since they leave us in autumn, closely associated with these warm June
nights, the stillness of which they break in very different fashion, and
these are the nightingale and nightjar. Each is of considerable
interest in its own way. It is not to be denied that the churring note
of the nightjar is, to ordinary ears, the reverse of attractive, and the
bird is not much more pleasing to the eye than to the ear; while the
nightingale, on the contrary, produces such sweet sounds as made Izaak
Walton marvel what music God could provide for His saints in heaven when
He gave such as this to sinners on earth. The suggestion was not wholly
his own, since the father of angling borrowed it from a French writer;
but he vastly improved on the original, and the passage will long live
in the hearts of thousands who care not a jot for his instructions in
respect of worms. At the same time, the nightjar, though the less
attractive bird of the two, is fully as interesting as its comrade of
the summer darkness, and there should be no difficulty in indicating the
little that they have in common, as well as much wherein they differ, in
both habits and appearance.
Both, then, are birds of sober attire. Indeed of the two, the nightjar,
with its soft and delicately pencilled plumage and the conspicuous white
spots, is perhaps the handsomer, though, as it is seen only in the
gloaming, its quiet beauty is but little appreciated. The unobtrusive
dress of the nightingale, on the other hand, is familiar in districts in
which the bird abounds, and is commonly quoted, by contrast with its
unrivalled voice, as the converse of the gaudy colouring of raucous
macaws and parrakeets. As has been said, both these birds are summer
migrants, the nightingale arriving on our shores about the middle of
April, the nightjar perhaps a fortnight later. Thenceforth, however,
their programmes are wholly divergent, for, whereas the nightjars
proceed to scatter over the length and breadth of Britain, penetrating
even to Ireland in the west and as far north as the Hebrides, the
nightingale stops far short of these extremes and leaves whole counties
of England, as well as probably the whole of Scotland, and certainly the
whole of Ireland, out of its calculations. It is however well known that
its range is slowly but surely extending towards the west.
This curiously restricted distribution of the nightingale, indeed,
within the limits of its summer home is among the most remarkable of
the many problems confronting the student of distribution, and
successive ingenious but unconvincing attempts to explain its seeming
eccentricity, or at any rate caprice, in the choice of its nesting range
only make the confusion worse. Briefly, in spite of a number of doubtful
and even suspicious reports of the bird's occurrence outside of these
boundaries, it is generally agreed by the soundest observers that its
travels do not extend much north of the city of York, or much west of a
line drawn through Exeter and Birmingham. By way of complicating the
argument, we know, on good authority, that the nightingale's range is
equally peculiar elsewhere; and that, whereas it likewise shuns the
departments in the extreme west of France, it occurs all over the
Peninsula, a region extending considerably farther into the sunset than
either Brittany or Cornwall, in both of which it is unknown. No
satisfactory explanation of the little visitor's objection to Wild Wales
or Cornwall has been found, and it may at once be stated that its
capricious distribution cannot be accounted for by any known facts of
soil, climate, or vegetation, since the surroundings which it finds
suitable in Kent and Sussex are equally to be found down in the West
Country, but fail to attract their share of nightingales.
The song of the nightingale, in praise of which volumes have been
written, is perhaps more beautiful than that of any other bird, though I
have heard wonderful efforts from the mocking-bird in the United States
and from the bulbuls along the banks of the Jordan. The latter are
sometimes, more especially in poetry, regarded as identical with the
nightingale; and, indeed, some ornithologists hold the two to be closely
related. What a gap there is between the sobbing cadences of the
nightingale and the rasping note of the nightjar, which, with specific
reference to a Colonial cousin of that bird Tasmanians ingeniously
render as "more pork"! It seems almost ludicrous to include under the
head of birdsong not only the music of the nightingale, but also the
croak of the raven and the booming note of the ostrich. Yet these also
are the love-songs of their kind, and the hen ostrich doubtless finds
more music in the thunderous note of her lord than in the faint melody
of such song-birds as her native Africa provides. The nightingale sings
to his mate while she is sitting on her olive-green eggs perching on a
low branch of the tree, at foot of which the slender nest is hidden in
the undergrowth. So much is known to every schoolboy who is too often
guided by the sound on his errand of plunder; and why the song of this
particular warbler should have been described by so many writers as one
of sadness, seeing that it is associated with the most joyous days in
the bird's year, passes comprehension. So obviously is its object to
hearten the female in her long and patient vigil that as soon as the
young are hatched the male's voice breaks like that of other choristers
to a guttural croak. It is said, indeed--though so cruel an experiment
would not appeal to many--that if the nest be destroyed just as the
young are hatched the bird recovers all his sweetness of voice and sings
anew while another home is built.
Although poetic licence has ascribed the song to the female, it is the
male nightingale only that sings, and for the purpose aforementioned.
The note of the nightjar, on the other hand, is equally uttered by both
sexes, and both also have the curious habit of repeatedly clapping the
wings for several minutes together. They moreover share the business of
incubation, taking day and night duty on the eggs, which, two in number,
are laid on the bare ground without any pretence of a nest, and
generally on open commons in the neighbourhood of patches of fern-brake.
Like the owls, these birds sleep during the day and are active only when
the sun goes down. It is this habit of seeking their insect food only in
the gloaming which makes nightjars among the most difficult of birds to
study from life, and all accounts of their feeding habits must therefore
be received with caution, particularly that which compares the bristles
on the mouth with baleen in whales, serving as a sort of strainer for
the capture of minute flying prey. This is an interesting suggestion,
and may even be sober fact; but its adoption would necessitate the bird
flying open-mouthed among the oaks and other trees beneath which it
finds the yellow underwings and cockchafers on which it feeds, and I
have more than once watched it hunting its victims with the beak closed.
I noticed this particularly when camping in the backwoods of Eastern
Canada where the bird goes by the name of nighthawk.
In all probability its food consists exclusively of insects, though
exceptional cases have been noted in which the young birds had evidently
been fed on seeds. The popular error which charges it with stealing the
milk of ewes and goats, from which it derives the undeserved name of
"goat-sucker," with its equivalent in several Continental languages, is
another result of the imperfect light in which it is commonly observed.
Needless to say, there is no truth whatever in the accusation, for the
nightjar would find no more pleasure in drinking milk than we should in
eating moths.
Here, then, are two night-voices of very different calibre. These are
not our only birds that break the silence on moonlight nights in June.
The common thrush often sings far into the night, and the sedge-warbler
is a persistent caroller that has often been mistaken for the
nightingale. The difference in this respect between the two subjects of
these remarks is that the nightjar is invariably silent all through the
day, whereas the nightingale sings joyously at all hours. It is only
because his splendid music is more marked in the comparative silence of
the night, with little or no competition, that his daylight concert is
often overlooked.
JULY
SWIFTS, SWALLOWS AND MARTINS
SWIFTS, SWALLOWS AND MARTINS
When the trout-fisherman sees the first martins and swallows dipping
over the sward of the water-meadows and skimming the surface of the
stream in hot pursuit of such harried water-insects as have escaped the
jaws of greedy fish, he knows that summer is coming in. The signs of
spring have been evident in the budding hedgerows for some weeks. The
rooks are cawing in the elms, the cuckoo's note has been heard in the
spinney for some time before these little visitors pass in jerky flight
up and down the valley. Then, a little later, come the swifts--the black
and screaming swifts--which, though learned folk may be right in
sundering them utterly from their smaller travelling companions from the
sunny south, will always in the popular fancy be associated with the
rest. Colonies of swifts, swallows, and martins are a dominant feature
of English village life during the warm months; and though there are
fastidious folk who take not wholly culpable exception to their little
visitors on the score of cleanliness, most of us welcome them back each
year, if only for the sake of the glad season of their stay. If,
moreover, it is a question of choice between these untiring travellers
resting in our eaves and the stay-at-home starling or sparrow, the
choice will surely fall on the first every time.
The swift is the largest and most rapid in its flight, and its voice has
a penetrating quality lacking in the notes of the rest. Swifts screaming
in headlong flight about a belfry or up and down a country lane are the
embodiment of that sheer joy of life which, in some cases with slender
reason, we associate peculiarly with the bird-world. Probably, however,
these summer migrants are as happy as most of their class. On the wing
they can have few natural enemies, though one may now and again be
struck down by a hawk; and they alight on the ground so rarely as to run
little risk from cats or weasels, while the structure and position of
their nests alike afford effectual protection for the eggs and young.
Compared with that of the majority of small birds, therefore, their
existence should be singularly happy and free from care; and though
that of the swift can scarcely, perhaps, when we remember its shrill
voice, be described as one grand sweet song, it should not be chequered
by many troubles. The greatest risk is no doubt that of being snapped up
by some watchful pike if the bird skims too close to the surface of
either still or running water, and I have even heard of their being
seized in this way by hungry mahseer, those great barbel which gladden
the heart of exiled anglers whose lot is cast on the banks of Himalayan
rivers.
It is, however, the sparrows and starlings, rivals for the nesting
sites, who show themselves the irreconcilable enemies of the returned
prodigals. Terrific battles are continually enacted between them with
varying fortunes, and the anecdotes of these frays would fill a volume.
Jesse tells of a feud at Hampton Court, in the course of which the
swallows, having only then completed their nest, were evicted by
sparrows, who forthwith took possession and hatched out their eggs. Then
came Nemesis, for the sparrows were compelled to go foraging for food
with which to fill the greedy beaks, and during their enforced absence
the swallows returned in force, threw the nestlings out, and demolished
the home. The sparrows sought other quarters, and the swallows
triumphantly built a new nest on the ruins of the old. A German writer
relates a case of revolting reprisal on the part of some swallows
against a sparrow that appropriated their nest and refused to quit.
After repeated failure to evict the intruder, the swallows, helped by
other members of the colony, calmly plastered up the front door so
effectually that the unfortunate sparrow was walled up alive and died of
hunger. This refined mode of torture is not unknown in the history of
mankind, but seems singularly unsuited to creatures so fragile.
The nests of these birds show, as a rule, little departure from the
conventional plan, but they do adapt their architecture to
circumstances, and I remember being much struck on one occasion by the
absence of any dome or roof. It was in Asia Minor, on the seashore, that
I came upon a cottage long deserted, its door hanging by one hinge, and
all the glass gone from the windows. In the empty rooms numerous
swallows were rearing twittering broods in roofless nests. No doubt the
birds realised that they had nothing to fear from rain, and were
reluctant to waste time and labour in covering their homes with
unnecessary roofs.
Most birds are careful in the education of their young, and indeed
thorough training at an early stage must be essential in the case of
creatures that are left to protect themselves and to find their own food
when only a few weeks old. Fortunately they develop with a rapidity that
puts man and other mammals to shame, and the helpless bald little swift
lying agape in the nest will in another fortnight be able to fly across
Europe. One of the most favoured observers of the early teaching given
by the mother-swallow to her brood was an angler who told me how, one
evening when he was fishing in some ponds at no great distance from
London, a number of baby swallows alighted on his rod. He kept as still
as possible, fearful of alarming his interesting visitors, but he must
at last have moved, for, with one accord, they all fell off his rod
together, skimmed over the surface of the water and disappeared in the
direction from which they had come a few moments earlier.
Swifts fly to an immense height these July evenings, mounting to such an
altitude as eventually to disappear out of sight altogether. This
curious habit, which is but imperfectly understood, has led to the
belief that, instead of roosting in the nest or among the reeds like the
swallows, the males, at any rate, spend the night flying about under the
stars. This fantastic notion is not, however, likely to commend itself
to those who pause to reflect on the incessant activity displayed by
these birds the livelong day. So rarely indeed do they alight that
country folk gravely deny them the possession of feet, and it is in the
last degree improbable that a bird of such feverish alertness could
dispense with its night's rest. No one who has watched swifts, swallows
and martins on the wing can fail to be struck by the extraordinary
judgment with which these untiring birds seem to shave the arches of
bridges, gateposts, and other obstacles in the way of their flight by so
narrow a margin as continually to give the impression of catastrophe
imminent and inevitable. Their escapes from collision are marvellous;
but the birds are not infallible, as is shown by the untoward fate of a
swallow in Sussex. In an old garden in that county there had for many
years been an open doorway with no door, and through the open space the
swallows had been wont, year after year, to fly to and fro on their
hunting trips. Then came a fateful winter during which a new owner took
it into his head to put up a fresh gate and to keep it locked, and, as
ill luck would have it, he painted it blue, which, in the season of fine
weather, probably heightened the illusion. Back came the happy swallows
to their old playground, and one of the pioneers flew headlong at the
closed gate and fell stunned and dying on the ground, a minor tragedy
that may possibly come as a surprise to those who regard the instincts
of wild birds as unerring.
That the young swallows leave our shores before their elders--late in
August or early in September--is an established fact, and the instinct
which guides them aright over land and sea, without assistance from
those more experienced, is nothing short of amazing. The swifts, last
to come, are also first to go, spending less time in the land of their
birth than either swallows or martins. The fact that an occasional
swallow has been seen in this country during the winter months finds
expression in the adage that "one swallow does not make a summer," and
it was no doubt this occasional apparition that in a less enlightened
age seemed to warrant the extraordinary belief, which still ekes out a
precarious existence in misinformed circles, that these birds, instead
of wintering abroad, retire in a torpid condition to the bottom of lakes
and ponds. It cannot be denied that these waters have occasionally, when
dredged or drained, yielded a stray skeleton of a swallow, but it should
be evident to the most homely intelligence that such debris merely
indicates careless individuals that, in passing over the water, got
their plumage waterlogged and were then drowned. It seems strange that
Gilbert White, so accurate an observer of birds, should actually have
toyed with this curious belief, though he leant rather to the more
reasonable version of occasional hybernation in caves or other
sheltered hiding-places. The rustic mind, however, preferred, and in
some unsophisticated districts still prefers, the ancient belief in
diving swallows, and no weight of evidence, however carefully presented,
would shake it in its creed. Fortunately this eccentric view of the
swallow's habits brings no harm to the bird itself, and may thus be
tolerated as an innocuous indulgence on the part of those who prefer
this fiction to the even stranger truth.
AUGUST
THE SEAGULL
THE SEAGULL
So glorious is the flight of the seagull that it tempts us to fling
aside the dry-as-dust theories of mechanism of flexed wings, coefficient
of air resistance, and all the abracadabra of the mathematical
biologist, and just to give thanks for a sight so inspiring as that of
gulls ringing high in the eye of the wind over hissing combers that
break on sloping beaches or around jagged rocks. These birds are one
with the sea, knowing no fear of that protean monster which, since
earth's beginning, has always, with its unfathomable mystery, its
insatiable cruelty, its tremendous strength, been a source of terror to
the land animals that dwell in sight of it. Yet the gulls sit on the
curling rollers as much at their ease as swimmers in a pond, and give an
impression of unconscious courage very remarkable in creatures that seem
so frail. Hunger may drive them inland, or instincts equally
irresistible at the breeding season, but never the worst gale that
lashes the sea to fury, for they dread it in its hour of rage as little
as on still summer nights when, in their hundreds, they fly off the land
to roost on the water outside the headlands.
It is curious that there should be no mention of them in the sacred
writings. We read of quails coming in from the sea, likewise of "four
great beasts," but of seafowl never a word, though one sees them in
abundance on the coast near Jaffa, and the Hebrew writers might have
been expected to weave them into the rich fabrics of their poetic
imagery as they did the pelican, the eagle and other birds less
familiar. Although seagulls have of late years been increasingly in
evidence beside the bridges of London, they are still, to the majority
of folk living far inland, symbolical of the August holiday at the
coast, and their splendid flight and raucous cries are among the most
enduring memories of that yearly escape from the smoke of cities.
The voice of gulls can with difficulty be regarded as musical, yet those
of us who live the year round by the sea find their plaintive mewing as
nicely tuned to that wild environment as the amorous gurgling of
nightingales to moonlit woods in May. Their voice may have no great
range, but at any rate it is not lacking in variety, suggesting to the
playful imagination laughter, tears, and other human moods to which they
are in all probability strangers. The curious similarity between the
note of a seagull and the whining of a cat bereft of her kittens is very
striking, and was on one occasion the cause of my being taken in by one
of these birds in a deep and beautiful backwater of the Sea of Marmora,
beside which I spent one pleasant summer. In this particular gulf, at
the head of which stands the ancient town of Ismidt, gulls, though
plentiful in the open sea, are rarely in evidence, being replaced by
herons and pelicans. I had not therefore set eyes on a seagull for many
weeks, when early one morning I heard, from the farther side of a wooded
headland, a new note suggestive of a wild cat or possibly a lynx. My
Greek servant tried in his patois to explain the unseen owner of the
mysterious voice, but it was only when a small gull suddenly came
paddling round the corner that I realised my mistake.
In addition to being at home on the seashore, and particularly in
estuaries and where the coast is rocky, gulls are a familiar sight in
the wake of steamers at the beginning and ending of the voyage, as well
as following the plough and nesting in the vicinity of inland meres and
marshes. The black-headed kind is peculiarly given to bringing up its
family far from the sea, just as the salmon ascends our rivers for the
same purpose. It is not perhaps a very loving parent, seeing that the
mortality among young gulls, many of which show signs of rough treatment
by their elders, is unusually great. On most lakes rich in fish these
birds have long established themselves, and they were, I remember, as
familiar at Geneva and Neuchatel as along the shores of Lake Tahoe in
the Californian Sierras, itself two hundred miles from the Pacific and
more than a mile above sea-level. Gulls also follow the plough in
hordes, not always to the complete satisfaction of the farmer, who is,
not unreasonably, sceptical when told that they seek wireworms only and
have no taste for grain. Unfortunately the ordinary scarecrow has no
terror for them, and I recollect, in the neighbourhood of Maryport,
seeing an immense number of gulls turning up the soil in close proximity
to several crows that, dangling from gibbets, effectually kept all black
marauders away.
Young gulls are, to the careless eye, apt to look larger than their
parents, an illusion possibly due to the optical effect of their dappled
plumage, and few people unfamiliar with these birds in their succeeding
moults readily believe that the dark birds are younger than the white.
Down in little Cornish harbours I have sometimes watched these young
birds turned to good account by their lazy elders, who call them to the
feast whenever the ebbing tide uncovers a heap of dead pilchards lying
in three or four feet of water, and then pounce on them the moment they
come to the surface with their booty. The fact is that gulls are not
expert divers. The cormorant and puffin and guillemot can vanish at the
flash of a gun, reappearing far from where they were last seen, and can
pursue and catch some of the swiftest fishes under water. Some gulls,
however, are able to plunge farther below the surface than others, and
the little kittiwake is perhaps the most expert diver of them all,
though in no sense at home under water like the shag. I have often, when
at anchor ten or fifteen miles from the land, and attended by the usual
convoy of seabirds that invariably gather round fishing-boats, amused
myself by throwing scraps of fish to them and watching the gulls do
their best to plunge below the surface when some coveted morsel was
going down into the depths, and now and again a little Roman-nose puffin
would dive headlong and snatch the prize from under the gulls' eyes.
Most of the birds were fearless enough; only an occasional
"saddleback"--the greater black-backed gull of the text-books--knowing
the hand of man to be against it for its raids on game and poultry,
would keep at a respectful distance.