In a Cheshire Garden
[Illustration: The Flower Garden.]
In a Cheshire Garden
Natural History Notes
BY
GEOFFREY EGERTON-WARBURTON,
_Rector of Warburton_.
LONDON
SHERRATT AND HUGHES
Manchester: 34 Cross Street
1912
ALL RIGHTS RESERVED.
PREFACE.
These Notes appeared from April to June this year in _The Warrington
Guardian_ and afterwards came out in a de-localised form in _The
Staffordshire Weekly Sentinel_.
I am indebted to the kindness of Mr. P. Ramsdale, of Heatley, for the
photographs of The Old Church, The Yew-tree, and The Flower Garden (as
it was some years ago).
My thanks are due also to Mr. Garrett for kindly allowing me to use his
very interesting photograph of The Two Nests referred to on page 94.
CONTENTS.
CHAP. PAGE
I. Introductory 1
II. Weeds and Alien Plants 5
III. Birds--Thrushes 11
IV. Chats, Robins, and Warblers 26
V. Tits and Wrens 37
VI. Wagtails, Flycatchers, Swallows, and other Insect-eaters 46
VII. Sparrows and other Finches 57
VIII. Finches, Starlings, and Crows 67
IX. Other Birds 77
X. British Mammals 95
XI. Dogs and Cats 103
Index 113
LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS.
Flower Garden _Frontispiece_
FACE
PAGE
Old Church 6
The Old Yew 23
The Sundial 38
A Corner in the Garden with Allium Dioscorides 55
Two Nests 70
The Food-stand 87
I.
INTRODUCTORY.
Although much of the neighbourhood has become semi-urban and any idea
of rural seclusion is destroyed, at least in summer, by the crowds that
find their way to it from Manchester and other large towns, yet the
Cheshire village of Warburton in which this garden is situated is a
real country place still. How long it will remain so is another thing.
One salt works has been set up at Heatley about a mile away and we are
now (1912) promised another, while there is every prospect of land
being let for works in Warburton itself. Who knows, in a few years
perhaps the whole place may be reduced to the desolation of another
Widnes. Then, when it has become a rare thing to find even a blade of
grass on the dreary black waste or to see any bird but a grimy sparrow,
a record of what was once here may be strange reading.
The garden itself about which I write is quite on the northern boundary
of Cheshire, in old days divided from Lancashire by the Mersey only.
The soil is light and sandy, not far from the rock in places and in
places with water at a very little depth below the surface. It is well
suited to hollies and rhododendrons, both of which grow abundantly and
luxuriantly, as also do yews. There are a good number of ordinary
deciduous trees, chiefly on the old bank of the river, such as oak,
sycamore, chestnut, birch, beech, and alder, but no conifers of any age
except one or two Scotch firs. There is one flourishing deadara which I
planted myself and a few young Austrian pines that seem to be doing
well.
A spruce fir that I once planted behaved in an extraordinary way;
instead of growing straight, it shot up in a zigzag fashion, the
leading shoot one year going off at an angle of 60 degrees or so, and
the next year harking back and starting in the opposite direction at
about the same angle.
Few of the trees can be more than 80 years old. I think most of them
would have been planted by my father, who was rector from 1833 to 1849.
There is however a remarkable old yew in the adjoining churchyard. The
half of it, just below where the branches spring, measures nearly nine
feet round. The other half has entirely gone, so has practically the
whole of the substance, the wood of the trunk, and what is left of the
still standing side is little more than a shell with a coating of bark.
Notwithstanding this there is quite a fair-sized head of leafy young
branches (which by the way has greatly increased since I first remember
the tree 40 years ago) growing up amidst the ruins of the old
far-reaching boughs. These yet remain to tell something of the wide
and grateful shade they once afforded to our "rude forefathers" as on
summer Sundays they waited for service to begin, just as I remember the
last generation gathered and gossipped under younger yews when this was
the Parish Church. This yew is the "thousand-year-old tree" of the
clerk's tale to visitors, and if one thinks how many years of slow
growth it must have taken to form a trunk of that thickness, say 18
feet in circumference, and how many more for it to have decayed away to
its present condition, it does indeed carry us back to an early date in
English history when the little green shoot that sprang from the
crimson-coated seed first saw the light.
One great drawback from a gardener's point of view is the prevalence of
strong, cold, N.-W. winds in spring. The winters are not so severe as
they often are further south, but the late spring frosts are sometimes
disastrous. We have had potatoes cut down by frost as late as June
21st, but the worst spring frost I have known was in May, 1894, just
about the time that Queen Victoria came to Manchester to open the Ship
Canal. On three consecutive nights, May 19, 20 and 21, there was frost,
and its intensity seemed to increase each night. Not only were potatoes
cut, but garden peas and many hardy herbaceous plants and even common
weeds. (I noticed that those with a northern aspect suffered least.)
The shoots and buds of roses were scorched, and the young leaves of
most trees and shrubs. Hollies suffered especially, but even yew and
rhododendron, oak, sycamore, and chestnut did not escape. The only tree
that weathered the cold with impunity was the hawthorn, the tenderest
leaves and tips of which were not injured. (This was not the case
though in the severe frost of Easter 1903.) Royal, male, and lady ferns
were shrivelled up to a greater or less degree, but parsley and oak
fern were unharmed.
We miss one gardener's friend here, but we escape the attentions of one
enemy. Though frogs are common enough, toads are very rare. I remember
to have seen only one during all the many years I have known the
garden. On the other hand, whilst I have a dim recollection of having
once found an old snail-shell, I cannot say for certain that I have
ever seen a snail, though of shell-less slugs in all sizes there is no
scarcity.
II.
WEEDS AND ALIEN PLANTS.
A slight knowledge of botany adds greatly to the interest of a garden,
and is besides often of practical value. With such knowledge, one forms
a habit of looking even at weeds with some interest, and this has led
to my finding several strange plants among them. I have for example
come across the following in the kitchen garden:
"Saponaria vaccaria," with its curious angled calyx and pretty pink
flower.
"Galium tricorne," very much like common goose-grass or cleavers, but
rare in England, and quite unknown in this neighbourhood.
Annual mercury (closely allied to the common perennial Dog's mercury),
green and dull-looking, only of interest because it is rare.
"Holosteum umbellatum," which again is rare and not much more
attractive to the casual observer.
"Draba muralis," allied to "Shepherd's purse," and not unlike it, but
as rare as that is common.
"Melilotus officinalis," a graceful yellow pea-flower. When this first
appeared it was quite a stranger in these parts, but afterwards for
several years it was continually turning up in different corners of
the garden, indeed even in 1911, twenty-six years since its first
visit, I found a stray specimen.
"Ranunculus arvensis," a weak-looking buttercup with curious rough seed
vessels.
"Scandix Pecten-Veneris," an ordinary unattractive umbelliferous plant,
but with extraordinary long beaks to the fruit, which are supposed to
be like the teeth of a comb. Both of these are I believe common in
other parts of the country, but they are unusual here.
"Poa nemoralis," a stranger grass of elegant growth, came one year in
the rougher part of a rock-border. It was made welcome and kindly
treated, but though allowed to follow its own devices and though
several seedlings sprang up round it, they were all gone in a year or
two. A rarer grass still, "Setaria glauca," once turned up in a
cucumber frame.
In 1907, a seedling fig came up close to the wall of the house. It has
now (1912) several shoots about eight feet long. The same year another
seedling fig appeared in the kitchen garden, and that too I have
transplanted to a warm corner of the house-wall, where it has made a
nice bush.
For several years we have found seedling tomatoes growing in the
kitchen garden, and in 1911 we gathered seven pounds of green tomatoes
from two plants to make into jam.
[Illustration: Old Church.]
When first I came here, and for a long time afterwards, "Erysimum
cheiranthoides" was always among the kitchen garden weeds, and one year
I found growing in a bed of onions its near relative "Erysimum
orientale," which is quite a rare British plant.
Greater celandine, a rather handsome perennial with somewhat glaucous
leaves and bright yellow flowers, used to be an abundant weed on the
banks and among the bushes, and is still (1911) to be found in the
garden, though in diminished quantity.
In 1889, a strange plant appeared which puzzled me a good deal at
first. It was tall and straggling, but had no flowers. Next spring
there were several of the same plants, very much branched with
something of the habit of a mugwort, and long spikes of flowers at the
end of every branch. I discovered it to be a species of "Ambrosia," a
native of North America, but I soon discovered also that it increased
by underground runners in every direction, and was only too thankful to
get rid of it.
Two years before, I had found another visitor, this time from South
America, with bright yellow flowers, evidently allied to forget-me-not,
which proved to be an "Amsinckia" (intermedia ?). There were about 20
plants of this annual in one border and several others in other parts
of the garden. With some consideration, but with no particular care on
my part, it has maintained itself in more or less quantity in the same
herbaceous border ever since.
In 1897, a single plant of an "Allium" appeared and grew to a height of
more than five feet, straight up with very stout stems, one and a half
inches in circumference, and handsome heads of reddish-green
bell-shaped flowers on drooping stalks, which afterwards, in fruit,
became quite straight and upright. I found it to be "Allium
Dioscorides," a native of Sicily and Sardinia. There were many tubers
at the root when I took it up, but none of them ever grew so tall and
fine as the original.
One or two plants that I have introduced myself have proved very
tiresome weeds. In 1875 or thereabouts, I brought back from the wild
part of a large garden in the neighbourhood a balsam with rather a
conspicuous yellow flower ("Impatiens noli-me-tangere," I think). It
made itself at home at once, but as it would keep within no bounds, I
have done all I could "to get without it," as they would say here, but
it defies me to my face and in spite of relentless persecution, again
and again every spring it comes up smiling in an abundant crop.
So indeed does a tall polygonum ("P. cuspidatum" I believe it is) that
I brought back from the same garden about the same time. It absolutely
refuses to budge from the place where I first allowed it to grow. It
does not perpetuate itself by seed like the balsam, but from little
odds and ends of rootlets and suckers that hide themselves in the soil.
What I take to be a variety of "Oxalis corniculata," a very pretty
little thing with dark reddish-brown leaves and deep yellow flowers, is
another uncontrollable subject. It is perennial and yet increases by
seed as fast as a balsam.
A plant which on the top of a stone wall is very pretty, "Linaria
vulgaris," has proved a veritable plague to me in the garden. I had it
sent to me originally by a nurseryman for the "Peloria" variety, and as
if the disappointment of that were not enough, it added insult to
injury, or rather injury to insult, by running below the surface in a
provoking and persevering manner and showing itself in most unexpected
places. Although the normal "vulgaris" is so irrepressible, I have
found "Peloria" quite the reverse, and have never been able to keep it
above a year or two.
The double-flowered varieties of most plants are, as a rule, more
difficult than the ordinary single, but a little potentilla ("reptans"
?) with a yellow ball of double flower has proved an exception here. No
single-flowered plant could get over and under the ground faster than
this has done.
In 1886, in an out-of-the-way path among trees, an orchid, "Epipactis
latifolia," came up in the very middle. I took care that it was not
disturbed, and found it again in exactly the same place four years
later, no sign of it having been seen in the interval. Never before, or
since, have I found a plant of that or any other orchis growing wild in
the garden.
One year (1887) in a border nearly full of rhododendrons, close to the
front door, a curious looking thing made its way above the ground,
which, at first sight might have been put down as something between a
hyacinth and a lily-of-the-valley, but was said to be "Muscari
comosum." I had never planted it and during the fifteen years that I
had been here had never seen anything like it. I very carefully marked
the spot when it died down, but from that time to this (1911) during
all the 24 years that have passed it has never shown itself again.
III.
BIRDS--THRUSHES.
You can feel something like affection even for a plant, when you have
watched over it and attended to its likes and dislikes as to aspect,
soil, moisture, shade and so on, and when it has responded to your care
and rewarded you for the pains you have spent upon it, but birds become
personal friends, it is an interest and amusement to study their
characters and habits, and a delight to listen to their voices. And
this friendship is not for any one particular bird (though of course
there may be that sometimes), but for the particular species of bird,
any one of which that you happen to meet with anywhere seems like an
old friend. A lively impudent tom-tit for instance is the same amusing
companion and it is the same pleasure to hear his cheery note, whether
you find him in a suburban garden or in some shady corner of a wood.
Of course it is a day to be marked with a white stone when you come
across a new or a rare bird, but if you watch the commonest
sympathetically and intelligently you have an endless fund of interest
and amusement. The quarrels, the loves, the boldness and ingenuity even
of a sparrow may divert your mind pleasantly and help you to put away
worries. Then how eagerly in spring does one listen for the first note
of a willow-warbler, what an interest is the first sight of a swallow,
and how gladly one welcomes each of our summer visitors as in turn they
arrive from passing the winter in the Sahara oases or among our friends
in the Transvaal or Cape Colony.
In a country unexplored or newly settled it may not be the same, but in
England there is no need to spoil the charm of friendship by use of the
collector's gun. All British birds have been so well illustrated and
described that it ought to be possible to tell most of them by careful
observation without actually having them in one's hand. In the
interests of science, to make sure of the discovery of a new species or
the distribution of a known one, birds must sometimes be shot (and
after all to be shot is a less cruel end than to fall a prey to their
natural enemies), but to shoot a well-known bird simply for the sake of
its skin is another matter. A man who shoots every rare bird he sees,
that he may add it to his private collection, is sacrificing bird-life
for his own selfish pleasure and disregarding the sentiments and
interests of the great body of nature-lovers and students. The true
naturalist does not collect specimens as he would postage stamps; to
study the life of a wren in its natural surroundings is more to him
than anything he can do with the dried skin of a golden eagle.
They say that there is in Switzerland a law which forbids the shooting
of any bird without a licence. If some such law could be enforced here,
rare birds that seek hospitality among us would no longer be at the
mercy of every idle lout who happens to have a gun. And is it
impossible that children might be taught to find pleasure in watching,
and not, as seems generally the case now, in destroying life?
We often have a pair of missel-thrushes ("shercocks" in Cheshire)
nesting here. Generally they build in a tree at some distance away,
where they make their presence known by noisy attacks on other birds;
but once they had their nest in a Scotch fir close to the house, and
then they were so quiet as almost to escape notice altogether.
There were two nests in the old churchyard this year (1912). One in a
Spanish Chestnut was about thirty feet from the ground, in the middle
of a clump of little shoots that grew straight up on the top side of a
thick branch. This branch overhangs a patch of grass running close to
the boundary wall and on this green boys were playing football with
much shouting and noise every evening. The nest stood out plainly to be
seen, and for a week before they flew (which they did on April 20th)
you could easily count all four young ones. The other nest was in a
yew, under which there is a seat in summer, and was simply set on the
top of one of the lowest spreading boughs without any attempt at
concealment. It was at the end of the bough and not six feet from the
ground, within easy reach of anyone. It could, however, only be seen
when you were actually under the tree and probably would never have
been noticed at all but for the behaviour of the birds themselves.
After the eggs were hatched they attacked everybody who went under or
even near the tree, swooping down suddenly from you didn't know where
and almost dashing into your face, indeed they would often hit your
hat. I am glad to say this display of courage was not wasted, for the
young birds safely flew on May 17th.
Missel-thrush is said to be short for mistletoe-thrush, and to mark the
singular taste of the bird for mistletoe berries. Mistletoe is scarce
with us, but they do appear to depend more upon berries of every kind
than either throstles or blackbirds, and one year I remember when the
yews bore an extraordinary crop of berries, the trees were quite alive
with the missel-thrushes that came to eat them. I would say, by the
way, that a great part of the holly berries are sometimes left
untouched by birds, and I have seen trees in summer quite red with the
berries of the previous year.
One or two missel-thrushes generally come to the food-stand in winter
and show themselves expert in getting fat from the supposed
sparrow-proof receptacles.
Though missel-thrushes are common their song is not familiar. It has
been described as much better than a throstle's; I do not know if that
is the general opinion. It certainly is simpler without the same
repetition, and it has seemed to me more mellow, more like a
blackbird's when I have heard it, but that is not often. Throstles will
sometimes sing continuously all the winter through, and early in the
year I have listened most carefully to catch the notes of their bigger
brothers, but only very seldom with success. They have, however, an
autumn song which I first noticed at the end of September a good many
years ago. I became aware one day of a bird's song that seemed to be
sometimes the note of a blackbird, sometimes of a throstle. After
listening for several days I came to the conclusion that it must have
been one of the many starlings that were singing everywhere, one that
had learnt more or less successfully to imitate a throstle. However, I
never could make sure, for I never could catch sight of the singer, he
would hide himself in a holly or a yew, and would at once stop singing
if I went near. At last, one day I heard him at the top of a sycamore
which was nearly bare of leaves, and managed to bring a glass to bear
on him; even then his body was hidden by a bough and his head was all
that I could see, but the head was plainly that of a thrush. While I
watched I could distinctly see him turn his eye down on me, and he was
off in an instant; but though I only got a glimpse as he flew away,
there was no mistaking the flight of a missel-thrush. It seemed curious
to me at the time that he should be singing at all then, and that he
should be so shy about it.
Song-thrushes, or throstles as they are called in Cheshire, are always
plentiful, but not always to the same extent. They were, for instance,
very much thinned in numbers by the hard winter of 1895, but in a
couple of years they abounded again, and I heard people complain of
their night's rest being spoilt, there were so many and they sang so
early and so loud. From April to June they sing almost incessantly,
from earliest light until quite dark. They begin at three in the
morning, or even earlier, and sing their loudest for about an hour;
then there seems somewhat of a lull, but they soon start again in full
chorus, and go on singing more or less throughout the day, sometimes
until past nine at night. In 1905, on the longest day of the year, I
woke at 2-30 a.m. to hear a throstle in full song just outside my
window, and at 9-30 p.m. a throstle, almost certainly the same bird,
was singing in the same place. I have often wondered how, with so much
time devoted to musical exercises, they manage to find enough for the
more important business of feeding themselves and their hungry broods.
A blackbird's song is, I think, always a love song, but mere exuberance
of spirits will make a throstle sing. I have seen one sing snatches of
his song whilst hunting for worms on the grass, as though he were too
full of joyousness to contain himself, and a couple of them will sing
at one another during intervals of quarrelling on the ground. There
seems at all times more rivalry and contention between throstles
throughout the whole season, and less of the spirit of _camaraderie_
that one so often sees with blackbirds, at least when once they have
settled the momentous question of pairing.
Within the bounds of general similarity much variety can be heard in
the songs of throstles; no two seem to be exactly alike, and some birds
are far better singers, have a much clearer, more musical note than
others.
In 1907, and again in 1909, I noticed that throstles were in full song
everywhere on July 15th, just as though it had been the middle of May.
A particular throstle will choose his favourite spot to sing from, and
will keep to it more or less throughout the season. The point of a
gable of the house is one such place (it is a Cheshire belief that a
throstle brings you good luck when he chooses your house to sing
from), the top of the highest chimney has been another, and the
weathercock on the outbuildings has been chosen year after year by a
throstle as his own peculiar stand. This last is a favourite platform
for the musical performances of other birds as well; a robin constantly
uses it, and a swallow, and more than once I have seen a little wren
there singing away with all his might, a might altogether out of
proportion to his tiny body.
Whilst most throstles seem to like as high a perch as possible to sing
from, I remember one that habitually poured forth the flood of his
melody raised above the level of the ground by a clod of earth only.
One morning (in March, 1897) I heard a throstle uttering a peculiar
shrill kind of cry, not a long-drawn-out note such as I have twice
heard from a blackbird, but a succession rather of short notes. At
first I couldn't make out what or where the noise was, but traced it
after a time to the thrush, who continually uttered the cry as he was
hunting for worms on the grass.
A standing marvel is the way in which a thrush can tell that there is a
worm below the ground at a particular place. As he goes hopping about
in a promiscuous sort of way, he suddenly stops with his head on one
side looking and listening for a second, then he pounces on the exact
spot and forthwith pulls out a worm. Sometimes he makes a mistake, or,
at all events, fails to make a catch, but not often. How does he do it?
Does his quick sight detect some slight movement, or his quick ear some
slight sound? Or has he any other sense of smell or sensation that
helps him? Another marvel about the matter to anyone who has himself
tried to pull a worm out of the ground is the ease with which a thrush
manages so neatly and quickly to extract its victim entire.
I have found a throstle's nest in the side of a haystack, and was told
of one in a pigstye and of another inside the porch of a house. In 1901
a throstle built in the roof of the lychgate of the churchyard close to
this garden. Although the first nest was taken she made another in the
same place and had very nearly hatched her eggs when again the
thoughtless cruelty of boys made all her labour vain and abused the
confidence she had so bravely shown in men. She used to sit on quite
calmly, though only just above the heads of people as they went through
the gate.
Generally speaking, throstles are so tame here that they hardly move
out of your way, at most hopping a foot or two further off; and one
will go on with his song undisturbed as I pass through an archway of
pink thorn on which he is perched not two feet above. They are
naturally, I think, more friendly in their disposition towards human
beings than blackbirds, which go clattering off whenever they see you
near them.
In May, 1902, there must have been at least 20 throstles' nests in the
garden itself. There were five, all in holly bushes, within 30 yards,
by the side of one path, two in one tree, both of which had young ones
in them at the same time. One bird had a nest just over the entrance to
the house porch, through which we were in and out the whole day long,
and we saw nothing of it until the young were hatched. Another chose an
extraordinarily exposed situation, in a rhododendron just opposite the
front door, from which we could see her quite plainly as she sat. The
nest was actually not more than a foot or so from a little narrow path.
We were constantly up and down this path and could hardly avoid
brushing the leaves at the end of the very bough on which the nest was
built, yet I never once saw her fly off. She used to keep her eye on
us, but did not move even if we stood still only a few feet away and
looked at her. This nest was under continual observation from the
laying of the first egg to the flight of the last nestling, which
remained for the best part of a day after the rest had flown.
On the other hand, in strange contrast to this confidence, there were
three nests farther away from the house (one indeed absurdly close to a
gate in constant use), from which the birds flew off with a loud,
startled cry if one waited for a moment near them. In one of these
three nests the brood was reared, but of the other two one was deserted
and one taken.
In 1899 a friend in the village assured me that there had been a
throstle's nest with eight eggs in it close to her house. As only four
of them, she said, hatched, perhaps the first hen was killed after she
had laid her complement of eggs, and the cock brought home another mate
to his ready-made nest.
I find a note that once I saw throstles join with starlings in their
raid upon elder-berries, but I have seen nothing since to confirm this.
Until the winter of 1910-11 I very seldom found a throstle attempt to
get the fat put out for tits; they generally content themselves with
the crumbs that have fallen on the ground underneath. If the weather is
at all severe they will come with sparrows to the fowls' food, but in a
sharp, continuous frost they disappear almost entirely. (Blackbirds and
some missel-thrushes remain.) This was very marked in February, 1902.
Before the severe cold began throstles were plentiful; after it had
continued for a few days not a single one was to be seen; but when the
thaw set in, in less than a week they abounded again on every side.
Some redwings come here every winter, but they are less common than
fieldfares and they are not so noticeable. The points of difference
between a redwing and a throstle, the rather smaller size, the red on
the side, the slight variations in shades of colour and markings, may
easily be passed over.
I have from my window seen a single redwing quite close to the house,
in company with a single fieldfare, both busy with the holly berries,
and in February, 1909, I saw all five of the commoner British thrushes
collected together and between them quite covering a field which had
lately been broken up by a subsoil cultivator.
A farmer tells me that the local name for redwing is "Kit," but I see
in "The Birds of Cheshire" that "Kit" is given as one of the names for
fieldfare.
We see fieldfares chiefly when they first arrive in October, and again
in early spring, before they leave, but, of course, there are some with
us most of the winter. The people here call them "Bluebacks," and it
was remarked as a curious thing in the late cold spring of 1891 that on
April 24th bluebacks were heard on one side of a field and a cuckoo on
the other.
[Illustration: Old Yew Tree.]
Blackbirds are, I think, nearly as plentiful as throstles, in spite of
relentless persecution by strawberry-growing market gardeners.
Sometimes, indeed, one is oneself compelled to own that we have a few
more blackbirds than we really want. In hot, dry summers, when the
ground is hard, they do much damage to the apple crop. Not content with
making short work with the "windfalls," they peck holes in some of the
best fruit on the trees. I noticed this especially in 1899, and again
in 1901 and 1911. In 1899 I saw four cock blackbirds amicably devouring
a fallen apple together.
Though a blackbird's song is beautifully mellow, it is generally
disconnected and fragmentary, but I remember hearing one once that
seemed continuous, or at least much more so than usual.
One day at the end of March (in 1895) I saw perched on a twig of an oak
tree and sitting quite close up against the trunk, a cock blackbird,
which continually uttered a small, thin sharp note, almost like the
squeaking of a slate pencil. He sat still in the same position for a
considerable time, only opening his mouth at intervals of about a
minute, or half a minute, to make this doleful noise. The same year, on
June 15th, in exactly the same place, a cock blackbird went through
exactly the same performance.
Every winter blackbirds have been amongst the most regular pensioners
at the food-stand.
Several times during May in 1898, and again in 1899 and 1900 and since,
I noticed a meeting of three, always, I think, three, cock blackbirds
at one particular spot, always the same, near a holly tree on the
lawn, which happens to be just opposite my window, where I could watch
them easily and unobserved. They seemed to go through a regular set
performance, like a game or a dance. They did not fight, though they
sometimes sparred a little, but ran round and round and in and out,
following and passing one another. It reminded me of a friendly
gathering of husbands for amusement, while their wives were busy with
household cares at home!
I was much interested one day (March, 1902) in the proceedings of two
pair of blackbirds. One very elegant cock, slender and graceful, with
intensely black coat and very bright orange bill, was seeking to
impress the hen of his choice by a series of little runs on every side
of her, with his tail spread out and sweeping the grass, his body in
the shape of a bow, his beak almost touching the ground; meanwhile, the
object of all this attention seemed to consider it a mere matter of
course and to be calmly indifferent. Presently another cock, not nearly
so spruce, came on the scene accompanied by another mate. The gallant
dandy evidently had no stomach for fighting, and promptly disappeared
behind a holly bush when the newcomer threatened to assault him. His
partner, however, was made of sterner stuff, and without more ado
attacked and drove away both the intruders.
I have never heard that there is any real difference in size, but hen
blackbirds appear bigger than cocks, just as young gulls in immature
plumage seem larger than old ones. I suppose the different colour has
something to do with it, and perhaps the cock's feathers are more
closely set than the hen's.
My wife told me that she had seen one evening in September (1907) 16
blackbirds on the tennis ground together. This seems perhaps rather a
large order, as they say, but in the following September I counted nine
myself, to the best of my belief, all of them cocks.
IV.
CHATS, ROBINS AND WARBLERS.
In spring, and again in autumn, wheatears pass through, and may be seen
about for several days at a time. In April and May, 1908, a pair stayed
so long in some rough ground near the bank of the Ship Canal that I
thought they might be going to take up their quarters there for the
season, but by May 31st they had disappeared.
We always have a fair number of whinchats in the meadows, and hardly a
year passes without seeing them on the grass in the garden itself. One
very wet summer, when in the low-lying lands the haycocks were standing
for days surrounded by water, I remember being struck by the number of
whinchats to be seen perching and chatting first on one haycock and
then on another.
Though whinchats are so comparatively common, and their usual note,
exactly like the knocking of two pebbles together, is constantly heard,
their pretty little song, a cadence of a few notes repeated over and
over again, I do not remember to have noticed here.
Only once have I seen a stonechat in the neighbourhood of this garden.
This was in October, 1890. On the opposite side of the river the land
had been raised by material excavated in the making of the Ship Canal,
and was at that time wild and covered with a strong growth of all kinds
of weeds. It was on a wire fence that ran along this bank that I saw
the bright little bird. And there, with a curious pendulum-like
movement of its tail, it continued to sit for a considerable time,
giving me ample opportunity to study it leisurely through a
field-glass.
Though redstarts are not uncommon in Dunham Park a few miles away, only
once have I seen one in the garden, in August, 1894. It stayed for
several days, and was never far away from the place where I first saw
it. I noticed that other birds who are at home here, wagtails
especially, seemed to look upon it as an interloper and resented its
intrusion.
One of the first things that I remember about the natural history of
Warburton is a brood of four white--or more strictly speaking,
cream-coloured--robins that were hatched in a neighbouring garden in
1872. They were jealously watched over by the owner of the garden, and
I often saw two of them until the autumn. Then they must either have
been taken (and many people were after them) or have moulted to the
ordinary robin colours, for we saw them no more.
Robins are plentiful in the garden and in the neighbourhood generally.
They show much courage and skill in getting at the fat on the
food-stand, no matter how greatly the difficulties of doing so may have
been multiplied.
It has been said that robins have more power than most birds to see
through the window into a room, and I certainly have observed that
though as a rule neither robins nor tits take much notice if I am
standing close by the window, yet sometimes a robin appears that will
spy me out as I sit by the fire quite far away and be off in an
instant. I have sometimes wondered if such wild robins might be
immigrants from the Continent, where by all accounts they are less tame
than in England.
Robins are pugnacious, and their duels are not unfrequently to the
death. I have seen a robin pursue a sparrow and even fly straight at a
great-tit and knock it off the food-stand, but I have noticed that
generally a robin makes way for a sparrow, and seldom stands up to a
tit of any kind, not even a marsh or a coal-tit, birds hardly half its
size. I remember one, however, in the winter of 1900-01 who
indiscriminately attacked all tits on the food-stand. He was very
friendly with me, and used to watch as I filled the receptacles, when
he would come close up and wait for a bit to be thrown to him, and
often as he saw me coming he would sit on a corner of the porch roof
and warble a little song of welcome. Another year (1901-02) two,
sometimes three, and occasionally four, robins would be there together
almost under my feet and ready to pick up anything I threw them. Very
unlike most robins, they seemed on perfectly good terms with one
another.
In November, 1905, a robin used to come into the house through the open
windows and make himself quite at home; he would sometimes sit and sing
on the bannisters in the hall.
I saw a very tame robin at Budworth in 1904. I was in the garden with
the lady to whom it belonged when the bird flew on to her hand, and he
used to come into the drawing-room without any hesitation and take his
place at afternoon tea.
In 1910 a pair of robins built in the pulpit desk of Oughtrington
Church near here, and hatched out four young ones. A friend who went to
service one Sunday evening in June saw a robin flying about and singing
until the sermon began, but then it took up a position on the back of a
seat near the pulpit and looked up at the preacher, quite silent and
apparently listening.
One of the prettiest little episodes of bird-life is the delicate
attention bestowed by a robin on the chosen partner of his joys and
cares that I have several times witnessed during April and May. Whilst
she remained watching and waiting on the ground below, he would fly up
to the food-stand and secure a morsel which, with a tender grace, he
presented to her. The gallant devotion so plainly expressed by the one
and the caressing, coquetting airs of the other were most amusing. I
have seen, too, about the same time of the year, one robin feeding
another with flies picked from the grass and the lower boughs of a
deadara tree. The robin that was being fed did not attempt to pick up
anything for itself, but sat there on the grass quivering its wings and
opening its mouth like a nestling.
Robins often catch flies in the air, flying up from the ground after
them, and I have seen one dart off from the branch of a tree, capture a
passing fly and return again to the same perch, for all the world like
a flycatcher.
One showery day in spring I saw a robin on the food-stand washing
itself in the rain, spreading out its wings, shaking its feathers,
bobbing and ducking about as though it had been in a bath, and I have
noticed one washing in wet leaves and drinking from the tips of leaves.
Greater whitethroats are as common in this garden and neighbourhood as
in most places. One that had its nest by the old river bank used to
come and scold whenever I went near, and never ceased until I left.
Such a proceeding looks like a case of instinct playing a bird false,
and serving only to draw attention to what it is wished to conceal.
Lesser whitethroats come to us every year, and may be said to be fairly
common in the village. They are always shy and restless and more
frequently heard than seen.
There was a lesser whitethroat's nest one year (1898) in a holly bush,
in which all five young ones used to be, whenever I looked at them,
apparently sleepy, with their heads shoved up over the side of the
nest. They never opened their mouths when we went near, and yet often
as I watched I never saw the parents feed them.
Blackcaps are not uncommon within easy reach of us, but only twice have
I seen one actually in the garden. The first time the unusual sound of
its wonderfully clear note attracted my attention was in July, 1899.
The bird stayed here then for several days, singing occasionally all
the while. The second time a blackcap came was in May, 1903. It was in
the garden for about ten days, and I hoped it might be going to nest
here, especially as one day I thought I saw a pair.
I noticed a difference in habits between the July bird and the one that
came in May. In July, when the joys and cares of family life were over,
there was more deliberation and less shyness. I was able to watch the
bird easily and for a long time together. In May he was restless and
very wary, and it was with difficulty I could get a glimpse of him. He
was always on the move, hunting about in the tops of the trees, and, I
thought, singing in competition with the willow-wrens.
The blackcap is often placed next to the nightingale as a songster, but
there is a very wide interval between them. The most inattentive
listener can hardly fail to notice a nightingale's song, but people who
are not accustomed to distinguish the different notes of birds are
often quite unaware of the presence of a singing blackcap, as the tone
of his song mingles with the general chorus.
Golden-crested wrens are not uncommon in winter, but I have never found
a nest here. I notice them most often in October and November, as they
are hunting in and out the yews and Scotch firs, sometimes a large
party, sometimes only a single pair.
One June day I was sitting in a cousin's garden in Wales, when out of
an arbor-vitæ close by appeared a dilapidated-looking gold-crest, which
set to work violently and persistently to abuse me. Herein, I think,
like the whitethroat mentioned before, it displayed either a perversion
of instinct or a want of sense. If it had only kept quiet I should not
have thought of a nest, but it told me so plainly that it had one in
that very tree that I looked as a matter of course and found it,
packed with fully-fledged young ones.
Chiffchaffs never stay with us, though they are to be found only a few
miles away, but I sometimes see them and hear their well-known note in
spring and autumn for a day or two.
Willow-warblers abound ("Peggy whitethroat" is the Cheshire name), and
it is a delight to catch for the first time each spring their lovely
little song, of which, unlike the wearisome iteration of the
chiffchaff, one never tires. The American naturalist, John Burroughs,
describes the willow-warbler's strain as the most melodious he heard in
England, and the only one exhibiting the best qualities of American
songsters. He adds: "It is too fine for the ordinary English ear!" As
if on a visit of a few weeks to a strange country he could possibly
know what most English people either thought or liked!
Willow-wrens as a rule keep pretty high up in the trees, but one
sometimes sees them on the grass picking up flies or flying up after
them in the air. Later on in summer they hunt for insects in the
kitchen garden, and are often to be seen running up and down the
pea-sticks.
Though silent in July, they sing again after the middle of August. I
have known a willow-wren's nest here in the middle of a roughish piece
of ground that was continually walked over, about as unprotected
position as you could wish, and yet the young were successfully reared.
I have seen a willow-wren attack and drive away a perfectly inoffensive
marsh-tit that happened to alight near it on the grass.
The wood-wren, with its "sibilous shivering note," I have heard at
Budworth, a few miles away, but never in this garden or immediate
neighbourhood.
The garden-warbler, too, is quite a stranger, and I have never
recognised it in these parts at all. In May, 1900, I saw and heard one
for several days in a garden in North Wales, where it is generally
supposed to be unknown.
Sedge-warblers sing incessantly when first they come, but after they
have been here for a little while are much less frequently heard. They
usually are hidden in the depths of a bush when singing, but I have
seen one pouring out its impetuous song mounted on a telephone wire in
the open, 20 feet from the ground, and another that sang as it was
flying. For several years a sedge-warbler has begun to sing again here
in July, not having been heard for some weeks previously. In 1907, for
example, from July 24th to August 2nd, he could, without much
exaggeration, be said to have sung all day and all night. I heard him
at seven in the morning when I got up and at twelve at night when I
went to bed, and I have a note of much the same thing in 1910, about
the same date. The bird that year chose as his special platform the
lower branches of a sycamore, and would every now and then fly off into
the air singing all the while at the very top of his voice, and then
return to the tree to sing again.
Hedgesparrows are common enough all the year round, and are great
favourites of mine. They are elegant birds in their modest way, they
are unobtrusive and useful, and their song, if not brilliant, is
pleasant, and like that of the wren and the robin, it helps to cheer
the dull winter months when the more famous warblers are away enjoying
the warmth of some sunny southern country.
There is no month in the year in which at one time or another I have
not heard the hedge-sparrow's song, but March is the time of all others
to hear it, then it seems impossible to get away from it at any hour of
the day.
Hedgesparrows creep about in a mouse-like fashion peculiar to
themselves, with a series of little running jumps, and the continual
shuffling or flipping movement of their wings is very noticeable.
They will take their share of the fowls' food with other birds, and
will come all round the food-stand and pick up the minutest morsels of
something on the ground, but (except in the case of a bird in the cold
weather of January, 1902), I have never seen one make an attempt to get
at the food on the stand itself.
Sometimes on first turning out on a dark winter's morning, between
seven and eight, hedgesparrows will be squatting on the path, and will
almost let you walk over them before they get out of your way.
V.
TITS AND WRENS.
Only once, in August, 1904, have I caught sight of a party of
long-tailed tits in the garden, but a friend who lived hardly a mile
away used to tell me that little parties of eight or nine might be seen
flying through his orchard nearly every winter. I think he said they
called them "churns," or something that sounded like that.
Great-tits are common the whole year round; and very handsome they look
when their suits of velvet-black and yellow are at their best. They are
constant visitors to the food-stand, and are not baffled by any
contrivance for excluding sparrows, but they are not so plucky or so
clever at it as tom-tits. They are hectoring, full of bustle and
importance, and make themselves generally disagreeable to other birds,
but I have seldom, if ever, seen one great-tit attack another.
Sometimes one sees a pair of the quietest possible character; on the
most affectionate terms with one another they will come to the stand
together and appear perfectly oblivious of the presence there of any
other birds.
It is not at all uncommon to see a great-tit with a crooked tail,
slightly sickle-shaped. It cannot always be the same bird, for it is 16
years since I first noticed a bird with such a tail, and nearly every
year still (1912) I see one.
One may often hear a tapping sound in trees and shrubs that is made by
a great-tit, and I have watched the bird after considerable tapping
draw out a grub of some sort from under the bark. I noticed on another
occasion that a tit in making this tapping noise was beating something
(through the glass it looked like a beetle) which it held in its beak
against a bough of the tree.
Like tom-tits, great-tits will fly off with grains of Indian corn, and,
like coal-tits, they are fond of sunflower seeds. (In spite of what
Gilbert White says, I have never seen tom-tits here touch sunflower
seeds.)
A great-tit has a note very much like the "pink, pink" of a chaffinch,
which he occasionally uses.
Though great-tits are, no doubt, handsome birds, they are not nearly so
interesting in my opinion as either of the other three common kinds of
tit. None of them, indeed, can really compare in interest with that
audacious little villain, the tom-tit, or blue-tit, or, as he is called
here, blue-cap. He is so full of spirits, so resolute and domineering,
I delight to hear his cheery little song, if it is to be called a
song.
[Illustration: Sundial in Old Church Yard.]
Tom-tits in abundance come to the food-stand, which in the first
instance was specially intended for their benefit. They will come more
or less the whole year through if the food is left there, but, of
course, many more in winter than in summer, and most of all in February
and the beginning of March, when I have counted twelve on the stand at
once, but the numbers fall off very quickly towards the middle of
March.