OXFORD: SPRING AND EARLY SUMMER.
[Illustration: Fieldfares.]
All the birds mentioned in the last chapter are residents in Oxford, in
greater or less numbers according to the season, except the Fieldfares
and Redwings, the Grey Wagtail, and the rarer visitors: and of these the
Fieldfares and Redwings are the only true winter birds. They come from
the north and east in September and October, and depart again in March
and April. When we begin our Summer Term not one is to be seen. The
berries in the meadow are all eaten up long before Lent Term is over,
and though these are not entirely or even chiefly the Redwing’s food,
the birds have generally disappeared with them.
They do not however leave the country districts till later. When wild
birds like these come into a town, the cause is almost certain to be
stress of weather; when the winter’s back is broken, they return to the
fields and hedges till the approach of summer calls them northwards.
There they assemble together in immense flocks, showing all the
restlessness and excitement of the smaller birds that leave us in the
autumn; suddenly the whole mass rises and departs like a cloud. Accounts
are always forthcoming of the departure of summer migrants, and
especially of the Swallows and Martins, and there are few who have not
seen these as they collect on the sunny side of the house-roof, or bead
the parapet of the Radcliffe building, before they make up their minds
to the journey. But few have seen the Fieldfares and Redwings under the
same conditions, and I find no account of their migration, or at least
of what actually happens when they go, in any book within my reach as I
write. But on March 19, 1884, I was lucky enough to see something of
their farewell ceremonies. I was walking in some water-meadows adjoining
a wood, on the outskirts of which were a number of tall elms and
poplars, when I heard an extraordinary noise, loud, harsh, and
continuous, and of great volume, proceeding from the direction of these
trees, which were at the time nearly half-a-mile distant. I had been
hearing the noise for a minute or two without attending to it, and was
gradually developing a consciousness that some strange new agricultural
instrument, or several of them, were at work somewhere near, when some
Fieldfares flew past me to alight on the meadow not far off. Then
putting up my glass, I saw that the trees were literally _black_ with
birds; and as long as I stayed, they continued there, only retreating a
little as I approached, and sending foraging detachments into the
meadow, or changing trees in continual fits of restlessness. The noise
they made was like the deep organ-sounds of sea-birds in the
breeding-time, but harsher and less serious. I would willingly have
stayed to see them depart, but not knowing when that might be, I was
obliged to go home: and the next day when I went to look for them, only
a few were left.
These birds do not leave us as a rule before the first summer visitors
have arrived. In the case I have just mentioned, the spring was a warm
one, and the very next day I saw the ever-welcome Chiff-chaff, which is
the earliest to come and the latest to go, of all the delicate warblers
which come to find a summer’s shelter in our abundant trees and herbage.
I use this word ‘warbler’ in a sense which calls for a word of
explanation: for not only are the birds which are called in the natural
history books by this name often very difficult to distinguish, but the
word itself has been constantly used to denote a certain class of birds,
without any precise explanation of the species meant to be included in
it. Nor is it in itself a very exact word; some of the birds which are
habitually called warblers do not warble in the proper sense of the
word,[11] and many others who really warble, such as the common
Hedge-sparrow, have no near relationship to the class I am speaking of.
But as it is a term in use, and a word that pleases, I will retain it in
this chapter, with an explanation which may at the same time help some
beginner in dealing with a difficult group of birds.
If the reader of this book who really cares to understand the
differences of the bird-life which abounds around us, will buy for a
shilling Mr. Dresser’s most useful _List of European Birds_,[12] he will
find, under the great family of the _Turdidae_, three sub-families
following each other on pages 7, 8, and 9, respectively called
_Sylvianae_, or birds of woodland habits, _Phylloscopinae_, or
leaf-searching birds, and _Acrocephalinae_, or birds belonging to a
group many of the members of which have the front of the head narrow and
depressed: and under all these three sub-families he will find several
species bearing in popular English the name of _warbler_. At the same
time he will find other birds in these sub-families, which are quite
familiar to him, but not as ‘warblers’ in any technical sense of the
word; thus the Robin will be found in the first sub-family, and the
Golden-crested Wren in the second. But, leaving out these two species,
and also the Nightingale, which is a bird of somewhat peculiar structure
and habits, he will find four birds in the first sub-family belonging to
the genus _Sylvia_, which are all loosely called warblers, and will be
mentioned in this chapter as summer visitors to Oxford, viz. the
Whitethroat (or Whitethroat-warbler), the Lesser Whitethroat, the
Blackcap, and the Garden-warbler; he will also find two in the second,
belonging to the genus _Phylloscopus_, the Chiff-chaff and the
Willow-wren (or Willow-warbler), and two in the third, belonging to the
genus _Acrocephalus_, the Sedge-warbler and the Reed-warbler. Let it be
observed that each of these three genera, _Sylvia_, _Phylloscopus_, and
_Acrocephalus_, is the representative genus of the sub-family in this
classification, and has given it its name; so that we might expect to
find some decided differences of appearance or habit between the members
of these genera respectively. And this is precisely what is the case, as
any one may prove for himself by a day or two’s careful observation.
The birds I have mentioned as belonging to the first genus, _i. e._
Whitethroat, etc., are all of a fairly substantial build, fond of
perching, singing a varied and warbling song (with the exception of the
Lesser Whitethroat, of whose song I shall speak presently), and all
preferring to build their cup-shaped nest a little way from the ground,
in a thick bush, hedge, or patch of thick-growing plants, such as
nettles. They also have the peculiarity of loving small fruits and
berries as food, and are all apt to come into our gardens in search of
them, where they do quite as much good as harm by a large consumption of
insects and caterpillars.
Secondly, the two kinds of birds belonging to the genus _Phylloscopus_,
Chiff-chaff and Willow-warbler, are alike in having slender, delicate
frames, with a slight bend forward as of creatures given to climbing up
and down, in an almost entire absence of the steady perching habit, in
building nests upon the ground with a hole at the _side_, and partly
arched over by a roof of dried grass, in feeding almost exclusively on
insects, and in singing a song which is always the same, each new effort
being undistinguishable from the last. In fact these two birds are so
much alike in every respect but their voices (which though unvarying are
very different from each other), that it is almost impossible for a
novice to distinguish them unless he hears them.
Thirdly, the two species belonging to the genus _Acrocephalus_, the
Sedge- and Reed-warblers, differ from the other two groups in
frequenting the banks of rivers and streams much more exclusively, where
they climb up and down the water-plants, as their name suggests, and
build a cup-shaped nest; and also in the nervous intensity and
continuity of their song.
[Illustration: Reed Warbler.—p. 42.]
These eight species, then, are the ‘warblers,’ of whom I am going to
speak in the first place. They may easily be remembered in these three
groups by any one who will take the trouble to learn their voices, and
to look out for them when they first arrive, before the leaves have come
out and the birds are shy of approach on account of their nests and
young. But without some little pains confusion is sure to arise, as we
may well understand when we consider that a century ago even such a
naturalist as White of Selborne had great difficulty in distinguishing
them; he was in fact the first to discover the Chiff-chaff (one of our
commonest and most obvious summer migrants) as a species separate from
the others of our second group. To give an idea of the progress
Ornithology has made during the last century, I will quote Markwick’s
note on White’s communication:—‘This bird, which Mr. White calls the
smallest Willow-wren, or Chiff-chaff, makes its appearance very early in
the spring, and is very common with us, _but I cannot make out the three
different species of Willow-wrens, which he says he has
discovered_.’[13] Nothing but a personal acquaintance—a friendship, as I
must call it in my own case—with these little birds, as they live their
every-day life among us, will suffice to fix the individuality of each
species in the mind; not even the best plates in a book, or the faded
and lifeless figures in a museum. You may shoot and dissect them, and
study them as you would study and label a set of fossils: but a bird is
a living thing, and you will never really know him till you fully
understand _how_ he lives.
Let us imagine ourselves taking a stroll into the Parks with the object
of seeing these eight birds, not as skeletons, but as living realities.
The first to present themselves to eye and ear will be the two species
of the second group, which may roughly be described (so far at least as
England is concerned) as containing Tree-warblers. From the tall trees
in St. John’s Gardens, before we reach the Museum, we are certain on any
tolerably warm day to hear the Willow-warbler, which has been the last
few years extremely abundant; in Oxford alone there must have been two
or three hundred pairs in the spring of 1885. From the same trees is
also pretty sure to come ringing the two notes of the Chiff-chaff, which
is a less abundant bird, but one that makes its presence more obvious.
Let us pause here a moment to make our ideas clear about these two. We
may justly take them first, as they are the earliest of their group to
arrive in England.
When the first balmy breath of spring brings the celandines into bloom
on the hedge-bank, and when the sweet violets and primroses are
beginning to feel the warmth of the sun, you may always look out for the
Chiff-chaff on the sheltered side of a wood or coppice. As a rule, I see
them before I hear them; if they come with an east wind, they doubtless
feel chilly for a day or two, or miss the plentiful supply of food which
is absolutely necessary to a bird in full song. Thus in 1884, I noted
March 20 as the first day on which I saw the Chiff-chaff, and March 23
as the first on which I heard him. The next year, the month of March
being less genial, I looked and listened in vain till the 31st. On that
day I made a circuit round a wood to its sunny side, sheltered well from
east and north, and entering for a little way one of these grassy
‘rides’ which are the delight of all wood-haunting birds, I stood quite
still and listened. First a Robin, then a Chaffinch broke the silence; a
Wood-pigeon broke away through the boughs; but no Chiff-chaff. After a
while I was just turning away, when a very faint sound caught my ear,
which I knew I had not heard for many months. I listened still more
keenly, and caught it again; it was the prelude, the preliminary
whisper, with which I have noticed that this bird, in common with a few
others, is wont to work up his faculties to the effort of an outburst of
song. In another minute that song was resounding through the wood.
No one who hails the approach of spring as the real beginning of a new
life for men and plants and animals, can fail to be grateful to this
little brown bird for putting on it the stamp and sanction of his clear
resonant voice. We may grow tired of his two notes—he never gets beyond
two—for he sings almost the whole summer through, and was in full voice
on the 25th of September in the same year in which he began on March
23rd; but not even the first twitter of the Swallow, or the earliest
song of the Nightingale, has the same hopeful story to tell me as this
delicate traveller who dares the east wind and the frost. They spend the
greater part of the year with us; I have seen them still lurking in
sheltered corners of the Dorsetshire coast, at the beginning of October,
within sound of the sea-waves in which many of them must doubtless
perish before they reach their journey’s end. And now and then they will
even pass the winter with us: this was the case with one which took up
his sojourn at Bodicote, near Banbury, in a winter of general mildness,
though not unbroken, if I recollect right, by some very sharp frosts.
The Willow-warbler follows his cousin to England in a very few days, and
remains his companion in the trees all through the summer. He has the
same brownish-yellow back and yellowish-white breast, but is a very
little larger, and sings a very different song, which is unique among
all British birds. Beginning with a high and tolerably full note, he
drops it both in force and pitch in a cadence short and sweet, as though
he were getting exhausted with the effort; for that it is a real effort
to him and all his slim and tender relations, no one who watches as well
as listens can have a reasonable doubt. This cadence is often perfect,
by which I mean that it descends gradually, not of course on the notes
of our musical scale, by which no birds in their natural state would
deign to be fettered, but through fractions of one or perhaps two of our
tones, and without returning upwards at the end; but still more often,
and especially, as I fancy, after they have been here a few weeks, they
take to finishing with a note nearly as high in pitch as that with which
they began.[14] This singular song is heard in summer term in every part
of the Parks, and in the grass beneath the trees there must be many
nests; but these we are not likely to find except by accident, so
beautifully are they concealed by their grassy roofs. Through the hole
in the upper part of the side you see tiny eggs, speckled with reddish
brown, lying on a warm bedding of soft feathers; one of these was built
last May in the very middle of the lawn of the Parsonage-house at
Ferry-Hincksey, and two others of exactly the same build, one a
Chiff-chaff’s, were but a little way outside the garden-gate, and had
escaped the sharp eyes of the village boys when I last heard of them.
Though from being on the ground they probably escape the notice of
Magpies and Jackdaws and other egg-devouring birds, these eggs and the
young that follow must often fall a prey to stoats and weasels, rats and
hedgehogs. That such creatures are not entirely absent from the
neighbourhood of the Parks, I can myself bear witness, having seen one
morning two fine stoats in deadly combat for some object of prey which I
could not discern, as I was divided from them by the river. The piping
squeaks they uttered were so vehement and loud, that at the first moment
I mistook them for the alarm-note of some bird that was strange to me.
In July, 1886, I saw a large stoat playing in Addison’s Walk, when few
human beings were about, and the young birds, newly-fledged, were no
doubt an easy prey.
One word more before we leave the Tree-warblers. In front of my
drawing-room window in the country are always two rows of hedges of
sweet peas, and another of edible peas; towards the end of the summer
some little pale _yellow_ birds come frequently and climb up and down
the pea-sticks, apparently in search of insects rather than of the peas.
These are the young Willow-warblers, which after their first moult
assume this gently-toned yellow tint; and very graceful and beautiful
creatures they are. I have sometimes seen them hover, like
humming-birds, over a spray on which they could not get an easy footing,
and give the stem or leaves a series of rapid pecks.
We have to walk but a little further on to hear or see at least two of
our first group, the _Sylviae_, or fruit-eating warblers. As we pass
into the Park by the entrance close to the house of the Keeper of the
Museum, we are almost sure, on any sunny day, to hear both Blackcap and
Garden-warbler, and with a little pains and patience, to see them both.
These two (for a wonder) take their scientific names from the
characteristics by which sensible English folk have thought best to name
them; the Blackcap being _Sylvia atracapilla_, and the Garden-warbler
_Sylvia hortensis_. Mr. Ruskin says, in that delicious fragment of his
about birds, called _Love’s Meinie_, that all birds should be named on
this principle; and indeed if they had only to discharge the duty which
many of our English names perform so well, viz. that of letting English
people know of what bird we are talking, his plan would be an excellent
one. Unluckily, Ornithology is a science, and a science which embraces
all the birds in the world; and we _must_ have some means of knowing for
certain that we shall be understood of all the world when we mention a
bird’s name. This necessity is well illustrated in the case of the
warblers. So many kinds of them are there, belonging to all our three
groups, in Europe alone, not to speak of other parts of the world, that
even a scientific terminology and description upon description have not
been able to save the birds from getting mixed up together, or getting
confounded with their own young, or with the young of other birds.
If the Blackcap were not a Sylvia, he could not well be scientifically
named after his black head, for other birds, such as Titmice, have also
black heads, and I have frequently heard the Cole Tit described as the
Blackcap. In any case he should perhaps have been named after his
wonderful faculty of song, in which he far excels all the other birds of
our three groups. Most people know the Blackcap’s song who have ever
lived in the country, for you can hardly enter a wood in the summer
without being struck by it; and all I need do here is to distinguish it
as well as I can from that of the Garden-warbler, which may easily be
mistaken for it by an unpractised ear, when the birds are keeping out of
sight in the foliage, as they often most provokingly will do. Both are
essentially warblers; that is, they sing a _strain_ of music, continuous
and _legato_, instead of a song that is broken up into separate notes or
short phrases, like that of the Song-thrush, or the Chiff-chaff. But
they differ in two points: the strain of the Blackcap is shorter,
forming in fact one lengthened phrase “in sweetness long drawn out,”
while the Garden-warbler will go on almost continuously for many minutes
together; and secondly, the Blackcap’s music is played upon a mellower
instrument. The most gifted Blackcaps—for birds of the same species
differ considerably in their power of song—excel all other birds in the
soft _quality_ of their tone, just as a really good boy’s voice, though
less brilliant and resonant, excels all women’s voices in softness and
sweetness. So far as I have been able to observe, the Blackcap’s voice
is almost entirely wanting in that power of producing the harmonics of a
note which gives a musical sound its brilliant quality; but this very
want is what produces its unrivalled mellowness.
The other two members of our first group (we are still in genus
_Sylvia_) are the two Whitethroats, greater and lesser, and we have not
far to go to find them. They arrive just at the beginning of our Easter
Term, but never come to Oxford in great numbers, because their proper
homes, the hedge-rows, are naturally not common objects of a town. In
the country the greater Whitethroats are swarming this year (1885), and
in most years they are the most abundant of our eight warblers; and the
smaller bird, less seen and less showy, makes his presence felt in
almost every lane and meadow by the brilliancy of his note.
Where shall we find a hedge near at hand, where we may learn to
distinguish the two birds? We left the Blackcaps and Garden-warblers at
the upper end of the Park; we shall still have a chance of listening to
them if we take the walk towards Parsons’ Pleasure, and here in the
thorn-hedge on the right hand of the path, we shall find both the
Whitethroats.[15] As we walk along, a rough grating sound, something
like the noise of a diminutive corn-crake, is heard on the other side of
the hedge—stopping when we stop, and sounding ahead of us as we walk on.
This is the teasing way of the greater Whitethroat, and it means that he
is either building a nest in the hedge, or thinking of doing so. If you
give him time, however, he will show himself, flirting up to the top of
the hedge, crooning, craking, and popping into it again; then flying out
a little way, cheerily singing a soft and truly warbling song, with
fluttering wings and roughened feathers, and then perhaps perching on a
twig to repeat it. Now you see the white of his throat; it is real
white, and it does not go below the throat. In one book I have seen the
Garden-warbler called a Whitethroat; but in his case the white is not so
pure, and it is continued down the breast. The throat of both
Whitethroats is real white, and they have a pleasant way of puffing it
out, as if to assure one that there is no mistake about it.
But how to distinguish the two? for in size they differ hardly enough to
guide an inexperienced eye. There are three points of marked difference.
The larger bird has a rufous or rusty-coloured back,[16] and his
wing-coverts are of much the same colour; while the back of the lesser
bird is darkish or grayish brown. Secondly, the head of the lesser
Whitethroat is of a much darker bluish-gray tint. But much the best
point of distinction in the breeding season is in the song. As I have
said, the larger bird warbles; but the lesser one, after a little
preliminary soliloquy in an under-tone, bursts out into a succession of
high notes, all of exactly the same pitch. It took me some time to find
out who was the performer of this music which I heard so constantly in
the hedges, for the bird is very restless and very modest. When I caught
sight of him he would not stop to be examined closely. One day however
he was kind enough to alight for a moment in a poplar close by me, and
as I watched him in the loosely-leaved branches, he poured out the song,
and duly got the credit for it.
We are now close to our old winter-station on the bridge over the
mill-stream, and leaning over it once more on the upper side, we shall
hear, if not see, both the remaining species of the warblers that Oxford
has to show us. They are the only species of River-warblers that are
_known_ to visit England regularly every year; these two, the
Sedge-warbler and the Reed-warbler, never fail, and the Sedge-warbler
comes in very large numbers, but only a few specimens of other
River-warblers have been found out in their venturesomeness. Still,
every young bird-hunter should acquaint himself with the characteristics
of the rarer visitors, in order to qualify himself for helping to throw
light on what is still rather a dark corner of English ornithology.
These same species which we so seldom see are swarming in the flat lands
of Holland, close by us, and why should they not come over to the island
which birds seem to love so dearly?
But there is no doubt that birds have ways, and reasons for them, which
man is very unlikely ever to be able to understand. Why, as Mr. Harting
asks,[17] should the Reed-warbler be so much less “generally
distributed” than the Sedge-warbler? That it is so, we can show well
enough even from Oxford alone. You will find Sedge-warblers all along
the Cherwell and the Isis, wherever there is a bit of cover, and very
often they will turn up where least expected; in a corn-field, for
example, where I have seen them running up and down the corn-stalks as
if they were their native reeds. But you must either know where to find
the Reed-warbler, or learn by slow degrees. Parsons’ Pleasure is almost
the only place known to me where
“The Reed-warbler swung in a nest with her young,
Deep-sheltered and warm from the wind.”[18]
There is, however, in this case, at least a plausible answer to Mr.
Harting’s question. Owing to the prime necessity of _reeds_ for the
building of this deep-sheltered nest, which is swung between several of
them, kept firm by their centrifugal tendency, yielding lovingly yet
proudly to every blast of wind or current of water—owing to this
necessity, the Reed-Warbler declines to take up his abode in any place
where the reeds are not thick enough and tall enough to give a real
protection to himself and his brood. Now in the whole length of Isis
between Kennington[19] and Godstow, and of Cherwell between its mouth
and Parsons’ Pleasure, there is no reed-bed which answers all the
requirements of this little bird. Now and then, it is true, they will
leave the reeds for some other nesting-place; one of them sang away all
the Summer Term of 1884 in the bushes behind the Museum, nearly half a
mile from the river, and probably built a nest among the lilac-bushes
which there abound. But that year they seemed to be more abundant than
usual; and this, perhaps, was one for whom there was no room in the
limited space of the reeds at Parsons’ Pleasure. Thick bushes, where
many lithe saplings spring from a common root, would suit him better
than a scanty reed-bed.[20]
There is no great difficulty in distinguishing Sedge- and Reed-warblers,
if you have an eye for the _character_ of birds. The two are very
different in temperament, though both are of the same quiet brown, with
whitish breast. The Sedge-bird is a restless, noisy, impudent little
creature, not at all modest or retiring, and much given to mocking the
voices of other birds. This is done as a rule in the middle of one of
his long and continuous outpourings of chatter; but I one day heard a
much more ridiculous display of impertinence. I was standing at the
bottom of the Parks, looking at a pair or two of Sedge-warblers on a
bush, and wondering whether they were going to build a nest there, when
a Blackbird emerged from the thicket behind me, and seeing a human
being, set up that absurd cackle that we all know so well. Instantly,
out of the bush I was looking at, there came an echo of this cackle,
uttered by a small voice in such ludicrous tones of mockery, as fairly
to upset my gravity. It seemed to say, “You awkward idiot of a bird, I
can make that noise as well as you: only listen!”—
The Reed-warbler, on the other hand, is quieter and gentler, and utters,
by way of song, a long crooning soliloquy, in accents not sweet, but
much less harsh and declamatory than those of his cousin. I have
listened to him for half-an-hour together among the bushes that border
the reed-bed, and have fancied that his warble suits well with the
gentle flow of the water, and the low hum of the insects around me. He
will sit for a long time singing on the same twig, while his partner is
on her nest in the reeds below; but the Sedge-warbler, in this and other
respects like a fidgety and ill-trained child, is never in one place, or
in the same vein of song, for more than a minute at a time.
It is amusing to stand and listen to the two voices going on at the same
time; the Sedge-bird rattling along in a state of the intensest
excitement, pitching up his voice into a series of loud squeaks, and
then dropping it into a long-drawn grating noise, like the winding-up of
an old-fashioned watch, while the Reed-warbler, unaffected by all this
volubility, takes his own line in a continued prattle of gentle content
and self-sufficiency.
These eight birds, then, are the _warblers_ which at present visit
Oxford. Longer walks and careful observation may no doubt bring us
across at least two others, the Wood-warbler and the
Grasshopper-warbler: the nest of the Wood-warbler has been found within
three miles. Another bird, too, which is often called a warbler, has of
late become very common both in and about Oxford—the Redstart. Four or
five years ago they were getting quite rare; but this year (1885) the
flicker of the red tail is to be seen all along the Cherwell, in the
Broad Walk, where they build in holes of the elms, in Port Meadow, where
I have heard the gentle warbling song from the telegraph wires, and
doubtless in most gardens. The Redstart is so extremely beautiful in
summer, his song so tender and sweet, and all his ways so gentle and
trustful, that if he were as common, and stayed with us all the year, he
would certainly put our Robin’s popularity to the proof. Nesting in our
garden, or even on the very wall of our house, and making his presence
there obvious by his brilliant colouring and his fearless domesticity,
he might become, like his plainer cousin of the continent, the favourite
of the peasant, who looks to his arrival in spring as the sign of a
better time approaching. “I hardly hoped,” writes my old Oberland guide
to me, after an illness in the winter, “to see the flowers again, or
hear the little Röthel (Black Redstart) under my eaves.”
The Oxford Redstarts find convenient holes for their nests in the
pollard willows which line the banks of the Cherwell and the many arms
of the Isis. The same unvaried and unnatural form of tree, which looks
so dreary and ghastly in the waste of winter flood, is full of comfort
and adaptability for the bird in summer. The works of man, though not
always beautiful, are almost always turned to account by the birds, and
by many kinds preferred to the solitude of wilder haunts. Whether he
builds houses, or constructs railways, or digs ditches, or forces trees
into an unnatural shape, they are ready to take advantage of every
chance he gives them. Only when the air is poisoned by smoke and
drainage, and vegetation retreats before the approach of slums, do they
leave their natural friends to live without the charm of their
voices—all but that strange parasite of mankind, the Sparrow. He,
growing sootier every year, and doing his useful dirty work with
untiring diligence and appetite, lives on his noisy and quarrelsome life
even in the very heart of London.
Whether the surroundings of the Oxford Sparrows have given them a sense
of higher things, I cannot say; but they have ways which have suggested
to me that the Sparrow must at some period of his existence have fallen
from a higher state, of which some individuals have a Platonic ἀνάµνησις
which prompts them to purer walks of life. No sooner does the summer
begin to bring out the flies among our pollard willows, than they become
alive with Sparrows. There you may see them, as you repose on one of the
comfortable seats on the brink of the Cherwell in the Parks, catching
flies in the air with a vigour and address which in the course of a few
hundred years might almost develop into elegance. Again and again I have
had to turn my glass upon a bird to see if it could really be a Sparrow
that was fluttering in the air over the water with an activity
apparently meant to rival that of the little Fly-catcher, who sits on a
bough at hand, and occasionally performs the same feat with native
lightness and deftness. But these are for the most part young Sparrows
of the year, who have been brought here perhaps by their parents to be
out of the way of cats, and for the benefit of country air and an
easily-digested insect diet. How long they stay here I do not know; but
before our Autumn Term begins they must have migrated back to the city,
for I seldom or never see them in the willows except in the Summer Term.
These seats by the Cherwell are excellent stations for observation.
Swallows, Martins, and Sand-martins flit over the water; Swifts scream
overhead towards evening; Greenfinches trill gently in the trees, or
utter that curious lengthened sound which is something between the bleat
of a lamb and the snore of a light sleeper; the Yellow Wagtail, lately
arrived, walks before you on the path, looking for materials for a nest
near the water’s edge; the Fly-catcher, latest arrival of all, is
perched in silence on the railing, darting now and then into the air for
flies; the Corn-crake sounds from his security beyond the Cherwell, and
a solitary Nightingale, soon to be driven away by dogs and boats and
bathers, may startle you with a burst of song from the neighbouring
thicket.
Of the birds just mentioned, the Swifts, Swallows, and Martins build, I
need hardly say, in human habitations, the Sand-martins in some sand- or
gravel-pit, occasionally far away from the river. The largest colony of
these little brown birds, so characteristic of our Oxford summer, is in
a large sand-pit on Foxcombe Hill: there, last July, I chanced to see
the fledgelings peeping out of their holes into the wide world, like
children gazing from a nursery window. The destruction all these species
cause among the flies which swarm round Oxford must be enormous. One day
a Martin dropped a cargo of flies out of its mouth on to my hat, just as
it was about to be distributed to the nestlings; a magnifying glass
revealed a countless mass of tiny insects, some still alive and
struggling. One little wasp-like creature disengaged himself from the
rest, and crawled down my hand, escaping literally from the very jaws of
death.
Before I leave these birds of summer, let me record the fact that last
June (1886) a pair of swallows built their nest on the circular spring
of a bell just over a doorway behind the University Museum; the bell was
constantly being rung, and the nest was not unfrequently examined, but
they brought up their young successfully. This should be reassuring to
those who believe that the Museum and its authorities are a terror to
living animals.
[Illustration: Nest on College Bell.]