SELBORNE, _Sept._ 9_th_, 1778.
Dear Sir,--From the motion of birds, the transition is natural enough
to their notes and language, of which I shall say something. Not that
I would pretend to understand their language like the vizier of the
_Spectator_, who, by recital of a conversation which passed between two
owls, reclaimed a sultan, before delighting in conquest and
devastation; but I would be thought only to mean that many of the
winged tribes have various sounds and voices adapted to express their
various passions, wants and feelings; such as anger, fear, love,
hatred, hunger and the like. All species are not equally eloquent;
some are copious and fluent as it were in their utterance while others
are confined to a few important sounds: no bird, like the fish kind, is
quite mute, though some are rather silent. The language of birds is
very ancient and, like other ancient modes of speech, very elliptical;
little is said, but much is meant and understood.
The notes of the eagle-kind are shrill and piercing and about the season
of nidification much diversified, as I have been often assured by a
curious observer of Nature, who long resided at Gibraltar, where eagles
abound. The notes of our hawks much resemble those of the king of birds.
Owls have very expressive notes; they hoot in a fine vocal sound, much
resembling the _vox humana_, and reducible by a pitch-pipe to a musical
key. This note seems to express complacency and rivalry among the males;
they use also a quick call and a horrible scream: and can snore and hiss
when they mean to menace. Ravens, besides their loud croak, can exert a
deep and solemn note that makes the woods to echo; the amorous sound of a
crow is strange and ridiculous; rooks, in the breeding season, attempt
sometimes in the gaiety of their hearts to sing, but with no great
success; the parrot-kind have many modulations of voice, as appears by
their aptitude to learn human sounds; doves coo in an amorous and
mournful manner, and are emblems of despairing lovers; the woodpecker
sets up a sort of loud and hearty laugh; the fern-owl, or goat-sucker,
from the dusk till daybreak, serenades his mate with the clattering of
castanets. All the tuneful _passeres_ express their complacency by sweet
modulations and a variety of melody. The swallow, as has been observed
in a former letter, by a shrill alarm bespeaks the attention of the other
hirundines, and bids them be aware the hawk is at hand. Aquatic and
gregarious birds, especially the nocturnal, that shift their quarters in
the dark, are very noisy and loquacious; as cranes, wild-geese,
wild-ducks, and the like; their perpetual clamour prevents them from
dispersing and losing their companions.
In so extensive a subject, sketches and outlines are as much as can be
expected; for it would be endless to instance in all the infinite variety
of the feathered nation. We shall therefore confine the remainder of
this letter to the few domestic fowls of our yards, which are most known,
and therefore best understood. And first the peacock, with his gorgeous
train, demands our attention; but, like most of the gaudy birds, his
notes are grating and shocking to the ear: the yelling of cats, and the
braying of an ass, are not more disgustful. The voice of the goose is
trumpet-like and clanking; and once saved the Capitol at Rome, as grave
historians assert; the hiss, also, of the gander, is formidable and full
of menace, and "protective of his young." Among ducks the sexual
distinction of voice is remarkable; for, while the quack of the female is
loud and sonorous, the voice of the drake is inward and harsh, and
feeble, and scarce discernible. The cock turkey struts and gobbles to
his mistress in a most uncouth manner; he hath also a pert and petulant
note when he attacks his adversary. When a hen turkey leads forth her
young brood she keeps a watchful eye; and if a bird of prey appear,
though ever so high in the air, the careful mother announces the enemy
with a little inward moan, and watches him with a steady and attentive
look; but if he approach, her note becomes earnest and alarming, and her
outcries are redoubled.
No inhabitants of a yard seem possessed of such a variety of expression
and so copious a language as common poultry. Take a chicken of four or
five days old, and hold it up to a window where there are flies, and it
will immediately seize its prey, with little twitterings of complacency;
but if you tender it a wasp or a bee, at once its note becomes harsh, and
expressive of disapprobation and a sense of danger. When a pullet is
ready to lay she intimates the event by a joyous and easy soft note. Of
all the occurrences of their life, that of laying seems to be the most
important; for no sooner has a hen disburdened herself, than she rushes
forth with a clamorous kind of joy, which the cock and the rest of his
mistresses immediately adopt. The tumult is not confined to the family
concerned, but catches from yard to yard, and spreads to every homestead
within hearing, till at last the whole village is in an uproar. As soon
as a hen becomes a mother her new relation demands a new language; she
then runs clucking and screaming about, and seems agitated as if
possessed. The father of the flock has also a considerable vocabulary;
if he finds food, he calls a favourite concubine to partake; and if a
bird of prey passes over, with a warning voice he bids his family beware.
The gallant chanticleer has at command his amorous phrases and his terms
of defiance. But the sound by which he is best known is his crowing: by
this he has been distinguished in all ages as the countryman's clock or
larum, as the watchman that proclaims the divisions of the night. Thus
the poet elegantly styles him:
" . . . the crested cock, whose clarion sounds
The silent hours."
A neighbouring gentleman one summer had lost most of his chickens by a
sparrow-hawk, that came gliding down between a faggot pile and the end of
his house to the place where the coops stood. The owner, inwardly vexed
to see his flock thus diminished, hung a setting-net adroitly between the
pile and the house, into which the caitiff dashed and was entangled.
Resentment suggested the law of retaliation; he therefore clipped the
hawk's wings, cut off his talons, and, fixing a cork on his bill, threw
him down among the brood-hens. Imagination cannot paint the scene that
ensued; the expressions that fear, rage, and revenge inspired, were new,
or at least such as had been unnoticed before: the exasperated matrons
upbraided, they execrated, they insulted, they triumphed. In a word,
they never desisted from buffeting their adversary till they had torn him
in a hundred pieces.