from about 12.30 to 1.30, there is a marked increase in numbers. In
winter at least no five minutes passes without one or more birds
appearing, but at mid-day, and again to a lesser extent just before it
begins to get dark, they seem literally to swarm.
I have found that all tits, as well as sparrows and robins, prefer a
mixture of bread and fat to fat alone. During February and March, 1897,
I weighed all the bread and fat consumed on the food-stand and found
that it was as nearly as possible eleven pounds. Lately I have added
cocoanuts to the bill of fare; they are appreciated by the tits, but
blackbirds, robins and thrushes prefer the bread and fat mixture, or
rather they do not seem to care at all for the cocoanuts.
It is curious to see how quickly birds discover that food has been put
out on the stand. One year, after the receptacles had been empty for
weeks in the summer, I put in some fat, and in less than five minutes
a tom-tit was there. Another time I made a longish block of wood,
bored nearly through with holes, which were filled with fat smoothed
off level with the surface. This block was hung with the holes
downwards, so that from above it could look like a bit of wood only. It
was hung up at 10.30 a.m., and at 11.30 a tom-tit had found it out, and
was eating away at the fat as he clung to the block back downwards.
Tom-tits, unlike great-tits, bully one another most unmercifully. They
can recognize each other at a great distance. A tom-tit on the
food-stand seems to know at once whether another arriving on the
nearest tree, some ten yards or more away, is his superior or inferior
in prowess. Sometimes he will ruffle up his feathers as if in
resentment at threatened intrusion, at other times he is prepared to
make way at once. As is the case with a herd of cows on a farm, the
relative standing between them seems to be an acknowledged matter and
is seldom contested. To us a couple of tom-tits appear as like as two
peas if we have them actually in the hand, and though it is easy to
understand that they can themselves distinguish differences at close
quarters, and may have some other sense than we have to help them, yet
it is a marvellous thing that they can do so without doubt or
hesitation at a distance of yards.
The whole question as to how birds recognize one another is very
interesting. We know that a shepherd can tell one sheep of his flock
from another as easily as we can distinguish between two men, but in
the feathered face of a bird there seems to us so little room for
difference of expression, and, generally speaking, if we take feather
by feather the description of one bird will apply equally well to any
other of the same species.
Tom-tits as a rule make way for a great-tit, but I have seen them fight
occasionally, and the tom-tit does not always come off second-best.
They are complete masters of both marsh and coal-tits, neither of which
dream of resisting them. They pay scarcely any heed one way or another
to sparrows or robins.
Both tom-tits and great-tits in the flush of their spring-time ardour
pay to their chosen helpmates the same delicate attentions as do
robins. It is always a pretty picture to see them present their
offerings of food, but with tits it seems a rather more business-like
matter and to lack something of the tender sentiment so plainly shown
by the robins.
Though not nearly so plentiful as tom-tits, both marsh and coal-tits
are with us more or less all the year round. Of the two, perhaps the
marsh-tit is the more regular, sometimes a pair seem to make the garden
their headquarters and to be always about, but several years may pass
without our seeing one coal-tit; then they will become almost as common
as tom-tits for a year or so, when again the number will dwindle down
to, it may be, a single pair.
Some years ago all four kinds of tit used to come together to the
food-stand, but (with the exception of a pair of coal-tits in the
winter of 1910-11) since 1899 tom-tits and great-tits have had it all
to themselves, neither marsh nor coal-tits have been there, though both
are still frequent visitors to the garden at all times of the year.
In June broods of young tits appear flying from tree to tree in little
parties. The old birds tirelessly hunt for food, whilst the
greeny-yellowy little ones sit expecting and cheeping among the boughs.
In comparing the marsh and coal-tits together one might imagine that
they each originally had the same amount of black allowed them for the
head, but while the marsh-tit preferred to have all his in one patch at
the back, the coal-tit would have a bit cut out to make a bib for his
chin! Of the two the marsh-tit is my favourite. I like the delicate
tints of its more sober colouring better than the more contrasted yet
more commonplace colours of the coal-tit.
There seems something savouring of meanness about coal-tits; they are
cautious and artful and carry away their food presumably to store,
there is not time to have swallowed it before they are back again at
the stand.
A pair of coal-tits that were here one winter seemed quite demoralised
by the food-stand, and to have altogether given up hunting for their
natural food.
Both kinds are perfectly amicable together, but a marsh will make way
for a coal-tit. The marsh-tit seems to excite special animosity in
tom-tits, whilst the coal-tit watches his opportunity, and, nipping in
just at the right moment, escapes much persecution. Of the two the
coal-tit has a more musical voice and a greater variety of notes, but
once (in 1899) when watching a party of marsh-tits, I heard, besides
the usual harsh note, a kind of continuous warble every now and then,
which I could attribute to no other bird, though I could not actually
see a marsh-tit uttering it.
The delightful little wrens are always with us, and the loud, clear
ringing notes of their sweet song may be heard almost throughout the
year. In July, when most birds are silent, the wren does his best to
make up for it, he seems to take a pleasure in having the field to
himself, and his song may be heard, and often his alone every day until
the middle of August. By that time some of the robins, having recovered
from their moult, begin to tune up, and the wren leaves it to them to
keep the ball going whilst he retires from the scene to complete his
own change of feather. Apparently with such a tiny body to cover that
is not a long business, for his bright little voice may be heard again
early in September. I always myself feel inclined to say "thank you" at
the conclusion of a wren's musical effort, and have been surprised to
find that there are people, it may be many people, who do not hear his
song at all of themselves, and when their attention is specially drawn
think it "only a bird squeaking!"
Wrens never seem to be tame in the same way that robins are, nor do
they ever attempt to get at the food on the stand, or to share in the
fowls' meals, but they often come close to the windows, creeping up and
down the frames, in quest of spiders and other small game.
A sight was reported to me the other day that I would have given a good
deal to have seen with my own eyes. When for two days in January (1912)
the ground was thickly covered with snow, I put a plate of scraps for
the birds in the open porch. In the evening of the second day of snow,
when the maid went to light the porch lamp, she saw this plate, as she
described it, full of wrens (little birds with their tails turned up
over their backs, she called them); there must have been, she thought,
certainly not less than fifteen of them. When they saw her they flew
off in a flock to the creeper outside, just where for two or three
years there has been a wren's nest. Perhaps this little company was
made up of the family that owned that nest as their home. In was in
1909 that a wren first built there among the stems of the Virginian
creeper close to the front door. The body of the nest was quite hidden
between the creeper and the wall, the little entrance-hole alone being
visible. We constantly saw the bird going in and out, taking a turn to
stretch his wings or bringing home provisions for his household, and
often he would sit close by and give vent to his feelings in a joyous
burst of song. He appears to have been pleased with the success of his
first venture on this site, for he has used the very same nest for the
last two years.
A wren has the same directness of flight as a kingfisher or a dipper;
it has none of the up and down course of most small birds, but it
follows a bee-line to its destination, with rapidly-beating wings, but
making comparatively slow progress. I was much struck by this, as one
day I watched a wren fly from a low bush to a height of 40 or 50 feet
up a poplar, it seemed to take quite an age to get there.
VI.
WAGTAILS, FLYCATCHERS, SWALLOWS AND OTHER INSECT-EATERS.
Pied wagtails never entirely desert us, though, of course, there are
many more, and they are much more in evidence, in summer than in
winter. It is a continual pleasure to watch them, to see the speed with
which they run in pursuit of a fly, the deftness of the capture, and
the satisfaction so plainly displayed at the feat, by the eloquent
balancing of the long tail. One day in August (1899) I watched a
wagtail through a glass, and distinctly saw him capture and devour four
"daddy-long legs" in succession. Besides running after them on the
ground, they will often fly up at insects in the air.
Pied wagtails are no respecters of persons as far as other birds are
concerned; I have seen a single wagtail at one time pursuing a peewit,
at another a sandpiper, and their encounters with swallows on the grass
are most amusing to watch. When the swallows are flying low the
wagtails will deliberately fly at them and even for a little way after
them.
A family of pied wagtails usually take possession of the lawn opposite
one of our windows, and we can observe the process of education in the
art of catching flies, from the stage in which the young are content
to be fed entirely by their parents through that in which they
supplement the supply by their own efforts, until finally little
difference in skill is to be noticed between old birds and the young.
This family appear to resent the intrusion of other birds on their
domain (as shown in their behaviour towards swallows), and I have seen
them persistently drive away young yellow wagtails who presumed to
trespass on their hunting ground.
Yellow wagtails are not so often seen in the garden, though they are
plentiful enough in the neighbourhood. They are lively and attractive
and their bright colour contrasts strongly with the freshly ploughed
earth so that their arrival is always noticed by the farmers and seems
to interest them more than the coming of any other migrant except the
cuckoo.
Meadow pipits are common in the fields around, but I cannot remember
ever to have seen one actually in the garden. On a rough bit of ground
near the Ship Canal bridge they are always to be found, and I have
watched one there for twenty minutes or more at a time as he soared up
to a considerable height, singing all the time, and then came down
again to the ground with wings and tail spread out, after the manner of
a tree-pipit, with a little musical twitter just as he landed. It kept
repeating this performance over and over again all the time I was
there.
For some years a tree-pipit used to take up his abode with us every
summer and give us the benefit of his energetic song. I was very much
amused once to watch him on some iron hurdles at the end of the garden.
He was so much in earnest and so full of energy; he would sing a little
bit, then run along the top rail a little way, then sing again, and so
on until he had gone nearly the whole length of the railings. This
entertainment he went through day after day for a fortnight or more at
the end of June and the beginning of July.
Spotted flycatchers have not been as common with us lately as they were
at one time, when they always made their home here during their summer
visit to this country, and were constantly in evidence. We have not had
a nest for several years, and last year (1911) I did not see a single
flycatcher in the garden, but this year, I am glad to say, they have
come back again and there has been a nest in the ivy on the house wall.
It was placed so low down that we could easily look into it, but never
once did I surprise the old bird; she seemed to hear one's footsteps at
a distance, and long before one reached the nest she was off. The young
were hatched on June 29th, but their eyes did not open until July 6th.
Whilst they were blind and as they grew bigger the nest seemed much
too small for them, and often one fancied two of them must inevitably
have been smothered, as they were quite hidden under the other three.
Even after they could see there was some confusion during the heat of
the day; but it was one of the prettiest sights imaginable when they
were tucked in for the night; all five heads with their sharp little
beaks and bright black eyes were arranged in perfect order, all looking
together in the same direction out of the nest. People in the village
call these birds by the name of "old man," and it seems expressive,
somehow peculiarly appropriate to their greyish colouring and quiet
unobtrusive manners.
For five years running a pair of flycatchers built in a fork of a thick
ivy-stem on the old church tower. They chose a most exposed place by
the side of a walk trodden by dozens of visitors to the church nearly
every day of the summer. The first time we noticed it (in 1894) the
nest was so low and so exposed that nothing could save it. In 1895,
when it was placed higher up and better concealed, the young were
successfully reared. In 1896 they chose a position actually not more
than three feet from the ground, and yet, marvellous to relate, owing
to watchful care on the part of human friends, and the continual
replacing of a screen of ivy leaves, they scored another success. In
1897, though the site was higher up and apparently much safer, the
young birds were taken, but in 1898 they were again able to escape the
attentions of cats and boys and bring off their brood without mishap;
in 1899 they wisely abandoned the dangerous situation altogether.
I was once watching a flycatcher perched on the food-stand opposite and
close to my open window, when I noticed that besides a
constantly-repeated weak single note, it had every now and then a
cadence of two and again of three notes, and sometimes a very faint
kind of inward warble.
The iron boundary hurdles on the south side of the garden are a
favourite stand for flycatchers, and I have seen them busily occupied
there in catching flies, which they carried to their young ones in the
trees near by, whilst every now and then the prettily-marked youngsters
would themselves come down to the top rail and sit there to be fed.
Croquet hoops on the grass near these hurdles seem to have a great
attraction for them. Two, sometimes three, would be there at the same
time. After each pursuit of a passing fly they would return now to the
same hoop, now to another, and sometimes they seemed to go the round of
all the hoops in turn. Every day throughout the summer they would be
there, and in the white line under each hoop was left indisputable
evidence of their regular occupation.
Towards the end of July, 1902, we were much interested in a pair of
flycatchers with their little family of three. One of the old birds
would spend its time catching flies for the young ones, whilst the
other rested, sitting quite unconcerned by itself on the rails. When
the working parent brought a fly to one of the family the other two
would hurry up, and there was constantly a small crowd of four
gesticulating little birds in one part or other of the lawn. Between
the intervals of being fed the young birds learnt to forage for
themselves, not, I noticed, flying off the ground after insects, but
running after them on the grass. These five birds stayed with us until
September 9th. They often flew down from the trees to catch flies on
the grass, and would hover in front of shrubs and tall plants whilst
they picked off the flies near them.
When flycatchers have been on the croquet hoops and swallows were
flying low, they had not seldom to get pretty sharply out of the way to
avoid a collision, as the swallows appeared purposely to fly at them.
In 1908 we were fortunate enough to see a bird here that is very seldom
found in Cheshire, namely, a pied flycatcher. It was in the evening of
August 25th that we saw it. The strange little bird came quite close up
to the French window of the room in which we were sitting, and we
noticed plainly the white patch on his wing. It did not seem at all
shy, and I watched it about the house for an hour or so.
It is said in "The Fauna of Cheshire" that while birds are sometimes
seen during the spring migration, there is no other record of a pied
flycatcher in Cheshire on the return journey in autumn.
Of swallows there is no lack. Nearly every year there are one or two
nests in the outbuildings, and in 1900 a pair began to build against
the wall of the house porch just over the front door. The wall was
perfectly flat, and they began to fasten mud against it as a
house-martin would have done. To save possible untoward consequences to
the hats of visitors I rigged up a shelf over the door; this, perhaps,
frightened them, at any rate, they did not go on with their work.
In 1908 a pair set their minds on building in the old church, and build
they did in spite of all we could do in the way of keeping doors and
windows shut (they must have found their way through some broken quarry
of a window). However, when we saw that we were beaten we made the best
of it, and really there was very little mess, and it was pleasant to
hear them warbling in the roof. When the young birds were hatched in
July the old ones were more wary than ever. If they saw anyone in the
church, instead of going on to the nest, they would turn back and fly
away with their mouthful of dainties. However, by hiding, I managed to
see the nestlings fed, and noticed that though they were very
vociferous when they guessed there was an immediate prospect of their
hunger being satisfied, a warning note from the old bird seemed to
silence them at once.
For a good many years a pair of swallows have nested in the porch of
the new church, and in 1910 an old trimmed straw hat that hung on a
nail in an outbuilding at the church-house was chosen by another pair
as a suitable foundation for their nest, and in this rather
strangely-placed nursery they brought up a young family.
There is something very charming in the swallow's warbling song, beyond
its association with warm and beautiful weather; and when in autumn
they are congregating by thousands, to hear them all chanting together
as they fill the air, and, sailing round and round in widening and
interlacing circles, mount higher and higher until the highest are
almost out of sight, is to my mind wonderfully grand and impressive.
Sometimes the swallows melt away without any noticeable gatherings,
while in other years they assemble in such flocks about the end of
September that in certain favourite hunting grounds the sky is almost
darkened by them, and to watch the intricate maze of perpetual motion
is enough to make one giddy, while as at intervals they sit resting,
they seem to stretch away for miles in long lines on the telegraph
wires.
Swallows and wagtails apparently grudge one another (and flycatchers) a
share in their insect sporting rights, if their mutual spitefulness has
any meaning. This common taste for the same kind of food often brings
the three into close quarters, and it is curious to notice the
different methods they use to compass the same end; the swallow
ceaselessly rushing at full speed through the air, the wagtail trusting
to his nimbleness of foot, and the flycatcher making a series of little
excursions upwards after his prey. I have seen swallows walking about
on the grass and picking up flies, and when their young ones are
resting on the ground they will often bring them food there, alighting
by the side first of one and then of another.
Ten years ago it was only on two or three houses in the village that
house-martins built, and they were seldom seen except in the immediate
neighbourhood of these, but now (1911) they have become comparatively
abundant everywhere. The wooden hay-sheds recently put up at many of
the farms seem to have attracted them in the first instance, but when
once they were led to look more closely into the matter they evidently
found that there were many more eligible building sites in Warburton
than they had had any idea of before. They have never yet made their
real home with us, but during the latter part of the summer they come
in crowds to the garden, and there are among them many only just able
to fly, who spend most of their time on the roof of the house, waiting
to be fed.
[Illustration: A Corner in the Garden with Allium Dioscorides.]
Two house-martins fell down a bedroom chimney here, and when I opened
the window to let them out, whilst one took advantage of it at once the
other kept flying round and round quite close up to the ceiling and
resting on a bell-wire that ran across. It was a long time, more than
half an hour, before I could persuade him that he was looking in the
wrong place for a way of escape.
At one time after the Ship Canal had been begun and traffic had ceased
on the river, a large colony of sand-martins established themselves
under the disused towing-path almost opposite, and naturally they were
then plentiful enough. Now, as far as we are concerned, the river with
all its belongings is a thing of the past, and it is only occasionally
that we see the little brown birds hawking for flies in the garden.
I was surprised not long ago to find in a field-sandpit, a mile away
from any other sand-martins' nests that I knew of, a solitary nest in a
hole within easy reach of my hand. The young must have been hatched,
for I watched the birds go in with food.
Sand-martins have a peculiar interest as being perhaps the most
universally distributed of all small birds. One likes to think that
nearly everywhere one went, in Asia, Africa or America, the very same
little brown swallows might be seen ceaselessly flitting about,
bringing back to mind the green fields and cloudy skies of home in
England.
Only once have I seen that other cosmopolitan, the tree-creeper, in the
garden. One morning in May, 1895, I heard a strange, small, rather
shrill song and found that it came from a little brown tree-creeper on
an oak just opposite my window. I watched it for some time through
field glasses as it climbed about, prying into every crack of the bark
and singing as it worked.
VII.
SPARROWS AND OTHER FINCHES.
Although I have never myself seen a goldfinch in the garden, they have
been seen here, and on the rough ground near the Ship Canal they are
not uncommon, indeed, I have heard of several shillings a week being
made by birds that have been caught there in spite of County Council
orders. They are usually known here as "red linnets," but another
Cheshire name for them is "nickers."
Greenfinches (green linnets in Cheshire) abound; in early spring they
are more than usually conspicuous, as in their brightest feather they
pursue one another in and out among the hollies and dark yew hedges.
Though then less evident to the eye, throughout the summer they let us
know by their unmistakable and wearisome notes that they are with us
still.
As early as April 29th, in 1890, I watched a greenfinch on a thorn
opposite my window feeding what appeared to be a fully-fledged young
one. It was pumping up the food from its craw, in the same way that a
pigeon does. The end of April is so unusually early for a greenfinch
family to have flown, that perhaps it was only another instance of
delicate marital attention, such as I have noticed in the case of
robins and tits.
In February, 1893, a hen hawfinch was shown me. It had just been shot
in the village, and in 1894 I heard of a nest in the gardens at Lymm
Hall, rather more than two miles away.
My wife told me one morning in October, 1910, that she had seen on a
tree near her window a thick-set bird with a big head and short tail
and neck, whose colour she described as some shades of brown. Two or
three little birds appeared to be mobbing it, and it kept pecking at
them like a parrot. She only saw it for a minute or two, before it flew
away round the corner of the house. It altogether sounds as though it
might have been a hawfinch.