Watching Stock-doves, Wood-pigeons, Snipe, etc.
I have alluded to the aerial combats of the stock-dove during the
nuptial season as elucidating similar movements on the part of the
peewit, though I was not able so fully to satisfy myself as to the
meaning of these in the latter bird. The fighting of birds on the
wing has sometimes--to my eye, at least--a very soft and delicate
appearance, which does not so much resemble fighting as sport and
dalliance between the sexes. Larks, for instance, have what seem, at
the worst, to be delicate little mock-combats in the air, carried on
in a way which suggests this. Sometimes, rising together, they keep
approaching and retiring from each other with the light, swinging
motion of a shuttlecock just before it turns over to descend, and this
resemblance is increased by their flying perpendicularly, or almost so,
with their heads up and tails down. Indeed, they seem more to be thrown
through the air than to fly. Then, in one fall, they sink together
into the grass. Or they will keep mounting above and above each other
to some height, and then descend in something the same way, but more
sweepingly (for let no one hope to see exactly how they do it), seeming
to make with their bodies the soft links of a feathered chain--or as
though their own "linked sweetness" of song had been translated into
matter and motion. In each case they make all the time, as convenient,
little kissipecks, rather than pecks, at each other.
Again, in the case of the redshank, though I have little doubt now that
the following, which was both aquatic and aerial, was a genuine combat
between two males, yet often at the time, and especially in its preface
and conclusion, it seemed as though the birds were of opposite sexes,
and, if fighting at all, only amorously.
"Two birds are pursuing each other on the bank of the river. The water
is low, and a little point of mud and shingle projects into the stream.
Up and down this, from the herbage to the water's edge and back again,
the birds run, one close behind the other, and each uttering a funny
little piping cry--'tu-tu-oo, tu-oo, tu-oo, tu-oo.' It is one, as
far as I can see, that always pursues the other, who, after a time,
flies to the opposite bank. The pursuer follows, and the chase is now
carried on by a series of little flights from bank to bank, sometimes
straight across, sometimes slanting a little up or down the stream,
whilst sometimes there is a little flight backwards and forwards along
the bank in the intervals of crossing. This continues for something
like an hour, but at last the pursuing bird, as both fly out from the
bank, makes a little dart, and, overtaking the other one, both flutter
down into the stream. They rise from it straight up into the air like
two blackbirds fighting, then fall back into it again, and now there
is a violent struggle in the water. Whilst it lasts the birds are
swimming, just as two ducks would be under similar circumstances, and
every now and then, in the pauses of exhaustion, both rest, floating
on the water. The combat would be as purely aquatic as with coots or
moor-hens, if it were not that the two birds often struggle out of the
water and rise together into the air, where they continue the struggle,
each one rising alternately above the other and trying to push it
down--it would seem with the legs. These were the tactics adopted in
the water too, but yet, with a good deal of motion and exertion, there
seems but little of fury. The birds are not _acharné_, or, at least,
they do not seem to be. It is a soft sort of combat, and now it has
ended in the combatants making their mutual toilette quite close to one
another. One stands on the shore and preens itself, the other sits just
off it on the water and bathes in it like a duck."
Even here, owing principally to the friendly toilette-scene, I was not
quite clear as to the nature of the bird's actions. How completely I at
first mistook it in the case of the stock-dove with the way in which it
was afterwards made plain to me, the following will show:--
"Most interesting aerial nuptial evolutions of the male and female
stock-dove.--They navigate the air together, following each other in
the closest manner, one being, almost all the while, just above the
other, their wings seeming to pulsate in time as soldiers (if sweet
birds will forgive such a simile) keep step. Now they rise, now sink,
making a wide, irregular circle. Both seem to wish, yet not to wish,
to touch, almost, yet not quite, doing so, till, when very close, the
upper one drops lightly towards the one beneath him, who sinks too;
yet for a moment you hear the wings clap against each other. This
sounds faintly, though very perceptibly; but the distance is great,
and it must really be loud. Every now and again the wings will cease
to vibrate, and the two birds sweep through the air on spread pinions,
but, otherwise, in the manner that has been described. I must have
watched this continuing for at least a quarter of an hour before they
sunk to the ground together, still maintaining the same relative
position, and with quivering wings as before. Here, however, something
distracted me, the glasses lost them, and I did not see them actually
alight. Another pair rise right from the ground in this manner,[2]
one directly above the other, quiver upwards to some little height,
then sweep off on spread pinions, following each other, but still at
slightly different elevations. They overtake one another, quiver up
still higher, with hardly an inch between them, then suddenly, with an,
as it were, 'enough of this,' sweep apart and float in lovely circles,
now upwards now downwards. As they do this another bird rushes through
the air to join them, he circles too, all three are circling, the
light glinting on one, falling from another, thrown and caught and
thrown again as if they played at ball with light."
[2] But I did not see what they were doing before they rose.
I thought, therefore, that birds when they flew in pairs like this were
disporting themselves together in a nuptial flight, and making--as
indeed this, in any case, is true--a very pretty display of it. What
was there, indeed--or what did there seem to be--to indicate that
angry passions lay at the root of all this loveliness? But I had not
taken sufficiently into consideration that sharp clap of the wings
indicating a blow--a severe one--on the part of one of the birds with a
parry on that of the other. This is how stock-doves, as well as other
pigeons, fight on the ground, and it is as an outcome and continuation
of these fierce stand-up combats--which there is no mistaking--that
the contending birds rise and hover one over the other, in the manner
described. My notes will, I think, show this, as well as the curious
and, as it were, formal manner in which the ground-tourney is conducted.
[Illustration: _Stock-doves: A Duel with Ceremonies._]
"Two stock-doves fighting.--This is very interesting and peculiar.
They fight with continual blows of the wings, these being used both as
sword--or, rather, partisan--and shield. The peculiarity, however, is
this, that every now and again there is a pause in the combat, when
both birds make the low bow, with tail raised in air, as in courting.
Sometimes both will bow together, and, as it would seem, to each
other--facing towards each other, at any rate--but at other times
they will both stand in a line, and bow, so that one bows only to the
tail of the other, who bows to the empty air. Or the two will bow at
different times, each seeming more concerned in making his bow than in
the direction or bestowal of it. It is like a little interlude, and
when it is over the combatants advance, again, against each other,
till they stand front to front, and quite close. Both, then, make a
little jump, and battle vigorously with their wings, striking and
parrying. One now makes a higher spring, trying, apparently, to jump
on to his opponent's back, and then strike down upon him. This is all
plain, honest fighting, but there is a constant tendency--constantly
carried out--for the two to get into line, and fight in a sort of
follow-my-leader fashion, whilst making these low bows at intervals. It
is a fight encumbered with forms, with a heavy, punctilious ceremony,
reminding one of those ornate sweeps and bowing rapier-flourishes which
are entered into before and at each pause in the duel between Hamlet
and Laertes, as arranged by Sir Henry Irving at the Lyceum. There were
four or five birds together when this fight broke out, but I could not
feel quite sure whether the non-fighting ones watched the fighting of
the other two. If they did, I do not think they were at all keenly
interested in it. Also, the fighting birds may sometimes, when they
bowed, have done so to the birds that stood near, but it never seemed
to me that this was the case, and it certainly was not so in most
instances."
In the spring from the ground which one of the fighting birds sometimes
makes, coming down on the other one's back and striking with the wings,
we have, perhaps, the beginning of what may develop into a contest in
the clouds, for let the bird that is undermost also spring up, and both
are in the air in the position required; and it is natural that the
undermost should continue to rise, because it could more easily avoid
the blows of the other whilst in the air, by sinking down through it,
than it could on the ground at such a disadvantage. Whether, in the
following instance, the one bird jumped on to the other's back does not
appear, but, as will be seen, the flight, which I had thought to be of
a sexual and nuptial character, was the direct outcome of a scrimmage.
"A short fight between two birds.--It is really most curious. There
is a blow and then a bow, then a vigorous set-to, with hard blows and
adroit parries, a pause with two profound bows, another set-to, and
then the birds rise, one keeping just above the other, and ascend
slowly, with quickly and constantly beating wings, in the way so often
witnessed. It would appear, therefore, that the curious flights of
two birds up into the air, the one of them exactly over, and almost
touching, the other--wherein, as I have noted, there is frequently a
blow with the wings which, to judge by the sound reaching me from a
considerable distance, must be sometimes a severe one--are the aerial
continuations of combats commenced on the ground." Sometimes, that is
to say. There seems no reason why birds accustomed thus to contend,
should not sometimes do so _ab initio_, and without any preliminary
encounter on mother earth--and this, I believe, is the case.
Here, then, in the stock-dove we have at the nuptial season a kind of
flight which seems certainly to be of the nature of a combat, very
much resembling that of the peewit at the same season. I have seen
peewits fighting on the ground, and once they were for a moment in the
air together at a foot or two above it, and the one a little above
the other. This, however, may have been mere chance, and I have not
seen the one form of combat arise unmistakably out of the other, as
in the case of the stock-doves. But assuming that in each case there
is a combat, is it certain that the contending birds are always, or
generally, two males, and not male and female? It certainly seems
natural to suppose this, but with the stock-dove, at any rate (and I
believe with pigeons generally), the two sexes sometimes fight sharply;
and, moreover, the female stock-dove bows to the male, as well as
the male to the female, both which points will be brought out in the
following instances:--
"A hen bird is sitting alone on the sand, a male flies up to her and
begins bowing. She does not respond, but walks away, and, on being
followed and pressed, stands and strikes at her annoyer with the wings,
and there is, then, a short fight between the two. At the end of it,
and when the bowing pigeon has been driven off and is walking away,
having his tail, therefore, turned to the one he is leaving, this one
also bows, once only, but quite unmistakably. The bow was directed
towards her retiring adversary, and also wooer, the two birds therefore
standing in a line." And on another occasion "A stock-dove flies to
another sitting on the warrens, and bows to her, upon which she also
bows to him. Yet his addresses are not successfully urged."
The sexes are here assumed, for the male and female stock-dove do not
differ sufficiently for one to distinguish them at a distance through
the glasses. When, however, one sees a bird fly, like this, to another
one and begin the regular courting action, one seems justified in
assuming it to be a male and the other a female. Both, however, bowed,
and there was a fight, though a short one (I have seen others of longer
duration), between them. It becomes, therefore, a question whether
the much more determined fights which I have witnessed are not also
between the male and the female stock-dove, and not between two males.
If so, the origin of the conflict is, probably, in all such cases--as
it certainly has been in those which I have witnessed--the desires
of the male bird, to which he tries to make the female submit. That
she, in the very midst of resisting, taken, as it would seem, "in her
heart's extremest hate," should yet bow to her would-be ravisher seems
strange, but she certainly does so. Whether it would be more or less
strange that two male birds, whilst fiercely contending, should act in
this way, I will leave to my readers to decide, and thus settle the
nature of these curious ceremonious encounters and their graceful and
interesting aerial continuations, to their own satisfaction.[3]
[3] With this suggestion, however, that fighting may be blended with
sexual display in the combats of male birds owing to association of
ideas, for rivalry is the main cause of such combats.
However it may be, the bow itself--which I will now notice more
fully--is certainly of a nuptial character, and is seen in its greatest
perfection only when the male stock-dove courts the female. This he
does by either flying or walking up to her and bowing solemnly till
his breast touches the ground, his tail going up at the same time to
an even more than corresponding height, though with an action less
solemn. The tail in its ascent is beautifully fanned, but it is not
spread out flat like a fan, but arched, which adds to the beauty of
its appearance. As it is brought down it closes again, but, should the
bow be followed up, it is instantly again fanned out and sweeps the
ground, as its owner, now risen from his prostrate attitude, with head
erect and throat swelled, makes a little rush towards the object of
his desires. The preliminary bow, however, is more usually followed
by another, or by two or three others, each one being a distinct and
separate affair, the bird remaining with his head sunk and tail raised
and fanned for some seconds before rising to repeat. Thus it is not
like two or three little bobs--which is the manner of wooing pursued by
the turtle-dove--but there is one set bow, to which but one elevation
and depression of the tail belongs, and the offerer of it must not only
regain his normal upright attitude, but remain in it for a perceptible
period before making another. This bow, therefore, is of the most
impressive and even solemn nature, and expresses, as much as anything
in dumb show can express, "Madam, I am your most devoted."
I believe--but I am not sure, and quite ready to be corrected--that the
stock-dove's bow is either a silent one, or, at least, that the note
uttered is subdued--the latter seems the more probable. At any rate, I
was never able to catch it, either when watching on the warrens at a
greater or less distance, or when not so far, amongst trees--for the
stock-dove woos also amongst the leafy woods, as does the wood-pigeon,
of which it is a smaller replica, but without the ring. "The male
wood-pigeon, when courting, bows to the female lengthways along the
branch on which he is sitting, elevating his tail at the same time,
in just the same way as does the stock-dove. As he does so, he says
'coo-oo-oo,' the last syllable being long drawn out, and having a very
intense expression, with a rise in the tone of it, sometimes almost to
the extent of becoming a soft shrillness. Having delivered himself of
this long 'coo-oo-oo,' he says several times together in an undertone,
and very quickly, 'coo, coo, coo coo,' or 'coo, coo, coo, coo, coo,
coo, coo,' after which, rising, and then bowing again, he recommences
with the long-drawn, impassioned 'coo-oo-oo,' as before. All this he
repeats several times, the number, probably, depending on whether
the female bird stays to hear his addresses or, as is usual in the
contrary, flies away. If she admits them pairing may take place, and at
the conclusion of it both birds utter a peculiar, low, deep, and very
raucous note which I have heard on this occasion, but on no other."
If the courting of the female stock-dove by the male whilst on the
ground, or amongst the branches of a tree, is of a somewhat heavy
nature--more pompous than beautiful--as is, I think, the case, it is
lightened in the most graceful manner by the aerial intermezzos--the
broidery of the theme--which charmingly relieve and set it off; for
often, "after bowing and walking together a little, near, but not
touching--a Hermia and Lysander distance--both rise, both mount, attain
a height, then pause, and, as from the summit of some lofty precipice,
descend on outspread joy-wings in a very music of motion. It is pretty,
too, to watch two of them flying together and then alighting, when one
instantly bows before the other with _empressé_ mien. Before, you have
not known which was which, or who was escorting the other. Now you feel
sure that it is _he_--the _empressé_, the pompously bowing bird--who
has taken _her_--the retiring, the coy one--for a little fly." For
though it is undoubted that the female stock-dove bows to the male,
yet, in courting, it is the male, I believe, who commences and carries
it to a fine art.
There are no birds surely--or, at least, not many--who can sport more
gracefully in the air than these. "One is sitting and cooing almost
in a rabbit-burrow, and so close to a rabbit there that it looks like
a little call. Sure enough, too, after a while, the bird, who, of
course, is the visitor, rises--but into the air _sans cérémonie_--and
makes as though to fly away. But having gone only a little distance,
with quick strokes of the wings, it rests upon their expanded surface,
and, in a lovely easy sweep, sails round again in the direction from
whence it started. It passes beyond the place, the wings now again
pulsating, then makes another wide sweep of grace and comes down near
where it was before. In a little it again rises, again sweeps and
circles, and again descends in the neighbourhood. Another now appears,
flying towards it, and as it passes over where the first is sitting,
this one rises into the air to meet it. They approach, glide from each
other, again approach, and thus alternately widening and narrowing the
distance between them, one at length goes down, the other passing on
to alight, at last, at that distance which the etiquette of the affair
prescribes. This circling flight on swiftly resting wings is most
beautiful. The pausing sweep, the lazy onwardness, the marriage, as it
were, of rest and speed is a delicious thing, another sense, a delicate
purged voluptuousness, a very banquet to the eye." Such beauty-flights
are almost always in the early morning, when appreciative persons are
mostly in bed, seen only by the dull eye of some warrener walking to
find and kill the beasts that have lain tortured in his traps all
night, exciting (if any) but a murderous thought at the time, with the
after-reflection, "If I'd a had a gun now----"
Stock-doves, as is well known, often choose rabbit-burrows to lay
their eggs in, and, having regard to their powers of flight and
arborial aptitudes, it might be thought that but for the rabbits they
would never be seen on these open, sandy tracts, the abode of the
peewit, stone-curlew, ringed plover, red-legged partridge, and other
such waste-haunting species. But the nesting habits of a bird must
follow its general ones almost necessarily in the first instance, and
though there are many apparently striking instances to the contrary,
they are probably to be explained by the former having remained fixed
whilst the latter have changed. No doubt, therefore, the stock-dove
began to spend much of its time on the ground before it thought of
laying its eggs there, and of the facilities offered by rabbit-holes
for so doing. That the habits as well as the organisms of all living
creatures are in a more or less plastic and fluctuating state is, I
believe, a conclusion come to by Darwin, and it agrees entirely with
the little I have been able to observe in regard to birds. I have seen
the robin redbreast become a wagtail or stilt-walker, the starling a
wood-pecker or fly-catcher, the tree-creeper also a fly-catcher, the
wren an accomplished tree-creeper, the moor-hen a partridge or plover,
and so on, and so on, all such instances having been noted down by me
at the time. Most birds are ready to vary their habits suddenly and
_de novo_ if they can get a little profit on the transaction, and the
extent to which they have varied gradually in a long course of time and
under changed conditions is, of course, a commonplace after Darwin.
The wood-pigeon has not yet begun to lay its eggs in rabbit-holes or
anywhere but in trees and bushes, but that it may some day do so is not
improbable, for it comes down sometimes, though not very frequently,
on the same sandy wastes that are loved by the stock-dove, and here,
like him, the male will court the female as though on the familiar
bough.[4] When I have seen him courting her thus on the ground, the
low bow which he makes her has been prefaced by one or more curious
hops, which I have not seen in the stock-dove's courting. They look
curious because they are so out of character, hopping being, as far as
I know, a mode of progression foreign to all the _columbidæ_. Whether
the wood-pigeon hops upon any other occasion I cannot be sure. If he
does not--and it is certainly not his usual habit--his adoption of it
here may be looked upon as a purely nuptial antic. In this the lark,
which is also a stepping and not a hopping bird, keeps him company,
as would the cormorant, were it not that he hops often as a matter
of convenience. Larks I have not seen hop in everyday life, though
sometimes I have thought that they did when running quickly over
ploughed land in winter, as starlings often do when they break from
a run which has become too quick for them into a running hop. But I
came to the conclusion that this was only apparent, and due to their
up and down motion over the clods of earth. A hop is quite foreign to
the lark's disposition, yet, when courting, "the male bird advances
upon the female with wings drooped, crest and tail raised, and with
a series of impressive hops." The hop of the wood-pigeon, under
similar circumstances, is of a heavy and deliberate nature, as might
be expected his build and size, and has the same set and formal from
character as the bow which immediately follows it.
[4] The same remark applies to the turtle-dove.
The turtle-dove bows too, in courtship, but it is a series of quick
little bows, or, rather bobs, which he makes to his _fiancée_ instead
of one or more slower and much more imposing ones. Essentially,
however, it is the same thing. The pace has been quickened and the
interval lessened, whilst, to allow of the increased speed, the bow
itself has been shorn of much of its pomp and circumstance, so that
it has become, as I say, a mere bob. The turtle-dove may perform some
half-dozen or more of these bobs, taking less time, perhaps, to get
through them than do his larger relatives to achieve one of their
solemn and formal bows. Still he is pompous too, he bends down low at
the shrine, and though each little bob may not be much in itself, yet,
when thus strung together, the display as a whole is equal to the other
two.
All the time he is thus bowing or bobbing the turtle-dove utters a
deep, rolling, musical note which is continuous (or sounds so), and
does not cease till he has got back into his more everyday attitude.
The hen looks sometimes surprised, sometimes as though she had expected
it, and sometimes, I think,--but of this I am not quite positive--she
will return the little series of musical bobs. This is in tree-land;
but I have seen the turtle-dove court on the ground, and he then,
between his bobbings, made a curious dancing step towards the female,
who retired and gave her final answer by flying away. But, besides
this, these birds have another and most charming nuptial disportment.
Sitting _à deux_ in some high tree, one of them will every now and
again fly out of it, mount upwards, make one or two circling sweeps
around and above it, then, after remaining poised for some seconds,
descend on spread wings in the most graceful manner, alighting on
the same branch beside the waiting partner. This is a beautiful thing
to see, and especially in the early fresh morning of a clear, lovely
day. It seems then as if the bird kept flying up to greet "the early
rising sun," or as rejoicing in the beauty of all things. These are
the coquetries, the prettinesses of loving couples, as to which--on
one side at least--what has not been said by the writers of our clumsy
race! But "if the lions were sculptors"--How might a bird novelist
expatiate!
[Illustration: _Turtle-Doves: The Nuptial Flight._]
Not less beautiful is the nuptial flight of the wood-pigeon. Of
this, the clapping of the wings above the back is the most salient
feature, a sound which is never heard during the winter or after the
breeding-season is fairly over. In full flight, the bird smites its
wings two or three times smartly together above the back, then, holding
them extended and motionless, it seems to pause for one instant--if
there can be pause in swiftest motion--before sinking and then rising
and sinking again, as does a wave, or as though it rested on an aerial
switchback. Then continuing his flight--recommencing, that is to say,
the strokes of his wings--he may do the same when he has gone a few
air-fields farther, and so "pass in music out of sight." Sometimes
there will be only a single clap of the wings instead of two or
three,[5] but always it is made just before the still-spreading of
them, and the hanging pause in the air; for let the speed be never
so great--and it hardly seems possible that it could be checked so
suddenly, and why should the bird wish to check it?--yet the effect
upon the eye of the wings extended and motionless after they have
been pulsating so rapidly is as of a pause. This pause, or rather
this rest-in-speed, as the bird, renouncing all effort, is carried
swiftly and placidly onwards in a curve of the extremest beauty has
a delicious effect upon one. One's spirit goes out until one seems
to be with the bird oneself, hanging and sweeping as it does. Yet in
this glory of motion it will often be shot by beings, in all grace and
beauty and poetry of life, how infinitely its inferiors! This makes
me think of Darwin's comment upon Bate's account of a humming-bird
caught and killed by a huge Brazilian spider, wherein the destroyer and
the victim--"one, perhaps, the loveliest, the other the most hideous
in the scale of creation"[6]--are contrasted. Spiders, too, had they
their Phidiases, might be idealised and made to look quite beautiful
in marble, even perhaps to our eyes (what cannot genius do?) whilst
to their own, of course, the _spider_ form would be "the spider form
divine."
[5] Sometimes, too, not any, the flight being the same.
[6] I quote from memory.
Wood-pigeons will also fly circling about above the trees in which
they have been sitting, in rapid pursuit of each other, and whilst
doing so, one or other of them may be heard to make a very pronounced
swishing or beating sound with the wings, reminding one of the peewit,
nightjar, and a great many other birds. Of instrumental music produced
during flight, the snipe is a familiar example. Here, however, the very
peculiar and highly specialised sound known as bleating or drumming is
produced, not by the feathers of the wing, but by those of the tail,
which have been specially modified, as we may suppose (those, at least,
of us who are believers in that force), by a process of musical sexual
selection. To quote Darwin: "No one was able to explain the cause until
Mr Meves observed that on each side of the tail the outer feathers are
peculiarly formed, having a stiff sabre-shaped shaft with the oblique
barbs of unusual length, the outer webs being strongly bound together.
He found that by blowing on these feathers, or by fastening them to
a long thin stick and waving them rapidly through the air, he could
reproduce the drumming noise made by the living bird. Both sexes are
furnished with these feathers, but they are generally larger in the
male than in the female, and emit a deeper note."
The possibility of reproducing the sound in the manner described seems
conclusive as to the cause of it. Otherwise I should have come to the
conclusion, by watching the bird, that the wings and not the tail were
the agency employed.
"I have just been watching for some time a snipe continually coursing
through the air and making, at intervals, the well-known drumming or
bleating sound,--bleating certainly seems to me the word which best
expresses its quality. The wings are constantly and quickly quivered,
not only when the bird rises or flies straight forward, but also during
its swift oblique descents, when one might expect that they would be
held rigid in the ordinary manner. From each sweep down the bird rises
and beats again upwards, but when the flight has been continued long
enough the wings are pressed to the sides as the plunge to earth is
made, which is also one way in which the lark descends. It is during
these downward flights--but not during the descent to earth--that
the sound strikes the ear. A second bird flies, to my surprise and
interest, quite differently. After scudding about for some little
time in a devious side-to-side pathway, less up and down, as it seems
to me, than the other, it suddenly tilts itself sideways, or almost
sideways--one wing pointing skywards, the other earthwards--and makes
a rapid swoop down, with the wings not beating. I watch it doing this
time after time, both with the naked eye and through the glasses, and
each time that the swoop is made no bleating or other sound accompanies
it: the flight is noiseless, like that of an ordinary bird. Two other
snipes are now flying about in this latter way and chasing each other.
At first--and this included a great many sweeps down--I heard no sound.
Afterwards I thought I heard it faintly sometimes, but could not be
sure that it was not made by another bird--a frequent difficulty in
watching snipe." Again, "A snipe is standing alone 'in the melancholy
marshes,' quite still, and uttering the creaky, see-sawey note. I can
see the two long mandibles of the beak dividing slightly and again
closing. The note is now thin and subdued, but, the bird taking flight
suddenly, it becomes much accentuated. It joins two other birds in the
air, and all three now sport and pursue each other about, constantly
uttering this cry, but bleating only occasionally. I am lying flat on
the ground, and they often fly close about and over me, the light, too,
being good, it being all before 5.40, and not much after 5, perhaps,
when it commenced (this was April 4th). I note that they often descend
through the air without vibrating the wings, and there is then no
bleating sound--this whilst quite close. I think--but am not yet quite
sure--that they sometimes descend in this way uttering the cry. When
they bleat, however, there is never the cry at the same time. It is
impossible to tell when these birds are going to alight, as they often
descend in the manner that they use when alighting, but, when almost
down, skim a little just over the ground, and, rising again, continue
their flight as before. Yet that they have had it in their mind to
alight I feel sure, for they always do so with that particular action."
Since, then, the snipe has two ways of making his rapid descents
through the air, in one of which he quivers his wings and in the
other not, and since, on the latter occasion, the bleat is not heard
or, if heard, only faintly, it would be natural to suppose that the
sound--if not vocal--was produced by the rapidly vibrating feathers
of the wing when in swift downward motion rather than by those of the
tail, which should not, one would think, be affected by the difference.
Also the fact of the vocal note not being uttered at the same time
as the bleat might make one think that this, too, was vocal. Such
arguments, however, would be at best but "poor seemings and thin
likelihoods"--the last one, I believe, not supported by what we know
(at least I cannot at the moment think of a bird that produces vocal
and instrumental music at the same time). If the sound can really be
reproduced by waving the modified feathers of the tail, then this is a
demonstration.[7]
[7] I have lately observed that when the snipe descends with quivering
wings, some outer feathers of the tail on each side are shot out from
it in a most noticeable manner, making--or looking like--two little
curved tufts. They are not seen before, which seems to me strong
evidence. The tail itself is fanned.
Snipe, as already observed, descend to the ground in order to alight
upon it in a manner quite different to the oblique downward-shooting
sweeps, with wings extended, whether vibrating or not, as practised
in ordinary nuptial flight. There are three ways, possibly more; but
three I have seen. In the first the bird shoots gracefully down, with
the wings pressed to the sides, as already described. In the second the
wings are raised straight, or almost straight, above the back, and this
gives, perhaps, a still more graceful appearance. The third way is not
nearly so usual a one as the other two--in fact, I only recall having
seen it once. In this the wings are but half spread (whilst held in
the ordinary manner) and motionless, and the bird descends in several
sweeps to one side or the other, something after the manner in which
a kite comes to the ground. No sound attends any of these forms of
descent.
The cry of the snipe which I have alluded to, is of a curious
nature, something like the word "chack-wood, chack-wood, chack-wood,
chack-wood," constantly repeated, and having a regular rise and fall
in it, which is why I call it a "see-saw note." Sometimes, when the
bird is a little way off, it sounds very much like a swishing of the
wings; but when these are really swished, as they often are--purposely,
I believe, and as a nuptial performance--the difference is at once
apparent. "Two snipes will often fly chasing each other, uttering this
note, and making from time to time the loud swishing with the wings.
Often, too, there will be a short, harsh cry--harsh, but with that
wild, loved harshness that lives in the notes of birds that haunt the
waste--which is instantly followed by a swishing of the wings, making
quite a music in the air. When at its loudest and harshest, this cry,
which then becomes a scream, is quite an extraordinary sound, having
a mewing intonation in it suggesting a cat as the performer. Yet it
is nothing so extraordinary as some notes of the snipe which I have
heard, mostly during the winter, and which are indeed--at least they
have struck me as being so--amongst the most wonderful that ever
issued from the throat of bird. I will recur to them again when I
come to the moor-hen (for it was in his company I heard them), a bird
that is itself as a whole orchestra of peculiar brazen instruments.
These wild cries and screams blend harmoniously with the curious,
monotonous, yet musical bleating, and come finely out of the gloom
of the evening thickening into night, as it descends over the wide
expanse of the fenlands. Best heard then--and there: the darkening sky,
the wide and wind-swept waste of coarse tufted grass, amongst which
brown dock-stalks stand tall-ly and thinly, the long, raised bank with
its thin belt of reeds beyond, emphasising rather than relieving the
flatness, the lonely thorn-bush, the stunted willow or two, the black
line of alders marking the course of the sluggish river, the wind, the
sad whispered music in the grasses, the wilder music in the air, the
aloneness, the drearness--such voices fit such scenes."
The male and female snipe both bleat, but the feathers in the tail
which produce the sound are less modified in the female, and the sound
which they produce is said to be different in consequence. That there
must be a difference would seem to follow of necessity; but, according
to my own experience, it requires a nice ear to distinguish the
bleating of the one sex from that of the other. There is, indeed, some
slight difference in the sound made by each individual snipe, but I
only once remember hearing one bleating with a markedly different tone.
Here the sound had a lower, softer, and deeper intonation, and was, to
my mind, a more musical sound altogether. When heard just before or
after the bleat of another snipe the difference was very marked, but I
considered it to be rather an individual than a sexual distinction, for
I do not know that there is any reason to suppose that the female snipe
bleats less frequently than the male except when she is sitting on her
eggs.
Snipe, when bleating, fly round and round in a wide irregular circle,
and for a long time one will not overstep the invisible boundary so as
to encroach upon the domain of the other. It seems--but the illusion
will be broken after a time--as though each bird had his allotment
in the fields of air and knew that he would be guilty of a rudeness
in entering that of another. Thus, though three or four of them may
be flying and bleating in the neighbourhood, it is often difficult
to watch more than one at a time with anything like closeness of
observation, a difficulty which is often increased by the failing
light; for, in my own experience, snipe bleat best either in the
early--though not very early--morning, or when evening has begun to
close in. To follow their wide, swift, eccentric circle of flight one
must keep turning round on a fixed point, and this, amidst swamp and
grass-tufts, is difficult to do without losing one's balance. Yet
still one watches and turns and strains one's eyes into the darkness,
unable to go, for one loves to see that small, swift, vocal shadow
appearing out of the great, still, silent ones and disappearing, again,
into them. When thus disporting, each within its own charmed circle,
the downward rush and bleat of one snipe will often for a long time
immediately precede or follow that of another, bleat answering to
bleat, till at length the duet is broken and complicated by a third
intermingling voice. At last a bird, trampling on etiquette, will flit
into the circle of the one you are watching, and the two, excitedly
pursuing each other with "chack-wood, chack-wood," or, with the harsh,
wild scream and loud swish of pinions, will speed off and vanish
together.
No doubt the male snipes bleat against each other in rivalry, but it
would also seem (a sentence, I confess, which I never use when I have
an undoubted instance to give) that the male and female bleat to one
another connubially, or in a lover-like manner. Here, however, is an
instance (as I translate it) of the one bleating whilst the other sits
listening and responding vocally on the ground.
"A snipe flies with a scream over the marshy meadows. As he passes one
little swampy bit another snipe utters from out of it the see-sawey,
'chack-wood' note, in answer, as it appears, to the scream. The first
snipe now flies round about over the meadows and land adjoining,
bleating, whilst the other one in the grass continues to see-saw."
Many birds, as is well known, have the instinct, when suddenly
discovered with their young ones, of tumbling over or fluttering along
the ground as though they had sustained some injury which had rendered
them unable to fly, so that the murderous or thievish longings of "the
paragon of animals" being diverted from their progeny to themselves,
the former may take thought and escape. The nightjar, partridge, and,
especially, the wild-duck, are good instances of this, and in every
case where I have come upon them under the requisite conditions they
have never failed to show me their shrewd estimate of man's nature.
With all these three birds, however, it has always been the presence
of the young that has moved them to act in this manner, their conduct
during incubation being quite different. The instance which I am now
going to bring forward with regard to the snipe has this peculiarity,
if it be one, that the bird was hatching her eggs at the time and was
still engaged in doing so a few days afterwards, proving that the young
were not just on the point of coming out on the occasion when she was
first disturbed. As I noted all down the instant after its occurrence,
the reader may rely upon having here just exactly what this snipe did.
"This morning a snipe flew out of some long reedy grass within a few
feet of me, and almost instantly taking the ground again--but now on
the smooth, green meadow--spun round over it, now here, now there, its
long bill lying along the ground as though it were the pivot on which
it turned, and uttering loud cries all the while. Having done this for
a minute or so, it lay, or rather crouched, quite still on the ground,
its head and beak lying along it, its neck outstretched, its legs bent
under it, with the body rising gradually, till the posterior part, with
the tail, which it kept fanned out, was right in the air. And in this
strange position it kept uttering a long, low, hoarse note, which,
together with its whole demeanour, seemed to betoken great distress. It
remained thus for some minutes before flying away, during which time
I stood still, watching it closely, and when it was gone, soon found
the nest, with four eggs in it, in the grass-tuft from which it had
flown. Its action whilst spinning over the ground was very like that
of the nightjar when put up from her young ones." It is to be noted
here that this snipe flew a very little way from the nest, and when on
the ground did not travel over it to any extent, but only in a small
circle just at first, after which it kept in one place. The Arctic skua
(Richardson's skua, as some call it, but I hate such appropriative
titles--as though a species could be any man's property!) behaves in
the same kind of way, for, lying along on its breast, with its wings
spread out and beating the ground, it utters plaintive little pitiful
cries, keeping always in the same, or nearly the same, spot. This
has, of course, the effect of drawing one's attention to the bird,
and away from the eggs or young (whether it acts thus in regard to
both I am not quite sure, but believe that it does), but the effect
produced on one--though here, of course, as throughout, I only speak
for myself--is that the bird is in great mental distress--prostrated
as it were--rather than acting with any conscious "intent to deceive."
The same is the case with the nightjar, whose sudden spinning about
over the ground in a manner much more resembling a maimed bluebottle
or cockchafer than a bird, seems to proceed from some violent nervous
shock or mental disturbance. The same, too, though in a lesser degree,
may be said of the partridge, and in all cases it is obvious that the
bird is very much excited and _ausser sich_.
Darwin, if I remember rightly,[8] found it difficult to believe that
birds, when they thus distract our attention from their young to
themselves, do so with a full consciousness of what they are doing and
why they are doing it. When the female wild-duck, however, acts in this
manner, it is difficult, I think, to escape from this conclusion. She
flaps for a long way over the surface of the water, pausing every now
and again and waiting, as though to see the effect of her ruse, and
continuing her tactics as soon as you get up to her. Having thus led
you a long distance away, she rises, and leaving the river, flies in
an extended circle, which will ultimately bring her back to it by the
other bank when you are well out of the way. The chicks, meanwhile,
have (of course) scuttled in amongst the reeds and rushes, though they
often take some little while to conceal themselves. She acts thus on
a river or broad stretch of water, which enables her to keep you in
sight for some time. But it is obvious that if you come upon her with
her family in a very narrow and sharply winding stream, the first bend
of it will hide you from her, and she would then, assuming that she
is acting intelligently, have all the agony of mind of not knowing
whether her plan was succeeding or not. It was in such a situation
that I met her only last spring, and to my surprise--and indeed,
admiration--instead of flapping along the water as I have always known
her to do before in such a _contre-temps_, she instantly flew out on
to the opposite bank, and began to flap and struggle along the flat
marshy meadow-land, of course in full view. I crossed the stream and
pursued her, allowing her to "fool me to the top of my bent," and
this she appeared to me to do, or to think she was doing, on much the
same kind of _indicia_ as one would go by in the case of a man. Now,
unless this bird had wished to keep me in view, and thus judge of the
effect of her stratagem, or unless she feared that "out of sight"
would be "out of mind" with regard to herself (but this would be to
credit her with yet greater powers of reflection), why should she have
left the water, the element in which she usually and most naturally
performs these actions, to modify them on the land? Yet to suppose
that it has ever occurred suddenly, and as a new idea, to any bird to
act a pious fraud of this kind, would be to suppose wonders, and also
to be unevolutionary (almost as serious a matter nowadays as to be
un-English).
[8] But I have not been able to find the passage, so may be mistaken.
But may we not think that an act, which in its origin has been of a
nervous and, as it were, pathological character, has become, in time,
blended with intelligence, and that natural selection has not only
picked out those birds who best performed a mechanical action--which,
though it sprung merely from mental disturbance, was yet of a
beneficial nature--but also those whose intelligence began after a time
to enable them to see whereto such action tended, and thus consciously
to guide and improve it? There is evidence, I believe--though neither
space nor the nature of this slight work will allow me to go into
it--that such abnormal mental states as of old inspired "the pale-eyed
priest from the prophetic cell," and to-day influence priests or
medicine-men amongst savages (to go no farther), can be, and are,
combined with ordinary shrewd intelligence; nor does it seem too much
to suppose that a bird that was always seeing the effect of what it
did when it, as it were, fell into hysterics, should have come in time
to reckon upon the hysterics, to know what they were good for, and
even to some extent to direct them--as a great actor in an emotional
scene must govern himself in the main, though, probably, a great deal
of the gesture, action, and facial expression is unconsciously and
spontaneously performed.
Now, if we assume that these ruses employed by birds for the protection
of their young--as in the case of the wild-duck--have commenced in
purely involuntary movements, without any proposed object, the instance
here given of the snipe may perhaps throw some light upon their origin.
A bird, whilst incubating, and thus, hour after hour, doing violence
to its active and energetic disposition, is under the influence of a
strong force in opposition to and overcoming the forces which usually
govern it. Its mental state may be supposed to be a highly-wrought and
tense one, and it therefore does not seem surprising that some sudden
surprise and startle at such a time, by rousing a force opposite to
that under the control of which it then is, and producing thereby
a violent conflict, should throw it off its mental balance and so
produce something in the nature of hysteria or convulsions. But let
this once take place with anything like frequency in the case of any
bird, and natural selection will begin to act. As the eggs of a
bird are stationary, and do not run away or seek shelter whilst the
parent bird is thus behaving in their neighbourhood, it would, on the
whole, be better for it to sit close or to fly away in an ordinary and
non-betraying manner. Allowing this, then, as the eggs of a bird would
be less exposed to danger the less often the sitting bird went off them
in this way, might not natural selection keep throwing the impulse
to do so farther and farther backwards till after the incubatory
process was completed? Then the tendency would be encouraged--at
least in the case of birds whose young can early get about--for, as
a rule, such antics would shield them better than sitting still. The
young would generally be in several places--giving as many chances of
discovery--and, on account of the suddenness of the surprise, would
often be running or otherwise exposing themselves. Take, for instance,
the case of the wild-duck, where I have always found the brood a most
conspicuous object at first, and taking some time, even on reedy
rivers, to get into concealment.
And I can see no reason why an aiding intelligence in the performance
of such movements should not be selected _pari passu_ with the
movements themselves, though of a nervous and, originally, purely
automatic character. Natural selection would, in this way, develop a
special intelligence in the performance of some special actions, out of
proportion to the general intelligence of the creature performing them,
though, no doubt, this also would tend to be thereby enlarged. And this
is what, in fact, we often do see or seem to see.
I may add that when, a few days afterwards, I again approached this
same nest the bird went off it without any performance of the sort.
This, if we could be sure that it was the same bird, would seem to show
that the habit was in an unfixed and fluctuating condition. On the
other hand, a bird that acts thus in the case of its young, would, I
think, always act so.
Perhaps it may be wondered why I have not included the peewit in the
list of birds which employ, or appear to employ, a ruse in favour of
their young ones, since this bird is always given as the stock instance
of it. The reason is, that whilst the birds I mentioned have always,
in my experience, gone off, so to speak, like clock-work, when the
occasion for it arrived, I have never known a peewit to do so, though
I have probably disturbed as many scores--perhaps hundreds--of them,
under the requisite conditions, as I have units of the others. I have
also inquired of keepers and warreners, and found their experience to
tally with mine. They have spoken of the cock bird "leading you astray"
aerially, whilst the hen sits on the nest, and of both of them flying,
with screams, close about your head when the young are out, which
statements I have often verified. But they have never professed to
have seen a peewit flapping over the ground as with a broken wing, in
the way it is so constantly said to do. I cannot, therefore, but think
that, by some chance or other, an action common to many birds has been
particularly, and yet wrongly, ascribed to the peewit. As it seems to
me, this is just one of those cases where negative evidence is almost
as strong as affirmative, and though, of course, quite ready to accept
any properly witnessed instance of the peewit's acting in this way, I
cannot but conclude that it does so very rarely indeed.
[Illustration]