what shall we say of
that writer whose masterly works on English rural life are familiar to
everyone, who is regarded as first among "lovers of nature," when he
relates that he invariably carried a gun when out of doors, mainly with
the object of shooting any kingfisher he might chance to see, as the
dead bird always formed an acceptable present to the cottager's wife,
who would get it stuffed and keep it as an ornament on her parlour
mantelshelf!

Happily for the kingfisher, and for human beings who love nature, the
old idea that beautiful birds were meant to be destroyed for fun by
anyone and everyone, from the small-brained, detestable cockney
sportsman I have mentioned, to the gentlemen who write books about the
beauties of nature, is now gradually giving place to this new one--that
it would be better to preserve the beautiful things we possess. Half a
century before the author of "Wild Life in a Southern Country" amused
himself by carrying a gun to shoot kingfishers, the inhabitants of that
same county of Wiltshire were bathed in tears--so I read in an old
Salisbury newspaper--at the tragic death of a young gentleman of great
distinction, great social charm, great promise. He was out shooting
swallows with a friend who, firing at a passing swallow, had the
misfortune to shoot and kill _him._

At the present time when gentlemen practise a little at flying birds, to
get their hand in before the first of September, they shoot sparrows as
a rule, or if they shoot swallows, which afford them better practice,
they do not say anything about it.




IV


Where the stream broadened and mixed with the river, there existed a
dense and extensive rush-bed--an island of rushes separated by a deep
channel, some twelve or fourteen yards in width from the bank. This was
a favourite nesting-place of the sedge-warblers; occasionally as many as
a dozen birds could be heard singing at the same time, although in no
sense together, and the effect was indeed curious. This is not a song
that spurts and gushes up fountain-like in the manner of the robin's,
and of some other kinds, sprinkling the listener, so to speak, with a
sparkling vocal spray; but it keeps low down, a song that flows along
the surface gurgling and prattling like musical running water, in its
shallow pebbly channel. Listening again, the similitude that seemed
appropriate at first was cast aside for another, and then another still.
The hidden singers scattered all about their rushy island were small,
fantastic, human minstrels, performing on a variety of instruments, some
unknown, others recognizable--bones and castanets, tiny hurdy-gurdies,
piccolos, banjos, tabours, and Pandean pipes--a strange medley!

Interesting as this concert was, it held me less than the solitary
singing of a sedge-warbler that lived by himself, or with only his mate,
higher up where the stream was narrow, so that I could get near him; for
he not only tickled my ears with his rapid, reedy music, but amused my
mind as well with a pretty little problem in bird psychology. I could
sit within a few yards of his tangled haunt without hearing a note; but
if I jumped up and made a noise, or struck the branches with my stick,
he would incontinently burst into song. It is a very well-known habit of
the bird, and on account of it and of the very peculiar character of the
sounds emitted, his song is frequently described by ornithologists as
"mocking, defiant, scolding, angry," etc. It seems clear that at
different times the bird sings from different exciting causes. When,
undisturbed by a strange presence, he bursts spontaneously into singing,
the music, as in other species, is simply an expression of overflowing
gladness; at other times, the bird expressed such feelings as alarm,
suspicion, solicitude, perhaps anger, by singing the same song. How does
this come about?

I have stated, when speaking of the nightingale, that birds in which the
singing faculty is highly developed, sometimes make the mistake of
bursting into song when anxious or distressed or in pain, but that this
is not the case with the mocking-birds. Some species of these brilliant
songsters of the New World, in their passion for variety (to put it that
way), import every harsh and grating cry and sound they know into their
song; but, on the other hand, when anxious for the safety of their
young, or otherwise distressed, they emit only the harsh and grating
sounds--never a musical note. In the sedge-warbler, the harsh, scolding
sounds that express alarm, solicitude, and other painful emotions, have
also been made a part of the musical performance; but this differs from
the songs of most species, the mocking birds included, in the
extraordinary rapidity with which it is enunciated; once the song begins
it goes on swiftly to the finish, harsh and melodious notes seeming to
overlap and mingle, the sound forming, to speak in metaphor, a close
intricate pattern of strongly-contrasted colours. Now the song
invariably begins with the harsh notes--the sounds which, at other
times, express alarm and other more or less painful emotions--and it
strikes me as a probable explanation that when the bird in the singing
season has been startled into uttering these harsh and grating sounds,
as when a stone is flung into the rushes, he is incapable of uttering
them only, but the singing notes they suggest and which he is in the
habit of uttering, follow automatically.

The spot where I observed this wee feathered fantasy, the tantalizing
sprite of the rushes, and where I soon ceased to see, hear, or think
about him, calls for a fuller description. On one side the wooded hill
sloped downward to the stream; on the other side spread the meadows
where the rooks came every day to feed, or to sit and stand about
motionless, looking like birds cut out of jet, scattered over about half
an acre of the grassy, level ground. Stout old pollard willows grew here
and there along the banks and were pleasant to see, this being the one
man-mutilated thing in nature which, to my mind, not infrequently gains
in beauty by the mutilation, so admirably does it fit into and harmonize
with the landscape. At one point there was a deep, nearly stagnant pool,
separated from the stream by a strip of wet, rushy ground, its still
dark surface covered with water-lilies, not yet in bloom. They were just
beginning to show their polished buds, shaped like snake's heads, above
the broad, oily leaves floating like islands on the surface. The stream
itself was, on my side, fringed with bulrushes and other aquatic plants;
on the opposite bank there were some large alders lifting their branches
above great masses of bramble and rose-briar, all together forming as
rich and beautiful a tangle as one could find even in the most luxuriant
of the wild, unkept hedges round the village. The briars especially
flourished wonderfully at this spot, climbing high and dropping their
long, slim branches quite down to the surface of the water, and in some
places forming an arch above the stream. A short distance from this
tangle, so abundantly sprinkled with its pale delicate roses, the water
was spanned by a small wooden bridge, which no person appeared to use,
but which had a use. It formed the one dry clear spot in the midst of
all that moist vegetation, and the birds that came from the wood to
drink and search for worms and small caterpillars first alighted on the
bridge. There they would rest a few moments, take a look round, then fly
to some favourite spot where succulent morsels had been picked up on
previous visits. Thrushes, blackbirds, sparrows, reed-buntings,
chaffinches, tits, wrens, with many other species, succeeded each other
all day long; for now they mostly had young to provide for, and it was
their busiest time.

The unsullied beauty and solitariness of this spot made me wish at first
that I was a boy once more, to climb and to swim, to revel in the
sunshine and flowers, to be nearer in spirit to the birds and dragon
flies and water-rats; then, that I could build a cabin and live there
all the summer long, forgetful of the world and its affairs, with no
human creature to keep me company, and no book to read, or with only one
slim volume, some Spanish poet, let me say Melendez, for
preference--only a small selection from his too voluminous writings; for
he, albeit an eighteenth-century singer, was perhaps the last of that
long, illustrious line of poets who sang as no others have sung of the
pure delight-fulness of a life with nature. Something of this charm is
undoubtedly due to the beauty of the language they wrote in and to the
free, airy grace of assonants. What a hard, artificial sound the rhyme
too often has: the clink that falls at regular intervals as of a
stone-breaker's hammer! In the freer kinds of Spanish poetry there are
numberless verses that make the smoothest lines and lyrics of our
sweetest and most facile singers, from Herrick to Swinburne, seem hard
and mechanical by comparison. But there is something more. I doubt, for
one thing, if we are justified in the boast we sometimes make that the
feeling for Nature is stronger in our poets than in those of other
countries. The most scientific critic may be unable to pick a hole in
Tennyson's botany and zoology; but the passion for, and feeling of
oneness with Nature may exist without this modern minute accuracy. Be
this as it may, it was not Tennyson, nor any other of our poets, that I
would have taken to my dreamed-of solitary cabin for companionship:
Melendez came first to my mind. I think of his lines to a butterfly:

  De donde alegre vienes
  Tan suelta y tan festiva,
  Las valles alegrando
  Veloz mariposilla?*

* May be roughly rendered thus:

  Whence, blithe one, comest thou
  With that airy, happy flight--
  To make the valleys glad,
  O swift-winged butterfly?

and can imagine him--the poet himself--coming to see me through the
woods and down the hill with the careless ease and lightness of heart of
his own purple-winged child of earth and air--_tan suelta y tan
festiva_. Here in these four or five words one may read the whole secret
of his charm--the exquisite delicacy and seeming artlessness in the
form, and the spirit that is in him--the old, simple, healthy, natural
gladness in nature, and feeling of kinship with all the children of
life. But I do not wish to disturb anyone in his prepossessions. It
would greatly trouble me to think that my reader should, for the space
of a page, or even of a single line, find himself in opposition to and
not with me; and I am free to admit that with regard to poetry one's
preferences change according to the mood one happens to be in and to the
conditions generally. At home in murky London on most days I should
probably seek pleasure and forgetfulness in Browning; but in such
surroundings as I have been describing the lighter-hearted, elf-like
Melendez accords best with my spirit, one whose finest songs are without
human interest; who is irresponsible as the wind, and as unstained with
earthly care as the limpid running water he delights in: who is brother
to bird and bee and butterfly, and worships only liberty and sunshine,
and is in love with nothing but a flower.

Nearly midway between the useful little bridge and the rose-blossoming
tangle I have spoken of there were three elm-trees growing in the open
grassy space near the brook; they were not lofty, but had very
wide-spreading horizontal branches, which made them look like oaks. This
was an ideal spot in which to spend the sultry hours, and I had no
sooner cast myself on the short grass in the shade than I noticed that
the end of a projecting branch above my head, and about twenty feet from
the ground, was a favourite perch of a tree-pipit. He sang in the air
and, circling gracefully down, would alight on the branch, where,
sitting near me and plainly visible, he would finish his song and renew
it at intervals; then, leaving the loved perch, he would drop, singing,
to the ground, just a few yards beyond the tree's shadow; thence,
singing again, he would mount up and up above the tree, only to slide
down once more with set, unfluttering wings, with a beautiful swaying
motion to the same old resting-place on the branch, there to sing and
sing and sing.

If Melendez himself had come to me with flushed face and laughing eyes,
and sat down on the grass at my side to recite one of his most
enchanting poems, I should, with finger on lip, have enjoined silence;
for in the mood I was then in at that sequestered spot, with the
landscape outside my shady green pavilion bathed and quivering in the
brilliant sunshine, this small bird had suddenly become to me more than
any other singer, feathered or human. And yet the tree-pipit is not very
highly regarded among British melodists, on account of the little
variety there is in its song. Nevertheless, it is most sweet--perhaps the
sweetest of all. It is true that there are thousands, nay, millions of
things--sights and sounds and perfumes--which are or may be described as
sweet, so common is the metaphor, and this too common use has perhaps
somewhat degraded it; but in this case there is no other word so well
suited to describe the sensation produced.

The tree-pipit has a comparatively short song, repeated, with some
variation in the number and length of the notes, at brief intervals. The
opening notes are thick and throaty, and similar in character to the
throat-notes of many other species in this group, a softer sound than
the throat-notes of the skylark and woodlark, which they somewhat
resemble. The canary-like trills and thin piping notes, long drawn out,
which follow vary greatly in different individuals, and in many cases
the trills are omitted. But the concluding notes of the song I am
considering--which is only one note repeated again and again--are clear
and beautifully inflected, and have that quality of sweetness, of
lusciousness, I have mentioned. The note is uttered with a downward
fall, more slowly and expressively at each repetition, as if the singer
felt overcome at the sweetness of life and of his own expression, and
languished somewhat at the close; its effect is like that of the perfume
of the honeysuckle, infecting the mind with a soft, delicious languor, a
wish to lie perfectly still and drink of the same sweetness again and
again in larger measure.

To some who are familiar with this by no means uncommon little bird, it
may seem that I am overstating the charm of its melody. I can only say
that the mood I was then in made me very keenly appreciative; also that
I have never heard any other individual of this species able to produce
precisely the same effect. We know that there are quite remarkable
differences in the songs of birds of the same species, that among
several that appear to be perfect and to sing alike one will possess a
charm above the other. The truth is they are not alike; they affect us
differently, but the sense is not fine enough or not sufficiently
trained to detect the cause. The poet's words may be used of this
natural melody as well as of the works of art:

  "O the little more and how much it is!"

There were about the village, within a few minutes' walk of the cottage,
not fewer than half-a-dozen tree-pipits, each inhabiting a favourite
spot where I could always count on finding and hearing him at almost any
hour of the day from sunrise to sunset. Yet I cared not for these. To
the one chosen bird I returned daily to spend the hot hours, lying in
the shade and listening to his strain. Finally, I allowed two or three
days to slip by, and when I revisited the old spot the secret charm had
vanished. The bird was there, and rose and fell as formerly, pouring out
his melody; but it was not the same: something was missing from those
last sweet, languishing notes. Perhaps in the interval there had been
some disturbing accident in his little wild life, though I could hardly
believe it, since his mate was still sitting about thirty yards from the
tree on the five little mottled eggs in her nest. Or perhaps his
midsummer's music had reached its highest point, and was now in its
declension. And perhaps the fault was in me. The virtue that draws and
holds us does not hold us always, nor very long; it departs from all
things, and we wonder why. The loss is in ourselves, although we do not
know it. Nature, the chosen mistress of our heart, does not change
towards us, yet she is now, even to-day--

  "Less full of purple colour and hid spice,"

and smiles and sparkles in vain to allure us, and when she touches us
with her warm, caressing touch, there is, compared with yesterday, only
a faint response.




V


Coming back from the waterside through the wood, after the hottest hours
of the day were over, the crooning of the turtle-doves would be heard
again on every side--that summer beech-wood lullaby that seemed never to
end. The other bird voices were of the willow-wren, the wood-wren, the
coal-tit, and the now somewhat tiresome chiffchaff; from the distance
would come the prolonged rich strain of the blackbird, and occasionally
the lyric of the chaffinch. The song of this bird gains greatly when
heard from a tall tree in the woodland silence; it has then a resonance
and wildness which it appears to lack in the garden and orchard. In the
village I had been glad to find that the chaffinch was not too common,
that in the tangle of minstrelsy one could enjoy there his vigorous
voice was not predominant.

Of all these woodland songsters the wood-wren impressed me the most. He
could always be heard, no matter where I entered the wood, since all
this world of tall beeches was a favoured haunt of the wood-wren, each
pair keeping to its own territory of half-an-acre of trees or so, and
somewhere among those trees the male was always singing, far up,
invisible to eyes beneath, in the topmost sunlit foliage of the tall
trees. On entering the wood I would, stand still for a few minutes to
listen to the various sounds until that one fascinating sound would come
to my ears from some distance away, and to that spot I would go to find
a bed of last year's leaves to sit upon and listen. It was an enchanting
experience to be there in that woodland twilight with the green cloud of
leaves so far above me; to listen to the silence, to the faint whisper
of the wind-touched leaves, then to little prelusive drops of musical
sound, growing louder and falling faster until they ran into one
prolonged trill. And there I would sit listening for half-an-hour or a
whole hour; but the end would not come; the bird is indefatigable and
with his mysterious talk in the leaves would tire the sun himself and send
him down the sky: for not until the sun has set and the wood has grown
dark does the singing cease.

On emerging from the deep shade of the beeches into the wide grassy road
that separated the wood from the orchards and plantations of fruit
trees, and pausing for a minute to look down on the more than
half-hidden village, invariably the first loud sounds that reached my
ear were those of the cuckoo, thrush, and blackbird. At all hours in the
village, from early morning to evening twilight, these three voices
sounded far and near above the others. I considered myself fortunate
that no large tree near the cottage had been made choice of by a
song-thrush as a singing-stand during the early hours. The nearest tree
so favoured was on the further side of a field, so that when I woke at
half-past three or four o'clock, the shrill indefatigable voice came in
at the open window, softened by distance and washed by the dewy
atmosphere to greater purity. Throstle and skylark to be admired must be
heard at a distance. But at that early hour when I sat by the open
window, the cuckoo's call was the commonest sound; the birds were
everywhere, bird answering bird far and near, so persistently repeating
their double note that this sound, which is in character unlike any
other sound in nature, which one so listens and longs to hear in spring,
lost its old mystery and charm, and became of no more account than the
cackle of the poultry-yard. It was the cuckoo's village; sometimes three
or four birds in hot pursuit of each other would dash through the trees
that lined the further side of the lane and alight on that small tree at
the gate which the nightingale was accustomed to visit later in the day.

Other birds that kept themselves very much out of sight during most of
the time also came to the same small tree at that early hour. It was
regularly visited, and its thin bole industriously examined, by the
nuthatch and the quaint little mouse-like creeper. Doubtless they
imagined that five o'clock was too early for heavy human creatures to be
awake, and were either ignorant of my presence or thought proper to
ignore it.

But where, during the days when the vociferous cuckoo, with hoarse
chuckle and dissyllabic call and wild bubbling cry was so much with
us--where, in this period of many pleasant noises was the cuckoo's mate,
or maid, or messenger, the quaint and beautiful wryneck? There are few
British birds, perhaps not one--not even the crafty black and white
magpie, or mysterious moth-like goatsucker, or tropical kingfisher--more
interesting to watch. At twilight I had lingered at the woodside, also
in other likely places, and the goatsucker had failed to appear, gliding
and zig-zagging hither and thither on his dusky-mottled noiseless wings,
and now this still heavier disappointment was mine. I could not find the
wryneck. Those quiet grassy orchards, shut in by straggling hedges,
should have had him as a favoured summer guest. Creeper and nuthatch,
and starling and gem-like blue tit, found holes enough in the old trunks
to breed in. And yet I knew that, albeit not common, he was there; I
could not exactly say where, but somewhere on the other side of the next
hedge or field or orchard; for I heard his unmistakable cry, now on this
hand, now on that. Day after day I followed the voice, sometimes in my
eagerness forcing my way through a brambly hedge to emerge with
scratched hands and clothes torn, like one that had been set upon and
mauled by some savage animal of the cat kind; and still the quaint
figure eluded my vision.

At last I began to have doubts about the creature that emitted that
strange, penetrating call. First heard as a bird-call, and nothing more,
by degrees it grew more and more laugh-like--a long, far-reaching,
ringing laugh; not the laugh I should like to hear from any person I
take an interest in, but a laugh with all the gladness, unction, and
humanity gone out of it--a dry mechanical sound, as if a soulless,
lifeless, wind-instrument had laughed. It was very curious. Listening to
it day by day, something of the strange history of the being once but no
longer human, that uttered it grew up and took shape in my mind; for we
all have in us something of this mysterious faculty. It was no bird, no
wryneck, but a being that once, long, long, long ago, in that same
beautiful place, had been a village boy--a free, careless, glad-hearted
boy, like many another. But to this boy life was more than to others,
since nature appeared immeasurably more vivid on account of his brighter
senses; therefore his love of life and happiness in life greatly
surpassed theirs. Annually the trees shed their leaves, the flowers
perished, the birds flew away to some distant country beyond the
horizon, and the sun grew pale and cold in the sky; but the bright
impression all things made on him gave him a joy that was perennial. The
briony, woodbine, and honeysuckle he had looked on withered in the
hedges, but their presentments flourished untouched by frost, as if his
warmth sustained and gave them perpetual life; in that inner magical
world of memory the birds still twittered and warbled, each after its
kind, and the sun shone everlastingly. But he was living in a fool's
paradise, as he discovered by-and-by, when a boy who had been his
playmate began to grow thin and pale, and at last fell sick and died. He
crept near and watched his dead companion lying motionless, unbreathing,
with a face that was like white clay; and then, more horrible still, he
saw him taken out and put into a grave, and the heavy, cold soil cast
over him.

What did this strange and terrible thing mean? Now for the first time he
was told that life is ours only for a season; that we also, like the
leaves and flowers, flourish for a while then fade and perish, and
mingle with the dust. The sad knowledge had come too suddenly and in too
vivid and dreadful a manner.  He could not endure it. Only for a
season!--only for a season! The earth would be green, and the sky blue,
and the sun shine bright for ever, and he would not see, not know it!
Struck with anguish at the thought, he stole away out of sight of the
others to hide himself in woods and thickets, to brood alone on such a
hateful destiny, and torture himself with vain longings, until he, too,
grew pale and thin and large-eyed, like the boy that had died, and those
who saw him shook their heads and whispered to one another that he was
not long for this world. He knew what they were saying, and it only
served to increase his misery and fear, and made him hate them because
they were insensible to the awful fact that death awaited them, or so
little concerned that they had never taken the trouble to inform him of
it. To eat and drink and sleep was all they cared for, and they regarded
death with indifference, because their dull sight did not recognize the
beauty and glory of the earth, nor their dull hearts respond to Nature's
everlasting gladness. The sight of the villagers, with their solemn
head-shakings and whisperings, even of his nearest kindred, grew
insupportable, and he at length disappeared from among them, and was
seen no more with his white, terror-stricken face. From that time he hid
himself in the close thickets, supporting his miserable existence on
wild fruits and leaves, and spending many hours each day lying in some
sheltered spot, gazing up into that blue sunny sky, which was his to
gaze on only for a season, while the large tears gathered in his eyes
and rolled unheeded down his wasted cheeks.

At length during this period there occurred an event which is the
obscurest part of his history; for I know not who or what it was--my
mind being in a mist about it--that came to or accidentally found him
lying on a bed of grass and dried leaves in his thorny hiding-place. It
may have been a gipsy or a witch--there were witches in those days--who,
suddenly looking on his upturned face and seeing the hunger in his
unfathomable eyes, loved him, in spite of her malignant nature; or a
spirit out of the earth; or only a very wise man, an ancient,
white-haired solitary, whose life had been spent in finding out the
secrets of nature. This being, becoming acquainted with the cause of the
boy's grief and of his solitary, miserable condition, began to comfort
him by telling him that no grief was incurable, no desire that heart
could conceive unattainable. He discoursed of the hidden potent
properties of nature, unknown only to those who seek not to know them;
of the splendid virtue inherent in all things, like the green and violet
flames in the clear colourless raindrops which are seen only on rare
occasions. Of life and death, he said that life was of the spirit which
never dies, that death meant only a passage, a change of abode of the
spirit, and the left body crumbled to dust when the spirit went out of
it to continue its existence elsewhere, but that those who hated the
thought of such change could, by taking thought, prolong life and live
for a thousand years, like the adder and tortoise or for ever. But no,
he would not leave the poor boy to grope alone and blindly after that
hidden knowledge he was burning to possess. He pitied him too much. The
means were simple and near to hand, the earth teemed with the virtue
that would save him from the dissolution which so appalled him. He would
be startled to hear in how small a thing and in how insignificant a
creature resided the principle that could make his body, like his
spirit, immortal. But exceeding great power often existed in small
compass: witness the adder's tooth, which was to our sight no more than
the point of the smallest thorn. Now, in the small ant there exists a
principle of a greater potency than any other in nature; so strong and
penetrating was it that even the dull and brutish kind of men who
enquire not into hidden things know something of its power. But the
greatest of all the many qualities of this acid was unknown to them. The
ants were a small people, but exceedingly wise and powerful. If a little
human child had the strength of an ant he would surpass in power the
mightiest giant that ever lived. In the same way ants surpassed men in
wisdom; and this strength and wisdom was the result of that acid
principle in them. Now, if any person should be able to overcome his
repugnance to so strange a food as to sustain himself on ants and
nothing else, the effect of the acid on him would be to change and
harden his flesh and make it impervious to decay or change of any kind.
He would, so long as he confined himself to this kind of food, be
immortal.

Not a moment did the wretched boy hesitate to make use of this new and
wonderful knowledge. When he had found and broken open an ant-hill, so
eager was he that, shutting his eyes, he snatched up the maddened
insects by handfuls and swallowed them, dust and ants together, and was
then tortured for hours, feeling and thinking that they were still alive
within him, running about in search of an outlet and frantically biting.
The strange food sickened him, so that he grew thinner and paler, until
at last he could barely crawl on hands and feet, and was like a skeleton
except for the great sad eyes that could still see the green earth and
blue sky, and still reflected in their depths one fear and one desire.
And slowly, day by day, as his system accustomed itself to the new diet,
his strength returned, and he was able once more to walk erect and run,
and to climb a tree, where he could sit concealed among the thick
foliage and survey the village where he had first seen the light and had
passed the careless, happy years of boyhood. But he cherished no tender
memories and regrets; his sole thought was of the ants, and where to
find a sufficiency of them to stay the cravings of hunger; for, after
the first sensations of disgust had been overcome, he had begun to grow
fond of this kind of food, and now consumed it with avidity. And as his
strength increased so did his dexterity in catching the small, active
insect prey. He no longer gathered the ants up in his palm and swallowed
them along with dust and grit, but picked them up deftly, and conveyed
them one by one to his mouth with lightning rapidity. Meanwhile that
"acid principle," about which he had heard such wonderful things, was
having its effect on his system. His skin changed its colour; he grew
shrunken and small, until at length, after very many years, he dwindled
to the grey little manikin of the present time. His mind, too, changed;
he has no thought nor remembrance of his former life and condition and
of his long-dead relations; but he still haunts the village where he
knows so well where to find the small ants, to pick them from off the
ant-hill and from the trunks of trees with his quick little claw-like
hands. Language and song are likewise forgotten with all human things,
all except his laugh; for when hunger is satisfied, and the sun shines
pleasantly as he reposes on the dry leaves on the ground or sits aloft
on a branch, at times a sudden feeling of gladness possesses him, and he
expresses it in that one way--the long, wild, ringing peal of laughter.
Listening to that strange sound, although I could not see I could yet
picture him, as, aware of my cautious approach, he moved shyly behind
the mossy trunk of some tree and waited silently for me to pass. A lean,
grey little man, clad in a quaintly barred and mottled mantle, woven by
his own hands from some soft silky material, and a close-fitting brown
peaked cap on his head with one barred feather in it for ornament, and a
small wizened grey face with a thin sharp nose, puckered lips, and a
pair of round, brilliant, startled eyes.

So distinct was this image to my mind's eye that it became unnecessary
for me to see the creature, and I ceased to look for him; then all at
once came disillusion, when one day, hearing the familiar high-pitched
laugh with its penetrating and somewhat nasal tone, I looked and beheld
the thing that had laughed just leaving its perch on a branch near the
ground and winging its way across the field. It was only a bird after
all--only the wryneck; and that mysterious faculty I spoke of, saying
that we all of us possessed something of it (meaning only some of us)
was nothing after all but the old common faculty of imagination.

Later on I saw it again on half-a-dozen occasions, but never succeeded
in getting what I call a satisfying sight of it, perched woodpecker-wise
on a mossy trunk, busy at its old fascinating occupation of deftly
picking off the running ants.

It is melancholy to think that this quaint and beautiful bird of a
unique type has been growing less and less common in our country during
the last half a century, or for a longer period. In the last fifteen or
twenty years the falling-off has been very marked. The declension is not
attributable to persecution in this case, since the bird is not on the
gamekeeper's black list, nor has it yet become so rare as to cause the
amateur collectors of dead birds throughout the country systematically
to set about its extermination. Doubtless that will come later on when
it will be in the same category with the golden oriole, hoopoe,
furze-wren, and other species that are regarded as always worth killing;
that is to say, it will come--the scramble for the wryneck's
carcass--if nothing is done in the meantime to restrain the enthusiasm
of those who value a bird only when the spirit of life that gave it
flight and grace and beauty has been crushed out of it--when it is no
longer a bird. The cause of its decline up till now cannot be known to
us; we can only say in our ignorance that this type, like innumerable
others that have ceased to exist, has probably run its course and is
dying out. Or it might be imagined that its system is undergoing some
slow change, which tells on the migratory instinct, that it is becoming
more a resident species in its winter home in Africa. But all
conjectures are idle in such a case. It is melancholy, at all events for
the ornithologist, to think of an England without a wryneck; but before
that still distant day arrives let us hope that the love of birds will
have become a common feeling in the mass of the population, and that the
variety of our bird life will have been increased by the addition of
some chance colonists and of many new species introduced from distant
regions.

I have lingered long over the wryneck, but have still a story to relate
of this bird--not a fairy tale this time, but true.

On the border of the village adjoining the wood--the side where birds
were more abundant, and which consequently had the greatest attraction
for me--there stands an old picturesque cottage nearly concealed from
sight by the hedge in front and closely planted trees clustering round
it. On one side was a grass field, on the other an orchard of old
cherry, apple, and plum trees, all the property of the old man living in
the cottage, who was a character in his way; at all events, he had not
been fashioned in quite the same mould as the majority of the cottagers
about him. They mostly, when past middle life, wore a heavy, dull and
somewhat depressed look. This man had a twinkle in his dark-grey eyes,
an expression of intelligent curiosity and fellowship; and his full
face, bronzed with sixty or sixty-five years' exposure to the weather,
was genial, as if the sunshine that had so long beaten on it had not
been all used up in painting his skin that rich old-furniture colour,
but had, some of it, filtered through the epidermis into the heart to
make his existence pleasant and sweet. But it was a very rough-cast
face, with shapeless nose and thick lips. He was short and
broad-shouldered, always in the warm weather in his shirt-sleeves, a
shirt of some very coarse material and of an earthen colour, his brown
thick arms bare to the elbows. Waistcoat and trousers looked as if he
had worn them for half his life, and had a marbled or mottled appearance
as if they had taken the various tints of all the objects and materials
he had handled or rubbed against in his life's work--wood, mossy trees,
grass, clay, bricks, stone, rusty iron, and dozens more. He wore the
field-labourer's thick boots; his ancient rusty felt hat had long lost
its original shape; and finally, to complete the portrait, a short black
clay pipe was never out of his lips--never, at all events, when I saw
him, which was often; for every day as I strolled past his domain he
would be on the outside of his hedge, or just coming out of his gate,
invariably with something in his hand--a spade, a fork, or stick of
wood, or an old empty fruit-basket. Although thus having the appearance
of being very much occupied, he would always stop for a few minutes'
talk with me; and by-and-by I began to suspect that he was a very social
sort of person, and that it pleased him to have a little chat, but that
he liked to have me think that he met me by accident while going about
his work.

One sunny morning as I came past his field he came out bearing a huge
bundle of green grass on his head. "What!" he exclaimed, coming to a
stand, "you here to-day? I thought you'd be away to the regatta."

I said that I knew little about regattas and cared less, that a day
spent in watching and listening to the birds gave me more pleasure than
all the regattas in the country. "I suppose you can't understand that?"
I added.

He took the big green bundle from his head and set it down, pulled off
his old hat to flap the dust out of it, then sucked at his short clay.
"Well," he said at length, "some fancies one thing and some another, but
we most of us like a regatta."

During the talk that followed I asked him if he knew the wryneck, and if
it ever nested in his orchard. He did not know the bird; had never heard
its name nor the other names of snake-bird and cuckoo's mate; and when I
had minutely described its appearance, he said that no such bird was
known in the village.

I assured him that he was mistaken, that I had heard the cry of the bird
many times, and had even heard it once at a distance since our
conversation began. Hearing that distant cry had caused me to ask the
question.

All at once he remembered that he knew, or had known formerly, the
wryneck very well, but he had never learnt its name. About twenty or
five-and-twenty years ago, he said, he saw the bird I had just described
in his orchard, and as it appeared day after day and had a strange
appearance as it moved up the tree trunks, he began to be interested in
it. One day he saw it fly into a hole close to the ground in an old
apple tree. "Now I've got you!" he exclaimed, and running to the spot
thrust his hand in as far as he could, but was unable to reach the bird.
Then he conceived the idea of starving it out, and stopped up the hole
with clay. The following day at the same hour he again put in his hand,
and this time succeeded in taking the bird. So strange was it to him
that after showing it to his own family he took it round to exhibit it
to his neighbours, and although some of them were old men, not one among
them had ever seen its like before. They concluded that it was a kind of
nuthatch, but unlike the common nuthatch which they knew. After they had
all seen and handled it and had finished the discussions about it, he
released it and saw it fly away; but, to his astonishment, it was back
in his orchard a few hours later. In a few weeks it brought out its five
or six young from the hole he had caught it in, and for several years it
returned each season to breed in the same hole until the tree was blown
down, after which the bird was seen no more.

What an experience the poor bird had suffered! First plastered up and
left to starve or suffocate in its hollow tree; then captured and passed
round from rough, horny hand to hand, while the villagers were
discussing it in their slow, ponderous fashion--how wildly its little
wild heart must have palpitated!--and, finally, after being released, to
go back at once to its eggs in that dangerous tree. I do not know which
surprised me most, the bird's action in returning to its nest after such
inhospitable treatment, or the ignorance of the villagers concerning it.
The incident seemed to show that the wryneck had been scarce at this
place for a very long period.

The villager, as a rule, is not a good observer, which is not strange,
since no person is, or ever can be, a good observer of the things in
which he is not specially interested; consequently the countryman only
knows the most common and the most conspicuous species. He plods through
life with downcast eyes and a vision somewhat dimmed by indifference;
forgetting, as he progresses, the small scraps of knowledge he acquired
by looking sharply during the period of boyhood, when every living
creature excited his attention. In Italy, notwithstanding the paucity of
bird life, I believe that the peasants know their birds better. The
reason of this is not far to seek; every bird, not excepting even the
"temple-haunting martlet" and nightingale and minute golden-crested
wren, is regarded only as a possible morsel to give a savour to a dish
of polenta, if the shy, little flitting thing can only be enticed within
touching distance of the limed twigs. Thus they take a very strong
interest in, and, in a sense, "love" birds. It is their passion for this
kind of flavouring which has drained rural Italy of its songsters, and
will in time have the same effect on Argentina, the country in which the
withering stream of Italian emigration empties itself.




VI


From the date of my arrival at the village in May, until I left it early
in July, the great annual business of pairing, nest-building, and
rearing the young was going on uninterruptedly. The young of some of the
earliest breeders were already strong on the wing when I took my first
walks along the hedgerows, still in their early, vivid green, frequently
observing my bird through a white and rose-tinted cloud of
apple-blossoms; and when I left some species that breed more than once
in the season were rearing second broods or engaged in making new nests.
On my very first day I discovered a nest full of fully fledged blue tits
in a hole in an apple tree; this struck me as a dangerous place for the
young birds; as the tree leaned over towards the lane, and the hole
could almost be reached by a person standing on the ground. On the next
day I went to look at them, and approaching noiselessly along the lane,
spied two small boys with bright clean faces--it was on a
Sunday--standing within three or four yards of the tree, watching the
tits with intense interest. The parent birds were darting up and down,
careless of their presence, finding food so quickly in the gooseberry
bushes growing near the roots of the tree that they visited the hole
every few moments; while the young birds, ever screaming for more, were
gathered in a dense little cluster at the entrance, their yellow breasts
showing very brightly against the rain-wet wood and the dark interior of
the hole. The instant the two little watchers caught sight of me the
excited look vanished from their faces, and they began to move off,
gazing straight ahead in a somewhat vacant manner. This instantaneous
and instinctive display of hypocrisy was highly entertaining, and would
have made me laugh if it had not been for the serious purpose I had in
my mind. "Now, look here," I said, "I know what you are after, so it's
no use pretending that you are walking about and seeing nothing in
particular. You've been watching the young tits. Well, I've been
watching them, too, and waiting to see them fly. I dare say they will
be out by to-morrow or the next day, and I hope you little fellows won't
try to drag them out before then."

They at once protested that they had no such intention. They said that
they never robbed birds' nests; that there were several nests at home in
the garden and orchard, one of a nightingale with three eggs in it, but
that they never took an egg. But some of the boys they knew, they said,
took all the eggs they found; and there was one boy who got into every
orchard and garden in the place, who was so sharp that few nests escaped
him, and every nest he found he destroyed, breaking the eggs if there
were any, and if there were young birds killing them.

Not, perhaps, without first mutilating them, I thought; for I know
something of this kind of young "human devil," to use the phrase which
Canon Wilberforce has made so famous in another connexion. Later on I
heard much more about the exploits of this champion bird-destroyer of
the village from (strange to say) a bird-catcher by trade, a man of a
rather low type of countenance, and who lived, when at home, in a London
slum. On the common where he spread his nets he had found, he told me,
about thirty nests containing eggs or fledglings; but this boy had gone
over the ground after him, and not many of the nests had escaped his
sharp eyes.

I was satisfied that the young tits were quite safe, so far as these
youngsters were concerned, and only regretted that they were such small
Boys, and that the great nest-destroyer, whose evil deeds they spoke of
with an angry colour in their cheeks, was a very strong boy, otherwise I
should have advised them to "go" for him.

Oddly enough I heard of another boy who exercised the same kind of
cruelty and destructiveness over another common a few miles distant.
Walking across it I spied two boys among the furze bushes, and at the
same moment they saw me, whereupon one ran away and the other remained
standing. A nice little fellow of about eight, he looked as if he had
been crying. I asked him what it was all about, and he then told me that
the bigger boy who had just run away was always on the common searching
for nests, just to destroy them and kill the young birds; that he, my
informant, had come there where he came every day just to have a peep at
a linnet's nest with four eggs in it on which the bird was sitting; that
the other boy, concealed among the bushes had watched him go to the nest
and had then rushed up and pulled the nest out of the bush.

"Why didn't you knock him down?" I asked.

"That's what I tried to do before he pulled the nest out," he said; and
then he added sorrowfully: "He knocked me down."

I am reminded here of a tale of ancient Greece about a boy of this
description--the boy to be found in pretty well every parish in the
land. This was a shepherd boy who followed or led his sheep to a
distance from the village and amused his idle hours by snaring small
birds to put their eyes out with a sharp thorn, then to toss them up
just to see how, and how far, they would fly in the dark. He was seen
doing it and the matter reported to the heads or fathers of the village,
and he was brought before them and, after due consideration of the case,
condemned to death. Such a decision must seem shocking to us and worthy
of a semi-barbarous people. But if cruelty is the worst of all
offences--and this was cruelty in its most horrid form--the offence
which puts men down on a level with the worst of the mythical demons, it
was surely a righteous deed to blot such an existence out lest other
young minds should be contaminated, or even that it should be known that
such a crime was possible.

* * *

All those birds that had finished rearing their young by the sixteenth
of June were fortunate, for on the morning of that day a great and
continuous shouting, with gun-firing, banging on old brass and iron
utensils, with various other loud, unusual noises, were heard at one
extremity of the village, and continued with occasional quiet intervals
until evening. This tempest of rude sounds spread from day to day, until
the entire area of the village and the surrounding orchards was
involved, and the poor birds that were tied to the spots where their
treasures were, must have existed in a state of constant trepidation.
For now the cherries were fast ripening, and the fruit-eating birds,
especially the thrushes and black-birds, were inflamed at the gleam of
crimson colour among the leaves. In the very large orchards men and boys
were stationed all day long yelling and firing off guns to frighten the
marauders. In the smaller orchards the trees were decorated with
whirligigs of coloured paper; ancient hats, among which were some of the
quaintly-shaped chimney-pots of a past generation; old coats and
waistcoats and trousers, and rags of all colours to flutter in the wind;
and these objects were usually considered a sufficient protection. Some
of the birds, wiser than their fellows, were not to be kept back by such
simple means; but so long as they came not in battalions, but singly,
they could have their fill, and no notice was taken of them.

I was surprised to hear that on the large plantations the men employed
were not allowed to use shot, the aim of the fruit grower being only to
scare the birds away. I had a talk with my old friend of the wryneck on
the subject, and told him that I had seen one of the bird-scarers going
home to his cottage very early in the morning, carrying a bunch of about
a dozen blackbirds and thrushes he had just shot.

Yes, he replied, some of the men would buy shot and use it early in the
morning before their master was about; but if the man I had seen had
been detected in the act, he would have been discharged on the spot. It
was not only because the trees would be injured by shot, but this
fruitgrower was friendly to birds.

Most fruit-growers, I said, were dead against the birds, and anxious
only to kill as many of them as possible.

It might be so in some places, he answered, but not in the village. He
himself and most of the villagers depended, in a great measure, on the
fruit they produced for a living, and their belief was that, taking one
bird with another all the year round, the birds did them more good than
harm.

I then imparted to him the views on this bird subject of a well-known
fruit-grower in the north of England, Mr. Joseph Witherspoon, of
Chester-le-Street. He began by persecuting the birds, as he had been
taught to do by his father, a market-gardener; but after years of
careful observation he completely changed his views, and is now so
convinced of the advantage that birds are to the fruit-grower, that he
does all in his power to attract them, and to tempt them to breed in his
grounds. His main idea is that birds that are fed on the premises, that
live and feed among the trees, search for and attack the gardeners'
enemies at every stage of their existence. At the same time he believes
that it is very bad to grow fruit near woods, as in such a case the
birds that live in the woods and are of no advantage to the garden,
swarm into it as the fruit ripens, and that it is only by liberal use of
nets that any reasonable portion of the fruit can be saved.

He answered that with regard to the last point he did not quite agree
with Mr. Witherspoon. All the gardens and orchards in the village were
raided by the birds from the wood, yet he reckoned they got as much
fruit from their trees as others who had no woods near them. Then there
was the big cherry plantation, one of the biggest in England, so that
people came from all parts in the blossoming time just to look at it,
and a wonderful sight it was. For a quarter of a mile this particular
orchard ran parallel with the wood; with nothing but the green road
between, and when the first fruit was ripening you could see all the big
trees on the edge of the wood swarming with birds--jays, thrushes,
blackbirds, doves, and all sorts of tits and little birds, just waiting
for a chance to pounce down and devour the cherries. The noise kept them
off, but many would dodge in, and even if a gun was fired close to them
the blackbirds would snatch a cherry and carry it off to the wood. That
didn't matter--a few cherries here and there didn't count. The starlings
were the worst robbers: if you didn't scare them they would strip a tree
and even an orchard in a few hours. But they were the easiest birds to
deal with: they went in flocks, and a shout or rattle or report of a gun
sent the lot of them away together.  His way of looking at it was this.
In the fruit season, which lasts only a few weeks, you are bound to
suffer from the attacks of birds, whether they are your own birds only
or your own combined with others from outside, unless you keep them off;
that those who do not keep them off are foolish or indolent, and deserve
to suffer. The fruit season was, he said, always an anxious time.

In conclusion, I remarked that the means used for protecting the fruit,
whether they served their purpose well or not, struck me as being very
unworthy of the times we lived in, and seemed to show that the British
fruit-growers, who were ahead of the world in all other matters
connected with their vocation, had quite neglected this one point. A
thousand years ago cultivators of the soil were scaring the birds from
their crops just as we are doing, with methods no better and no worse,
putting up scarecrows and old ragged garments and fluttering rags,
hanging a dead crow to a stick to warn the others off, shouting and
yelling and throwing stones. There appeared to be an opening here for
experiment and invention. Mere noise was not terrifying to birds, and
they soon discovered that an old hat on a stick had no injurious brains
in or under it. But certain sounds and colours and odours had a strong
effect on some animals. Sounds made to stimulate the screams of some
hawks would perhaps prove very terrifying to thrushes and other small
birds, and the effect of scarlet in large masses or long strips might be
tried. It would also be worth while to try the effect of artificial
sparrow-hawks and other birds of prey, perched conspicuously, moving and
perking their tails at intervals by clockwork. In fact, a hundred things
might be tried until something valuable was found, and when it lost its
value, for the birds would in time discover the deception, some new plan
adopted.

To this dissertation on what might be done, he answered that if any one
could find out or invent any new effective means to keep the birds from
the fruit, the fruit-growers would be very thankful for it; but that no
such invention could be looked for from those who are engaged on the
soil; that it must come from those who do not dig and sweat, but sit
still and work with their brains at new ideas.

This ended our conversation, and I left him more than satisfied at the
information he had given me, and with a higher opinion than ever of his
geniality and good practical sense.

It was a relief when the noisy, bird-scaring business was done with, and
the last market baskets of ripe cherries were carried away to the
station. Very splendid they looked in such large masses of crimson, as
the baskets were brought out and set down in the grassy road; but I
could not help thinking a little sadly that the thrushes and blackbirds
which had been surreptitiously shot, when fallen and fluttering in the
wet grass in the early morning, had shed life-drops of that same
beautiful colour.




VII


After the middle of June the common began to attract me more and more.
It was so extensive that, standing on its border, just beyond the last
straggling cottages and orchards, the further side was seen only as a
line of blue trees, indistinct in the distance. As I grew to know it
better, adding each day to my list from its varied bird life, the woods
and waterside were visited less and less frequently, and after the
bird-scaring noises began in the village, its wildness and quiet became
increasingly grateful. The silence of nature was broken only by bird
sounds, and the most frequent sound was that of the yellow bunting, as,
perched motionless on the summit of a gorse bush, his yellow head
conspicuous at a considerable distance, he emitted his thin monotonous
chant at regular intervals, like a painted toy-bird that sings by
machinery. There, too, sedentary as an owl in the daytime, the corn
bunting was common, discharging his brief song at intervals--a sound as
of shattering glass. The whinchat was rarely seen, but I constantly met
the small, prettily coloured stonechat flitting from bush to bush,
following me, and never ceasing his low, querulous tacking chirp,
anxious for the safety of his nest. Nightingales, blackcaps and
white-throats also nested there, and were louder and more emphatic in
their protests when approached. There were several grasshopper-warblers
on the common, all, very curiously as it seemed to me, clustered at one
spot, so that one could ramble over miles of ground without hearing
their singular note; but on approaching the place they inhabited one
gradually became conscious of a mysterious trilling buzz or whirr, low
at first and growing louder and more stridulous, until the hidden
singers were left behind, when by degrees it sank lower and lower again,
and ceased to be audible at a distance of about one hundred yards from
the points where it had sounded loudest. The birds hid in clumps of
furze and bramble so near together that the area covered by the buzzing
sound measured about two hundred yards across. This most singular sound
(for a warbler to make) is certainly not ventriloquial, although if one
comes to it with the sense of hearing disorganized by town noises or
unpractised, one is at a loss to determine the exact spot it comes from,
or even to know from which side it comes. While emitting its prolonged
sound the bird is so absorbed in its own performance that it is not
easily alarmed, and will sometimes continue singing with a human
listener standing within four or five yards of it. When one is near the
bird, and listens, standing motionless, the effect on the nerves of
hearing is very remarkable, considering the smallness of the sound,
which, without being unpleasant, is somewhat similar to that produced by
the vibration of the brake of a train; it is not powerful enough to jar
the nerves, but appears to pervade the entire system. Lying still, with
eyes closed, and three or four of these birds singing near, so that
their strains overlap and leave no silent intervals, the listener can
imagine that the sound originates within himself; that the numberless
fine cords of his nervous network tremble responsively to it.

There are a number of natural sounds that resemble more or less closely
the most unbirdlike note of this warbler--cicada, rattlesnake, and some
batrachians.  Some grasshoppers perhaps come nearest to it; but the most
sustained current of sound emitted by the insect is short compared to
the warbler's strain, also the vibrations are very much more rapid, and
not heard as vibrations, and the same effect is not produced.

The grasshopper warblers gave me so much pleasure that I was often at
the spot where they had their little colony of about half-a-dozen pairs,
and where I discovered they bred every year. At first I used to go to
any bush where I had caught sight of a bird and sit down within a few
yards of it and wait until the little hideling's shyness wore off, and
he would come out and start reeling. Afterwards I always went straight
to the same bush, because I thought the bird that used it as his
singing-place appeared less shy than the others. One day I spent a long
time listening to this favourite; delightedly watching him, perched on a
low twig on a level with my sight, and not more than five yards from me;
his body perfectly motionless, but the head and wide-open beak jerked
from side to side in a measured, mechanical way. I had a side view of
the bird, but every three seconds the head would be jerked towards me,
showing the bright yellow colour of the open mouth. The reeling would
last about three minutes, then the bird would unbend or unstiffen and
take a few hops about the bush, then stiffen and begin again. While thus
gazing and listening I, by chance, met with an experience of that rare
kind which invariably strikes the observer of birds as strange and
almost incredible--an example of the most perfect mimicry in a species
which has its own distinctive song and is not a mimic except once in a
while, and as it were by chance. The marsh warbler is our perfect
mocking-bird, our one professional mimic; while the starling in
comparison is but an amateur. We all know the starling's ever varying
performance in which he attempts a hundred things and occasionally
succeeds; but even the starling sometimes affects us with a mild
astonishment, and I will here give one instance.

I was staying at a village in the Wiltshire downs, and at intervals,
while sitting at work in my room on the ground floor, I heard the
cackling of a fowl at the cottage opposite. I heard, but paid no
attention to that familiar sound; but after three days it all at once
struck me that no fowl could lay an egg about every ten or twelve
minutes, and go on at this rate day after day, and, getting up, I went
out to look for the cackler. A few hens were moving quietly about the
open ground surrounding the cottage where the sound came from, but I
heard nothing. By and by, when I was back in my room, the cackling
sounded again, but when I got out the sound had ceased and the fowls, as
before, appeared quite unexcited. The only way to solve the mystery was
to stand there, out of doors, for ten minutes, and before that time was
over a starling with a white grub in his beak, flew down and perched on
the low garden wall of the cottage, then, with some difficulty, squeezed
himself through a small opening into a cavity under a strip of zinc
which covered the bricks of the wall. It was a queer place for a
starling's nest, on a wall three feet high and within two yards of the
cottage door which stood open all day. Having delivered the grub, the
starling came out again and, hopping on to the zinc, opened his beak and
cackled like a hen, then flew away for more grubs.

I observed the starling a good deal after this, and found that
invariably on leaving the nest, he uttered his imitation of a fowl
cackling, and no other note or sound of any kind. It was as if he was
not merely imitating a sound, but had seen a fowl leaving the nest and
then cackling, and mimicked the whole proceeding, and had kept up the
habit after the young were hatched.

To return to my experience on the common. About fifty yards from the
spot where I was there was a dense thicket of furze and thorn, with a
huge mound in the middle composed of a tangle of whitethorn and bramble
bushes mixed with ivy and clematis. From this spot, at intervals of half
a minute or so, there issued the call of a duck--the prolonged, hoarse
call of a drake, two or three times repeated, evidently emitted in
distress. I conjectured that it came from one of a small flock of ducks
belonging to a cottage near the edge of the common on that side. The
flock, as I had seen, was accustomed to go some distance from home, and
I supposed that one of them, a drake, had got into that brambly thicket
and could not make his way out. For half an hour I heard the calls
without paying much attention, absorbed in watching the quaint little
songster close to me and his curious gestures when emitting his
sustained reeling sounds. In the end the persistent distressed calling
of the drake lost in a brambly labyrinth got a little on my nerves, and
I felt it as a relief when it finally ceased. Then, after a short
silence, another sound came from the same spot--a blackbird sound, known
to everyone, but curiously interesting when uttered in the way I now
heard it. It was the familiar loud chuckle, not emitted in alarm and
soon ended, but the chuckle uttered occasionally by the bird when he is
not disturbed, or when, after uttering it once for some real cause, he
continues repeating it for no reason at all, producing the idea that he
has just made the discovery that it is quite a musical sound and that he
is repeating it, as if singing, just for pleasure. At such times the
long series of notes do not come forth with a rush; he begins
deliberately with a series of musical chirps uttered in a measured
manner, like those of a wood wren, the prelude to its song, the notes
coming faster and faster and swelling and running into the loud
chuckling performance. This performance, like the lost drake's call, was
repeated in the same deliberate or leisurely manner at intervals again
and again, until my curiosity was aroused and I went to the spot to get
a look at the bird who had turned his alarm sound into a song and
appeared to be very much taken with it.  But there was no blackbird at
the spot, and no lost drake, and no bird, except a throstle sitting
motionless on the bush mound. This was the bird I had been listening to,
uttering not his own thrush melody, which he perhaps did not know at
all, but the sounds he had borrowed from two species so wide apart in
their character and language.

The astonishing thing in this case was that the bird never uttered a
note of his own original and exceedingly copious song; and I could only
suppose that he had never learned the thrush melody; that he had,
perhaps, been picked up as a fledgling and put in a cage, where he had
imitated the sounds he heard and liked best, and made them his song, and
that he had finally escaped or had been liberated.

The wild thrush, we know, does introduce certain imitations into his own
song, but the borrowed notes, or even phrases, are, as a rule, few, and
not always to be distinguished from his own.

Sometimes one can pick them out; thus, on the borders of a marsh where
redshanks bred, I have heard the call of that bird distinctly given by
the thrush. And again, where the ring-ouzel is common, the thrush will
get its brief song exactly. When thrushes taken from the nest are reared
in towns, where they never hear the thrush or any other bird sing, they
are often exceedingly vocal, and utter a medley of sounds which are
sometimes distressing to the ear. I have heard many caged thrushes of
this kind in London, but the most remarkable instance I have met with
was at the little seaside town of Seaford. Here, in the main shopping
street, a caged thrush lived for years in a butcher's shop, and poured
out its song continuously, the most distressing throstle performance I
ever heard, composed of a medley of loud, shrill and harsh
sounds--imitations of screams and shouts, boy whistlers, saw filing,
knives sharpened on steels, and numerous other unclassifiable noises;
but all, more or less, painful. The whole street was filled with the
noise, and the owner used to boast that his caged thrush was the most
persistent as well as the loudest singer that had ever been heard. He
had no nerves, and was proud of it! On a recent visit to Seaford I
failed to hear the bird when walking about the town, and after two or
three days went into the shop to enquire about it. They told me it was
dead--that it had been dead over a year; also that many visitors to
Seaford had missed its song and had called at the shop to ask about the
bird. The strangest thing about its end, they said, was its suddenness.
The bird was singing its loudest one morning, and had been at it for
some time, filling the whole place with its noise, when suddenly, in the
middle of its song, it dropped down dead from its perch.

To drop dead while singing is not an unheard of, nor a very rare
occurrence in caged birds, and it probably happens, too, in birds living
their natural life. Listening to a nightingale, pouring out its powerful
music continuously, as the lark sings, one sometimes wonders that
something does not give way to end the vocalist's performance and life
at the same instant. Some such incident was probably the origin of the
old legend of the minstrel and the nightingale on which Strada based his
famous poem, known in many languages. In England Crawshaw's version was
by far the best, and is perhaps the finest bird poem in our literature.

The blackbird, like the thrush, sometimes borrows a note or a phrase,
and, like the thrush again, if reared by hand he may become a nuisance
by mimicking some disagreeable sound, and using it by way of song. I
heard of such a case a short time ago at Sidmouth. The ground floor of
the house where I lodged was occupied by a gentleman who had a fondness
for bird music, and being an invalid confined to his rooms, he kept a
number of birds in cages. He had, besides canaries, the thrush,
chaffinch, linnet, goldfinch and cirl bunting. I remarked that he did
not have the best singer of all--the blackbird. He said that he had
procured one, or that some friend had sent him one, a very beautiful
ouel cock in the blackest plumage and with the orange-tawniest bill,
and he had anticipated great pleasure from hearing its fluting melody.
But alas! no blackbird song did this unnatural blackbird sing. He had
learnt to bark like a dog, and whenever the singing spirit took him he
would bark once or twice or three times, and then, after an interval of
silence of the proper length, about fifteen seconds, he would bark
again, and so on until he had had his fill of music for the time. The
barking got on the invalid's nerves, and he sent the bird away. "It was
either that," he said, "or losing my senses altogether."

* * *

As all or most singing birds learn their songs from the adults of the
same species, it is not strange that there should be a good deal of what
we call mimicry in their performances: we may say, in fact, that pretty
well all the true singers are mimics, but that some mimic more than
others. Thus, the starling is more ready to borrow other birds' notes
than the thrush, while the marsh-warbler borrows so much that his
singing is mainly composed of borrowings. The nightingale is, perhaps,
an exception. His voice excels in power and purity of sound, and what we
may call his artistry is exceptionally perfect; this may account for the
fact that he does not borrow from other birds' songs. I should say, from
my own observation, that all songsters are interested in the singing of
other species, or at all events, in certain notes, especially the most
striking in power, beauty, and strangeness. Thus, when the cuckoo starts
calling, you will see other small birds fly straight to the tree and
perch near him, apparently to listen. And among the listeners you will
find the sparrow and tits of various species--birds which are never
victimized by the cuckoo, and do not take him for a hawk since they take
no notice of him until the calling begins. The reason that the double
fluting call of the cuckoo is not mimicked by other birds is that they
can't; because that peculiar sound is not in their register. The
bubbling cry is reproduced by both the marsh warbler and the starling.
Again, it is my experience that when a nightingale starts singing, the
small birds near immediately become attentive, often suspending their
own songs and some flying to perch near him, and listen, just as they
listen to the cuckoo. Birds imitate the note or phrase that strikes them
most, and is easiest to imitate, as when the thrush copies the piping
and trilling of the redshank and the easy song of the ring-ouzel, which,
when incorporated into his own music, harmonizes with it perfectly. But
he cannot flute, and so never mimics the blackbird's song, although he
can and does, as we have seen, imitate its chuckling cry.

There is another thing to be considered. I believe that the bird, like
creatures in other classes, has his receptive period, his time to learn,
and that, like some mammals, he learns everything he needs to know in
his first year or two; and that, having acquired his proper song, he
adds little or nothing to it thereafter, although the song may increase
in power and brilliance when the bird comes to full maturity. This, I
think, holds true of all birds, like the nightingale, which have a
singing period of two or three months and are songless for the rest of
the year. That long, silent period cannot, so far as sounds go, be a
receptive one; the song early in life has become crystallized in the
form it will keep through life, and is like an intuitive act. This is
not the case with birds like the starling, that sing all the year
round--birds that are naturally loquacious and sing instead of screaming
and chirping like others. They are always borrowing new sounds and
always forgetting.

The most curious example of mimicry I have yet met with is that of a
true mocking-bird, Mimus patachonicus, a common resident species in
northern Patagonia, on the Atlantic side, very abundant in places. He is
a true mocking-bird because he belongs to the genus Mimus, a branch of
the thrush family, and not because he mocks or mimics the songs of other
species, like others of his kindred. He does not, in fact, mimic the set
songs of others, although he often introduces notes and phrases borrowed
from other species into his own performance. He sings in a sketchy way
all the year round, but in spring has a fuller unbroken song, emitted
with more power and passion. For the rest of the time he sings to amuse
himself, as it seems, in a peculiarly leisurely, and one may say,
indolent manner, perched on a bush, from time to time emitting a note or
two, then a phrase which, if it pleases him, he will repeat two or
three, or half a dozen times. Then, after a pause, other notes and
phrases, and so on, pretty well all day long. This manner of singing is
irritating, like the staccato song of our throstle, to a listener who
wants a continuous stream of song; but it becomes exceedingly
interesting when one discovers that the bird is thinking very much about
his own music, if one can use such an expression about a bird; that he
is all the time experimenting, trying to get a new phrase, a new
combination of the notes he knows and new notes. Also, that when sitting
on his bush and uttering these careless chance sounds, he is, at the
same time, intently listening to the others, all engaged in the same
way, singing and listening. You will see them all about the place, each
bird sitting motionless, like a grey and white image of a bird, on the
summit of his own bush. For, although he is not gregarious as a rule, a
number of pairs live near each other, and form a sort of loose
community. The bond that unites them is their music, for not only do
they sit within hearing distance, but they are perpetually mimicking
each other. One may say that they are accomplished mimics but prefer
mimicking their own to other species. But they only imitate the notes
that take their fancy, so to speak. Thus, occasionally, one strikes out
a phrase, a new expression, which appears to please him, and after a few
moments he repeats it again, then again, and so on and on, and if you
remain an hour within hearing he will perhaps be still repeating it at
short intervals. Now, if by chance there is something in the new phrase
which pleases the listeners too, you will note that they instantly
suspend their own singing, and for some little time they do nothing but
listen. By and by the new note or phrase will be exactly reproduced from
a bird on another bush; and he, too, will begin repeating it at short
intervals. Then a second one will get it, then a third, and eventually
all the birds in that thicket will have it. The constant repeating of
the new note may then go on for hours, and it may last longer. You may
return to the spot on the second day and sit for an hour or longer,
listening, and still hear that same note constantly repeated until you
are sick and tired of it, or it may even get on your nerves. I remember
that on one occasion I avoided a certain thicket, one of my favourite
daily haunts for three whole days, not to hear that one everlasting
sound; then I returned and to my great relief the birds were all at
their old game of composing, and not one uttered--perhaps he didn't
dare--the too hackneyed phrase. I was sharply reminded one day by an
incident in the village of this old Patagonian experience, and of the
strange human-like weakness or passion for something new and arresting
in music or song, something "tuney" or "catchy."

It chanced that when I left London a new popular song had come out and
was "all the rage," a tune and words invented or first produced in the
music-halls by a woman named Lottie Collins, with a chorus to
it--_Ta-ra-ra-boom-de-ay_, repeated several times. First caught up in
the music-halls it spread to the streets, and in ever-widening circles
over all London, and over all the land. In London people were getting
tired of hearing it, but when I arrived at my village "in a hole," and
settled down among the Badgers, I heard it on every hand--in cottages,
in the streets, in the fields, men, women and children were singing,
whistling, and humming it, and in the evening at the inn roaring it out
with as much zest as if they had been singing _Rule Britannia._

This state of things lasted from May to the middle of June; then, one
very hot, still day, about three o'clock, I was sitting at my cottage
window when I caught the sound of a rumbling cart and a man singing. As
the noise grew louder my interest in the approaching man and cart was
excited to an extraordinary degree; never had I heard such a noise! And
no wonder, since the man was driving a heavy, springless farm cart in
the most reckless manner, urging his two huge horses to a fast trot,
then a gallop, up and down hill along those rough gully-like roads, he
standing up in his cart and roaring out "Auld Lang Syne," at the top of
a voice of tremendous power. He was probably tipsy, but it was not a bad
voice, and the old familiar tune and words had an extraordinary effect
in that still atmosphere. He passed my cottage, standing up, his legs
wide apart, his cap on the back of his head, a big broad-chested young
man, lashing his horses, and then for about two minutes or longer the
thunder of the cart and the roaring song came back fainter, until it
faded away in the distance. At that still hour of the day the children
were all at school on the further side of the village; the men away in
the fields; the women shut up in their cottages, perhaps sleeping. It
seemed to me that I was the only person in the village who had witnessed
and heard the passing of the big-voiced man and cart. But it was not so.
At all events, next day, the whole village, men, women and children,
were singing, humming and whistling "Auld Lang Syne," and "Auld Lang
Syne" lasted for several days, and from that day "Ta-ra-ra-boom-de-ay"
was heard no more. It had lost its charm.




VIII


Just out of hearing of the grasshopper warblers, there was a good-sized
pool of water on the common, probably an old gravel-pit, its bottom now
overgrown with rushes. A sedge warbler, the only one on the common,
lived in the masses of bramble and gorse on its banks; and birds of so
many kinds came to it to drink and bathe that the pool became a
favourite spot with me. One evening, just before sunset, as I lingered
near it, a pied wagtail darted out of some low scrub at my feet and
fluttered, as if wounded, over the turf for a space of ten or twelve
yards before flying away. Not many minutes after seeing the wagtail, a
reed-bunting--a bird which I had not previously observed on the
common--flew down and alighted on a bush a few yards from me, holding a
white crescent-shaped grub in its beak. I stood still to watch it,
certainly not expecting to see its nest and young; for, as a rule, a
bird with food in its beak will sit quietly until the watcher loses
patience and moves away; but on this occasion I had not been standing
more than ten seconds before the bunting flew down to a small tuft of
furze and was there greeted by the shrill, welcoming cries of its young.
I went up softly to the spot, when out sprang the old bird I had seen,
but only to drop to the ground just as the wagtail had done, to beat the
turf with its wings, then to lie gasping for breath, then to flutter on
a little further, until at last it rose up and flew to a bush.

After admiring the reed-bunting's action, I turned to the dwarf bush
near my feet, and saw, perched on a twig in its centre, a solitary young
bird, fully fledged but not yet capable of sustained flight. He did not
recognise an enemy in me; on the contrary, when I approached my hand to
him, he opened his yellow mouth wide, in expectation of being fed,
although his throat was crammed with caterpillars, and the white
crescent-shaped larva I had seen in the parent's bill was still lying in
his mouth unswallowed. The wonder is that when a young bird had been
stuffed with food to such an extent just before sleeping time, he can
still find it in him to open his mouth and call for more.

* * *

How wonderful it is that this parental instinct, so beautiful in its
perfect simulation of the action of the bird that has lost the power of
flight, should be found in so large a number of species! But when we
find that it is not universal; that in two closely-allied species one
will possess it and the other not; and that it is common in such
widely-separated orders as gallinaceous and passerine birds, in pigeons,
ducks, and waders, it becomes plain that it is not assignable to
community of descent, but has originated independently all over the
globe, in a vast number of species. Something of the beginnings and
progressive development of this instinct may be learnt, I think, by
noticing the behaviour of various passerine birds in the presence of
danger, to their nests and young. Their actions and cries show that they
are greatly agitated, and in a majority of species the parent bird flits
and flutters round the intruder, uttering sounds of distress. Frequently
the bird exhibits its agitation, not only by these cries and restless
motions, but by the drooping of the wings and tail--the action observed
in a bird when hurt or sick, or oppressed with heat. These languishing
signs are common to a great many species after the young have been
hatched; the period when the parental solicitude is most intense. In
several species which I have observed in South America, the languishing
is more marked. There are no sorrowful cries and restless movements; the
bird sits with hanging wings and tail, gasping for breath with open bill
--in appearance a greatly suffering bird. In some cases of this
description, the bird, if it moves at all, hops or flutters from a
higher to a lower branch, and, as if sick or wounded, seems about to
sink to the ground. In still others, the bird actually does drop to the
ground, then, feebly flapping its wings, rises again with great effort.
From this last form it is but a step to the more highly developed
complex instinct of the bird that sinks to the earth and flutters
painfully away, gasping, and seemingly incapable of flight.

It would be a great mistake to suppose that the bird when fluttering on
the ground to lead an enemy from the neighbourhood of its nest is in
full possession of all its faculties, acting consciously, and itself in
as little danger of capture as when on its perch or flying through the
air. We have seen that the action has its root in the bird's passion for
its young, and intense solicitude in the presence of any danger
threatening them, which is so universal in this class of creatures, and
which expresses itself so variously in different kinds. This must be in
all cases a painful and debilitating emotion, and when the bird drops
down to the earth its pain has caused it to fall as surely as if it had
received a wound or had been suddenly attacked by some grievous malady;
and when it flutters on the ground it is for the moment incapable of
flight, and its efforts to recover flight and safety cause it to beat
its wings, and tremble, and gasp with open mouth. The object of the
action is to deceive an enemy, or, to speak more correctly, the result
is to deceive, and there is nothing that will more inflame and carry
away any rapacious mammal than the sight of a fluttering bird. But in
thus drawing upon itself the attention of an enemy threatening the
safety of its eggs or young, to what a terrible danger does the parent
expose itself, and how often, in those moments of agitation and
debility, must its own life fall a sacrifice! The sudden spring and rush
of a feline enemy must have proved fatal in myriads of instances. From
its inception to its most perfect stage, in the various species that
possess it, this perilous instinct has been washed in blood and made
bright.

What I have just said, that the peculiar instinct and deceptive action
we have been considering is made and kept bright by being bathed in
blood, applies to all instinctive acts that tend to the preservation of
life, both of the individual and species. Necessarily so, seeing that,
for one thing, instincts can only arise and grow to perfection in order
to meet cases which commonly occur in the life of a species. The
instinct is not prophetic and does not meet rare or extraordinary
situations. Unless intelligence or some higher faculty comes in to
supplement or to take the place of instinctive action then the creature
must perish on account of the limitation of instinct. Again, the higher
and more complete the instinct the more perilous it is, seeing that its
efficiency depends on the absolutely perfect health and balance of all
the faculties and the entire organism. Thus, the higher instinctive
faculty and action of birds for the preservation of the species, that of
migration, is undoubtedly the most dangerous of all. It is so perfect
that by means of this faculty millions and myriads of birds of an
immense variety of species from cranes, swans, and geese down to minute
goldcrests and firecrests and the smallest feeble-winged-leaf warblers,
are able to inhabit and to distribute themselves evenly over all the
temperate and cold regions of the earth, and even nearer the pole: and
in all these regions they rear their young and spend several months each
year, where they would inevitably perish from cold and lack of food if
they stayed on to meet the winter. We can best realize the perfection of
this instinct when we consider that all these migrants, including the
young which have never hitherto strayed beyond the small area of their
home where every tree and bush and spring and rock is familiar to them,
rush suddenly away as if blown by a wind to unknown lands and continents
beyond the seas to a distance of from a thousand to six or seven
thousand miles; that after long months spent in those distant places,
which in turn have grown familiar to them, they return again to their
natal place, not in a direct but ofttimes by a devious route, now north,
now north-east, now east or west, keeping to the least perilous lines
and crossing the seas where they are narrowest. Thus, when the returning
multitude recrosses the Channel into England, coming by way of France
and Spain from north or south or mid-Africa and from Asia, they at once
proceed to disperse over the entire country from Land's End to Thurso
and the northernmost islands of Scotland, until every wood and hill and
moor and thicket and stream and every village and field and hedgerow and
farmhouse has its own feathered people back in their old places. But
they do not return in their old force. They had increased to twice or
three times their original numbers when they left us, and as a result of
that great adventure a half or two-thirds of the vast army has perished.

The instinct which in character comes nearest to that of the parent
simulating the action of a wounded and terrified bird struggling to
escape in order to safeguard its young, is that one, very strong in all
ground-breeding species, of sitting close on the nest in the presence of
danger. Here, too, the instinct is of prime importance to the species,
since the bird by quitting the nest reveals its existence to the
prowling, nest-seeking enemy--dog, cat, fox, stoat, rat, in England;
and in the country where I first observed animals, the skunk, armadillo,
opossum, snake, wild cat, and animals of the weasel family. By leaving
its nest a minute or half a minute too soon the bird sacrifices the eggs
or young; by staying a moment too long it is in imminent danger of being
destroyed itself.  How often the bird stays too long on the nest is seen
in the corn-crake, a species continually decreasing in this country
owing to the destruction caused by the mowing-machine. The parent birds
that escape may breed again in a safer place, but in many cases the bird
clings too long to its nest and is decapitated or fatally injured by the
cutters.  Larks, too, often perish in the same way. To go back to the
ailing or wounded bird simulating action: this is perhaps most perfect
in the gallinaceous birds, all ground-breeders whose nests are most
diligently hunted for by all egg-eating creatures, beast or bird, and
whose tender chicks are a favourite food for all rapacious animals. In
the fowl, pheasants, partridges, quail, and grouse, the instinct is
singularly powerful, the bird making such violent efforts to escape,
with such an outcry, such beating of its wings and struggles on the
ground, that no rapacious beast, however often he may have been deceived
before, can fail to be carried away with the prospect of an immediate
capture. The instinct and action has appeared to me more highly
developed in these birds because, in the first place, the demonstrations
are more violent than in other families, consequently more effective;
and secondly, because the danger once over, the bird's recovery to its
normal quiet, watchful state is quicker. By way of experiment, I have at
various times thrown myself on pheasants, partridges and grouse, when I
have found them with a family of recently-hatched chicks; then on giving
up the chase and turning away from the bird its instantaneous recovery
has seemed like a miracle. It was like a miracle because the creature
did actually suffer from all those violent, debilitating emotions
expressed in its disordered cries and action, and it is the miracle of
Nature's marvellous health. If we, for example, were thrown into these
violent extremes of passion, we should not escape the after-effects. Our
whole system would suffer, a doctor would perhaps have to be called in
and would discourse wisely on metabolism and the development of toxins
in the muscles, and give us a bottle of medicine.

I will conclude this digression and dissertation on a bird's instinct by
relating the action of a hen-pheasant I once witnessed, partly because
it is the most striking one I have met with of that instantaneous
recovery of a bird from an extremity of distress and terror, and partly
for another reason which will appear at the end.

The hen-pheasant was a solitary bird, having strayed away from the
pheasant copses near the Itchen and found a nesting-place a mile away,
on the other side of the valley, among the tall grasses and sedges on its
border. I was the bird's only human neighbour, as I was staying in a
fishing-cottage near the spot where the bird had its nest. Eventually,
it brought off eight chicks and remained with them at the same spot on the
edge of the valley, living like a rail among the sedges and tall valley
herbage. I never went near the bird, but from the cottage caught sight of
it from time to time, and sometimes watched it with my binocular. There
was, I thought, a good chance of its being able to rear its young, unless
the damp proved injurious, as there was no dog or cat at the cottage, and
there were no carrion crows or sparrow-hawks at that spot. One morning
about five o'clock on going out I spied a fox-terrier, a poaching dog
from the neighbouring village, rushing about in an excited state a
hundred yards or so below the cottage. He had scented the birds, and
presently up rose the hen from the tall grass with a mighty noise, then
flopping down she began beating her wings and struggling over the grass,
uttering the most agonizing screams, the dog after her, frantically
grabbing at her tail. I feared that he would catch her, and seizing a
stick flew down to the rescue, yelling at the dog, but he was too excited
to obey or even hear me. At length, thanks to the devious course taken by
the bird, I got near enough to get in a good blow on the dog's back. He
winced and went on as furiously as ever, and then I got in another blow
so well delivered that the rascal yelled, and turning fled back to the
village. Hot and panting from my exertions, I stood still, but sooner
still the pheasant had pulled herself up and stood there, about three
yards from my feet, as if nothing had happened--as if not a ripple had
troubled the quiet surface of her life! The serenity of the bird, just
out of that storm of violence and danger, and her perfect indifference to
my presence, was astonishing to me. For a minute or two I stood still
watching her; then turned to walk back to the cottage, and no sooner did
I start than after me she came at a gentle trot, following me like a dog.
On my way back I came to the very spot where the fox-terrier had found
and attacked the bird, and at once on reaching it she came to a stop and
uttered a call, and instantly from eight different places among the tall
grasses the eight fluffy little chicks popped up and started running to
her. And there she stood, gathering them about her with gentle
chucklings, taking no notice of me, though I was standing still within
two yards of her!

Up to the moment when the dog got his smart blow and fled from her she
had been under the domination of a powerful instinct, and could have
acted in no other way; but what guided her so infallibly in her
subsequent actions? Certainly not instinct, and not reason, which
hesitates between different courses and is slow to arrive at a decision.
One can only say that it was, or was like, intuition, which is as much
as to say that we don't know.



IX


Among the rarer fringilline birds on the common were the cirl bunting,
bullfinch and goldfinch, the last two rarely seen. Linnets, however,
were abundant, now gathered in small flocks composed mainly of young
birds in plain plumage, with here and there an individual showing the
carmine-tinted breast of the adult male. Unhappily, a dreary fate was in
store for many of these blithe twitterers.

On June 24, when walking towards the pool, I spied two recumbent human
figures on a stretch of level turf near its banks, and near them a
something dark on the grass--a pair of clap-nets! "Still another serpent
in my birds' paradise!" said I to myself, and, walking on, I skirted the
nets and sat down on the grass beside the men. One was a rough
brown-faced country lad; the other, who held the strings and wore the
usual cap and comforter, was a man of about five-and-twenty, with pale
blue eyes and yellowish hair, close-cropped, and the unmistakable London
mark in his chalky complexion. He regarded me with cold, suspicious
looks, and, when I talked and questioned, answered briefly and somewhat
surlily. I treated him to tobacco, and he smoked; but it wasn't shag,
and didn't soften him. On mentioning casually that I had seen a stoat an
hour before, he exhibited a sudden interest. It was as if one had said
"rats!" to a terrier. I succeeded after a while in getting him to tell
me the name of the man to whom he sent his captives, and when I told him
that I knew the man well--a bird-seller in a low part of London--he
thawed visibly. Finally I asked him to look at a red-backed shrike,
perched on a bush about fifteen yards from his nets, through my
field-glasses, and from that moment he became as friendly as possible,
and conversed freely about his mystery. "How near it brings him!" he
exclaimed, with a grin of delight, after looking at the bird.  The
shrike had greatly annoyed him; it had been hanging about for some time,
he told me, dashing at the linnets and driving them off when they flew
down to the nets. Two or three times he might have caught it, but would
not draw the nets and have the trouble of resetting them for so
worthless a bird. "But I'll take him the next time," he said
vindictively. "I didn't know he was such a handsome bird."
Unfortunately, the shrike soon flew away, and passing linnets dropped
down, drawn to the spot by the twitterings of their caged fellows, and
were caught; and so it went on for a couple of hours, we conversing
amicably during the waiting intervals. For now he regarded me as a
friend of the bird-catcher. Linnets only were caught, most of them young
birds, which pleased him; for the young linnet after a month or two of
cage life will sing; but the adult males would be silent until the next
spring, consequently they were not worth so much, although the carmine
stain in their breast made them for the time so much more beautiful.

I remarked incidentally that there were some who looked with unfriendly
eyes on his occupation, and that, sooner or later, these people would
try to get an Act of Parliament to make bird-catching in lanes, on
commons and waste lands illegal. "They can't do it!" he exclaimed
excitedly. "And if they can do it, and if they do do it, it will be the
ruination of England. For what would there be, then, to stop the birds
increasing? It stands to reason that the whole country would be eaten
up."

Doubtless the man really believed that but for the laborious days that
bird-catchers spend lying on the grass, the human race would be very
badly off.

Just after he had finished his protest, three or four linnets flew down
and were caught. Taking them from the nets, he showed them to me,
remarking, with a short laugh, that they were all young males. Then he
thrust them down the stocking-leg which served as an entrance to the
covered box he kept his birds in--the black hole in which their captive
life begins, where they were now all vainly fluttering to get out. Going
back to the previous subject, he said that he knew very well that many
persons disliked a bird-catcher, but there was one thing that nobody
could say against him--he wasn't cruel; he caught, but didn't kill. He
only killed when he caught a great number of female linnets, which were
not worth sending up; he pulled their heads off, and took them home to
make a linnet pie. Then, by way of contrast to his own merciful temper,
he told me of the young nest-destroyer I have writ-ten about. It made
him mad to see such things! Something ought to be done, he said, to stop
a boy like that; for by destroying so many nestlings he was taking the
bread out of the bird-catcher's mouth. Passing to other subjects, he
said that so far he had caught nothing but linnets on the common--you
couldn't expect to catch other kinds in June. Later on, in August and
September, there would be a variety. But he had small hopes of catching
goldfinches, they were too scarce now. Greenfinches, yellow-hammers,
common buntings, reed sparrows--all such birds were worth only tuppence
apiece. Oh, yes, he caught them just the same, and sent them up to
London, but that was all they were worth to him. For young male linnets
he got eightpence, sometimes tenpence; for hen birds fourpence, or less.
I dare say that eightpence was what he hoped to get, seeing that young
male linnets are not unfrequently sold by London dealers for sixpence
and even fourpence.  Goldfinches ran to eighteenpence, sometimes as much
as two shillings.  Starlings he had made a lot out of, but that was all
past and over. Why?

Because they were not wanted--because people were such fools that they
now preferred to shoot at pigeons. He hated pigeons! Gentlemen used to
shoot starlings at matches; and if you had the making of a bird to shoot
at, you couldn't get a better than the starling--such a neat bird! He
had caught hundreds--thousands--and had sold them well. But now nothing
but pigeons would they have. Pigeons! Always pigeons! He caught
starlings still, but what was the good of that? The dealers would only
take a few, and they were worth nothing--no more than greenfinches and
yellow-hammers.

My colloquy with my enemy on the common tempts me to a fresh digression
in this place--to have my say on a question about which much has already
been said during the last three or four decades, especially during the
'sixties, when the first practical efforts to save our wild-bird life
from destruction were made.

There is a feeling in the great mass of people that the pursuit of any
wild animal, whether fit for food or not, for pleasure or gain, is a
form of sport, and that sport ought not to be interfered with. So strong
and well-nigh universal is this feeling, which is like a superstition,
that the pursuit is not interfered with, however unsportsmanlike it may
be, and when illegal, and when practised by only a very few persons in
any district, where to others it may be secretly distasteful or even
prejudicial.

Even bird-catching on a common is regarded as a form of sport and the
bird-catcher as a sportsman--and a brother.

A striking instance of this tameness and stupidly acquiescent spirit in
people generally was witnessed during the intensely severe frosts of the
early part of the late winter (1882-3), when incalculable numbers of
sea-birds were driven by hunger and cold into bays and inland waters. At
this time thousands of gulls made their appearance in the Thames, but no
sooner did they arrive than those who possessed guns and licences to
shoot began to shoot them. The police interfered and some of these
sportsmen were brought before the magistrates and fined for the offence
of discharging guns to the public danger. For upwards of a fortnight
after the shooting had been put a stop to, the gulls continued to
frequent the river in large numbers, and were perhaps most numerous from
London Bridge to Battersea, and during this time they were watched every
day by thousands of Londoners with keen interest and pleasure. The river
here, flowing through the very centre and heart of the greatest city of
the world, forms at all hours and at all seasons of the year a noble and
magnificent sight; to my eyes it never looked more beautiful and
wonderful than during those intensely cold days of January, when there
was nothing that one could call a mist in a chilly, motionless
atmosphere, but only a faint haze, a pallor as of impalpable frost,
which made the heavens seem more white than blue, and gave a hoariness
and cloud-like remoteness to the arches spanning the water, and the vast
buildings on either side, ending with the sublime dome of the city
cathedral; and when out of the pale motionless haze, singly, in twos and
threes, in dozens and scores, floated the mysterious white bird-figures,
first seen like vague shadows in the sky, then quickly taking shape and
whiteness, and floating serenely past, to be succeeded by others and yet
others.

It was not merely the ornithologist in me that made the sight so
fascinating, since it was found that others--all others, it might almost
be said,--experienced the same kind of delight.  Crowds of people came
down to the river to watch the birds; workmen when released from their
work at mid-day hurried down to the embankment so as to enjoy seeing the
gulls while eating their dinners, and, strangest thing of all, to feed
them with the fragments!

And yet these very men who found so great a pleasure in observing and
feeding their white visitors from the sea, and were exhilarated with the
novel experiences of seeing wild nature face to face at their own
doors--these thousands would have stood by silent and consenting if the
half-a-dozen scoundrels with guns and fish-hooks on lines had been
allowed to have their will and had slaughtered and driven the birds from
the river! And this, in fact, is precisely what happened at a distance
from London, where guns could be discharged without danger to the
public, in numberless bays and rivers in which the birds sought refuge.
They were simply slaughtered wholesale in the most wanton manner; in
Morecambe Bay a hundred and twelve gulls were killed at one discharge,
and no hand and no voice was raised to interfere with the hideous sport.
Not because it was not shocking to the spectators, but because it was
"Sport."

Doubtless it will be said that this wholesale wanton destruction of bird
life, however painful it may be to lovers of nature, however
reprehensible from a moral point of view, is sanctioned by law, and
cannot therefore be prevented. This is not quite so. We see that the
Wild Birds Protection Act is continually being broken with impunity, and
where public opinion is unfavourable to it the guardians of the law
themselves, the police and the magistrates, are found encouraging the
people to break the law. Again, we find that where commons are enclosed,
and the law says nothing, the people are accustomed to assemble together
unlawfully to tear the fences down, and are not punished. For, after
all, if laws do not express or square with public will or opinion, they
have little force; and if, in any locality, the people thought proper to
do so--if they were not restrained by that dull, tame spirit I have
spoken of--they would, lawfully or unlawfully, protect their sea-fowl
from the cockney sportsmen, and sweep the bird-catchers out of their
lanes and waste lands.

One day I paid a visit to Maidenhead, a pleasant town on the Thames,
where the Thames is most beautiful, set in the midst of a rich and
diversified country which should be a bird's paradise. In my walks in
the town, I saw a great many stuffed kingfishers, and, in the shops of
the local taxidermists, some rare and beautiful birds, with others that
are fast becoming rare. But outside of the town I saw no kingfishers and
no rare species at all, and comparatively few birds of any kind. It
might have been a town of Philistine cockneys who at no very distant
period had emigrated thither from the parish of St. Giles-in-the-Fields.
I came home with the local guide-book in my pocket. It is now before me,
and this is what its writer says of the Thicket, the extensive and
beautiful common two miles from the town, which belongs to Maidenhead,
or, in other words, to its inhabitants: "The Thicket was formerly much
infested by robbers and highwaymen. The only remains of them to be found
now are the snarers of the little feathered songsters, who imprison them
in tiny cages and carry them off in large numbers to brighten by their
sweet, sad sighs for liberty the dwellers in our smoky cities."

On this point I consulted a bird-catcher, who had spread his nets on the
common for many years, and he complained bitterly of the increasing
scarcity of its bird life. There was no better place than the Thicket
formerly, he said; but now he could hardly make his bread there. I
presume that a dozen men of his trade would be well able to drain the
country in the neighbourhood of the Thicket of the greater portion of
its bird life each year so as to keep the songsters scarce. Will any
person maintain for a moment that the eight or nine thousand inhabitants
of Maidenhead, and the hundreds or thousands inhabiting the surrounding
country could not protect their songbirds from these few men, most of
them out of London slums, if they wished or had the spirit to do so?

It is true that the local authorities in some country towns have made
by-laws to protect the birds in their open spaces. Thus, at Tunbridge
Wells, since 1890, bird-trapping and bird's-nesting have been prohibited
on the large and beautiful common there; but, so far as I know, such
measures have only been taken in boroughs after the birds have been
almost exterminated.

Doubtless the day will come when, law or no law, the bird-catcher will
find it necessary to go warily, lest the people of any place where he
may be tempted to spread his nets should have formed the custom of
treating those of his calling somewhat roughly. That it will come soon
is earnestly to be wished. Nevertheless, it would be irrational to
cherish feelings of animosity and hatred against the bird-catcher
himself, the "man and brother," ready and anxious as we may be to take
the bread out of his mouth. He certainly does not regard himself as an
injurious or disreputable person; on the contrary he looks on himself as
a useful member of the community, and in some cases even more. If anyone
is to be hated or blamed, it is the person who sends the bird-catcher
into the fields; not the dealer, but he who buys trapped birds and keeps
them in cages to be amused by their twitterings. This is not a question
of morality, nor of sentimentality, as some may imagine; but rather of
taste, of the sense of fitness, of that something vaguely described as
the feeling for nature, which is not universal. Thus, one man will dine
with zest on a pheasant, partridge, or quail, but would be choked by a
lark; while another man will eat pheasant and lark with equal pleasure.
Both may be good, honest, moral men; only one has that something which
the other lacks. In one the soul responds to the skylark's music
"singing at heaven's gate," in the other not; to one the roasted lark is
merely a savoury morsel; the other, be he never so hungry, cannot
dissociate the bird on the dish from that heavenly melody which
registered a sensation in his brain, to be thereafter reproduced at
will, together with the revived emotion. It is a curious question, and
is no nearer to a settlement when one of these two I have described
turns round and calls his neighbour a gross feeder, a worshipper of his
belly, a soulless and brutish man; and when the other answers
"pooh-pooh" and goes on complacently devouring larks with great gusto,
until he is himself devoured of death.

To those with whom I am in sympathy in this matter, who love to listen
to and are yearly invigorated by the skylark's music, and whose souls
are yearly sickened at the slaughter of their loved songsters, I would
humbly suggest that there is a simpler, more practical means of ending
this dispute, which has surely lasted long enough. It goes without
saying that this bird's music is eminently pleasing to most persons,
that even as the sunshine is sweet and pleasant to behold, its silvery
aerial sounds rained down so abundantly from heaven are delightful and
exhilarating to all of us, or at all events, to so large a majority that
the minority are not entitled to consideration. One person in five
thousand, or perhaps in ten thousand, might be found to say that the
lark singing in blue heaven affords him no pleasure. This being so, and
ours being a democratic country in which the will or desire of the many
is or may be made the law of the land, it is surely only right and
reasonable that lovers of lark's flesh should be prevented from
gratifying their taste at the cost of the destruction of so loved a
bird, that they should be made to content themselves with woodcock, and
snipe on toast, and golden plover, and grouse and blackcock, and any
other bird of delicate flavor which does not, living, appeal so strongly
to the aesthetic feelings in us and is not so universal a favourite.

This, too, will doubtless come in time. Speaking for myself, and going
back to the former subject, little as I like to see men feeding on
larks, rather would I see larks killed and eaten than thrust into cages.
For in captivity they do not "sweeten" my life, as the Maidenhead
guidebook writer would say, with their shrill, piercing cries for
liberty, but they "sing me mad." Just as in some minds this bird's
music--a sound which above all others typifies the exuberant life and
joy of nature to the soul--cannot be separated from the cooked and
dished-up melodist, so that they turn with horror from such meat, so I
cannot separate this bird, nor any bird, from the bird's wild life of
liberty, and the marvellous faculty of flight which is the bird's
attribute. To see so wild and aerial a creature in a cage jars my whole
system, and is a sight hateful and unnatural, an outrage on our
universal mother.

This feeling about birds in captivity, which I have attempted to
describe, and which, I repeat, is not sentimentality, as that word is
ordinarily understood, has been so vividly rendered in an ode to "The
Skylarks" by Sir Rennell Rodd, that the reader will probably feel
grateful to me for quoting a portion of it in this place, especially as
the volume in which it appears--_Feda, with Other Poems_--is, I imagine,
not very widely known:

    "Oh, the sky, the sky, the open sky,
    For the home of a song-bird's heart!
    And why, and why, and for ever why,
    Do they stifle here in the mart:
    Cages of agony, rows on rows,
    Torture that only a wild thing knows:
    Is it nothing to you to see
    That head thrust out through the hopeless wire,
    And the tiny life, and the mad desire
    To be free, to be free, to be free?
    Oh, the sky, the sky, the blue, wide sky,
    For the beat of a song-bird's wings!

    * * *

    Straight and close are the cramping bars
    From the dawn of mist to the chill of stars,
    And yet it must sing or die!
    Will its marred harsh voice in the city street
    Make any heart of you glad?
    It will only beat with its wings and beat,
    It will only sing you mad.

    * * *

    If it does not go to your heart to see
    The helpless pity of those bruised wings,
    The tireless effort to which it clings
    To the strain and the will to be free,
    I know not how I shall set in words
    The meaning of God in this,
    For the loveliest thing in this world of His
    Are the ways and the songs of birds.
    But the sky, the sky, the wide, free sky,
    For the home of the song-bird's heart!"


How falsely does that man see Nature, how grossly ignorant must he be of
its most elemental truths, who looks upon it as a chamber of torture, a
physiological laboratory on a very vast scale, a scene of endless strife
and trepidation, of hunger and cold, and every form of pain and
misery--and who, holding this doctrine of

  "Oh, the sky, the sky, the open sky is the home of a song-bird's heart,"

Nature's cruelty, keeps a few captive birds in cages, and is accustomed
to say of them, "These, at any rate, are safe, rescued from subjection
to ruthless conditions, sheltered from the inclement weather and from
enemies, and all their small wants abundantly satisfied;" who once or
twice every day looks at his little captives, presents them with a lump
of sugar, whistles and chuckles to provoke them to sing, then goes about
his business, flattering himself that he is a lover of birds, a being of
a sweet and kindly nature. It is all a delusion--a distortion and
inversion of the truth--so absurd that it would be laughable were it
not so sad, and the cause of so much unconscious cruelty. The truth is,
that if birds be capable of misery, it is only in the unnatural
conditions of a caged life that they experience it; and that if they are
capable of happiness in a cage, such happiness or contentment is but a
poor, pale emotion compared with the wild exuberant gladness they have
in freedom, where all their instincts have full play, and where the
perils that surround them do but brighten their many splendid faculties.
The little bird twitters and sings in its cage, and among ourselves the
blind man and the cripple whistle and sing, too, feeling at times a
lower kind of contentment and cheerfulness. The chaffinch in East
London, with its eyeballs seared by red-hot needles, sings, too, in its
prison, when it has grown accustomed to its darkened existence, and is
in health, and the agreeable sensations that accompany health prompt it
at intervals to melody, but no person, not even the dullest ruffian
among the baser sort of bird-fanciers would maintain for a moment that
the happiness of the little sightless captive, whether vocal or silent,
is at all comparable in degree to that of the chaffinch singing in April
"on the orchard bough," vividly seeing the wide sunlit world, blue above
and green below, possessing the will and the power, when its lyric ends,
to transport itself swiftly through the crystal fields of air to other
trees and other woods.

I take it that in the lower animals misery can result from two causes
only--restraint and disease; consequently, that animals in a state of
nature are not miserable. They are not hindered nor held back. Whether
the animal is migrating, or burying himself in his hibernating nest or
den; or flying from some rapacious enemy, which he may, or may not, be
able to escape; or feeding, or sleeping, or fighting, or courting, or
incubating, however many days or weeks this process may last--in all
things he is obeying the impulse that is strongest in him at the
time--he is doing what he wants to do--the one thing that makes him
happy.

As to disease, it is so rare in wild animals, or in a large majority of
cases so quickly proves fatal, that, compared with what we call disease
in our own species it is practically non-existent. The "struggle for
existence," in so far as animals in a state of nature are concerned, is
a metaphorical struggle; and the strife, short and sharp, which is so
common in nature, is not misery, although it results in pain, since it
is pain that kills or is soon outlived. Fear there is, just as in fine
weather there are clouds in the sky; and just as the shadow of the cloud
passes, so does fear pass from the wild creature when the object that
excited it has vanished from sight. And when death comes, it comes
unexpectedly, and is not the death that we know, even before we taste of
it, thinking of it with apprehension all our lives long, but a sudden
blow that takes away consciousness--the touch of something that numbs
the nerves--merely the prick of a needle.  In whatever way the animal
perishes, whether by violence, or excessive cold, or decay, his death is
a comparatively easy one. So long as he is fighting with or struggling
to escape from an enemy, wounds are not felt as wounds, and scarcely
hurt him--as we know from our own experience; and when overcome, if
death be not practically instantaneous, as in the case of a small bird
seized by a cat, the disabling grip or blow is itself a kind of anodyne,
producing insensibility to pain. This, too, is a matter of human
experience. To say nothing of those who fall in battle, men have often
been struck down and fearfully lacerated by lions, tigers, jaguars, and
other savage beasts; and after having been rescued by their companions,
have recounted this strange thing. Even when there was no loss of
consciousness, when they saw and knew that the animal was rending their
flesh, they seemed not to feel it, and were, at the time, indifferent to
the fate that had overtaken them.

It is the same in death from cold. The strong, well-nourished man,
overtaken by a snowstorm on some pathless, uninhabited waste, may
experience some exceedingly bitter moments, or even hours, before he
gives up the struggle. The physical pain is simply nothing: the whole
bitterness is in the thought that he must die. The horror at the thought
of annihilation, the remembrance of all the happiness he is now about to
lose, of dear friends, of those whose lives will be dimmed with grief
for his loss, of all his cherished dreams of the future--the sting of
all this is so sharp that, compared with it, the creeping coldness in
his blood is nothing more than a slight discomfort, and is scarcely
felt. By and by he is overcome by drowsiness, and ceases to struggle;
the torturing visions fade from his mind, and his only thought is to lie
down and sleep. And when he sleeps he passes away; very easily, very
painlessly, for the pain was of the mind, and was over long before death
ensued.

The bird, however hard the frost may be, flies briskly to its customary
roosting-place, and with beak tucked into its wing, falls asleep. It has
no apprehensions; only the hot blood grows colder and colder, the pulse
feebler as it sleeps, and at midnight, or in the early morning, it drops
from its perch--dead.

Yesterday he lived and moved, responsible to a thousand external
influences, reflecting earth and sky in his small brilliant brain as in
a looking-glass; also he had a various language, the inherited knowledge
of his race, and the faculty of flight, by means of which he could
shoot, meteor-like, across the sky, and pass swiftly from place to
place, and with it such perfect control over all his organs, such
marvellous certitude in all his motions, as to be able to drop himself
plumb down from the tallest tree-top or out of the void air, on to a
slender spray, and scarcely cause its leaves to tremble. Now, on this
morning, he lies stiff and motionless; if you were to take him up and
drop him from your hand, he would fall to the ground like a stone or a
lump of clay--so easy and swift is the passage from life to death in
wild nature! But he was never miserable.

Those of my readers who have seen much of animals in a state of nature,
will agree that death from decay, or old age, is very rare among them.
In that state the fullest vigour, with brightness of all the faculties,
is so important that probably in ninety-nine cases in a hundred any
falling-off in strength, or decay of any sense, results in some fatal
accident. Death by misadventure, as we call it, is Nature's ordinance,
the end designed for a very large majority of her children.
Nevertheless, animals do sometimes live on without accident to the very
end of their term, to fade peacefully away at the last. I have myself
witnessed such cases in mammals and birds; and one such case, which
profoundly impressed me, and is vividly remembered, I will describe.

One morning in the late summer, while walking in the fields at my home
in South America, I noticed a few purple martins, large, beautiful
swallows common in that region, engaged, at a considerable height, in
the aerial exercises in which they pass so much of their time each day.
By and by, one of the birds separated itself from the others, and,
circling slowly downward, finally alighted on the ground not far from
me. I walked on: but the action of the bird had struck me as unusual and
strange, and before going far, I turned and walked back to the spot
where it continued sitting on the ground, quite motionless. It made no
movement when I approached to within four yards of it; and after I had
stood still at that distance for a minute or so, attentively regarding
it, I saw it put out one wing and turn over on its side. I at once took
it up in my hand, and found that it was already quite dead. It was a
large example of its species, and its size, together with a something of
dimness in the glossy purple colour of the upper plumage, seemed to show
that it was an old bird. But it was uninjured, and when I dissected it
no trace of disease was discernible. I concluded that it was an old bird
that had died solely from natural failure of the life-energy.

But how wonderful, how almost incredible, that the healthy vigour and
joy of life should have continued in this individual bird down to within
so short a period of the end; that it should have been not only strong
enough to find its food, but to rush and wheel about for long intervals
in purely sportive exercises, when the brief twilight of decline and
final extinction were so near! It becomes credible--we can even believe
that most of the individuals that cease to exist only when the vital
fire has burnt itself out, fall on death in this swift, easy
manner--when we recall the fact that even in the life-history of men
such a thing is not unknown. Probably there is not one among my readers
who will not be able to recall some such incident in his own circle--the
case of someone who lived, perhaps, long past the term usually allotted
to man, and who finally passed away without a struggle, without a pang,
so that those who were with him found it hard to believe that the spirit
had indeed gone. In such cases, the subject has invariably been healthy,
although it is hard to believe that, in the conditions we exist in, any
man can have the perfect health that all wild creatures enjoy.




X


After my long talk with the bird-catcher on June 24, and two more talks
equally long on the two following days, I found that something of the
charm the common had had for me was gone. It was not quite the same as
formerly; even the sunshine had a something of conscious sadness in it
which was like a shadow. Those merry little brown twitterers that
frequently shot across the sky, looking small as insects in the wide
blue expanse, and ever and anon dropped swiftly down like showers of
aerolites, to lose themselves in the grass and herbage, or perch singing
on the topmost dead twigs of a bush, now existed in constant imminent
danger--not of that quick merciful destruction which Nature has for her
weaklings, and for all that fail to reach her high standard; but of a
worse fate, the prison life which is not Nature's ordinance, but one of
the cunning larger Ape's abhorred inventions. Instead of taking my usual
long strolls about the common I loitered once more in the village lanes
and had my reward.

On the morning of June 27 I was out sauntering very indolently, thinking
of nothing at all; for it was a surpassingly brilliant day, and the
sunshine produced the effect of a warm, lucent, buoyant fluid, in which
I seemed to float rather than walk--a celestial water, which, like the
more ponderable and common sort, may sometimes be both felt and seen.
The sensation of feeling it is somewhat similar to that experienced by a
bather standing breast-deep in a dear, green, warm tropical sea, so
charged with salt that it lifts him up; but to distinguish it with the
eye, you must look away to a distance of some yards in an open unshaded
place, when it will become visible as fine glinting lines, quivering and
serpentining upwards, fountain-wise, from the surface. All at once I was
startled by hearing the loud importunate hunger-call of a young cuckoo
quite close to me. Moving softly up to the low hedge and peering over, I
saw the bird perched on a long cross-stick, which had been put up in a
cottage garden to hang clothes on; he was not more than three to four
yards from me, a fine young cuckoo in perfect plumage, his barred
under-surface facing me. Although seeing me as plainly as I saw him, he
exhibited no fear, and did not stir. Why should he, since I had not come
there to feed him, and, to his inexperienced avian mind, was only one of
the huge terrestrial creatures of various forms, with horns and manes on
their heads, that move heavily about in roads and pastures, and are
nothing to birds? But his foster parent, a hedge-sparrow, was
suspicious, and kept at some distance with food in her bill; then
excited by his imperative note, she flitted shyly to him, and deposited
a minute caterpillar in his great gaping yellow mouth. It was like
dropping a bun into the monstrous mouth of the hippopotamus of the
Zoological Gardens. But the hedge-sparrow was off and back again with a
second morsel in a very few moments; and again and again she darted away
in quest of food and returned successful, while the lazy, beautiful
giant sat sunning himself on his cross-stick and hungrily cried for
more.

This is one of those exceptional sights in nature which, however often
seen, never become altogether familiar, never fail to re-excite the old
feelings of wonder and admiration which were experienced on first
witnessing them. I can safely say, I think, that no man has observed so
many parasitical young birds (individuals) being fed by their
foster-parents as myself, yet the interest such a sight inspired in me
is just as fresh now as in boyhood.  And probably in no parasitical
species does the strangeness of the spectacle strike the mind so sharply
as in this British bird, since the differences in size and colouring
between the foster-parent and its false offspring are so much greater in
its case. Here nature's unnaturalness in such an instinct--a close union
of the beautiful and the monstrous--is seen in its extreme form. The
hawk-like figure and markings of the cuckoo serve only to accentuate the
disparity, which is perhaps greatest when the parent is the
hedge-sparrow--so plainly-coloured a bird, so shy and secretive in its
habits. One never ceases to be amazed at the blindness of the parental
instinct in so intelligent a creature as a bird in a case of this kind.
Some idea of how blind it is may be formed by imagining a case in widely
separated types of our own species, which would be a parallel to that of
the cuckoo and hedge-sparrow. Let us imagine that some malicious Arabian
Night's genius had snatched up the infant male child of a Scandinavian
couple--the largest of their nation; and flying away to Africa with it,
to the heart of the great Aruwhimi forest had laid it on the breast of a
little coffee-coloured, woolly-headed, spindle-shanked, pot-bellied,
pigmy mother, taking away at the same time her own newly-born babe; that
she had tenderly nursed the substituted child, and reared and protected
it, ministering, according to her lights, to all its huge wants, until
he had come to the fullness of his stature, yet never suspected, that
the magnificent, ivory-limbed giant, with flowing yellow locks and
cerulean eyes, was not the child of her own womb.




XI


Bright and genial were all the last days of June, when I loitered in the
lanes before the unwished day of my return to London. During this quiet,
pleasant time the greenfinch was perhaps more to me than any other
songster. In the village itself, with the adjacent lanes and orchards,
this pretty, seldom-silent bird was the most common species. The village
was his metropolis, just as London is ours--and the sparrow's; its lanes
were his streets, its hedges and elm trees his cottage rows and tall
stately mansions and public buildings. . We frequently find the
predominance of one species somewhat wearisome. Speaking for myself,
there are songsters that are best appreciated when they are limited in
numbers and keep their distance, but of the familiar, unambitious
strains of swallow, robin, and wren I never tire, nor, during these
days, could I have too much of the greenfinch, low as he ranks among
British melodists. Tastes differ; that is a point on which we are all
agreed, and every one of us, even the humblest, is permitted to have his
own preferences. Still, after re-reading Wordsworth's lines to "The
Green Linnet," it is curious, to say the least of it, to turn to some
prosewriter--an authority on birds, perhaps--to find that this species,
whose music so charmed the poet, has for its song a monotonous croak,
which it repeats at short intervals for hours without the slightest
variation--a dismal sound which harmonizes with no other sound in
nature, and suggests nothing but heat and weariness, and is of all
natural sounds the most irritating. To this writer, then--and there are
others to keep him in countenance--the greenfinch as a vocalist ranks
lower than the lowest. One can only wonder (and smile) at such extreme
divergences. To my mind all natural sounds have, in some measure an
exhilarating effect, and I cannot get rid of the notion that so it
should be with every one of us; and when some particular sound, or
series of sounds, that has more than this common character, and is
distinctly pleasing, is spoken of as nothing but disagreeable,
irritating, and the rest of it, I am inclined to think that there is
something wrong with the person who thus describes it; that he is not
exactly as nature would have had him, but that either during his
independent life, or before it at some period of his prenatal existence,
something must have happened to distune him. All this, I freely confess,
may be nothing but fancy. In any case, the subject need not keep us
longer from the greenfinch--that is to say, _my_ greenfinch not another
man's.

From morning until evening all around and about the cottage, and out of
doors whithersoever I bent my steps, from the masses of deep green
foliage, sounded the perpetual airy prattle of these delightful birds.
One had the idea that the concealed vocalists were continually meeting
each other at little social gatherings, where they exchanged pretty
loving greetings, and indulged in a leafy gossip, interspersed with
occasional fragments of music, vocal and instrumental; now a long
trill--a trilling, a tinkling, a sweeping of one minute finger-tip over
metal strings as fine as gossamer threads--describe it how you will, you
cannot describe it; then the long, low, inflected scream, like a lark's
throat-note drawn out and inflected; little chirps and chirruping
exclamations and remarks, and a soft warbled note three or four or more
times repeated, and sometimes, the singer fluttering up out of the
foliage and hovering in the air, displaying his green and yellow plumage
while emitting these lovely notes; and again the trill, trill answering
trill in different keys; and again the music scream, as if some
unsubstantial being, fairy or woodnymph had screamed somewhere in her
green hiding-place. In London one frequently hears, especially in the
spring, half-a-dozen sparrows just met together in a garden tree, or
among the ivy or creeper on a wall, burst out suddenly into a confused
rapturous chorus of chirruping sounds, mingled with others of a finer
quality, liquid and ringing. At such times one is vexed to think that
there are writers on birds who invariably speak of the sparrow as a
tuneless creature, a harsh chirper, and nothing more. It strikes one
that such writers either wilfully abuse or are ignorant of the right
meaning of words, so wild and glad in character are these concerts of
town sparrows, and so refreshing to the tired and noise-vexed brain! But
now when I listened to the greenfinches in the village elms and
hedgerows, if by chance a few sparrows burst out in loud gratulatory
notes, the sounds they emitted appeared coarse, and I wished the
chirrupers away. But with the true and brilliant songsters it seemed to
me that the rippling greenfinch music was always in harmony, forming as
it were a kind of airy, subdued accompaniment to their loud and ringing
tones.

I had had my nightingale days, my cuckoo and blackbird and tree-pipit
days, with others too numerous to mention, and now I was having my
greenfinch days; and these were the last.

One morning in July I was in my sitting-room, when in the hedge on the
other side of the lane, just opposite my window, a small brown bird
warbled a few rich notes, the prelude to his song. I went and stood by
the open window, intently listening, when it sang again, but only a
phrase or two. But I listened still, confidently expecting more; for
although it was now long past its singing season, that splendid sunshine
would compel it to express its gladness. Then, just when a fresh burst
of music came, it was disturbed by another sound close by--a human
voice, also singing. On the other side of the hedge in which the bird
sat concealed was a cottage garden, and there on a swing fastened to a
pair of apple trees, a girl about eleven years old sat lazily swinging
herself. Once or twice after she began singing the nightingale broke out
again, and then at last he became silent altogether, his voice
overpowered by hers.  Girl and bird were not five yards apart. It
greatly surprised me to hear her singing, for it was eleven o'clock,
when all the village children were away at the National School, a time
of day when, so far as human sounds were concerned, there reigned an
almost unbroken silence. But very soon I recalled the fact that this was
a very lazy child, and concluded that she had coaxed her mother into
sending an excuse for keeping her at home, and so had kept her liberty
on this beautiful morning. About two minutes' walk from the cottage, at
the side of the crooked road running through the village, there was a
group of ancient pollarded elm trees with huge, hollow trunks, and
behind them an open space, a pleasant green slope, where some of the
village children used to go every day to play on the grass. Here I used
to see this girl lying in the sun, her dark chestnut hair loosed and
scattered on the sward, her arms stretched out, her eyes nearly closed,
basking in the sun, as happy as some heat-loving wild animal. No, it was
not strange that she had not gone to school with the others when her
disposition was remembered, but most strange to hear a voice of such
quality in a spot where nature was rich and lovely, and only man was, if
not vile, at all events singularly wanting in the finer human qualities.

Looking out from the open window across the low hedge-top, I could see
her as she alternately rose and fell with slow, indolent motion, now
waist-high above the green dividing wall, then only her brown head
visible resting against the rope just where her hand had grasped it. And
as she swayed herself to and fro she sang that simple melody--probably
some child's hymn which she had been taught at the Sunday-school; but it
was a very long hymn, or else she repeated the same few stanzas many
times, and after each there was a brief pause, and then the voice that
seemed to fall and rise with the motion went on as before. I could have
stood there for an hour--nay, for hours--listening to it, so fresh and
so pure was the clear young voice, which had no earthly trouble in it,
and no passion, and was in this like the melody of the birds of which I
had lately heard so much; and with it all that tenderness and depth
which is not theirs, but is human only and of the soul.

It struck me as a singular coincidence--and to a mind of so primitive a
type as the writer's there is more in the fact that the word
implies--that, just as I had quitted London, to seek for just such a
spot as I so speedily found, with the passionately exclaimed words of a
young London girl ringing in my ears, so now I went back with this
village girl's melody sounding and following me no less clearly and
insistently. For it was not merely remembered, as we remember most
things, but vividly and often reproduced, together with the various
melodies of the birds I had listened to; a greater and principal voice
in that choir, yet in no wise lessening their first value, nor ever out
of harmony with them.




EXOTIC BIRDS FOR BRITAIN


There are countries with a less fertile soil and a worse climate than
ours, yet richer in bird life. Nevertheless, England is not poor; the
species are not few in number, and some are extremely abundant.
Unfortunately many of the finer kinds have been too much sought after;
persecuted first for their beauty, then for their rarity, until now we
are threatened with their total destruction. As these kinds become
unobtainable, those which stand next in the order of beauty and rarity
are persecuted in their turn; and in a country as densely populated as
ours, where birds cannot hide themselves from human eyes, such
persecution must eventually cause their extinction. Meanwhile the bird
population does not decrease. Every place in nature, like every property in
Chancery, has more than one claimant to it--sometimes the claimants are
many--and so long as the dispute lasts all live out of the estate. For
there are always two or more species subsisting on the same kind of
food, possessing similar habits, and frequenting the same localities. It
is consequently impossible for man to exterminate any one species
without indirectly benefiting some other species, which attracts him in
a less degree, or not at all. This is unfortunate, for as the bright
kinds, or those we esteem most, diminish in numbers the less interesting
kinds multiply, and we lose much of the pleasure which bird life is
fitted to give us. When we visit woods, or other places to which birds
chiefly resort, in districts uninhabited by man, or where he pays little
or no attention to the feathered creatures, the variety of the bird life
encountered affords a new and peculiar delight. There is a constant
succession of new forms and new voices; in a single day as many species
may be met with as one would find in England by searching diligently for
a whole year.

And yet this may happen in a district possessing no more species than
England boasts; and the actual number of individuals may be even less
than with us. In sparrows, for instance, of the one common species, we
are exceedingly rich; but in bird life generally, in variety of birds,
especially in those of graceful forms and beautiful plumage, we have
been growing poorer for the last fifty years, and have now come to so
low a state that it becomes us to inquire whether it is not in our power
to better ourselves. It is an old familiar truth--a truism--that it is
easier to destroy than to restore or build up; nevertheless, some
comfort is to be got from the reflection that in this matter we have up
till now been working against Nature. She loves not to bring forth food
where there are none to thrive on it; and when our unconsidered action
had made these gaps, when, despising her gifts or abusing them, we had
destroyed or driven out her finer kinds, she fell back on her lowlier
kinds--her reserve of coarser, more generalized species--and gave them
increase, and bestowed the vacant places which we had created on them.
What she has done she will undo, or assist us in undoing; for we should
be going back to her methods, and should have her with and not against
us. Much might yet be done to restore the balance among our native
species. Not by legislation, albeit all laws restraining the wholesale
destruction of bird life are welcome. On this subject the Honourable
Auberon Herbert has said, and his words are golden: "For myself,
legislation or no legislation, I would turn to the friends of animals in
this country, and say, 'If you wish that the friendship between man and
animals should become a better and truer thing than it is at present,
you must make it so by countless individual efforts, by making thousands
of centres of personal influence.'"

The subject is a large one. In this paper the question of the
introduction of exotic birds will be chiefly considered. Birds have been
blown by the winds of chance over the whole globe, and have found rest
for their feet. That a large number of species, suited to the conditions
of this country, exist scattered about the world is not to be doubted,
and by introducing a few of these we might accelerate the change so
greatly to be desired. At present a very considerable amount of energy
is spent in hunting down the small contingents of rare species that once
inhabited our islands, and still resort annually to its shores,
persistently endeavouring to re-establish their colonies. A less amount
of labour and expense would serve to introduce a few foreign species
each year, and the reward would be greater, and would not make us
ashamed. We have generously given our own wild animals to other
countries; and from time to time we receive cheering reports of an
abundant increase in at least two of our exportations--to wit, the
rabbit and the sparrow. We are surely entitled to some return. Dead
animals, however rich their pelt or bright their plumage may be, are not
a fair equivalent. Dead things are too much with us. London has become a
mart for this kind of merchandise for the whole of Europe, and the
traffic is not without a reflex effect on us; for life in the inferior
animals has come or is coming to be merely a thing to be lightly taken
by human hands, in order that its dropped garment may be sold for filthy
lucre. There are warehouses in this city where it is possible for a
person to walk ankle-deep--literally to wade--in bright-plumaged
bird-skins, and see them piled shoulder-high on either side of him--a
sight to make the angels weep!

Not the angel called woman. It is not that she is naturally more cruel
than man; bleeding wounds and suffering in all its forms, even the sigh
of a burdened heart, appeal to her quick sympathies, and draw the ready
tears; but her imagination helps her less. The appeal must in most cases
be direct and through the medium of her senses, else it is not seen and
not heard. If she loves the ornament of a gay-winged bird, and is able
to wear it with a light heart, it is because it calls up no mournful
image to her mind; no little tragedy enacted in some far-off wilderness,
of the swift child of the air fallen and bleeding out its bright life,
and its callow nestlings, orphaned of the breast that warmed them, dying
of hunger in the tree. We know, at all events, that out of a female
population of many millions in this country, so far only ten women,
possibly fifteen, have been found to raise their voices--raised so often
and so loudly on other questions--to protest against the barbarous and
abhorrent fashion of wearing slain birds as ornaments. The degrading
business of supplying the demand for this kind of feminine adornment
must doubtless continue to flourish in our midst, commerce not being
compatible with morality, but the material comes from other lands,
unblessed as yet with Wild Bird Protection Acts, and "individual
efforts, and thousands of centres of personal influence"; it comes
mainly from the tropics, where men have brutish minds and birds a
brilliant plumage. This trade, therefore, does not greatly affect the
question of our native bird life, and the consideration of the means,
which may be within our reach, of making it more to us than it now is.
Some species from warm and even hot climates have been found to thrive
well in England, breeding in the open air; as, for instance, the black
and the black-necked swans, the Egyptian goose, the mandarin and summer
ducks, and others too numerous to mention. But these birds are
semi-domestic, and are usually kept in enclosures, and that they can
stand the climate and propagate when thus protected from competition is
not strange; for we know that several of our hardy domestic birds--the
fowl, pea-fowl, Guinea-fowl, and Muscovy duck--are tropical in their
origin. Furthermore, they are all comparatively large, and if they ever
become feral in England, it will not be for many years to come.

That these large kinds thrive so well with us is an encouraging fact;
but the question that concerns us at present is the feasibility of
importing birds of the grove, chiefly of the passerine order, and
sending them forth to give a greater variety and richness to our bird
life. To go with such an object to tropical countries would only be to
court failure. Nature's highest types, surpassing all others in
exquisite beauty of form, brilliant colouring, and perfect melody, can
never be known to our woods and groves. These rarest avian gems may not
be removed from their setting, and to those who desire to know them in
their unimaginable lustre, it will always be necessary to cross oceans
and penetrate into remote wildernesses. We must go rather to regions
where the conditions of life are hard, where winters are long and often
severe, where Nature is not generous in the matter of food, and the
mouths are many, and the competition great. Nor even from such regions
could we take any strictly migratory species with any prospect of
success. Still, limiting ourselves to the resident, and consequently to
the hardiest kinds, and to those possessing only a partial migration, it
is surprising to find how many there are to choose from, how many are
charming melodists, and how many have the bright tints in which our
native species are so sadly lacking. The field from which the supply can
be drawn is very extensive, and includes the continent of Europe, the
countries of North Asia, a large portion of North America and Antarctic
America, or South Chili and Patagonia. It would not be going too far to
say that for every English species, inhabiting the garden, wood, field,
stream, or waste, at least half a dozen resident species, with similar
habits, might be obtained from the countries mentioned which would be
superior to our own in melody (the nightingale and lark excepted),
bright plumage, grace of form, or some other attractive quality. The
question then arises; What reason is there for believing that these
exotics, imported necessarily in small numbers, would succeed in winning
a footing in our country, and become a permanent addition to its
avifauna? For it has been admitted that our species are not few, in
spite of the losses that have been suffered, and that the bird
population does not diminish, however much its character may have
altered and deteriorated from the aesthetic point of view, and probably
also from the utilitarian. There are no vacant places. Thus, the streams
are fished by herons, grebes, and kingfishers, while the rushy margins
are worked by coots and gallinules, and, above the surface, reed and
sedge-warblers, with other kinds, inhabit the reed-beds. The decaying
forest tree is the province of the woodpecker, of which there are three
kinds; and the trunks and branches of all trees, healthy or decaying,
are quartered by the small creeper, that leaves no crevice unexplored in
its search for minute insects and their eggs. He is assisted by the
nuthatch; and in summer the wryneck comes (if he still lives), and
deftly picks up the little active ants that are always wildly careering
over the boles. The foliage is gleaned by warblers and others; and not
even the highest terminal twigs are left unexamined by tits and their
fellow-seekers after little things. Thrushes seek for worms in moist
grounds about the woods; starlings and rooks go to the pasture lands;
the lark and his relations keep to the cultivated fields; and there also
dwells the larger partridge. Waste and stony grounds are occupied by the
chats, and even on the barren mountain summits the ptarmigan gets his
living. Wagtails run on the clean margins of streams; and littoral birds
of many kinds are in possession of the entire sea-coast. Thus, the whole
ground appears to be already sufficiently occupied, the habitats of
distinct species overlapping each other like the scales on a fish. And
when we have enumerated all these, we find that scores of others have
been left out.  The important fly-catcher; the wren, Nature's diligent
little housekeeper, that leaves no dusty corner uncleaned; and the
pigeons, that have a purely vegetable diet. The woods and thickets are
also ranged by jays, cuckoos, owls, hawks, magpies, butcher-birds--
Nature's gamekeepers, with a licence to kill, which, after the manner of
game-keepers, they exercise somewhat indiscriminately. Above the earth,
the air is peopled by swifts and swallows in the daytime, and by
goatsuckers at night. And, as if all these were not enough, the finches
are found scattered everywhere, from the most secluded spot in nature to
the noisy public thoroughfare, and are eaters of most things, from
flinty seed to softest caterpillar. This being the state of things, one
might imagine that experience and observation are scarcely needed to
prove to us that the exotic, strange to the conditions, and where its
finest instincts would perhaps be at fault, would have no chance of
surviving. Nevertheless, odd as it may seem, the small stock of facts
bearing on the subject which we possess point to a contrary conclusion.
It might have been assumed, for instance, that the red-legged partridge
would never have established itself with us, where the ground was
already fully occupied by a native species, which possessed the
additional advantage of a more perfect protective colouring. Yet, in
spite of being thus handicapped, the stranger has conquered a place, and
has spread throughout the greater part of England. Even more remarkable
is the case of the pheasant, with its rich plumage, a native of a hot
region; yet our cold, wet climate and its unmodified bright colours have
not been fatal to it, and practically it is one of our wild birds. The
large capercailzie has also been successfully introduced from Norway.
Small birds would probably become naturalized much more readily than
large ones; they are volatile, and can more quickly find suitable
feeding-ground, and safe roosting and nesting places; their food is also
more abundant and easily found; their small size, which renders them
inconspicuous, gives them safety; and, finally, they are very much more
adaptive than large birds.

It is not at all probable that the red-legged partridge will ever drive
out our own bird, a contingency which some have feared. That would be a
misfortune, for we do not wish to change one bird for another, or to
lose any species we now possess, but to have a greater variety. We are
better off with two partridges than we were with one, even if the
invader does not afford such good sport nor such delicate eating. They
exist side by side, and compete with each other; but such competition is
not necessarily destructive to either. On the contrary, it acts and
re-acts healthily and to the improvement of both. It is a fact that in
small islands, very far removed from the mainland, where the animals
have been exempt from all foreign competition--that is, from the
competition of casual colonists--when it does come it proves, in many
cases, fatal to them. Fortunately, this country's large size and
nearness to the mainland has prevented any such fatal crystallization of
its organisms as we see in islands like St.  Helena. That any English
species would be exterminated by foreign competition is extremely
unlikely; whether we introduce exotic birds or not, the only losses we
shall have to deplore in the future will, like those of the past, be
directly due to our own insensate action in slaying every rare and
beautiful thing with powder and shot. From the introduction of exotic
species nothing is to be feared, but much to be hoped.

There is another point which should not be overlooked. It has after all
become a mere fiction to say that _all_ places are occupied. Nature's
nice order has been destroyed, and her kingdom thrown into the utmost
confusion; our action tends to maintain the disorderly condition, while
she is perpetually working against us to re-establish order. When she
multiplies some common, little-regarded species to occupy a space left
vacant by an artificially exterminated kind, the species called in as a
mere stop-gap, as it were, is one not specially adapted in structure and
instincts to a particular mode of life, and consequently cannot fully
and effectually occupy the ground into which it has been permitted to
enter. To speak in metaphor, it enters merely as a caretaker or ignorant
and improvident steward in the absence of the rightful owner. Again,
some of our ornamental species, which are fast diminishing, are fitted
from their peculiar structure and life habits to occupy places in nature
which no other kinds, however plastic they may be, can even partially
fill. The wryneck and the woodpecker may be mentioned; and a still
better instance is afforded by the small, gem-like kingfisher--the
only British bird which can properly be described as gem-like.
When the goldfinch goes--and we know that he is going rapidly--other
coarser fringilline birds, without the melody, brightness, and charm of
the goldfinch--sparrow and bunting--come in, and in some rough fashion
supply its place; but when the kingfisher disappears an important place
is left absolutely vacant, for in this case there is no coarser bird of
homely plumage with the fishing instinct to seize upon it. Here, then,
is an excellent opportunity for an experiment. In the temperate regions
of the earth there are many fine kingfishers to select from; some are
resident in countries colder than England, and are consequently very
hardy; and in some cases the rivers and streams they frequent are
exceedingly poor in fish. Some of them are very beautiful, and they vary
in size from birds no larger than a sparrow to others as large as a
pigeon.

Anglers might raise the cry that they require all the finny inhabitants
of our waters for their own sport. It is scarcely necessary to go as
deeply into the subject as mathematical-minded Mudie did to show that
Nature's lavishness in the production of life would make such a
contention unreasonable. He demonstrated that if all the fishes hatched
were to live their full term, in twenty-four years their production
power would convert into fish (two hundred to the solid foot) as much
matter as there is contained in the whole solar system--sun, planets,
and satellites! An "abundantly startling" result, as he says. To be well
within the mark, ninety-nine out of every hundred fishes hatched must
somehow perish during that stage when they are nothing but suitable
morsels for the kingfisher, to be swallowed entire; and a portion of all
this wasted food might very well go to sustain a few species, which
would be beautiful ornaments of the waterside, and a perpetual delight
to all lovers of rural nature, including anglers. It may be remarked in
passing, that the waste of food, in the present disorganized state of
nature, is not only in our streams.

The introduction of one or more of these lovely foreign kingfishers
would not certainly have the effect of hastening the decline of our
native species; but indirectly it might bring about a contrary result--a
subject to be touched on at the end of this paper. Practical naturalists
may say that kingfishers would be far more difficult to procure than
other birds, and that it would be almost impossible to convey them to
England. That is a question it would be premature to discuss now; but if
the attempt should ever be made, the difficulties would not perhaps be
found insuperable. In all countries one hears of certain species of
birds that they invariably die in captivity; but when the matter is
closely looked into, one usually finds that improper treatment and not
loss of liberty is the cause of death. Unquestionably it would be much
more difficult to keep a kingfisher alive and healthy during a long
sea-voyage than a common seed-eating bird; but the same may be said of
woodpeckers, cuckoos, warblers, and, in fact, of any species that
subsists in a state of nature on a particular kind of animal food.
Still, when we find that even the excessively volatile humming-bird,
which subsists on the minutest insects and the nectar of flowers, and
seems to require unlimited space for the exercise of its energies, can
be successfully kept confined for long periods and conveyed to distant
countries, one would imagine that it would be hard to set a limit to
what might be done in this direction. We do not want hard-billed birds
only. We require, in the first place, variety; and, secondly, that every
species introduced, when not of type unlike any native kind, as in the
case of the pheasant, shall be superior in beauty, melody, or some other
quality, to its British representative, or to the species which comes
nearest to it in structure and habits. Thus, suppose that the
introduction of a pigeon should be desired. We know that in all
temperate regions, these birds vary as little in colour and markings as
they do in form; but in the vocal powers of different species there is
great diversity; and the main objects would therefore be to secure a
bird which would be an improvement in this respect on the native kinds.
There are doves belonging to the same genus as stock-dove and
wood-pigeon, that have exceedingly good voices, in which the peculiar
mournful dove-melody has reached its highest perfection--weird and
passionate strains, surging and ebbing, and startling the hearer with
their mysterious resemblance to human tones. Or a Zenaida might be
preferred for its tender lament, so wild and exquisitely modulated, like
sobs etherealized and set to music, and passing away in sigh-like sounds
that seem to mimic the aerial voices of the wind.

When considering the character of our bird population with a view to its
improvement, one cannot but think much, and with a feeling almost of
dismay, of the excessive abundance of the sparrow. A systematic
persecution of this bird would probably only serve to make matters
worse, since its continued increase is not the cause but an effect of a
corresponding decrease in other more useful and attractive species; and
if Nature is to have her way at all there must be birds; and besides, no
bird-lover has any wish at see such a thing attempted. The sparrow has
his good points, if we are to judge him as we find him, without allowing
what the Australians and Americans say of him to prejudice our minds.
Possibly in those distant countries he may be altogether bad,
resembling, in this respect, some of the emigrants of our species, who,
when they go abroad, leave their whole stock of morality at home. Even
with us Miss Ormerod is exceedingly bitter against him, and desires
nothing less than his complete extirpation; but it is possible that this
lady's zeal may not be according to knowledge, that she may not

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