it seldom goes to the ground, and usually confines its food-seeking
to the higher branches of trees, it is rarely seen. Nor is it nearly
so loquacious as the larger bird, nor so richly coloured, although
handsome and conspicuous in its black-and-white dress, with a touch
of glossy crimson on the nape. It frequents woods, hedgerows, and
plantations, also pollard willows growing by the side of streams. It
may be met with in most English counties, but in the northern counties
and in Scotland it is very scarce. In Ireland it does not breed,
although occasionally seen there as a migrant in winter. These migrants
come from northern Europe, sometimes in considerable numbers, and
are diffused over the British Islands; the birds of British race are
believed to remain in this country throughout the year.
[Illustration: FIG. 60.--SPOTTED WOODPECKER. ⅕ natural size.]
Like most woodpeckers, this species feeds principally on insects found
in crevices of the bark and decayed wood of trees. In the season he
becomes a fruit and seed eater, and visits gardens and orchards to
steal the cherries; and also feeds on berries, nuts, acorns, and
fir-seeds. He is, for a woodpecker, a silent bird; his usual call is a
sharp, quick note, repeated two or three times. The most curious sound
he makes is instrumental: it is the love-call of the bird, produced by
striking the beak on a branch so rapidly as to produce a long jarring
or rattling note.
The eggs are laid in a hole in a tree, not always made by the bird;
they are six or seven in number, and creamy white in colour.
Barred Woodpecker.
(Lesser Spotted Woodpecker.)
Dendrocopus minor.
Forehead and lower parts dirty white; crown bright red; nape, back, and
wings black with white bars; tail black, the outer feathers tipped with
white and barred with black; iris red. Length, five and a half inches.
* * * * *
When Yarrell wrote that the neglect of the name of barred woodpecker,
which had been used by some authors for the present species, was to be
regretted for brevity’s sake, it was a pity that he did not go so far
as to reintroduce it in his great work. For doubtless many a writer
on birds has groaned in spirit at the necessity laid upon him to use
two such cumbrous names as great, or greater, spotted woodpecker, and
lesser spotted woodpecker. Partly on this account I lament Yarrell’s
timidity, and partly for a personal reason, since my boldness in using
the neglected name will be taken by some readers as an exemplification
of the familiar truth that fools rush in where angels fear to tread.
But no one will deny that the book-names of these two woodpeckers are
bad, and to some extent misleading, since the birds are as unlike in
markings as they are in size. The first is as big as a fieldfare,
and is spotted; the second is scarcely larger than a linnet, and is
distinctly barred.
The barred woodpecker is found in most English counties as far north
as York; in Scotland and Ireland it is a rare straggler. It is nowhere
common, and appears to be even rarer than it is, owing to its small
size and its habit of frequenting tall trees. Its usual note is a
sharp chirp, resembling that of the blackbird when going to roost; its
love-call, as in the case of the spotted woodpecker, is instrumental,
and produced in the same manner. The sound varies in tone and pitch
according to the character of the tree performed on, and has been
compared to the sound made by an auger when used in boring hard wood;
also to the creaking of a branch swayed by the wind.
The barred woodpecker in most cases makes a nesting-hole for itself in
the branch or trunk of a soft-wooded tree. Six or seven smooth, creamy
white eggs are laid.
Green Woodpecker.
Gecinus viridis.
[Illustration: FIG. 61.--GREEN WOODPECKER. ⅙ natural size.]
Upper parts olive-green; rump yellow; under parts greenish grey; crown,
back of the head, and moustaches crimson; face black. _Female_:
less crimson on the head; moustaches black. Length, thirteen inches.
* * * * *
The chief characteristic of this beautiful woodland bird is his
extraordinary energy. His entire structure, from the straight, sharp,
powerful bill, and long, barbed tongue, to the climbing feet and stiff
tail-feathers, used as a support to the body when clinging vertically
to the trunk of a tree, is admirably adapted to the laborious trade
he follows. And this peculiar form has its correlative in a strength,
boldness, and determination in attacking a hard piece of work that are
nothing less than brilliant. One is astonished at the force of the
sounding blows he delivers on the tough bark and wood in his search
for hidden insects; yet this is one of the common, small, everyday
tasks of his life, and not comparable to the huge labour of digging
a breeding-hole deep into the heart of a large branch or trunk of
a tree. This energy and intensity of life shows itself also in his
motions, gestures, and language. His very qualities of eagerness
and determination in splitting up the wood in which his prey lies
concealed, and the loud racket he is compelled to make at such times,
call upon him the undesirable attentions of the species that are his
enemies: he must, when hammering on a tree, be exceedingly vigilant all
the while, less some prowling sparrow-hawk or swift-descending falcon
shall take him unawares. The wood he exerts his strength on does not
absorb his whole attention: his eyes are all the time glancing this way
and that, and on the slightest appearance of danger he is nimble as a
squirrel to place the trunk or branch between himself and a possible
enemy. After a few moments of hiding his red head becomes visible as
he peeps cautiously round the trunk, and if the danger be then over he
goes back to his task. In the presence of a winged enemy he finds his
safety in clinging to the trunk, round which he can move so rapidly, as
on the wing he is a heavy bird; but hawks are now rare in England, and
his chief persecutors are men with guns.
The language of the green woodpecker, or yaffle, as he is called in
the southern counties, adds greatly to his attractiveness; his ringing
cry is a sound to rejoice the hearer. Many of the woodpeckers have
extremely powerful voices, and the cry of the great black woodpecker
of continental Europe has been described by one familiar with it as
being like the ‘yell of a demon.’ This ‘demon’ must, I imagine, be a
very blithe-hearted one, and its ‘yell’ an expression of wild, joyous,
woodland life which we should be glad to listen to in England. Our
bird’s voice is not so powerful; but who has not been made happier for
a whole day by hearing his ‘loud laugh,’ as one of our old poets has
called his cry? It is a clear, piercing sound, so loud and sudden that
it startles you, full of wild liberty and gladness; and when I listen
for and fail to hear it in park or forest, I feel that I have missed a
sound for which no other bird cry or melody can compensate me.
This species is found in woods and parks throughout England as far
north as Derbyshire and the south of Yorkshire; farther north he is
very rare as a breeder, and in Ireland is only known as a straggler.
In seeking his food he climbs obliquely up the trunk, until, having
mounted to the higher branches, he passes with a dipping flight to the
next tree, invariably alighting near the roots. In summer he feeds a
great deal on the ground, especially on ants, of which he is very fond.
The breeding-hole is usually made in a soft-wooded tree; it is carried
straight to the heart of the wood, and is then extended downwards to
the depth of about a foot. In most cases it is found that the heart of
the tree selected by the birds is rotten, although outwardly no signs
of decay may appear. The hole ends in a chamber in which the eggs are
deposited on a slight bed of chips; the eggs are four to seven in
number, are oval in form and have pure white polished shells. The young
when fledged come out of their cell in the tree’s heart, and creep
about the bark for some days before they are able to fly.
The same breeding-hole is used for several years, if not taken
possession of by a pair of marauding starlings, which not unfrequently
happens.
Wryneck.
Iÿnx torquilla.
Upper parts reddish grey, irregularly spotted and lined with brown
and black; a broad black and brown band from the back of the head to
the back; under parts dull white, tinged with buff, and barred with
dark brown, except on the breast and belly, where the markings become
arrow-headed in form; outer web of the quills marked with rectangular,
alternate black and yellowish red spots; tail-feathers barred with
black zigzag bands; beak and feet olive-brown. Length, seven inches.
* * * * *
[Illustration: FIG. 62.--WRYNECK. ⅓ natural size.]
The wryneck is placed by anatomists next to the woodpeckers, and is
like them in the form of its feet and the habit of perching vertically
on the trunks of trees; but he does not dig into the wood with his
beak, nor does he support himself with his tail, the feathers of which
are soft, as in most perching birds. He is a singular bird, differing
from all others in form, colouring, language, and habits. His variously
coloured plumage, so curiously and beautifully barred and mottled, is
most like that of the nightjar; but his beauty appears only when he
is seen very near. At a distance of twenty-five or thirty yards he is
obscure in colouring, and is more remarkable for his attitudes and
gestures, when seen on a tree trunk deftly and rapidly picking up the
small ants on which he feeds. When thus engaged he twists his neck,
turning his head from side to side in a most singular manner; hence the
name of wryneck. When taken in the hand he twists his neck about in the
same manner, and hisses like a snake, as he also does when disturbed
during incubation; and on this account he has been called snake-bird.
When held in the hand he sometimes swoons, and appears to be dead until
released, whereupon he quickly recovers and makes his escape. Even more
characteristic than his contortions, hissings, and ‘death feignings,’
is his voice. It is an unmistakable and familiar sound of early spring,
as distinctive as the shrill cry of the swift and the cuckoo’s call--a
clear, high-pitched, far-reaching note, reiterated many times--a sound
that makes itself heard at a distance of a quarter of a mile. As a
rule, this note is heard a few days before the cuckoo’s call, and on
this account the wryneck is known in the southern counties, where he is
most common, as the cuckoo’s mate, or messenger, or boder, and is also
called the cuckoo’s maid.
The wryneck feeds chiefly on ants and their larvæ, and, like the
green woodpecker, he goes to the anthills on commons and uncultivated
grounds; the insects are taken with the long, retractile tongue, which
is covered with an adhesive saliva, and which the bird, when feeding,
darts out and withdraws with lightning rapidity.
A hole in the trunk of a tree, often near the roots, is a favourite
nesting-place. The eggs are seven to ten in number, and are deposited,
without any nest, on the rotten wood. They are pure white, and have
glossy shells. The same breeding-hole is used year after year.
The wryneck is most common in the southern and south-eastern counties;
in the West of England and in Wales it is rarer. In the northern
counties of England it is also rare and local; in Scotland it does not
breed, and in Ireland it is not known.
Kingfisher.
Alcedo ispida.
[Illustration: FIG. 63.--KINGFISHER. ¼ natural size.]
Back azure-blue; head and wing-coverts bluish green spotted with
azure-blue; under and behind the eye a reddish band, passing into
white, and beneath this a band of azure-green; wings and tail greenish
blue; throat white; under parts rusty orange-red. Length, seven and a
half inches.
* * * * *
The kingfisher is by far the most brilliantly coloured bird in the
British Islands; and those who see it living and moving with the
sunlight on it can form an idea of the wonderful lustre of many
tropical species, which certainly cannot be done by gazing on the
labelled pellets of dead and dimmed feathers, called ‘specimens,’ in
cabinets and museums. Unhappily, this rare splendour of the kingfisher,
which gives it value, has served only to draw destruction upon it. As
Yarrell long ago said, it is persecuted chiefly because of its beauty,
and the desire to possess a stuffed specimen in a glass case. It is
found in suitable localities throughout Great Britain where it has
not been exterminated to gratify the vile taste that prefers a mummy
to a living creature. In Ireland it is rare and local as a breeding
species, but as an autumn and winter visitor is found throughout the
country. It frequents streams and rivers, and the margins of lakes,
and, more rarely, the seaside. It is a solitary bird, and, like the
dipper, restricts itself to one part of the stream where it gets
its food. Day after day it returns to the same perch, where it sits
watching the surface, silent and immovable as a heron. It looks out for
its prey both when perched and when flying at a height of a few feet
above the surface, and often hovers motionless for a few moments before
darting down into the water. With the minnow it captures held crossways
in the beak it flies to a perch, and, after beating it against the
branch or stone, swallows it, head first, sometimes tossing it in the
air and catching it as it falls. It also preys on aquatic insects
and small crustaceans. The pairing-time is early, and in February or
March the birds make choice of a breeding place, usually near their
fishing-ground, but sometimes at a distance of a mile or more from the
water. A hole is dug in a bank to a depth of from one to three or four
feet; but sometimes the birds find a hole suited to their purpose, or a
cavity under the roots of a tree growing on an overhanging bank, which
they occupy. The hole made by the birds has an upward slope, and ends
in a chamber about six inches in diameter. Here is formed the nest, of
the strangest material used by any nest-making bird. The kingfisher,
like the owl and cuckoo and many other species, casts up the
indigestible portions of its food--the minute bones of minnows in this
case--in the form of small pellets. The pellets are thrown up in the
nest-chamber, and, when broken up and pressed down by the sitting-bird,
are shaped into a cuplike nest. The eggs are six to eight in number,
pure white and translucent, and globular in form.
Probably the kingfisher pairs for life, as the same breeding-hole is
used year after year, although the two birds are not seen together out
of the breeding season.
The cry is a shrill but musical piping note, two or three times
repeated, somewhat like the sandpiper’s cry.
* * * * *
Two specimens of the belted kingfisher (_Ceryle alcyon_), an American
species, have been obtained in Ireland.
Three other birds remain to be noticed in this place; they are members
of three distinct families, and are amongst the most beautiful of the
rare occasional visitors seen in our country:--
The roller (_Coracius garrula_), a jay-like bird, blue and
chestnut-brown in colour. It breeds in Southern and Central Europe, and
is known only as a rare straggler in the British Islands.
The bee-eater (_Merops apiaster_)--A good many examples of this elegant
and richly coloured bird have been obtained in England. It is an
abundant species in Southern Europe, where it breeds in colonies in
sandbanks, like our sand-martin.
The hoopoe (_Upupa epops_).--This species has some claim to a place
among British birds, as it is an annual visitor to our country,
although in small numbers. It is a singular and beautiful bird, and it
is sad to think that, but for the persecution it has encountered year
after year, it would most probably have established itself as a regular
breeding species in the southern counties of England.
[Illustration: FIG. 64.--HOOPOE.]
Cuckoo.
Cuculus canorus.
Upper parts bluish ash, darker on the wings, lighter on the neck and
breast; under parts whitish with transverse dusky streaks; quills
barred on the inner webs with oval white spots; tail-feathers
blackish, tipped and spotted with white; beak dusky, edged with yellow;
orbits and inside of mouth orange yellow; iris and feet yellow.
_Young_: ash-brown barred with reddish brown; tips of feathers
white; a white spot on the back of the head. Length, thirteen and a
half inches.
* * * * *
[Illustration: FIG. 65.--CUCKOO. ⅙ natural size.]
There are many cuckoos in the world, and in some countries it would be
possible to see three or four, or even half a dozen, distinct species
in the course of a single day. We have but one, and have made much of
it. ‘Perhaps no bird,’ says Yarrell, ‘has attracted so much attention,
while of none have more idle tales been told.’ And he might have added,
that of no other bird so much remains to be known. Our cuckoo interests
us in two distinct ways: he charms us, and he affects the mind with his
strangeness. He is a visitor of the early spring, with a far-reaching,
yet soft and musical, voice, full of beautiful associations, prophetic
of the flowery season. To quote Sir Philip Sidney’s words, applying
them to a feathered instead of to a human troubadour: ‘He cometh to
you with a tale to hold children from their play and old men from
the chimney-corner.’ Seen, this melodist has the bold figure, rough,
feathered legs, and barred plumage of a hawk. This fierce, predacious
aspect is deceptive: he is a timid bird, with the climbing feet of the
woodpecker and wryneck. Strangest of all, the female has the habit of
placing her eggs in other birds’ nests, forgetting her motherhood, a
proceeding which, being contrary to nature’s use, seems unnatural.
It reads like a tale from the ‘Thousand and One Nights,’ in which we
sometimes encounter human beings, good, or bad, or merely fantastic,
who wander about the world disguised as birds. Only when we see and
handle the cuckoo’s egg placed in the hedge-sparrow’s, or pipit’s, or
wagtail’s nest, when we see the large hawk-like young cuckoo being
fed and tenderly cared for by its diminutive foster-parent, do we
realise the extraordinary nature of such an instinct. In spite of this
‘naughtiness’ of the cuckoo, to speak of it in human terms, it is to
all a favourite, ‘the darling of the year,’ and from the days when the
oldest known English lyric was written--
Summer is icumen in,
Loud sing cuckoo,
to the present time the poets have found inspiration in his fluting
call; and musicians, too, owing to that unique quality of his voice
which makes it imitable and harmonious with human music, vocal and
instrumental.
The cuckoo does not usually arrive in this country before the middle of
April, but he is sometimes two, and even three weeks earlier. The males
arrive first, and it is they that utter the well-known double call that
gives the bird its name. The cry of the female, a curious prolonged
bubbling sound, is heard less frequently.
One of the strangest facts in the strange history of this bird is that
its egg is not laid in the nest in which it is found, but is carried
by the cuckoo in her bill and placed there. It is very small for so
large a bird, although much larger, in most cases, than the eggs it is
placed with, as its favourite nests in this country are all of small
birds--the hedge-sparrow, reed-warbler, pied wagtail, and meadow-pipit.
The eggs are very variable, being dull greenish or dull reddish grey,
with spots and mottlings of a deeper shade. In some instances the
cuckoo’s egg resembles in colour the eggs it is placed with, and it is
thought by some naturalists that the female cuckoo invariably deposits
her eggs in the nests of one species. As a rule, only one egg is laid
in a nest, and a few days after the eggs are hatched the young cuckoo
gets rid of his foster-brothers by getting them on to his back, which
is broad and hollow, and throwing them over the side of the nest. If
any unhatched eggs remain in the nest, he gets rid of them in the same
way.
The food of the cuckoo is exclusively insectivorous, and consists in
large part of hairy caterpillars, which most birds refuse to touch.
The indigestible portions of the food he swallows are cast up in small
pellets.
By August the old birds take their departure; the young migrate one to
two months later.
* * * * *
No fewer than three exotic cuckoos have been placed on the list of
British birds. Two of these are American species: the yellow-billed
cuckoo (_Coccyzus americanus_) and the black-billed cuckoo
(_C. erythrophthalmus_). The third is the great spotted cuckoo
(_Coccystes glandarius_), an African species, which visits Spain
in summer, and, like our bird, is parasitical, but has the habit of
depositing its eggs in the nests of various species of the crow family.
Barn-Owl.
Strix flammea.
Beak yellowish white; upper parts light tawny yellow minutely
variegated with brown, grey, and white; face and lower plumage white,
the feathers of the margin tipped with brown. Length, fourteen inches.
* * * * *
The barn-owl is one of the very few species that have almost a
world-wide range. It is resident throughout the British Islands, and
inhabits the greater part of Europe; it extends to Africa, including
Madagascar; to India and America, and to the Malaysian, Australian, and
Polynesian regions; and is found in islands so widely separated and
far removed from the mainland as the Azores, Madeira, the Canaries,
and Cape de Verde. The short-eared owl has a distribution just as
wide, or even wider; but that bird, wherever found, is of a wandering
habit, making his home and breeding-place wherever food is abundant,
and staying not where it fails him. His action resembles, only on a
vaster scale, that of the nomads of the human race, who break up their
camp and move away from the district that no longer affords pasture
to their cattle. Thus, in the case of this species, the vagrant habit
may be held to account for so extensive a range. But the barn-owl’s
universality cannot be accounted for in the same way, since he is, in
most countries, a stay-at-home bird, and spends his whole life, from
year’s end to year’s end, in the same spot. We can only conjecture that
at some former and very remote period in the history of his species he,
too, had a vagrant disposition; or else that he is a very ancient bird
on the earth, and has had unlimited time to get so widely dispersed;
also, that the barn-owl is one of those rare types that can exist
unaltered in a great variety of conditions. One of our domestic birds,
the goose, affords an instance of the unchangeableness of some types in
all regions of the globe; but the goose has been carried everywhere by
adventurous white men, while the barn-owl, by means unknown to us, has
distributed himself over the earth.
[Illustration: FIG. 66.--BARN-OWL. ⅐ natural size.]
Another general remark about this most strange and fascinating fowl may
be made in this place. The barn-owl, being so widely distributed, and
in many countries the most common species, and being, furthermore, the
only member of its order that attaches itself by preference to human
habitations, and is a dweller in towns as well as in rural districts,
is probably the chief inspirer and object of the innumerable ancient
owl superstitions which still flourish in all countries among the
ignorant. His blood-curdling voice, his whiteness, and extraordinary
figure, and, when viewed by day on his perch in some dim interior, his
luminous eyes and great round face, and wonderful intimidating gestures
and motions, must powerfully affect the primitive mind, for in that
low intellectual state whatever is strange is regarded as supernatural.
Before sitting down to write this little history I went out into
the woods, and was so fortunate as to hear three owls calling with
unearthly shrieks to one another from some large fir-trees under which
I was standing, and, listening to them, it struck me as only natural
that in so many regions of the earth this bird should have been, and
should still be, regarded as an evil being, a prophet of disaster and
death.