unprejudiced looker-on who doesn't suffer from their depredations.
There is no denying that sparrows are vulgar, and bold and pushing, or
that they are tiresomely persevering in the mischief that they do. They
are coarsely built and have no song, while their monotonous chirp is
distracting, but they have that which for the race of life stands them
in more stead than either beauty or musical talent; they have courage
and intelligence, a wonderful power of adapting themselves to
circumstances and a sound healthy constitution, with a digestion that
an ostrich might envy.
The food-stand has shown me what sparrows are and what they can do.
When I set it up I had no wish to feed sparrows, and could not bear to
see them devouring all before them in the greedy, systematic way that
they have. So I set my wits to work to see if I could not contrive
something by which they might be baffled without depriving the tits of
their food. It proved more than I could do to prevent any of the
sparrows getting any of the food, but I was able to make it more
difficult for them, so difficult that only a few could manage it. They
differ very much individually: some are far bolder and more
enterprising than others, but I have found that some sparrows can do
almost anything that a tit can do in the way of acrobatic performances,
though not, of course, with the same easy grace. I tried many devices.
I had seen somewhere that if food were suspended from a pliable twig
only tits would venture to attack it. It didn't take long to prove the
fallacy of this idea. The swinging of the net made not the slightest
difference to the sparrows; they alighted on it just as readily as if
it had been lying on the ground. Then I tried hanging the net at one
end of a stick and a movable weight at the other. The stick acted as a
balance, and the net went down directly a bird settled on it. This
instability frightened the sparrows for a long time, but in the end
they got quite used to it. It was the same with many other contrivances
that I tried, they answered their purpose for a time, it may be
altogether as far as most went, but in every case sooner or later some
sparrows learnt to overcome every difficulty, and it struck me that
each successive year they seemed to do so more easily, as though they
turned the experience of one year to good account in the next.
In 1899 I made an apparatus like a windmill, with four arms, and food
in a kind of little box at the end of each. The arms, of course, went
down directly a bird touched them. This for a long time was effectual,
and I had begun to flatter myself that I had solved the problem, but
during a hard frost some one or two sparrows overcame their fears and
managed to get the fat, and when once they saw it might be done with
safety many others learnt the trick. I then complicated the idea into a
wheel, with eight arms, and food only at the extreme point of each.
This answered so far that no sparrow seemed able to get at the fat from
the revolving arm itself as they hung on to it (an easy feat for the
tits), but they used to hover opposite the ends of the arms and pick
out the food. (Robins did this also.) Independently of its effect in
discouraging the sparrows, the wheel afforded much amusement by the
antics it imposed upon the tits as they went round and up and down on
the arms.
One plan I tried depended for its action on the difference of weight
between a sparrow and a tit. It was the opposite of the arrangement by
which sparrows are prevented from appropriating the food put out for
pheasants, where the pheasant opens the corn-box by his weight on the
perch outside. I tried so to arrange the balance that the heavier
sparrow was cut off from the hole which contained the food, whilst for
the tit it remained open. The practical drawback to this plan was the
nicety of adjustment required, for though a sparrow is more than twice
the weight of a tom-tit, the difference between the two weights is
little more than a quarter of an ounce.
One of the most successful contrivances, after all, is one of the
simplest. Take a tin canister (one that I used was three inches long by
2-1/2 in diameter), hang it open end downwards by a string brought
through a hole in the other end, to this string fasten inside the tin a
bit of wood about the thickness of a large pencil, and let it hang like
the clapper in a bell, projecting a quarter of an inch below the bottom
rim of the tin. Plaster all round the inside of the tin with fat,
leaving the wooden tongue in the middle free for the birds to cling to.
In this way both great-tits and tom-tits can feed themselves without
difficulty, but only one sparrow in twenty can manage with much ado to
hold on and to eat at the same time. (To see a sparrow with his
less-practised feet clinging to the edge of the tin, back downwards,
just like a tit and helping himself to its contents is a good example
of the energetic enterprise and the adaptability of his nature.) Robins
do sometimes hold on to the tin in the same way, but generally they get
quite as much as they want by flying up and pecking at the fat. They
seem able to aim very accurately, and when the tin is nearly empty can
make sure of the smallest fragments. Sparrows also attack the food in
the same way by flying up at it, but they seem to find it more awkward,
owing, perhaps, to the small space between the sides of the tin and the
wood in the middle, which barely gives room for their larger heads and
clumsier beaks.
Another successful plan was to suspend the fat within a roll of
inch-mesh wire netting. To begin with I put this on the food-stand, at
some little distance from my window, and though at first only tits and
robins would venture down within the roll of wire, after a time the
sparrows followed suit, and, of course, there was nothing to prevent
them getting as much as they liked but their own caution. I might have
stopped them by covering the top with netting, but then the great-tits
and robins would have been excluded as well as the sparrows, and even
tom-tits could only get through the meshes with difficulty. However, I
moved the roll quite close up to the glass of the window, leaving the
top still uncovered (and the bottom closed) as before. Tom-tits came to
it in its new position almost as readily as when on the food-stand.
Great-tits came but were always rather uneasy about it, but not one
sparrow ventured to clamber down inside the roll, although it was there
for more than a year and we had some very hard frosts. They would
continually try to get at the food from underneath and from the side,
but could not make up their minds to go inside the roll itself,
although it was quite open and they had learnt to go in without scruple
when it was on the food-stand, before it was put close to the window.
The most fearless of any birds with regard to this wire roll were two
robins in the beginning of 1902; they were perpetually scrambling up
and down inside the wire, and continued to do so until April, when the
supply of food came to end.
The extreme caution of sparrows enables one to scare them away for a
time by a fluttering ribbon or a bit of paper, but it is only for a
time; when they see that tits treat such things with contempt and
venture close to them with impunity they soon summon up courage to lay
aside their suspicions.
I once put a wire rat-trap under the food-stand, so arranged that it
went off when a string was pulled. At first, it was baited with corn,
but while robins and tits went in and out without the least concern,
not a sparrow would go near, and for a time the presence of the trap
kept them away from the food-stand altogether. However, they could not
resist the temptation of bread, and one or two were caught at last. But
what was the use of catching them? I hadn't the heart to kill them in
cold blood and used to let them go, and indeed I quite enjoyed myself
the sense of joyous relief they must have felt as they flew off
unharmed into the free air.
However much mischief sparrows may do, some good work must be placed to
their credit. Through a great part of the year, even in February, I
have seen them flying up after gnats, and it is a common thing in
summer to see a sparrow in pursuit of a moth. Its efforts always seem
ridiculously awkward and sometimes I fancy are ineffectual after all,
but they must commonly succeed or they would not try so often and so
persistently.
In the spring of 1900 the grass was covered for many days together with
some kind of little black fly, and sparrows a dozen or so at a time
with blackbirds, thrushes and chaffinches found a continual feast in
them. I noticed again and again quite a big round ball of them
collected and carried away by a thrush.
It has often been noticed that sparrows are more eager than most birds
in hunting for aphides, and I have seen a sparrow make short work of a
"daddy-long-legs." In July and August I have watched them catching
flies on the grass, running after them much as a wagtail does, indeed
once I remember seeing a sparrow and a wagtail on the lawn at the same
time, each followed by a young bird whose hunger they were trying to
satisfy with flies caught in similar fashion.
Impudence is a marked characteristic of a sparrow. I have seen a
starling at work in his busy, methodical way, closely followed all over
the lawn by a sparrow. There he was all the time, close at the
starling's elbow and ready to pounce upon whatever dainty morsel a
skill superior to his own might bring to light. The starling was
plainly bored by his company, but the sparrow would take no hint, and
maintained his position in spite even of pointed rebuffs from the
other's beak. (In the dry summer of 1911 I noticed at different times
both a throstle and a blackbird attended in the same way by a sparrow.)
At another time when a starling has arrived with food in its mouth, and
not daring on account of my being there to take it into its nest, has
begun, after the usual unwise custom of starlings, loudly to advertise
the situation, I have seen two sparrows, attracted by the noise he
made, take up positions one on either side and try to snatch the food
away from him. I saw this happen twice on two successive days in June,
1901.
The dusting habit of sparrows must be counted among their many
iniquities when they indulge in it, as they often do, in a bed of
newly-sown seeds, but it was strange to see one dusting during the hard
frost of 1895; one should have thought that they were so out of the way
of dusting in winter that no sparrow would have taken advantage of the
rare opportunity when a long dry frost made it possible.
One day in April, 1899, a sparrow that was sitting on the food-stand
close by my window made quite a song of his chirping. There was a kind
of modulation of notes, continuously uttered and accompanied by a
regular "beating time" movement of his tail. On another occasion I have
heard a sparrow sitting alone on the ridge of a roof, singing, one
could only call it, quite a little song in subdued tones.
VIII.
FINCHES, STARLINGS AND CROWS.
The spruce, handsome chaffinch (in Cheshire "pied finch") is with us
all the year round, and his song here, as I suppose everywhere, is one
of the most familiar of the pleasant voices of spring.
One or more chaffinches generally feed with the fowls (and sometimes
they are quite extraordinarily tame, hens more so, perhaps, than
cocks), but they do not often attempt to get food from the stand.
Though they sometimes do, for instance in the winter of 1910-11, there
was one that came regularly.
The gait of the chaffinch strikes one as peculiar, it is as a fact a
hopping movement, but it gives the impression of a run.
I have frequently noticed something like rivalry or competition in
singing between a chaffinch and another bird, such as a tree-pipit or a
lesser whitethroat, or a willow-wren.
One night as I was going the round of the house the last thing, about
12 o'clock, I heard a great fluttering and found that a light had been
left on a table close to an unshuttered window, and outside beating
against the glass was a handsome cock chaffinch.
In February, 1911, a brambling was brought to me for identification. It
had been shot at the other side of the village, one of a large flock.
I have never seen one in the garden itself, but not far away I think I
caught sight of a small flock in March, 1899.
Far more interesting than stuffed specimens in a museum (how seldom,
even at South Kensington, do you see small birds well set up, even
sufficiently well to recognize the bird when met with alive!); far more
interesting is such an outdoor aviary as one finds near the Town Hall
in Warrington, where the birds appear to want nothing to make their
lives ideally happy. In this aviary bramblings seem quite at home, and
may be seen in best condition of health and feather.
Lesser redpoles, which here they call "jitties," I have seen close to
the garden, and on the other side of the village they are common. I
have heard of one boy catching 50 in a season with birdlime; for these
he got a few pence apiece in Warrington.
A lesser redpole was given me in 1900, and a very engaging little bird
he was. Though supposed to be freshly caught he was tame when first I
had him, and in a very short time seemed hardly to know fear.
We used to let him out of his cage every day for an hour or so at a
time. He enjoyed this immensely, and we had great difficulty in
shutting him up again. He seemed fond of his cage, and would be
continually going into it, but directly we went near to shut the door
he was out. I tried a long string, which we pulled from a distance as
soon as he was in the cage. This answered for a time, but he got to be
so knowing that when he saw the string fastened to the door he wouldn't
go into the cage at all. We got the better of him in the end, however,
by hanging a bit of card inside the doorway; when he pushed against
this on the outside he could get by into the cage, but he couldn't open
it from the inside. We only turned the card in when we wanted him to go
back, leaving him free to go in and out as he liked till then. Oddly
enough, he used to go in almost directly the card was in its place, and
never attempted to get out again. He seemed to enjoy the exercise of
flying very much, and used to go round and round the room again and
again and again for the mere pleasure of it.
Though he would settle on the different things in the room and stay
there for some length of time, there was never any need to clean up
after him, but on the outside of his cage he was not so particular. It
was a great amusement to him to sit and make faces at himself in a
looking-glass.
He lived very happily with us for more than two years. In the end he
died of some kind of wasting disease, but was bright and apparently
happy to the last.
For some months before he died, if we let him out at meal-times, as we
often did, he had a curious habit of going to the salt-cellars and
helping himself to grains of salt; once he took as many as thirteen
pinches in succession! We often wondered afterwards whether he took the
salt because he was ill or whether it was the salt that made him ill.
I would gladly sacrifice many fruit buds for the sake of seeing
bullfinches in the garden, but never yet have I had that pleasure.
Other people in the village do not regard their visits in the same
light, and it is only because I hear of their being shot that I know
they come here.
A bullfinch that belonged to a cousin must I think have reached the
highest degree of tameness possible in a bird. Tommy, as he was called,
was taken from the nest before he could fly, and he not only lost all
sense of fear but showed an extraordinary personal devotion to his
mistress. He used to wake her in the morning with a kiss, and warble
his little greeting. He would come directly she called him, and would
fly after her from room to room. This devotion was at last the cause of
his death. In May, 1901, he was taken to London to a strange house, and
one day hearing his mistress's voice as she came in, he flew down the
stairs to meet her, and somehow struck against the hall lamp with such
force that he was taken up dead.
[Illustration: The Two Nests.]
I find the following entry in my diary for November 9th, 1895:--"A
small flight of birds passed along the trees in front of the window.
Caught a momentary glance of one as it rested on the tree, and noticed
shades of brown and pink and the peculiar bill. Could they have been
crossbills?"
Yellow-hammers, or "goldfinches" as they are called here, are often to
be seen in the fields near, but in the garden we are more familiar with
the black-headed reed-bunting. We generally have one or two about the
old bed of the river. I have watched the bird through a telescope on a
July day, as he sat on an osier twig that was swaying in the wind,
preening his feathers and uttering his short melody (?) betweenwhiles.
He would begin as though he had really something to sing, then would
come two halting notes, indicating doubt of his power to do much after
all, which would immediately become a certainty, and his brief attempt
would end in a fizzle. He would, however, be perfectly satisfied with
the performance himself, and would go through it again and again almost
as persistently as the yellow-hammer repeats his wearisome monotonous
phrase. In the spring he has a still simpler song, if it can be called
a song, consisting of two or three notes of one tone, something like
the cheep of a chicken, sometimes repeated _ad infinitum_, sometimes
followed by a short run of three or four notes more.
We have starlings with us all the year round, and I am glad of it. Here
at any rate they do nothing but good, and they are, besides, handsome,
and are interesting to watch, while their song, whether a chorus or a
solo, is always cheerful. Cold and bad weather doesn't seem to affect
their spirits. On Christmas morning, in 1897, although there was a hard
frost, starlings were singing away merrily, one of them imitating a
blackbird's note exactly.
At one time flocks of starlings used to come on autumn evenings to
roost in the garden. I have watched one detachment after another arrive
until the trees and evergreens were crowded with them. They did not
come so much later on when the leaves had fallen, and now that the
shrubbery has been thinned they do not come at all in any numbers. In
spring I have heard 30 or more all singing together in this same
shrubbery as late as April 2nd.
Starlings hunt for their food in a methodical, business-like way. They
do not seem to have the peculiar gift by which thrushes hit on the
exact spot where a worm is (I fancy they do not feed much on worms) but
they go diligently over every square inch of ground in their search,
probing the turf with their bills widely open, so widely that one can
hardly see how they can close them on a grub when they find one.
Starlings afford another example of a strange perversion of instinct or
want of common sense. If you happen to be standing anywhere near the
place that one has chosen for his nest, and he arrives with his food in
his mouth, instead of slipping quietly in whilst your eyes are turned
away, he waits outside making as much racket as he can, and you are
almost forced to notice him and cannot fail to see the whereabouts of
his nest, plainly marked as it is sure to be by plentiful splashes of
white.
It is quite a common thing in spring and summer to see starlings
catching flies in the air, and I remember in 1906, on September 29th,
the air was, one might say, full of starlings, floating about in every
direction with expanded wings, and then shooting up or down or to one
side when they came within reach of a fly. It was a warm, still day,
and I fancy the flies they were catching were winged aphides.
For many years now as soon as the elder-berries are ripe numbers of
starlings, chiefly young ones, arrive on the scene, and in a few days
clear them off completely.
Jays are not common here, but we have occasionally watched one in the
garden as he was looking for fallen acorns in the grass close to the
house.
One may pretty safely count on seeing a magpie near Arley at any time
of the year, and we do at long intervals see them in this garden and
in the fields near, but they are very far from common.
I have heard of a magpie at a farm in the next village to this, many
years ago indeed, who kept his eye on a turkey that was in the habit of
laying eggs at a little distance from the house, and often managed to
appropriate the newly-laid egg before the farm people could stop him.
Jackdaws are often about, generally in company with rooks, but I have
never specially noticed them settling in the garden, as the rooks often
do.
In Wales once I saw a jackdaw busily engaged exploring the back of a
pony with its beak. The pony continued quietly grazing all the while,
but I thought he seemed rather relieved when his visitor left.
In January, 1898, two crows appeared in the garden; I used to see them
nearly every evening. A month later we saw a single crow, injured in
one wing, go backwards and forwards over the whole length of the
opposite bank. Up and down he went, regularly quartering the ground in
his search for food. He did this for several days, and we felt quite
sorry for him, he was so diligent and persevering, and it must have
been so little that he could find within such comparatively narrow
limits. We put food for him, which he soon found and seemed to
appreciate. He drove away rooks who tried to share it with him, but as
he carried away each bit to eat in private the rooks took advantage of
his absence, and the supply did not last as long as it might have done.
The poor bird was uncommonly wary: he would spy one out hundreds of
yards away and disappear in a wonderful manner, seeing that he could
not fly. At last some Ship Canal workmen caught him. I got him from
them and kept him for three months, but though he ate pretty well it
did not seem to do him much good, and he never became in the least tame
to the day of his death.
We have often hoped that rooks would build in the garden; they come
sometimes to the higher trees as though they had thoughts of doing so,
but they have not gone beyond that as yet. In some years when acorns
are ripe many rooks come here to get them (in 1911, although acorns
were extraordinarily abundant, I hardly saw a single rook). I have
never seen them pick up the acorns on the ground, as the jays and
wood-pigeons do, but they gather them fresh for themselves from the
tree.
More than once I have seen a single rook pursuing a hawk, and, on the
other hand, I have seen a rook put to flight by a missel-thrush.
Rather a strange story was told me of a farmer's daughter at Heatley,
near here. She lived by herself not far from the railway station, and
every day, summer and winter alike, she fed a number of rooks that
habitually waited on her bounty. One winter's day, it appears, she
threw down food for a few rooks that were in a tree behind her house.
The next day they were there again, and again she fed them, and so it
grew into a regular thing, and they came expecting to be fed like so
many fowls every day of the year. My informant often watched the
proceeding, and said that the birds seemed to know their benefactress
quite well and not to be at all afraid of her, though they were as shy
of strangers as any other rooks.
Skylarks are abundant in the neighbourhood, and often in the garden we
hear one singing overhead. I have seen a lark singing his regular song
on the ground, and have seen one perched on iron railings by the side
of a road holding a largish brown moth in its bill, and at the same
time uttering repeatedly two or three notes of its song.
Larks are very fond of dusting in roads. I remember being struck one
hot day in June by the number of dusting larks I met with in a ten-mile
ride. Without any exaggeration there must have been one every twenty
yards on an average for the whole distance.
IX.
OTHER BIRDS.
The wild shriek of swifts, as they dash and wheel through the air at
their topmost speed, seems to express such intense delight in freedom
and motion and power, that it imparts something of the same sense of
exhilaration to the beholder, at least, I know it is so with me.