THE SKYLARK.
The Skylark, that beautiful singer, which carries its joy up to the
very gates of heaven, as it were, has inspired more poets to sing about
it than any other bird living.
Wordsworth says, as in an ecstasy of delight:—
Up with me! up with me into the clouds!
For thy song, lark, is strong;
Up with me! up with me into the clouds!
Singing, singing.
With clouds and sky about me ringing,
Lift me, guide me till I find
That spot that seems so to my mind.
Shelley, in an ode which expresses the bird’s ecstasy of song, also
thus addresses it, in a strain of sadness peculiar to himself:—
Hail to thee, blithe spirit!
Bird, thou never wert—
That from heaven, or near it,
Pourest thy full heart
In profuse strains of unpremeditated art!
Higher, still, and higher
From the earth thou springest,
Like a cloud of fire;
The deep blue thou wingest,
And singing still doth soar, and soaring ever singest!
* * * * *
Better than all measures
Of delightful sound,
Better than all treasures
That in books are found,
Thy skill to poet were, thou scorner of the ground.
Teach me half the gladness
That thy brain must know,
Such harmonious madness
From my lips should flow;
The world should listen then, as I am listening now.
[Sidenote: _James Hogg’s Verses._]
James Hogg, the Ettrick shepherd, who had listened to the bird with
delight on the Scottish hills, thus sings of it:—
Bird of the wilderness,
Blithesome and cumberless,
Sweet is thy matin o’er moorland and lea!
Emblem of happiness,
Blest is thy dwelling-place—
Oh, to abide in the desert with thee!
Wild is thy lay, and loud;
Far in the downy cloud
Love gives it energy, love gave it birth.
Where on thy dewy wing,
Where art thou journeying?
Thy lay is in heaven, thy love is on earth.
O’er fell and fountain sheen,
O’er moor and mountain green,
O’er the red streamer that heralds the day;
Over the cloudlet dim,
Over the rainbow’s rim,
Musical cherub, soar, singing away!
Then when the gloaming comes,
Low in the heather blooms,
Sweet will thy welcome and bed of love be!
Emblem of happiness,
Blest is thy dwelling-place—
Oh, to abide in the desert with thee!
But we must not forget the earthly life of the bird in all these sweet
songs about him.
The plumage of the skylark is brown, in various shades; the fore-part
of the neck, reddish-white, spotted with brown; the breast and under
part of the body, yellowish-white. Its feet are peculiar, being
furnished with an extraordinarily long hind claw, the purpose of which
has puzzled many naturalists. But whatever nature intended it for, the
bird has been known to make use of it for a purpose which cannot fail
to interest us and call forth our admiration. This shall be presently
explained. The nest is built on the ground, either between two clods
of earth, in the deep foot-print of cattle, or some other small hollow
suitable for the purpose, and is composed of dry grass, hair, and
leaves; the hair is mostly used for the lining. Here the mother-bird
lays four or five eggs of pale sepia colour, with spots and markings
of darker hue. She has generally two broods in the year, and commences
sitting in May. The he-lark begins to sing early in the spring.
Bewick says, “He rises from the neighbourhood of the nest almost
perpendicularly in the air, by successive springs, and hovers at a
vast height. His descent, on the contrary, is in an oblique direction,
unless he is threatened by birds of prey, or attracted by his mate, and
on these occasions he drops like a stone.”
[Illustration:
SKYLARKS AND NEST. [Page 44.
]
With regard to his ascent, I must, however, add that it is in a spiral
direction, and that what Bewick represents as springs are his sudden
spiral flights after pausing to sing. Another peculiarity must be
mentioned: all his bones are hollow, and he can inflate them with air
from his lungs, so that he becomes, as it were, a little balloon, which
accounts for the buoyancy with which he ascends, and the length of
time he can support himself in the air: often for an hour at a time.
Still more extraordinary is the wonderful power and reach of his voice,
for while, probably, the seven hundred or a thousand voices of the
grand chorus of an oratorio would fail to fill the vast spaces of the
atmosphere, it can be done by this glorious little songster, which,
mounting upwards, makes itself heard, without effort, when it can be
seen no longer.
[Sidenote: _Its Solicitude for its Young._]
The attachment of the parents to their young is very great, and has
been seen to exhibit itself in a remarkable manner.
The nest being placed on the open-ground—often pasture, or in a field
of mowing grass—it is very liable to be disturbed; many, therefore,
are the instances of the bird’s tender solicitude either for the young
or for its eggs, one of which I will give from Mr. Jesse. “In case of
alarm,” he says, “either by cattle grazing near the nest, or by the
approach of the mower, the parent-birds remove their eggs, by means
of their long claws, to a place of greater security, and this I have
observed to be affected in a very short space of time.” He says that
when one of his mowers first told him of this fact he could scarcely
believe it, but that he afterwards saw it himself, and that he regarded
it only as another proof of the affection which these birds show their
offspring. Instances are also on record of larks removing their young
by carrying them on their backs: in one case the young were thus
removed from a place of danger into a field of standing corn. But
however successful the poor birds may be in removing their eggs, they
are not always so with regard to their young, as Mr. Yarrell relates.
An instance came under his notice, in which the little fledgeling
proved too heavy for the parent to carry, and, being dropped from an
height of about thirty feet, was killed in the fall.
Of all captive birds, none grieves me more than the skylark. Its
impulse is to soar, which is impossible in the narrow spaces of a cage;
and in this unhappy condition, when seized by the impulse of song, he
flings himself upwards, and is dashed down again by its cruel barriers.
For this reason the top of the lark’s cage is always bedded with green
baize to prevent his injuring himself. In the freedom of nature he is
the joyous minstrel of liberty and love, carrying upwards, and sending
down from above, his buoyant song, which seems to fall down through the
golden sunshine like a flood of sparkling melody.
I am not aware of the height to which the lark soars, but it must be
very great, as he becomes diminished to a mere speck, almost invisible
in the blaze of light. Yet, high as he may soar, he never loses the
consciousness of the little mate and the nestlings below: but their
first cry of danger or anxiety, though the cry may be scarce audible
to the human ear, thrills up aloft to the singer, and he comes down
with a direct arrow-like flight, whilst otherwise his descent is more
leisurely, and said by some to be in the direct spiral line of his
ascent.
Larks, unfortunately for themselves, are considered very fine eating.
Immense numbers of them are killed for the table, not only on the
continent, but in England. People cry shame on the Roman epicure,
Lucullus, dining on a stew of nightingales’ tongue, nearly two thousand
years ago, and no more can I reconcile to myself the daily feasting on
these lovely little songsters, which may be delicate eating, but are no
less God’s gifts to gladden and beautify the earth.