either enter, or appear to enter, a short much-cropped hedge, but twenty
yards distant. I ran to the spot; the hawk of course made off, but there
was nothing in the bush save a hedge sparrow, which had probably
attracted him, but which he had not succeeded in getting.
Kestrels are almost common; I have constantly seen them while strolling
along the road, generally two together, and once three. In the latter
part of the summer and autumn they seem to be most numerous, hovering
over the recently reaped fields. Certainly there is no scarcity of hawks
here. Upon one occasion, on Surbiton Hill, I saw a large bird of the
same kind, but not sufficiently near to identify. From the gliding
flight, the long forked tail, and large size I supposed it to be a kite.
The same bird was going about next day, but still farther off. I cannot
say that it was a kite, for unless it is a usual haunt, it is not in my
opinion wise to positively identify a bird seen for so short a time.
The thick hedge mentioned is a favourite resort of blackbirds, and on a
warm May morning, after a shower--they are extremely fond of a
shower--half-a-dozen may be heard at once whistling in the elms. They
use the elms here because there are not many oaks; the oak is the
blackbird's favourite song-tree. There was one one day whistling with
all his might on the lower branch of an elm, at the very roadside, and
just above him a wood-pigeon was perched. A pair of turtle-doves built
in the same hedge one spring, and while resting on the gate by the
roadside their "coo-coo" mingled with the song of the nightingale and
thrush, the blackbird's whistle, the chiff-chaff's "chip-chip," the
willow-wren's pleading voice, and the rustle of green corn as the wind
came rushing (as it always does to a gateway).
Goldfinches come by occasionally, not often, but still they do come. The
rarest bird seems to be the bullfinch. I have only seen bullfinches
three or four times in three seasons, and then only a pair. Now, this is
worthy a note, as illustrating what I have often ventured to say about
the habitat of birds being so often local, for if judged by observation
here the bullfinch would be said to be a scarce bird by London. But it
has been stated upon the best authority that only a few miles distant,
and still nearer town, they are common.
The road now becomes bordered by elms on either side, forming an
irregular avenue. Almost every elm in spring has its chaffinch loudly
challenging. The birdcatchers are aware that it is a frequented resort,
and on Sunday mornings four or five of them used to be seen in the
course of a mile, each with a call bird in a partly darkened cage, a
stuffed dummy, and limed twigs. In the cornfields on either hand
wood-pigeons are numerous in spring and autumn. Up to April they come
in flocks, feeding on the newly sown grain when they can get at it, and
varying it with ivy berries, from the ivy growing up the elms. By
degrees the flocks break up as the nesting begins in earnest.
Some pair and build much earlier than others; in fact, the first egg
recorded is very little to be depended on as an indication. Particular
pairs (of many kinds of birds) may have nests, and yet the species as a
species may be still flying in large packs. The flocks which settle in
these fields number from one to two hundred. Rooks, wood-pigeons, and
tame white pigeons often feed amicably mixed up together; the white tame
birds are conspicuous at a long distance before the crops have risen, or
after the stubble is ploughed.
I should think that the corn farmers of Surrey lose more grain from the
birds than the agriculturists whose tenancies are a hundred miles from
London. In the comparatively wild or open districts to which I had been
accustomed before I made these observations I cannot recollect ever
seeing such vast numbers of birds. There were places, of course, where
they were numerous, and there were several kinds more represented than
is the case here, and some that are scarcely represented at all. I have
seen flocks of wood-pigeons immensely larger than any here; but then it
was only occasionally. They came, passed over, and were gone. Here the
flocks, though not very numerous, seem always to be about.
Sparrows crowd every hedge and field, their numbers are incredible;
chaffinches are not to be counted; of greenfinches there must be
thousands. From the railway even you can see them. I caught glimpses of
a ploughed field recently sown one spring from the window of a railway
carriage, every little clod of which seemed alive with small birds,
principally sparrows, chaffinches, and greenfinches. There must have
been thousands in that field alone. In autumn the numbers are even
greater, or rather more apparent.
One autumn some correspondence appeared lamenting the scarcity of small
birds (and again in the spring the same cry was raised); people said
that they had walked along the roads or footpaths and there were none in
the hedges. They were quite correct--the birds were not in the hedges,
they were in the corn and stubble. After the nesting is well over and
the wheat is ripe the birds leave the hedges and go out into the
wheatfields; at the same time the sparrows quit the house-tops and
gardens and do the same. At the very time this complaint was raised, the
stubbles in Surrey, as I can vouch, were crowded with small birds.
If you walked across the stubble flocks of hundreds rose out of your
way; if you leant on a gate and watched a few minutes you could see
small flocks in every quarter of the field rising and settling again.
These movements indicated a larger number in the stubble there, for
where a great flock is feeding some few every now and then fly up
restlessly. Earlier than that in the summer there was not a wheatfield
where you could not find numerous wheatears picked as clean as if
threshed where they stood. In some places, the wheat was quite thinned.
Later in the year there seems a movement of small birds from the lower
to the higher lands. One December day I remember particularly visiting
the neighbourhood of Ewell, where the lands begin to rise up towards the
Downs. Certainly, I have seldom seen such vast numbers of small birds.
Up from the stubble flew sparrows, chaffinches, greenfinches,
yellow-hammers, in such flocks that the low-cropped hedge was covered
with them. A second correspondence appeared in the spring upon the same
subject, and again the scarcity of small birds was deplored.
So far as the neighbourhood of London was concerned, this was the exact
reverse of the truth.
Small birds swarmed, as I have already stated, in every ploughed field.
All the birdcatchers in London with traps and nets and limed twigs could
never make the slightest appreciable difference to such flocks. I have
always expressed my detestation of the birdcatcher; but it is founded on
other grounds, and not from any fear of the diminution of numbers only.
Where the birdcatcher does inflict irretrievable injury is in this
way--a bird, say a nightingale, say a goldfinch, has had a nest for
years in the corner of a garden, or an apple-tree in an orchard. The
birdcatcher presently decoys one or other of these, and thenceforward
the spot is deserted. The song is heard no more; the nest never again
rebuilt.
The first spring I resided in Surrey I was fairly astonished and
delighted at the bird life which proclaimed itself everywhere. The
bevies of chiffchaffs and willow wrens which came to the thickets in the
furze, the chorus of thrushes and blackbirds, the chaffinches in the
elms, the greenfinches in the hedges, wood-pigeons and turtle-doves in
the copses, tree-pipits about the oaks in the cornfields; every bush,
every tree, almost every clod, for the larks were so many, seemed to
have its songster. As for nightingales, I never knew so many in the most
secluded country.
There are more round about London than in all the woodlands I used to
ramble through. When people go into the country they really leave the
birds behind them. It was the same, I found, after longer observation,
with birds perhaps less widely known as with those universally
recognised--such, for instance, as shrikes. The winter when the cry was
raised that there were no birds, that the blackbirds and thrushes had
left the lawns and must be dead, and how wicked it would be to take a
nest next year, I had not the least, difficulty in finding plenty of
them.
They had simply gone to the water meadows, the brooks, and moist places
generally. Every locality where running water kept the ground moist and
permitted of movement among the creeping things which form these birds'
food, was naturally resorted to. Thrushes and blackbirds, although they
do not pack--that is, regularly fly in flocks--undoubtedly migrate when
pressed by weather.
They are well known to arrive on the east coast from Norway in numbers
as the cold increases. I see no reason why we may not suppose that in
very severe and continued frost the thrushes and blackbirds round London
fly westwards towards the milder side of the island. It seems to me that
when, some years since, I used to stroll round the water meadows in a
western county for snipes in frosty weather, the hedges were full of
thrushes and blackbirds--quite full of them.
Now, though there were thrushes and blackbirds about the brooks by
London last winter, there were few in the hedges generally. Had they,
then, flown westwards? It is my belief that they had. They had left the
hard-bound ground about London for the softer and moister lands farther
west. They had crossed the rain-line. When frost prevents access to food
in the east, thrushes and blackbirds move westwards, just as the
fieldfares and redwings do.
That the fieldfares and redwings do so I can say with confidence,
because, as they move in large flocks, there is no difficulty in tracing
the direction in which they are going. They all went west when the
severe weather began. On the southern side of London, at least in the
districts I am best acquainted with, there was hardly a fieldfare or
redwing to be seen for weeks and even months. Towards spring they came
back, flying east for Norway. As thrushes and blackbirds move singly,
and not with concerted action, their motions cannot be determined with
such precision, but all the facts are in favour of the belief that they
also went west.
That they were killed by the frost and snow I utterly refuse to credit.
Some few, no doubt, were--I saw some greatly enfeebled by
starvation--but not the mass. If so many had been destroyed their bodies
must have been seen when there was no foliage to hide them, and no
insects to quickly play the scavenger as in summer. Some were killed by
cats; a few perhaps by rats, for in sharp winters they go down into the
ditches, and I saw a dead redwing, torn and disfigured, at the mouth of
a drain during the snow, where it might have been fastened on by a rat.
But it is quite improbable that thousands died as was supposed.
Thrushes and blackbirds are not like rooks. Rooks are so bound by
tradition and habit that they very rarely quit the locality where they
were reared. Their whole lives are spent in the neighbourhood of the
nest, trees, and the woods where they sleep. They may travel miles
during the day, but they always come back to roost. These are the birds
that suffer the most during long frosts and snows. Unable to break the
chain that binds them to one spot, they die rather than desert it. A
miserable time, indeed, they had of it that winter, but I never heard
that any one proposed feeding the rooks, the very birds that wanted it
most.
Swallows, again, were declared by many to be fewer. It is not at all
unlikely that they were fewer. The wet season was unfavourable to them;
still a good deal of the supposed absence of swallows may be through the
observer not looking for them in the right place. If not wheeling in the
sky, look for them over the water, the river, or great ponds; if not
there, look along the moist fields or shady woodland meadows. They vary
their haunts with the state of the atmosphere, which causes insects to
be more numerous in one place at one time, and presently in another.
A very wet season is more fatal than the sharpest frost; it acts by
practically reducing the births, leaving the ordinary death-rate to
continue. Consequently, as the old birds die, there are none (or fewer)
to supply their places. Once more let me express the opinion that there
are as many small birds round London as in the country, and no measure
is needed to protect the species at large. Protection, if needed, is
required for the individual. Sweep the roads and lanes clear of the
birdcatchers, but do not prevent a boy from taking a nest in the open
fields or commons. If it were made illegal to sell full-grown birds,
half the evil would be stopped at once if the law were enforced. The
question is full of difficulties. To prevent or attempt to prevent the
owner of a garden from shooting the bullfinches or blackbirds and so on
that steal his fruit, or destroy his buds, is absurd. It is equally
absurd to fine--what twaddle!--a lad for taking a bird's egg. The only
point upon which I am fully clear is that the birdcatcher who takes
birds on land not his own or in his occupation, on public property, as
roads, wastes, commons, and so forth, ought to be rigidly put down. But
as for the small birds as a mass, I am convinced that they will never
cease out of the land.
It is not easy to progress far along this road, because every bird
suggests so many reflections and recollections. Upon approaching the
rising ground at Ewell green plovers or peewits become plentiful in the
cornfields. In spring and early summer the flocks break up to some
extent, and the scattered parties conduct their nesting operations in
the pastures or on the downs. In autumn they collect together again, and
flocks of fifty or more are commonly seen. Now and then a much larger
flock comes down into the plain, wheeling to and fro, and presently
descending upon an arable field, where they cover the ground.
NIGHTINGALE ROAD
The wayside is open to all, and that which it affords may be enjoyed
without fee; therefore it is that I return to it so often. It is a fact
that common hedgerows often yield more of general interest than the
innermost recesses of carefully guarded preserves, which by day are
frequently still, silent, and denuded of everything, even of game; nor
can flowers flourish in such thick shade, nor where fir-needles cover
the ground.
By the same wayside of which I have already spoken there is a birch
copse, through which runs a road open to foot passengers, but not to
wheel traffic, and also a second footpath. From these a little
observation will show that almost all the life and interest of the copse
is at, or near, the edge, and can be readily seen without trespassing a
single yard. Sometimes, when it is quiet in the evening and the main
highway is comparatively deserted, a hare comes stealing down the track
through the copse, and after lingering there awhile crosses the highway
into the stubble on the other side.
In one of these fields, just opposite the copse, a covey of partridges
had their rendezvous, and I watched them from the road, evening after
evening, issue one by one, calling as they appeared from a breadth of
mangolds. Their sleeping-place seemed to be about a hundred yards from
the wayside. Another arable field just opposite is bounded by the road
with iron wire or railing, instead of a hedge, and the low mound in
which the stakes are fixed swarmed one summer with ant-hills full of
eggs, and a slight rustle in the corn as I approached told where the
parent bird had just led her chicks from the feast to shelter.
Passing into the copse by the road, which is metalled but weed-grown
from lack of use, the grasshoppers sing from the sward at the sides, but
the birds are silent as the summer ends. Pink striped bells of
convolvulus flower over the flints and gravel, the stones nearly hidden
by their runners and leaves; yellow toadflax or eggs and bacon grew here
till a weeding took place, since which it has not reappeared, but in its
place viper's bugloss sprang up, a plant which was not previously to be
found there. Hawkweeds, some wild vetches, white yarrow, thistles, and
burdocks conceal the flints yet further, so that the track has the
appearance of a green drive.
The slender birch and ash poles are hung with woodbine and wild hops,
both growing in profusion. A cream-coloured wall of woodbine in flower
extends in one spot, in another festoons of hops hang gracefully, and so
thick as to hide everything beyond them. There is scarce a stole without
its woodbine or hops; many of the poles, though larger than the arm, are
scored with spiral grooves left by the bines. Under these bushes of
woodbine the nightingales when they first arrive in spring are fond of
searching for food, and dart on a grub with a low satisfied "kurr."
The place is so favourite a resort with these birds that it might well
be called Nightingale Copse. Four or five may be heard singing at once
on a warm May morning, and at least two may often be seen as well as
heard at the same time. They sometimes sing from the trees, as well as
from the bushes; one was singing one morning on an elm branch which
projected over the road, and under which the van drivers jogged
indifferently along. Sometimes they sing from the dark foliage of the
Scotch firs.
As the summer wanes they haunt the hawthorn hedge by the roadside,
leaving the interior of the copse, and may often be seen on the dry and
dusty sward. When chiffchaff and willow-wren first come they remain in
the treetops, but in the summer descend into the lower bushes, and, like
the nightingales, come out upon the sward by the wayside. Nightingale
Copse is also a great favourite with cuckoos. There are a few oaks in
it, and in the meadows in the rear many detached hawthorn bushes, and
two or three small groups of trees, chestnuts, lime, and elm. From the
hawthorns to the elms, and from the elms to the oaks, the cuckoos
continually circulate, calling as they fly.
One morning in May, while resting on a rail in the copse, I heard four
calling close by, the furthest not a hundred yards distant, and as they
continually changed their positions flying round there was always one in
sight. They circled round, singing; the instant one ceased another took
it up, a perfect madrigal. In the evening, at eight o'clock, I found
them there again, still singing. The same detached groups of trees are
much frequented by wood-pigeons, especially towards autumn.
Rooks prefer to perch on the highest branches, wood-pigeons more in the
body of the tree, and when the boughs are bare of leaves a flock of the
latter may be recognised in this way as far as the eye can see, and when
the difference of colour is rendered imperceptible by distance. The
wood-pigeon when perched has a rounded appearance; the rook a longer and
sharper outline.
By one corner of the copse there is an oak, hollow within, but still
green and flourishing. The hollow is black and charred; some mischievous
boys must have lighted a fire inside it, just as the ploughboys do in
the far away country. A little pond in the meadow close by is so
overhung by another oak, and so surrounded with bramble and hawthorn,
that the water lies in perpetual shade. It is just the spot where, if
rabbits were about, one might be found sitting out on the bank under the
brambles. This overhanging oak was broken by the famous October snow,
1880, further splintered by the gales of the next year, and its trunk is
now split from top to bottom as if with wedges.
These meadows in spring are full of cowslips, and in one part the
meadow-orchis flourishes. The method of making cowslip balls is
universally known to children, from the most remote hamlet to the very
verge of London, and the little children who dance along the green sward
by the road here, if they chance to touch a nettle, at once search for a
dock leaf to lay on it and assuage the smart. Country children, and
indeed older folk, call the foliage of the knotted figwort cutfinger
leaves, as they are believed to assist the cure of a cut or sore.
Raspberry suckers shoot up in one part of the copse; the fruit is
doubtless eaten by the birds. Troops of them come here, travelling along
the great hedge by the wayside, and all seem to prefer the outside trees
and bushes to the interior of the copse. This great hedge is as wide as
a country double mound, though it has but one ditch; the thick hawthorn,
blackthorn, elder, and bramble--the oaks, elms, ashes, and firs form, in
fact, almost a cover of themselves.
In the early spring, when the east wind rushes with bitter energy across
the plains, this immense hedge, as far as it extends, shelters the
wayfarer, the road being on the southern side, so that he can enjoy such
gleams of sunshine as appear. In summer the place is, of course for the
same reason, extremely warm, unless the breeze chances to come up strong
from the west, when it sweeps over the open cornfields fresh and sweet.
Stoats and weasels are common on the mound, or crossing the road to the
corn; they seem more numerous in autumn, and I fear leveret and
partridge are thinned by them.
Mice abound; in spring they are sometimes up in the blackthorn bushes,
perhaps for the young buds. In summer they may often be heard rushing
along the furrows across the wayside sward, scarce concealed by the wiry
grass. Flowers are very local in habit; the spurge, for instance, which
is common in a road parallel to this, is not to be seen, and not very
much cow-parsnip, or "gix," one of the most freely-growing hedge plants,
which almost chokes the mounds near by. Willowherbs, however, fill every
place in the ditch here where they can find room between the bushes, and
the arum is equally common, but the lesser celandine absent.
Towards evening, as the clover and vetches closed their leaves under the
dew, giving the fields a different aspect and another green, I used
occasionally to watch from here a pair of herons, sailing over in their
calm serene way. Their flight was in the direction of the Thames, and
they then passed evening after evening, but the following summer they
did not come. One evening, later on in autumn, two birds appeared
descending across the cornfields towards a secluded hollow where there
was water, and, although at a considerable distance, from their manner
of flight I could have no doubt they were teal.
The spotted leaves of the arum appeared in the ditches in this locality
very nearly simultaneously with the first whistling of the blackbirds in
February; last spring the chiffchaff sang soon after the flowering of
the lesser celandine (not in this hedge, but near by), and the first
swift was noticed within a day or two of the opening of the May bloom.
Although not exactly, yet in a measure, the movements of plant and bird
life correspond.
In a closely cropped hedge opposite this great mound (cropped because
enclosing a cornfield) there grows a solitary shrub of the wayfaring
tree. Though well known elsewhere, there is not, so far as I am aware,
another bush of it for miles, and I should not have noticed this had not
this part of the highway been so pleasant a place to stroll to and fro
in almost all the year. The twigs of the wayfaring tree are covered with
a mealy substance which comes off on the fingers when touched. A stray
shrub or plant like this sometimes seems of more interest than a whole
group.
For instance, most of the cottage gardens have foxgloves in them, but I
had not observed any wild, till one afternoon near some woods I found a
tall and beautiful foxglove, richer in colour than the garden specimens,
and with bells more thickly crowded, lifting its spike of purple above
the low cropped hawthorn. In districts where the soil is favourable to
the foxglove it would not have been noticed, but here, alone and
unexpected, it was welcomed. The bees in spring come to the broad
wayside sward by the great mound to the bright dandelions; presently to
the white clover, and later to the heaths.