A MIDLAND VILLAGE: RAILWAY AND WOODLAND.
[Illustration: Whinchat on Telegraph Wires.]
Beyond the Yantle we come upon a line of railway, running down from
Chipping Norton to join the main line to Worcester. Just as the waters
of the Evenlode are reinforced at this point in its course by the two
contingent streams I described in the last chapter, so the main railway
is here joined by two subsidiary lines, the one coming from Chipping
Norton and the other from Cheltenham over the Cotswolds. Paradoxical as
it may seem, I do not hesitate to say that this large mileage of railway
within a small radius acts beneficially upon our bird-life. Let us see
how this is.
In the first place, both cuttings and embankments, as soon as they are
well overgrown with grass, afford secure and sunny nesting-places to a
number of birds which build their nests on the ground. The Whin-chat for
example, an abundant bird here every summer, gives the railway-banks its
especial patronage. The predatory village-boys cannot prowl about these
banks with impunity except on Sundays, and even then are very apt to
miss a Whin-chat’s nest. You may see the cock-bird sitting on the
telegraph wires, singing his peaceful little song, but unless you
disturb his wife from her beautiful blue eggs you are very unlikely to
find them in the thickening grass of May or June. And even if she is on
the nest, she will sit very close; I have seen an express train fly past
without disturbing her, when the nest was but six or eight feet from the
rails. The young, when reared, will often haunt the railway for the rest
of the summer, undismayed by the rattle and vibration which must have
shaken them even when they were still within the egg. Occasionally a
Wheatear will make its appearance about the railway, but I have no
evidence of its breeding there; nor is the Stone-chat often to be seen
here, though it is a summer visitor not far off among the hills.
Let me say incidentally that no one who has either good eyes or a good
glass ought ever to confound the two Chats together. In the breeding
season the fine black head of the cock Stone-chat distinguishes him at
once; but even the female should never be the subject of a blunder, if
the observer has been at all used to attend to the _attitudes_ of birds.
The Stone-chat sits upright and almost defiant, and is a shorter and
stouter bird than the Whin-chat, which perches in an attitude of greater
humility, and always seems to me to deprecate your interference rather
than to defy it. And it is quite in keeping with this that the ‘chat’ of
the latter is not so loud and resonant as that of the former, as I have
satisfied myself after careful observation of both; the Stone-chat
penetrating to my dull ears at a greater distance than his cousin.[37]
This really means that the bill of the one, and in fact his whole
muscular system, is stronger than the same in the other, and the τὸ
θυµοεῖδες of his constitution is more largely developed.
If I walk alongside of the railway, as it passes between the
water-meadows and the corn-fields which lie above them, divided on each
side from these by a low-lying withy-bed, I always keep an eye upon the
telegraph-wires ahead, knowing by long experience that they will tell me
what birds are breeding or have bred about here. As autumn approaches,
great numbers indeed of visitors, Swallows, Martins, Linnets, and
others, will come and sun themselves here, and even tempt a Sparrow-hawk
or Kestrel to beat up and down the line; but in early summer, beside the
Whin-chats, and the Whitethroats nesting in great numbers in the thick
quickset hedges which border the line, it is chiefly the melancholy
tribe of Buntings that will attract my notice.
I trust my friends the Buntings will not take offence at being called
melancholy; I cannot retract the word, except in what is now called “a
parliamentary sense.” I have just been looking through a series of
plates and descriptions of all the Buntings of Europe, and in almost
every one of them I see the same deflected tail and listless
attitude,[38] and read of the same monotonous and continually repeated
note. The Buntings form in fact, though apt to be confused with one
another owing to their very strong family likeness, perhaps the most
clearly-marked and idiosyncratic genus among the whole range of our
smaller birds. This may be very easily illustrated from our three common
English species. Look at the common Corn Bunting, as he sits on the
wires or the hedge-top; he is lumpy, loose-feathered, spiritless, and
flies off with his legs hanging down, and without a trace of agility or
vivacity; he is a dull bird, and seems to know it. Even his voice is
half-hearted; it reminds me often of an old man in our village who used
to tell us that he had “a wheezing in his pipes.” Near him sits a Yellow
Bunting (Yellowhammer), a beautiful bird when in full adult plumage of
yellow head, orange-brown back, white outer tail-feathers, and pink
legs; yet even this valued old friend is apt to be untidy in the sit of
his feathers, to perch in a melancholy brown study with deflected tail,
and to utter the same old song all the spring and summer through. This
song, however (if indeed it can be called one), is a much better one
than that of the Corn Bunting, and is occasionally even a little
varied.[39]
Just below, on an alder branch or withy-sapling, sits a fine cock Reed
Bunting, whose jet-black head and white neck make him a conspicuous
object in spite of the sparrow-like brown of his back and wings. Except
in plumage, he is exactly like his relations. He will sit there, as long
as you like to stay, and shuffling his feathers, give out his odd
tentative and half-hearted song. Like the others he builds on or close
to the ground, in this case but a few yards from the rails, and his
wife, like theirs, lays eggs streaked and lined in that curious way that
is peculiar to Buntings alone. I have not had personal experience of our
rarer Buntings, the Ortolan, the Snow Bunting, or even the Cirl Bunting,
as living birds; but all the members of this curious race seem to have
the characteristics mentioned above in a greater or less degree, and
also a certain hard knob in the upper mandible of the bill, which is
said to be used as a grindstone for the grain and seeds which are the
food of them all in the adult state.
Keeping yet awhile to the railway, let us notice that even the station
itself meets with some patronage from the birds. In the stacks of coal
which are built up close to the siding, the Pied Wagtails occasionally
make their nests, fitting them into some hospitable hole or crevice.
These, like all other nests found in or about the station, are carefully
protected by the employés of the company. In a deep hole in the masonry
of the bridge which crosses the line a few yards below the station, a
pair of Great Titmice built their nest two years ago, and successfully
brought up their young, regardless of the puffing and rattling of the
trains, for the hole was in the _inside_ of the bridge, and only some
six feet from the rails of the down line. A little coppice, remnant of a
larger wood cut down to make room for the railway, still harbours
immense numbers of birds; here for example I always hear the ringing
note of the Lesser Whitethroat; and here, until a few years ago, a
Nightingale rejoiced in the density of the overgrown underwood.
A Ring-ousel, the only specimen, alive or dead, which I have seen or
heard of in these parts, was found dead here one morning some years ago,
having come into collision with the telegraph wires in the course of its
nocturnal migration. It was preserved and stuffed by the station-master,
who showed it to me as a _piebald Blackbird_.
A little further down the line is another bridge, in which a Blue-tit
found a hole for its nest last year; this also was in the inside of the
bridge, and close to the up-line. This bridge is a good place from which
to watch the Tree-pipit, and listen to its charming song. All down the
line, wherever it passes a wood or a succession of tall elms and ashes,
these little grayish-brown birds build their nest on or close to the
grassy banks, and take their station on the trees or the telegraph-wires
to watch, to sing, and to enjoy themselves. A favourite plan of theirs
is to utter their bright canary-like song from the very top twig of an
elm, then to rise in the air, higher and higher, keeping up their
energies by a quick succession of sweet shrill notes, till they begin to
descend in a beautiful curve, the legs hanging down, the tail expanded
and inclined upwards, and the notes getting quicker and quicker as they
near the telegraph-wires or the next tree-top. When they reach the
perching-place, it ceases altogether. So far as I have noticed, the one
part of the song is given when the bird is on the tree, the other when
it is on the wing. The perching-song, if I may call it so, is possessed
by no other kind of Pipit; but the notes uttered on the wing are much
the same with all the species.
The young student of birds may do well to concentrate his attention for
awhile on the Pipits, and on their near relations, the Larks and the
Wagtails. These three seemed to form a clearly-defined group; and though
in the latest scientific classification the Larks have been removed to
some distance from the other two (which form a single family of
_Motacillidae_), it must be borne in mind that this is in consequence
only of a single though remarkable point of difference. Apart from
definite structural characters, a very little observation will show that
their habits are in most respects alike. They all place their nests on
the ground; and they all walk, instead of hopping; the Larks and the
Pipits sing in the air, while the Pipits and the Wagtails move their
tails up and down in a peculiar manner. All are earth-loving birds,
except the Tree-pipit and the Wood lark.
We may now leave the railway, and enter the woodland. Most of the birds
that dwell here have been already mentioned; and I shall only mention in
passing the Jays, the Magpies, and the Crows, those mischievous and
predatory birds, which probably do more harm to the game in a single
week of April or May, than the beautiful mice-eating Kestrel does during
the whole year. They all rob the nests of the pheasants and partridges,
both of eggs and young; and when I saw one day in the wood the bodies of
some twenty robbers hung up on a branch, all belonging to these three
species, I could not but feel that justice had been done, for it is not
only game birds who are their victims. A large increase of these three
species would probably have a serious result on the smaller winged
population of a wood.
[Illustration: Grasshopper Warbler.]
Among the more interesting inhabitants of the wood, there are two
species which have not as yet been spoken of in these chapters—the
Grasshopper Warbler and the Nightingale. The former has no right to be
called a _warbler_, except in so far as it belongs to one of those three
families mentioned in a former chapter, in which all our British
‘warblers’ are now included. It has no song, properly so called; but no
one who has the luck to watch it alive, even without a detailed
examination of its structure, will doubt its true relationship to the
Sedge-warbler and the Reed-warbler. It is not a water-haunting bird, but
still rather recalls the ways of its relations, by choosing deep ditches
thickly grown with grass and reeds, and sheltered by bramble-bushes; it
seems to need something to climb up and down, and to creep about in;
like the sedge-birds, it seldom flies any distance, and one is tempted
to fancy that all these species would gradually lose the use of their
wings as genuine organs of flight, if it were not for the yearly
necessities of migration.
I once had a remarkable opportunity of watching this very curious bird.
It was about the beginning of May, before the leaves had fully come out;
a time which is very far the best in the year for observing the smaller
and shyer birds. Intent on pairing or nest-building, they have little
fear, if you keep quite quiet, and you can follow their movements with a
glass without danger of losing sight of them in the foliage. I was
returning from a delicious morning ramble through Bruerne wood, and was
just rounding the last corner of it, where a small plantation of baby
saplings was just beginning to put on leaf, when my ear caught the
unmistakable ‘reel’ of this bird. Some other birds of the warbler kind,
Wren, Robin, Sedge-bird, can produce a noise like the winding-up of a
watch, but none of these winds it up with such rapidity, or keeps it
going so long as the Grasshopper Warbler, nor does any cricket or
grasshopper perform the feat in exactly the same way. Our bird’s
noise—we cannot call it a voice—is like that of a very well-oiled
fisherman’s reel,[40] made to run at a very rapid rate, and its local
name of the ‘reel-bird’ is a perfectly just and good one.
I was on the outside of a little hedge, and the noise proceeded from the
saplings on its further side. In order to see the bird I must get over
the hedge, which could not be done without a scrunching and crackling of
branches sufficient to frighten away a much less wary bird than this.
There seemed, however, to be no other chance of getting a sight of the
bird, so through the hedge I went; and tumbled down on the other side
with such a disturbance of the branches that I gave up all hope of
attaining my object.
Great was my astonishment when I saw only a few yards from me a little
olive-brown bird creeping through the saplings, which I knew at once to
be the Grasshopper Warbler. I then took up a fixed position, the little
bird after a minute or two proceeded to do the same, and for some time I
watched it with my glass, as it sat on a twig and continued to utter its
reel. It was only about ten paces from me, and the field-glass which I
carried placed it before me as completely as if it had been in my hands.
What struck me most about it was its long supple olive-green neck, which
was thrust out and again contracted as the reel was being produced; this
being possibly, as I fancy, the cause of the strange ventriloquistic
power which the bird seems to possess; for even while I watched it, as
the neck was turned from side to side, the noise seemed to be projected
first in one direction and then in another.[41] The reel was uttered at
intervals, and as a general rule did not continue for more than a
quarter of a minute, but one spell of it lasted for forty seconds by my
watch. It is said to continue sometimes for as much as twenty minutes,
but I have never been fortunate enough to hear it for anything
approaching to that length of time.
Our interview was not to last very long. It unluckily happened that my
little terrier, who accompanies me in all my walks, and is trained to
come to heel when anything special is to be observed, had been out of
sight when I broke the hedge; and now he must needs come poking and
snuffing through the saplings just as if a Grasshopper Warbler were as
fair game as a mole or a water rat. Nevertheless, so astonishing was the
boldness of this bird that he allowed the dog to hunt about for some
time around him without being in the least disconcerted.[42] When at
last he made off he retreated in excellent order, merely half flying,
half creeping with his fan-like tail distended, until he disappeared in
the thick underwood. I would have taken the dog under my arm and tried
for another interview, which no doubt he would have given me, if I had
not been obliged to depart in order to catch a train to Oxford. This
bird was undoubtedly a male who was awaiting the arrival of the females:
just at this time they not only betray themselves more easily by the
loudness of their reel, but also are well known to be less shy of
showing themselves than at any other period of their stay with us. This
is the case with most of our summer migrants. Only a few minutes before
I found this bird, I had been watching a newly-arrived cock Nightingale,
who had not yet found his mate, and was content to sing to me from the
still leafless bough of an oak-tree, without any of the shyness he would
have shown two or three weeks later.
We have every spring a few pairs of Nightingales in our woods. Except
when a wood has been cleared of its undergrowth, they may always be
found in the same places, and if the accustomed pair is missing in one
it is almost sure to be found in another. The edge of a wood is the
favourite place, because the bird constantly seeks its food in the open;
also perhaps because the best places for the nest are often in the depth
of an overgrown hedge, where the cover is thicker than inside a wood.
Sitting on the sunny side of such a wood, I have often had ample
opportunity of hearing and watching a pair: for though always somewhat
shy, they are not frightened at a motionless figure, and will generally
show themselves if you wait for them, on some prominent bough or bit of
railing, or as they descend on the meadow in quest of food.
I am always surprised that writers on birds have so little to say of the
beauty of the Nightingale’s form and colouring. It is of the ideal size
for a bird, neither too small to be noticed readily, nor so large as the
somewhat awkwardly built Blackbird or Starling. All its parts are in
exquisite proportion; its length of leg gives it a peculiarly sprightly
mien, and tail and neck are formed to a perfect balance. Its plumage, as
seen, not in an ornithologist’s cabinet, but in the living and moving
bird a little distance from you, is of three hues, all sober, but all
possessing that reality of colour which is so satisfying to the eye on a
sunny day. The uniform brown of the head, the wings, and the upper part
of the back, is much like the brown of the Robin, a bird which in some
other respects strangely resembles the Nightingale; but either it is a
little brighter, or the larger surface gives it a richer tone. In both
birds the brown is set off against a beautiful red; but this in the
Nightingale is only distinct when it flies or jerks the tail, the upper
feathers of which, as well as the longer quills, and especially the
innermost ones, are of that deep but bright russet that one associates
with an autumn morning. And throat and breast are white; not pure white,
but of the gentle tone of a cloud where the gray begins to meet the
sunshine.
In habit the Nightingale is peculiarly alert and quick, not restless in
a petty way, like the fidgety Titmice or the lesser warblers, but
putting a certain seriousness and intensity into all it does. Its
activity is neither grotesque nor playful, but seems to arise from a
kind of nervous zeal, which is also characteristic of its song. If it
perches for an instant on the gorse-bush beneath the hedgerow which
borders the wood, it jerks its tail up, expands its wings, and is off in
another moment. If it alights on the ground, it rears up head and neck
like a thrush, hops a few paces, listens, darts upon some morsel of
food, and does not dally with it. As it sings, its whole body vibrates,
and the soft neck feathers ripple to the quivering of the throat.
I need not attempt to describe that wonderful song, if song it is, and
not rather an impassioned recitative. The poets are often sadly to seek
about it; Wordsworth at least seems to have caught its spirit:—
“O Nightingale, thou surely art
A creature of a fiery heart.”
And Wordsworth, as he tells us in the next stanza, found the cooing of
the stock-dove more agreeable to his pensive mind. I never yet heard a
Nightingale singing dolefully, as the poets will have it sing;[43] its
varied phrases are all given out _con brio_, and even that marvellous
_crescendo_ on a single note, which no other bird attempts, conveys to
the mind of the listener the fiery intensity of the high-strung singer.
It is a pity to compare the songs of birds; our best singers, Thrush,
Blackbird, Blackcap, Robin, and Garden-warbler, all have a vocal beauty
of their own; but it may safely be said that none approaches the
Nightingale in fire and fervour of song, or in the combination of
extraordinary power with variety of phrase. He seems to do what he
pleases with his voice, yet never to play with it; so earnest is he in
every utterance—and these come at intervals, sometimes even a long
silence making the performance still more mysterious—that if I were
asked how to distinguish his song from the rest, I should be inclined to
tell my questioner to wait by a wood side till he is fairly startled by
a bird that puts his whole ardent soul into his song. But if he will
have a description, let him go to old Pliny’s tenth book, or rather to
Philemon Holland’s translation of it, which is much better reading than
the original; and there he will find the most enthusiastic of the many
futile attempts to describe the indescribable.
The Nightingale’s voice is heard no more after mid-June; and from this
time onwards the woods begin to grow silent, especially after early
morning. For a while the Blackcap breaks the stillness, and his soft
sweet warble is in perfect keeping with the quiet solitude. But as the
heat increases, the birds begin to feel, as man does, that the shade of
a thick wood is more oppressive than the bright sunshine of the meadows;
and on a hot afternoon in July you may walk through the woodland and
hardly catch a single note.
But on the outskirts of a wood, or in a grassy ‘ride,’ you may meet with
life again. The Titmice will come crooning around you, appearing
suddenly, and vanishing you hardly know how or whither; Wood-pigeons
will dash out of the trees with that curious impetuosity of theirs, as
if they were suddenly sent for on most pressing business. A Robin will
perch on a branch hard by, and startle you with that pathetic soliloquy
which calls up instantly to your memory the damp mist and decaying
leaves of last November. The Green Woodpecker may be there, laughing at
you from an elm, or possibly (as I have sometimes seen him) feeding on
the ground, and looking like a gorgeous bird of the tropics.
Other birds of the Woodpecker kind are not common in our woods. The
Greater Spotted Woodpecker has only once fairly shown himself to me; the
Lesser Spotted Woodpecker, which I have heard country folk call the
_French Heckle_, seldom catches the eye,[44] though to judge by the
number of stuffed specimens which adorn the parlours of inns and
farm-houses, it can by no means be very rare. For this name ‘heckle,’
and all its curious local variants, I may refer the reader to Professor
Skeat’s most valuable etymological contribution to Newton’s Edition of
_Yarrell’s Birds_;[45] but why, one may ask, should it be called the
_French_ Heckle? A very old game-keeper, who described to me by this
name a bird which was certainly the Lesser Spotted Woodpecker, also used
the expression _English_ Heckle for the Wryneck—a bird (he said) much
plainer than the French Heckle, and apt to hiss at you if you try to
take its eggs. I imagine that French is here contrasted with English to
indicate superior brightness and dapperness of plumage.
There is yet one bird of our woods—or rather of one wood, thickly
planted with oaks—of which I have as yet said nothing. I had long
suspected his presence in that wood, but my search for him was always in
vain. One day in May, 1888, I luckily turned down a little by-path which
led me through a forest of young ashes, and brought me out into a wide
clearing carpeted with blue-bells and overshadowed by tall oaks. Here I
heard a sibilant noise, which in the distance I had taken for the
Grasshopper Warbler; though I had had doubts of it, as it was not
prolonged for more than two or three seconds. Now also I heard, from the
thick wood beyond the clearing, a series of plaintive notes, something
like those of the Tree Pipit, and this stopped me again as I was turning
away. I listened, and heard these notes repeated several times, feeling
more and more certain each time that I had heard them before in this
very wood, and suspected them to be the call-notes of the Wood-warbler,
a bird with which, strangely enough, I had never had any personal
acquaintance.
The sibilant noise was all this time going on close at hand. The wood
was comparatively silent owing to the east wind, and I could concentrate
my attention on these new voices without distraction. I noticed that the
sibilation was preceded by three or four slightly longer and more
distinct notes, and as this answered to my book-knowledge of the
Wood-warbler, I became more and more anxious to see the bird. But he
would not let me see him. And then came the puzzling plaintive notes
again, as different as possible from the sibilant ones, and it became
absolutely necessary to discover whether they were uttered by the same
creature.
At last I thought I had made sure of the bird in one particular little
thicket not more than ten or twelve yards from me, and crept on as
softly as possible out of the clearing into the underwood. Of course the
dead twigs crackled under my feet and the branches had to be put
forcibly aside, and the voice retreated as I neared it. I thought of a
certain morning in the Alps, and of a provoking and futile hunt after
Bonelli’s Warbler; but pushing on a little further into a small open
space, I stopped once more, and then firmly resolved not to move again.
I had a long time to wait. Sometimes the plaintive voice, but oftener
the sibilant notes, would be uttered quite close to me, and the singer
would stay for some time in the same bush, hidden from my sight, but
near at hand. And at last, as a fisherman sees the surface of the smooth
black pool in an instant broken, and then feels his fish, I caught sight
of a momentary motion in the leaves not ten yards away from me. A minute
later I saw the bird, and knew at once that I had the Wood-warbler
before me. There was nothing now to do but to stand motionless and see
more of it.
By degrees it seemed to grow used to my presence, and showed itself to
me without any sign of alarm. What can be more delightful than to watch
in perfect solitude and security the bird you have been looking for so
long? There was the yellow throat, the delicate white breast, the
characteristic streak over the eye—all plainly visible as he sat facing
me; and when he kindly turned his tail to me and preened his feathers, I
could see the greenish-brown back, and note the unusual length of wing.
Several times, when close to me, he gave utterance to that curious
‘shivering’ sibilation (to use Gilbert White’s apt word), his bill
opening wide to give the last shake, his head lifted upwards, the long
wings quivering slightly, and the whole body vibrating under the effort.
One thing more was needed—a visible proof that the long-drawn plaintive
notes were his notes too, and this I had the pleasure of securing by a
little more patience. But when my little warbler uttered these notes,
his bill was not opened wide, nor did his frame vibrate with any
apparent effort; they seemed rather an inward soliloquy or a secret
signal (as indeed they were), and always ended up with a short note and
a sudden closing of the bill, as if to say, “All’s right, that’s well
over.”
Then behind me I heard the undoubted double call-note of a warbler,
which probably I myself caused the little bird’s wife to utter,
trespassing as I surely was in the neighbourhood of the nest. It did
just cross my mind that I ought to search for that nest, but I gave up
the idea almost at once, and bade adieu in peace to my new friends. They
had shown themselves to me without fear, and they should have no reason
to dislike me.
Beyond the woods where these birds live, we come out on scrubby fields,
often full of thistles, and spotted with furze-bushes. These fields are
the special favourites of the Linnets and Goldfinches; the Linnets are
in great abundance, the latter, since the Wild Birds’ Act came into
operation, by no means uncommon in autumn.
We cannot but pause again and again as we make our way through the gorse
and brushwood, for the little Linnet in his full summer dress is hardly
less beautiful than the Goldfinch, and all his ways and actions are no
less cheering and attractive. The male birds differ much, perhaps
according to age, in brilliancy of plumage; but a fine cock Linnet in
full dress of crimson breast and crown, white wing-bars and
tail-feathers, and chestnut back, is to my thinking as splendid a little
bird as these islands can show. I can never forget the astonishment of a
companion who hardly knew the bird, when I pointed him out a Linnet in
this splendid costume one July day on a Radnorshire hill.
The ground now rises towards the hills which form the limit of our
western horizon. On these hills may now and then be seen a few birds
which we seldom meet with in the lower grounds, such as the Stone-chat,
the Brambling, the Wheatear; but as the hills are for the most part
cultivated, and abound in woods and brooks, the difference between the
bird life of the uplands and the lowlands is not remarkable at any time
of the year.
It may be worth while, however, to note down in outline the chief
movements of the birds in our district in the course of a single year.
In January, which is usually the coldest month in the year, the greater
number of our birds are collected in flocks in the open country, the
villages only retaining the ordinary Blackbirds, Thrushes, Robins, &c.
The winter migrants are in great numbers in the fields, but they and
almost all other birds will come into villages and even into towns in
very severe weather. In February, villages, orchards, and gardens are
beginning to receive more of the bird population, while the great flocks
are beginning to break up under the influence of the approach of spring.
In March the same process goes on more rapidly; the fields are becoming
deserted and the gardens fuller. But meanwhile hedges, woods, thickets
and streams are filling with a population from beyond the seas, some
part of which penetrates even into the gardens, sharing the fruit-trees
with the residents, or modestly building their nests on the ground. As a
rule, though one of a very general kind, it may be laid down that our
resident birds prefer the neighbourhood of mankind for nesting purposes,
while the summer migrants build chiefly in the thickets and hedges of
the open country; so that just at the time when Chaffinches,
Greenfinches, Goldfinches, and a host of other birds are leaving the
open country for the precincts of the village, their places are being
taken by the new arrivals of the spring. Or if this rule be too
imperfect to be worth calling a rule at all (for all the Swallow kind
but one British species build in human habitations), it is at least true
that if a garden offers ample security for nesting, the proportion of
residents to migrants taking advantage of it will be much greater than
in a wood or on a heath.
Just as the population of the open country begins to decrease in numbers
in early spring, so it increases rapidly in the first weeks of summer.
The young broods that have spent their infancy in or near the village
now seek more extended space and richer supplies of food, and when the
hay is cut, they may be found swarming in all adjacent hedges and on the
prostrate swathes, while the gardens are comparatively empty. But before
July is over an attentive watcher will find that his garden is visited
by birds which were not born and bred there; while the residents are
away in the fields, the migrants begin to be attracted to the gardens by
the ripening fruits of all kinds. White-throats, Willow-warblers,
Chiff-chaffs, haunt the kitchen-garden for a while, then leave it on
their departure for the coast and their journey southwards. After this
last little migration, the villages and gardens remain almost deserted
except by the Blackbirds and Thrushes, the Robins and the Wrens, until
the winter drives the wilder birds to seek the neighbourhood of man once
more. Even then, unless the garden be well timbered, they will be
limited to a very few species, except in the hardest weather; and it is
remarkable how little variety will be found among our winter
pensioners—those recipients of out-door relief, who spoil their
digestions by becoming greedy over a food which is not natural to them.
[Illustration: Out-door relief.]
This rough attempt to sketch the local migrations of birds must be
understood as applying to my own village only, and to gardens which are
not surrounded with extensive parks.