Bull of the Bog, &c., is so called for the bellowing or drumming noise
or booming for which the bird is so famous. This deep note of the
"hollow-sounding Bittern" is exerted on the ground at the breeding
season, about February or March. As the day declines he leaves his
haunt, and, rising spirally, soars to a great height in the twilight.
Willughby says that it performs this last-mentioned feat in the autumn,
"making a singular kind of noise, nothing like to lowing." Bewick
says that it soars as above described when it changes its haunts.
Ordinarily it flies heavily, like the Heron, uttering from time to time
a resounding cry, not bellowing; and then Willughby, who well describes
the bellowing noise of the breeding season, supposes it to be the Night
Raven, at whose "deadly voice" the superstitious wayfarer of the night
turned pale and trembled. "This, without doubt," writes Willughby, "is
that bird our common people call the Night Raven, and have such a dread
of, imagining its cry portends no less than their death or the death of
some of their near relations; for it flies in the night, answers their
description of being like a flagging collar, and hath such a kind of
hooping cry as they talk of." Others, with some reason, consider the
Qua Bird already mentioned (which utters a loud and most disagreeable
noise when on the wing, conveying the idea of the agonies of a person
attempting to vomit) to be the true Night Raven. The Bittern was well
known to the ancients, and Aristotle mentions the fable of its origin
from staves metamorphosed into birds. The long claw of the hind toe is
much prized as a toothpick, and in the olden times it was thought to
have the property of preserving the teeth.
The Greater-billed Butcher Bird, from New Holland, has extraordinary
powers of voice: it is trained for catching small birds, and it is said
to imitate the notes of some other birds by way of decoying them to
their destruction.
The mere imitative sounds of Parrots are of little interest compared
with the instances of instinct, apparently allied to reason, which are
related of individuals. Of this tribe the distinguishing characteristics
are a hooked bill, the upper mandible of which is moveable as well as
the lower, and not in one piece with the skull, as in most other birds,
but joined to the head by a strong membrane, with which the bird lifts
it or lets it fall at pleasure. The bill is also round on the outside
and hollow within, and has, in some degree, the capacity of a mouth,
allowing the tongue, which is thick and fleshy, to play freely; while
the sound, striking against the circular border of the lower mandible,
reflects it like a palate: hence the animal does not utter a whistling
sound, but a full articulation. The tongue, which modulates all sounds,
is proportionally larger than in man.
The Wild Swan has a very loud call, and utters a melancholy cry when one
of the flock is killed; hence it was said by the poets to sing its own
dying dirge. Such was the popular belief in olden times; and, looking to
the anatomical characteristics of the species, it was, in some degree,
supported by the more inflated wind-pipe of the wild when compared
with that of the tame species. The _Song of the Swan_ is, however,
irreconcileable with sober belief, the only noise of the Wild Swan of
our times being unmelodious, and an unpleasing monotony.
The Laughing Goose is named from its note having some resemblance to the
laugh of man; and not, as Wilson supposes, from the grinning appearance
of its mandibles. The Indians imitate its cry by moving the hand quickly
against the lips, whilst they repeat the syllable _wah_.
The Cuckoo may be said to have done much for musical science, because
from that bird has been derived the _minor scale_, the origin of which
has puzzled so many; the Cuckoo's couplet being the _minor third_ sung
downwards.
The Germans are the finest appreciators of the Nightingale; and it is a
fact, that when the Prussian authorities, under pecuniary pressure, were
about to cut down certain trees near Cologne, which were frequented by
Nightingales, the alarmed citizens purchased the trees in order to save
the birds and keep their music. Yet one would think the music hardly
worth having, if it really sounded as it looks upon paper, transcribed
thus by Bechstein, from whom it is quoted by Broderip:--
Zozozozozozozozozozozozo zirrhading
Hezezezezezezezezezezezezezezeze cowar ho dze hoi
Higaigaigaigaigaigaigaigaigaigai, guaiagai coricor dzio dzio pi.[13]
M. Wichterich, of Bonn, remarks:--"It is a vulgar error to suppose that
the song of the Nightingale is melancholy, and that it only sings by
night. There are two varieties of the Nightingale; one which sings both
in the night and the day, and one which sings in the day only."
In the year 1858, Mr. Leigh Sotheby, in a letter to Dr. Gray, of the
British Museum, described a marvellous little specimen of the feathered
tribe--a Talking Canary. Its parents had previously and successfully
reared many young ones, but three years before they hatched only _one_
out of four eggs, the which they immediately neglected, by commencing
the rebuilding of a nest on the top of it. Upon this discovery, the
unfledged and forsaken bird, all but dead, was taken away and placed in
flannel by the fire, when, after much attention, it was restored, and
then brought up by hand. Thus treated, and away from all other birds, it
became familiarised only with those who fed it; consequently, its first
singing notes were of a character totally different to those usual with
the Canary.
Constantly being talked to, the bird, when about three months old,
astonished its mistress by repeating the endearing terms used in talking
to it, such as "Kissie, kissie," with its significant sounds. This
went on, and from time to time the little bird repeated other words;
and then, for hours together, except during the moulting season, it
astonished by _ringing the changes_, according to its own fancy, and as
plainly as any human voice could articulate them, on the several words,
"Dear sweet Titchie" (its name), "kiss Minnie," "Kiss me, then, dear
Minnie." "Sweet pretty little Titchie," "Kissie, kissie, kissie." "Dear
Titchie," "Titchie wee, gee, gee, gee, Titchie. Titchie."
The usual singing-notes of the bird were more of the character of the
Nightingale, mingled occasionally with the sound of the dog-whistle used
about the house. It is hardly necessary to add, that the bird was by
nature remarkably tame.
In 1839, a Canary-bird, capable of distinct articulation, was exhibited
in Regent-street. The following were some of its sentences:--"Sweet
pretty dear," "Sweet pretty dear Dicky," "Mary," "Sweet pretty little
Dicky dear;" and often in the course of the day, "Sweet pretty Queen."
The bird also imitated the jarring of a wire, the ringing of a bell; it
was three years old, and was reared by a lady who never allowed it to
be in the company of other birds. This Canary died in October, 1839; it
was, it is believed, the only other talking instance publicly known.
We read of some experiments made in the rearing of birds at Kendal
by a bird-fancier, the result of which was, that upwards of 20
birds--Canaries. Greenfinches, Linnets, Chaffinches, Titlarks,
and Whitethroats--were reared in one cage by a pair of Canaries.
The experiments were continued until the extraordinary number of
thirty-eight birds had been brought up within two months by the
Canaries. It may be worth while to enumerate them.
In the month of June the Canaries--the male green, and the female
piebald--were caged for the purpose of breeding. The female laid five
eggs, and while she was sitting a Greenfinch egg was introduced into
the nest. All of these were hatched, and the day after incubation was
completed five Grey Linnets, also newly hatched, were put into the cage,
in their own nest. Next day a newly-hatched nest of four Chaffinches was
also introduced; and afterwards five different nests, consisting of six
Titlarks, six Whitethroats, three Skylarks, three Winchars, and three
Blackcaps. While rearing the last of these nests, the female Canary
again laid and hatched four eggs, thus making thirty-eight young birds
brought up by the pair of Canaries. It will be noticed that most of
these birds are soft-billed, whose natural food is small insects; but
they took quite kindly to the seeds upon which they were fed by their
step-parents. The pair of Canaries fed at one time twenty-one young
birds, and never had less than sixteen making demands upon their care;
and while the female was hatching her second nest she continued to feed
the birds that occupied the other nest.
Of the origin of the _neighing sound_ which accompanies the single
Snipe's play-flight during pairing-time, opinions are various. Bechstein
thought it was produced by means of the beak; Naumann and others, again,
that it originated in powerful strokes of the wing. Pratt, in Hanover,
observing that the bird makes heard its well-known song or cry, which he
expresses with the words, "gick jack, gick jack!" at the same time with
the _neighing sound_, it seemed to be settled that the latter is not
produced through the throat. In the meantime, M. Meves, of Stockholm,
remarked with surprise, that the humming sound could never be observed
whilst the bird was flying upwards, at which time the tail is closed;
but only when it was casting itself downwards in a slanting direction,
with the tail strongly spread out.
M. Meves has written for the Zoological Society a paper upon the origin
of this sound, which all the field-naturalists and sportsmen of England
and other countries had, for the previous century, been trying to make
out, but had failed to discover. Of this paper the following is an
abstract:--
The peculiar form of the tail-feathers in some foreign
species nearly allied to our Snipe encouraged the notion that the
tail conduced to the production of the sound. M. Meves found the
tail-feathers of our common Snipe, in the first feather especially,
very peculiarly constructed; the shaft uncommonly stiff and
sabre-shaped; the rays of the web strongly bound together and very
long, the longest reaching nearly three-fourths of the whole length
of the web, these rays lying along or spanning from end to end of
the curve of the shaft, _like the strings of a musical instrument_.
If you blow from the outer side upon the broad web, it comes into
vibration, and a sound is heard, which, though fainter, resembles
very closely the well-known _neighing_.
But to convince yourself fully that it is the first feather
which produces the peculiar sound, it is only necessary carefully
to pluck out such an one, to fasten its shaft with fine thread to
a piece of steel wire a tenth of an inch in diameter, and a foot
long, and then to fix this at the end of a four-foot stick. If
now you draw the feather, with this outer side forward, sharply
through the air, at the same time making some short movements or
shakings of the arm, so as to represent the shivering motion of the
wings during flight, you produce the neighing sound with the most
astonishing exactness.
If you wish to hear the humming of both feathers at once, as
must be the case from the flying bird, this also can be managed by
a simple contrivance. Take a small stick, and fasten at the side of
the smaller end a piece of burnt steel wire in the form of a fork;
bind to each point a side tail-feather; bend the wire so that the
feathers receive the same direction which they do in the spreading
of the tail as the bird sinks itself in flight; and then, with this
apparatus, draw the feathers through the air as before. Such a
sound, but in another tone, is produced when we experiment with the
tail-feathers of other kinds of Snipe.
Since in both sexes these feathers have the same form, it is
clear that both can produce the same humming noise; but as the
feathers of the hen are generally less than those of the cock-bird,
the noise made by them is not so deep as in the other case.
Besides the significance which these tail-feathers have as a
kind of musical instrument, their form may give a weighty character
in the determination of a species standing very near one another,
which have been looked upon as varieties.
This interesting discovery was first announced by M. Meves in an account
of the birds observed by himself during a visit to the Island of
Gottland, in the summer of the year 1856, which narrative was published
at Stockholm in the following winter. In the succeeding summer, M. Meves
showed his experiments to Mr. Wolley, whose services to Ornithology
we have already noticed. The mysterious noise of the wilderness was
reproduced in a little room in the middle of Stockholm: first, the deep
bleat, now shown to proceed from the male Snipe, and then the fainter
bleat of the female, both most strikingly true to nature, neither
producible with any other feathers than the outer ones of the tail.
Mr. Wolley inquired of Mr. Meves how, issuing forth from the town on
a summer ramble, he came to discover what had puzzled the wits and
strained the eyes of so many observers. He freely explained how, in a
number of "Naumannia," an accidental misprint of the word representing
tail-feathers instead of wing-feathers,--a mistake which another author
ridiculed--first led him to think on the subject. He subsequently
examined in the Museum at Stockholm the tail-feathers of various species
of Snipe, remarked their structure, and reasoned upon it. Then he
blew upon them, and fixed them on levers that he might wave them with
greater force through the air; and at the same time he made more careful
observation than he had hitherto done in the living birds. In short,
in him the obscure hint was thrown upon fruitful ground, whilst in a
hundred other minds it had failed to come to light.
Dr. Walsh saw at Constantinople a Woodpecker, about the size of a
Thrush, which was very active in devouring flies, and tapped woodwork
with his bill with a noise _as loud as that of a hammer_, to disturb the
insects concealed therein, so as to seize upon them when they appeared.
Among remarkable bird services should not be forgotten those of the
Trochilos to the Crocodile. "When the Crocodile," says Herodotus, "feeds
in the Nile, the inside of his mouth is always covered with _bdella_
(a term which the translators have rendered by that of _leech_). All
birds, _except one_, fly from the Crocodile; but this one bird, the
_Trochilos_, on the contrary, flies towards him with the greatest
eagerness, and renders him a very great service; for every time that the
Crocodile comes to the land to sleep, and when he lies stretched out
with his jaws open, the Trochilos enters and establishes himself in his
mouth, and frees him from the bdella which he finds there. The Crocodile
is grateful, and never does any harm to the little bird who performs for
him this office."
This passage was long looked upon as a pleasant story, and nothing more;
until M. Geoffroy St. Hilaire, during his long residence in Egypt,
ascertained the story of Herodotus to be correct in substance, but
inexact in details. It is perfectly true that a little bird does exist,
which flies incessantly from place to place, searching everywhere, even
in the Crocodile's mouth, for the insects which form the principal
part of its nourishment. This bird is seen everywhere on the banks of
the Nile, and M. Geoffroy has proved it to be of a species already
described by Hasselquist, and very like the small winged Plover. If
the Trochilos be in reality the little Plover, the bdella cannot be
leeches, (which do not exist in the running waters of the Nile) but the
small insects known as _gnats_ in Europe. Myriads of these insects dance
upon the Nile: they attack the Crocodile upon the inner surface of his
palate, and sting the orifice of the glands, which are numerous in the
Crocodile's mouth. Then the little Plover, who follows him everywhere,
delivers him from these troublesome enemies; and that without any danger
to himself, for the Crocodile is always careful, when he is going to
shut his mouth, to make some motion which warns the little bird to fly
away. At St. Domingo there is a Crocodile which very nearly resembles
that of Egypt. This Crocodile is attacked by gnats, from which he would
have no means of delivering himself (his tongue, like that of the
Crocodile, being fixed) if a bird of a particular species did not give
him the same assistance that the Crocodile of the Nile receives from
the little Plover. These facts explain the passage in Herodotus, and
demonstrate that the animal, there called bdella, is not a leech, but a
flying insect similar to our gnat.
Exemplifications of instinct, intelligence, and reason in Birds are by
no means rare, but this distinction must be made: instinctive actions
are dependent on the nerves, intelligence on the brain; but that which
constitutes peculiar qualities of the mind in man has no material
organ. The Rev. Mr. Statham has referred to the theory of the facial
angle as indicative of the amount of sagacity observable in the animal
race, but has expressed his opinion that the theory is utterly at
fault in the case of Birds; many of these having a very acute facial
angle being considerably more intelligent than others having scarcely
any facial angle at all. Size also seems to present another anomaly
between the two races of Beasts and Birds; for while the Elephant and
the Horse are among the most distinguished of quadrupeds for sagacity
and instinct, the larger Birds seem scarcely comparable to the smaller
ones in the possession of these attributes. The writer instances this
by comparing the Ostrich and the Goose with the Wren, the Robin, the
Canary, the Pigeon, and the Crow; and amusingly alludes to the holding
of parliaments or convocations of birds of the last species, while the
Ostrich is characterised in Scripture as the type of folly.
The author then refers to the poisoning of two young Blackbirds by the
parent birds, when they found that they could neither liberate them
nor permanently share their captivity. The two fledglings had been
taken from a Blackbirds' nest in Surrey-square, and had been placed in
a room looking over a garden, in a wicker cage. For some time the old
birds attended to their wants, visited them regularly, and fed them
with appropriate food; but, at last, getting wearied of the task, or
despairing of effecting their liberation, they appear to have poisoned
them. They were both found suddenly dead one morning, shortly after
having been seen in good health; and on opening their bodies a small
leaf, supposed to be that of _Solanum Nigrum_, was found in the stomach
of each. The old birds immediately deserted the spot, as though aware of
the nefarious deed befitting their name.
As an exemplification of instinct Dr. Horner states that Rooks built
on the Infirmary trees at Hull, but never over the street. One year,
however, a young couple ventured to build here: for eight mornings in
succession the old Rooks proceeded to destroy the nest, when at last the
young ones chose a more fitting place.
Mr. A. Strickland, having referred to the tendency of birds to build
their nests of materials of a colour resembling that around such nests,
relates an instance in which the Fly-catcher built in a red brick wall,
and used for the nest mahogany shavings. Referring to the meeting of
Rooks for judicial purposes. Mr. Strickland states that he once saw a
Rook tried in this way, and ultimately killed by the rest.
SONGS OF BIRDS AND SEASONS OF THE DAY.
Although nearly half a century has elapsed since the following
observations were communicated to the Royal Society by Dr. Jenner, their
expressive character is as charming as ever, and their accuracy as
valuable:--
"There is a beautiful propriety in the order in which Singing
Birds fill up the day with their pleasing harmony. The accordance
between their songs, and the aspect of nature at the successive
periods of the day at which they sing, is so remarkable that one
cannot but suppose it to be the result of benevolent design.
"From the _Robin_ (not the _Lark_, as has been generally
imagined), as soon as twilight has drawn its imperceptible line
between night and day, begins his artless song. How sweetly does
this harmonize with the soft dawning of the day! He goes on till
the twinkling sunbeams begin to tell him that his notes no longer
accord with the rising sun. Up starts the _Lark_, and with him a
variety of sprightly songsters, whose lively notes are in perfect
correspondence with the gaiety of the morning. The general warbling
continues, with now and then an interruption by the transient croak
of the _Raven_, the scream of the _Jay_, or the pert chattering of
the _Daw_. The _Nightingale_, unwearied by the vocal exertions of
the night, joins his inferiors in sound in the general harmony. The
_Thrush_ is wisely placed on the summit of some lofty tree, that
its piercing notes may be softened by distance before it reaches
the ear, while the mellow _Blackbird_ seeks the lower branches.
"Should the sun, having been eclipsed by a cloud, shine forth
with fresh effulgence, how frequently we see the _Goldfinch_ perch
on some blossomed bough, and hear his song poured forth in a strain
peculiarly energetic; while the sun, full shining on his beautiful
plumes, displays his golden wings and crimson crest to charming
advantage. Indeed, a burst of sunshine in a cloudy day, or after a
heavy shower, seems always to wake up a new gladness in the little
musicians, and invite them to an answering burst of minstrelsy.
"As evening advances, the performers gradually retire, and the
concert softly dies away. At sunset the _Robin_ again sends up his
twilight song, till the still more serene hour of night sends him
to his bower of rest. And now, in unison with the darkened earth
and sky, no sooner is the voice of the _Robin_ hushed, than the
_Owl_ sends forth his slow and solemn tones, well adapted to the
serious hour."
FOOTNOTES:
[12] The popular name of this bird is the _Umbrella Bird_. On its head
it bears a crest, different from that of any other bird. It is formed
of feathers more than two inches long, very thickly set, and with hairy
plumes curving over at the end. These can be laid back so as to be
hardly visible, or can be erected and spread out on every side, forming
a dome completely covering the head, and even reaching beyond the point
of the beak; the individual feathers then stand out something like the
down-bearing seeds of the dandelion. Besides this, there is another
ornamental appendage on the breast, formed by a fleshy tubercle, as
thick as a quill and an inch and a-half long, which hangs down from
the neck, and is thickly covered with glossy feathers, forming a large
pendent plume or tassel. This, also, the bird can either press to its
breast, so as to be scarcely visible, or can swell out so as almost to
conceal the forepart of its body.
[13] "Athenæum," No. 1467.
OWLS.