One of my best days in England was spent amid the singing of skylarks
on the South Down Hills, near an old town at the mouth of the Little
Ouse, where I paused on my way to France. The prospect of hearing one
or two of the classical birds of the Old World had not been the least
of the attractions of my visit, though I knew the chances were against
me so late in the season, and I have to thank my good genius for
guiding me to the right place at the right time. To get out of London
was delight enough, and then to find myself quite unexpectedly on these
soft rolling hills, of a mild October day, in full sight of the sea,
with the larks pouring out their gladness overhead, was to me good
fortune indeed.
The South Downs form a very remarkable feature of this part of England,
and are totally unlike any other landscape I ever saw. I believe it is
Huxley who applies to them the epithet of muttony, which they certainly
deserve, for they are like the backs of immense sheep, smooth, and
round, and fat,--so smooth, indeed, that the eye can hardly find a
place to take hold of, not a tree, or bush, or fence, or house, or
rock, or stone, or other object, for miles and miles, save here and
there a group of strawcapped stacks, or a flock of sheep crawling
slowly over them, attended by a shepherd and dog, and the only lines
visible those which bound the squares where different crops had been
gathered. The soil was rich and mellow, like a garden,--hills of chalk
with a pellicle of black loam.
These hills stretch a great distance along the coast, and are cut
squarely off by the sea, presenting on this side a chain of white chalk
cliffs suggesting the old Latin name of this land, Albion.
Before I had got fifty yards from the station I began to hear the
larks, and being unprepared for them I was a little puzzled at first,
but was not long discovering what luck I was in. The song disappointed
me at first, being less sweet and melodious than I had expected to
hear; indeed, I thought it a little sharp and harsh,--a little
stubbly,--but in other respects, in strength and gladness and
continuity, it was wonderful. And the more I heard it the better I
liked it, until I would gladly have given any of my songsters at home
for a bird that could shower down such notes, even in autumn. Up, up,
went the bird, describing a large easy spiral till he attained an
altitude of three or four hundred feet, when, spread out against the
sky for a space of ten or fifteen minutes or more, he poured out his
delight, filling all the vault with sound. The song is of the sparrow
kind, and, in its best parts, perpetually suggested the notes of our
vesper sparrow; but the wonder of it is its copiousness and sustained
strength. There is no theme, no beginning, middle, or end, like most of
our best birdsongs, but a perfect swarm of notes pouring out like bees
from a hive, and resembling each other nearly as closely, and only
ceasing as the bird nears the earth again. We have many more melodious
songsters; the bobolink in the meadows for instance, the vesper sparrow
in the pastures, the purple finch in the groves, the winter wren, or
any of the thrushes in the woods, or the wood-wagtail, whose air song
is of a similar character to that of the skylark, and is even more
rapid and ringing, and is delivered in nearly the same manner; but our
birds all stop when the skylark has only just begun. Away he goes on
quivering wing, inflating his throat fuller and fuller, mounting and
mounting, and turning to all points of the compass as if to embrace the
whole landscape in his song, the notes still raining upon you, as
distinct as ever, after you have left him far behind. You feel that you
need be in no hurry to observe the song lest the bird finish; you walk
along, your mind reverts to other things, you examine the grass and
weeds, or search for a curious stone, still there goes the bird; you
sit down and study the landscape, or send your thoughts out toward
France or Spain, or across the sea to your own land, and yet, when you
get them back, there is that song above you, almost as unceasing as the
light of a star. This strain indeed suggests some rare pyrotechnic
display, musical sounds being substituted for the many-colored sparks
and lights. And yet I will add, what perhaps the best readers do not
need to be told, that neither the lark-song, nor any other bird-song in
the open air and under the sky, is as noticeable a feature as my
description of it might imply, or as the poets would have us believe;
and that most persons, not especially interested in birds or their
notes, and intent upon the general beauty of the landscape, would
probably pass it by unremarked.
I suspect that it is a little higher flight than the facts will bear
out when the writers make the birds go out of sight into the sky. I
could easily follow them on this occasion, though, if I took my eye
away for a moment, it was very difficult to get it back again. I had to
search for them as the astronomer searches for a star. It may be that
in the spring, when the atmosphere is less clear and the heart of the
bird full of a more mad and reckless love, that the climax is not
reached until the eye loses sight of the singer.
Several attempts have been made to introduce the lark into this
country, but for some reason or other the experiment has never
succeeded. The birds have been liberated in Virginia and on Long
Island, but do not seem ever to have been heard of afterwards. I see no
reason why they should not thrive anywhere along our Atlantic seaboard,
and I think the question of introducing them worthy of more thorough
and serious attention than has yet been given it, for the lark is
really an institution; and as he sings long after the other birds are
silent,--as if he had perpetual spring in his heart,--he would be a
great acquisition to our fields and meadows. It may be that he cannot
stand the extremes of our climate, though the English sparrow thrives
well enough. The Smithsonian Institution has received specimens of the
skylark from Alaska, where, no doubt, they find a climate more like the
English.
They have another prominent singer in England, namely, the robin,--the
original robin redbreast,--a slight, quick, active bird with an orange
front and an olive back, and a bright, musical warble that I caught by
every garden, lane, and hedge-row. It suggests our bluebird, and has
similar habits and manners, though it is a much better musician.
The European bird that corresponds to our robin is the blackbird, of
which Tennyson sings:--
"O Blackbird, sing me something well;
While all the neighbors shoot thee round
I keep smooth plats of fruitful ground
Where thou may'st warble, eat, and dwell."
It quite startled me to see such a resemblance,--to see, indeed, a
black robin. In size, form, flight, manners, note, call, there is
hardly an appreciable difference. The bird starts up with the same
flirt of the wings, and calls out in the same jocund, salutatory way,
as he hastens off. The nest, of coarse mortar in the fork of a tree, or
in an outbuilding, or in the side of a wall, is also the same.
The bird I wished most to hear, namely, the nightingale, had already
departed on its southern journey. I saw one in the Zoological Gardens
in London, and took a good look at him. He struck me as bearing a close
resemblance to our hermit thrush, with something in his manners that
suggested the water-thrush also. Carlyle said he first recognized its
song from the description of it in "Wilhelm Meister," and that it was a
"sudden burst," which is like the song of our water-thrush.
I have little doubt our songsters excel in melody, while the European
birds excel in profuseness and volubility. I heard many bright,
animated notes and many harsh ones, but few that were melodious. This
fact did not harmonize with the general drift of the rest of my
observations, for one of the first things that strikes an American in
Europe is the mellowness and rich tone of things. The European is
softer-voiced than the American and milder-mannered, but the bird
voices seem an exception to this rule.