in a drawing-room never fail, if visitors arrive and the conversation
grows animated, to take a part in it, after their fashion, by
chattering or singing.
It is their universal instinct, even in a condition of freedom. They
are the echoes both of God and of man. They associate themselves with
all sounds and voices, add their own poesy, their wild and simple
rhythms. By analogy, by contrast, they augment and complete the grand
effects of nature. To the hoarse beating of the waves the sea-bird
opposes his shrill strident notes; with the monotonous murmuring of the
agitated trees the turtle-dove and a hundred birds blend a soft sad
cadence; to the awakening of the fields, the gaiety of the country,
the lark responds with his song, and bears aloft to heaven the joys of
earth.
Thus, then, everywhere, above the vast instrumental concert of nature,
above her deep sighs, above the sonorous waves which escape from the
divine organ, a vocal music springs and detaches itself--that of the
bird, almost always in vivid notes, which strike sharply on this solemn
base with the ardent strokes of a bow.
Winged voices, voices of fire, angel voices, emanations of an intense
life superior to ours, of a fugitive and mobile existence, which
inspires the traveller doomed to a well-beaten track with the serenest
thoughts and the dream of liberty.
Just as vegetable life renews itself in spring by the return of the
leaves, is animal life renewed, rejuvenified by the return of the
birds, by their loves, and by their strains. There is nothing like it
in the southern hemisphere, a youthful world in an inferior condition,
which, still in travail, aspires to find a voice. That supreme flower
of life and the soul, Song, is not yet given to it.
The beautiful, the sublime phenomenon of this higher aspect of the
world occurs at the moment that Nature commences her voiceless concert
of leaves and blossoms, her melodies of March and April, her symphony
of May, and we all vibrate to the glorious harmony; men and birds take
up the strain. At that moment the smallest become poets, often sublime
songsters. They sing for their companions whose love they wish to gain.
They sing for those who hearken to them, and more than one accomplishes
incredible efforts of emulation. Man also responds to the bird. The
song of the one inspires the other with song. Harmony unknown in tropic
climes! The dazzling colours which there replace this concord of sweet
sounds do not create such a mutual bond. In a robe of sparkling gems,
the bird is not less alone.
Far different from this favoured, dazzling, glittering being are the
birds of our colder countries, humble in attire, rich in heart, but
almost paupers. Few, very few of them, seek the handsome gardens, the
aristocratic avenues, the shade of great parks. They all live with
the peasant. God has distributed them everywhere. Woods and thickets,
clearings, fields, vineyards, humid meadows, reedy pools, mountain
forests, even the peaks snow-crowned--he has allotted each winged tribe
to its particular region--has deprived no country, no locality, of this
harmony, so that man can wander nowhere, can neither ascend so high,
nor descend so low, but that he will be greeted with a chorus of joy
and consolation.
[Illustration]
Day scarcely begins, scarcely does the stable-bell ring out for the
herds, but the wagtail appears to conduct, and frisk and hover around
them. She mingles with the cattle, and familiarly accompanies the hind.
She knows that she is loved both by man and the beasts, which she
defends against insects. She boldly plants herself on the head of the
cow, on the back of the sheep. By day she never quits them; she leads
them homeward faithfully at evening.
The water-wagtail, equally punctual, is at her post; she flutters round
the washerwomen; she hops on her long legs into the water, and asks for
crumbs; by a strange instinct of mimicry she raises and dips her tail,
as if to imitate the motion of beating the linen, to do her work also
and earn her pay.
The bird of the fields before all others, the labourer's bird, is the
lark, his constant companion, which he encounters everywhere in his
painful furrow, ready to encourage, to sustain him, to sing to him
of hope. _Espoir_, hope, is the old device of us Gauls; and for this
reason we have adopted as our national bird that humble minstrel, so
poorly clad, but so rich in heart and song.
[Illustration]
Nature seems to have treated the lark with harshness. Owing to the
arrangement of her claws, she cannot perch on the trees. She rests on
the ground, close to the poor hare, and with no other shelter than the
furrow. How precarious, how riskful a life, at the time of incubation!
What cares must be hers, what inquietudes! Scarcely a tuft of grass
conceals the mother's fond treasure from the dog, the hawk, or the
falcon. She hatches her eggs in haste; with haste she trains the
trembling brood. Who would not believe that the ill-fated bird must
share the melancholy of her sad neighbour, the hare?
This animal is sad, and fear consumes her.
"Cet animal est triste et la crainte le ronge."
LA FONTAINE.
But the contrary has taken place by an unexpected marvel of gaiety
and easy forgetfulness, of lightsome indifference and truly French
carelessness; the national bird is scarcely out of peril before she
recovers all her serenity, her song, her indomitable glee. Another
wonder: her perils, her precarious existence, her cruel trials, do
not harden her heart; she remains good as well as gay, sociable and
trustful, presenting a model (rare enough among birds) of paternal
love; the lark, like the swallow, will, in case of need, nourish her
sisters.
Two things sustain and animate her: love and light. She makes love for
half the year. Twice, nay, thrice, she assumes the dangerous happiness
of maternity, the incessant travail of a hazardous education. And when
love fails, light remains and re-inspires her. The smallest gleam
suffices to restore her song.
She is the daughter of day. As soon as it dawns, when the horizon
reddens and the sun breaks forth, she springs from her furrow like an
arrow, and bears to heaven's gate her hymn of joy. Hallowed poetry,
fresh as the dawn, pure and gleeful as a childish heart! That powerful
and sonorous voice is the reapers' signal. "We must start," says the
father; "do you not hear the lark?" She follows them, and bids them
have courage; in the hot sunny hours invites them to slumber, and
drives away the insects. Upon the bent head of the young girl half
awakened she pours her floods of harmony.
"No throat," says Toussenel, "can contend with that of the lark in
richness and variety of song, compass and _velvetiness_ of _timbre_,
duration and range of sound, suppleness and indefatigability of the
vocal chords. The lark sings for a whole hour without half a second's
pause, rising vertically in the air to the height of a thousand yards,
and stretching from side to side in the realm of clouds to gain a yet
loftier elevation, without losing one of its notes in this immense
flight.
"What nightingale could do as much?"
[Illustration]
This hymn of light is a benefit bestowed on the world, and you will
meet with it in every country which the sun illuminates. There are
as many different species of larks as there are different countries:
wood-larks, field-larks, larks of the thickets, of the marshes, the
larks of the Crau de Provence, larks of the chalky soil of Champagne,
larks of the northern lands in both hemispheres; you will find them,
moreover, in the salt steppes, in the plains of Tartary withered
by the north wind. Preserving reclamation of kindly nature; tender
consolations of the love of God!
But autumn has arrived. While the lark gathers behind the plough the
harvest of insects, the guests of the northern countries come to visit
us: the thrush, punctual to our vintage-time; and, haughty under his
crown, the wren, the imperceptible "King of the North." From Norway,
at the season of fogs, he comes, and, under a gigantic fir-tree, the
little magician sings his mysterious song, until the extreme cold
constrains him to descend, to mingle, and make himself popular among
the little troglodytes which dwell with us, and charm our cottages by
their limpid notes.
The season grows rough; all the birds draw nearer man. The honest
bullfinches, fond and faithful couples, come, with a short melancholy
chirp, to solicit help. The winter-warbler also quits his bushes; timid
as he is, he grows sufficiently bold towards evening to raise outside
our doors his trembling voice with its monotonous, plaintive accents.
"When, in the first mists of October, shortly before winter, the poor
proletarian seeks in the forest his pitiful provision of dead wood, a
small bird approaches him, attracted by the noise of his axe; he hovers
around him, and taxes his wits to amuse him by singing in a very low
voice his softest lays. It is the robin redbreast, which a charitable
fairy has despatched to tell the solitary labourer that there is still
some one in nature interested in him.
"When the woodcutter has collected the brands of the preceding day,
reduced to cinders; when the chips and the dry branches crackle in the
flames, the robin hastens singing to enjoy his share of the warmth, and
to participate in the woodcutter's happiness.
"When Nature retires to slumber, and folds herself in her mantle of
snow; when one hears no other voices than those of the birds of the
North, which define in the air their rapid triangles, or that of the
north wind, which roars and engulfs itself in the thatched roof of the
cottages, a tiny flute-like song, modulated in softest notes, protests
still, in the name of creative work, against the universal weakness,
lamentation, and lethargy."
Open your windows, for pity's sake, and give him a few crumbs, a
handful of grain. If he sees friendly faces, he will enter the room; he
is not insensible to warmth; cheered by this brief breath of summer,
the poor little one returns much stronger into the winter.
Toussenel is justly indignant that no poet has sung of the robin.[25]
But the bird himself is his own bard; and if one could transcribe his
little song, it would express completely the humble poesy of his life.
The one which I have by my side, and which flies about my study, for
lack of listeners of his own species, perches before the glass, and,
without disturbing me, in a whispering voice utters his thoughts to
the ideal robin which he fancies he sees before him. And here is their
meaning, so far as a woman's hand has succeeded in preserving it:--
[Illustration]
"Je suis le compagnon
Du pauvre bûcheron.
"Je le suis en automne,
Au vent des premiers froids,
Et c'est moi qui lui donne
Le dernier chant des bois.
"Il est triste, et je chante
Sous mon deuil mêlé d'or.
Dans la brume pesante
Je vois l'azur encor.
"Que ce chant te relève
Et te garde l'espoir!
Qu'il te berce d'un rêve,
Et te ramène au soir!
"Mais quand vient la gelée,
Je frappe à ton carreau.
Il n'est plus de feuillée,
Prends pitié de l'oiseau!
"C'est ton ami d'automne
Qui revient près de toi.
Le ciel, tout m'abandonne--
Bûcheron, ouvre-moi!
"Qu'en ce temps de disette,
Le petit voyageur,
Régalé d'une miette,
S'endorme à ta chaleur!
"Je suis le compagnon
Du pauvre bûcheron."
[Illustration]
_Imitated_:--
I am the companion
Of the poor woodcutter.
I follow him in autumn,
When the first chill breezes plain;
And I it is who warble
The woodlands' last sweet strain.
He is sad, and then I sing
Under my gilded shroud,
And I see the gleam of azure
Glint through the gathering cloud.
Oh, may the song inspiring
Revive Hope's flame again,
And at even guide thee homeward
By the magic of its strain!
But when the streams are frozen,
I tap at thy window-pane--
Oh, on the bird take pity,
Not a leaf, not a herb remain!
It is thy autumn comrade
Who makes appeal to thee;
By heaven, by all forsaken,
Woodman, oh, pity me!
Yes, in these days of famine
The little pilgrim keep;
On dainty crumbs regale him,
By the fireside let him sleep!
For I am the companion
Of the poor woodcutter!
[Illustration]
[Illustration]
[Illustration: THE NEST.]
[Illustration]
THE NEST.
ARCHITECTURE OF BIRDS.
I am writing opposite a graceful collection of nests of French birds,
made for me by a friend. I am able thus to appreciate, to verify the
descriptions of authors, to improve them, perhaps, if the very limited
resources of style can give any just idea of a wholly special art, less
analogous to ours than one would be tempted to believe at the first
glance. Nothing in this branch of study can supply the place of actual
sight of the objects. You must see and touch; you will then perceive
that all comparison is false and inaccurate. These things belong to a
world apart. Shall we say _above_, or _below_ the works of man? Neither
the one nor the other; but essentially different, and whose supposed
similarities (or relations) are only external.
Let us recollect, at the outset, that this charming object, so much
more delicate than words can describe, owes everything to art, to
skill, to calculation. The materials are generally of the rudest, and
not always those which the artist would have preferred. The instruments
are very defective. The bird has neither the squirrel's hand nor the
beaver's tooth. Having only his bill and his foot (which by no means
serves the purpose of a hand), it seems that the nest should be to him
an insoluble problem. The specimens now before my eyes are for the
most part composed of a tissue or covering of mosses, small flexible
branches, or long vegetable filaments; but it is less a _weaving_
than a _condensation_; a felting of materials, blended, beaten, and
welded together with much exertion and perseverance; an act of great
labour and energetic operation, for which the bill and the claw would
be insufficient. The tool really used is the bird's own body--his
breast--with which he presses and kneads the materials until he has
rendered them completely pliable, has thoroughly mixed them, and
subdued them to the general work.
And within, too, the implement which determines the circular form of
the nest is no other than the bird's body. It is by constantly turning
himself about, and ramming the wall on every side, that he succeeds in
shaping the circle.
[Illustration]
Thus, then, his house is his very person, his form, and his immediate
effort--I would say, his suffering. The result is only obtained by a
constantly repeated pressure of his breast. There is not one of these
blades of grass but which, to take and retain the form of a curve, has
been a thousand and a thousand times pressed against his bosom, his
heart, certainly with much disturbance of the respiration, perhaps with
much palpitation.
It is quite otherwise with the habitat of the quadruped. He comes
into the world clothed; what need has he of a nest? Thus, then, those
animals which build or burrow labour for themselves rather than for
their young. A skilful miner is the mountain rat, in his oblique
tunnel, which saves him from the winter gale. The squirrel, with hand
adroit, raises the pretty turret which defends him from the rain. The
great engineer of the lakes, the beaver, foreseeing the gathering
of the waters, builds up several stages to which he may ascend at
pleasure; but all this is done for the individual. The bird builds for
her family. Carelessly did she live in her bright leafy bower, exposed
to every enemy; but the moment she was no longer alone, the hoped for
and anticipated maternity made her an artist. The nest is a creation of
love.
[Illustration]
Thus, the work is imprinted with a force of extraordinary will, of a
passion singularly persevering. You see in it especially this fact,
that it is not, like our works, prepared from a model, which settles
the plan, conducts and regulates the labour. Here the conception is so
thoroughly _in_ the artist, the idea so clearly defined, that, without
frame or carcase, without preliminary support, the aerial ship is built
up piece by piece, and not a hitch disturbs the ensemble. All adjusts
itself exactly, symmetrically, in perfect harmony; a thing infinitely
difficult in such a deficiency of tools, and in this rude effort of
concentration and kneading by the mere pressure of the breast. The
mother does not trust to the male bird for all this; but she employs
him as her purveyor. He goes in quest of the materials--grasses,
mosses, roots, or branches. But when the ship is built, when the
interior has to be arranged--the couch, the household furniture--the
matter becomes more difficult. Care must be taken that the former be
fit to receive an egg peculiarly sensitive to cold, every chilled point
of which means for the little one a dead limb. That little one will
be born naked. Its stomach, closely folded to the mother's, will not
fear the cold; but the back, still bare, will only be warmed by the
bed; the mother's precaution and anxiety are, therefore, not easily
satisfied. The husband brings her some horse-hair, but it is too hard;
it will only serve as an under-stratum, a sort of elastic mattress.
He brings hemp, but that is too cold; only the silk or silky fibre of
certain plants, wool or cotton, are admissible; or better still, her
own feathers, her own down, which she plucks away, and deposits under
the nursling. It is interesting to watch the male bird's skilful and
furtive search for materials; he is apprehensive lest you should learn,
by watching him with your eyes, the track to his nest. Frequently,
if you look at him, he will take a different road, to deceive you. A
hundred ingenious little thefts respond to the mother's desire. He
will follow the sheep to collect a little wool. From the poultry-yard
he will gather the dropped feathers of the mother hen. If the farmer's
wife quit for a moment her seat in the porch, and leave behind her
distaff or ball of thread, he will spy his opportunity, and go off the
richer for a thread or two.
[Illustration]
[Illustration]
Collections of nests are very recent, not numerous, and, as yet,
not rich. In that of Rouen, however, which is remarkable for its
arrangement; in that of Paris, where many very curious specimens may be
examined; you can distinguish already the different industries which
create this master-piece of the nest. What is the chronology, the
gradual growth of it? Not from one art to another (not from masonry
to weaving, for example); but in each separate art, the birds which
abandon themselves to it are more or less successful, according to the
intelligence of the species, the abundance of material, or the exigency
of climate.
Among the burrowing birds, the booby, and the penguin, whose young, as
soon as born, spring into the sea, content themselves with hollowing
out a rude hole. But the bee-eater, the sea-swallow, which must educate
their young, excavate under the ground a dwelling which is admirably
proportioned, and not without some geometrical design. They furnish
it, moreover, and strew it with soft yielding substances on which the
fledgling will be less sensitive to the hardness or freshness of the
humid soil.
Among the building-birds, the flamingo, which raises a pyramid of mud
to isolate her eggs from the inundated earth, and, while standing
erect, hatches them under her long legs, is contented with a rude,
rough work. It is, moreover, a stratagem. The true mason is the
swallow, which suspends her house to ours.
The marvel of its kind is, perhaps, the wonderful carpentry which the
thrush executes. The nest, very much exposed under the moist shelter of
the vines, is made externally of moss, and amid the surrounding verdure
escapes the eye; but look within: it is an admirable cupola, neat,
polished, shining, and not inferior to glass. You may see yourself in
it as in a mirror.
The rustic art, appropriate to the forests, of timber-work, joining,
wood-carving, is attempted on the lowest scale by the toucan, whose
bill, though enormous, is weak and thin: he attacks only worm-eaten
trees. The woodpecker, better armed, as we have seen, accomplishes
more: he is a true carpenter; until love inspires him, and he becomes a
sculptor.
Infinite in varieties and species is the guild of basket-makers and
weavers. To note the starting-point, the advance, and the climax of an
industry so varied, would be a prolonged labour.
The shore birds plait, to begin with, but very unskilfully. Why should
they do better? So warmly clothed by nature with an unctuous and almost
impermeable coat of plumage, they have little need to allow for the
elements. Their great art is the chase; always lank, and insufficiently
fed, the piscivora are controlled by the wants of a craving stomach.
The very elementary weaving of the herons and storks is already
outstripped, though to no great extent, by the basket-makers of the
woods, the jay, the mocking-bird, the bullfinch. Their more numerous
brood impose on them more arduous toil. They lay down rude enough
foundations, but thereupon plant a basket of more or less elegant
design, a web of roots and dry twigs strongly woven together. The
cistole delicately interlaces three reeds or canes, whose leaves,
mingled with the web, form a safe and mobile base, undulating as the
bird rocks. The tomtit suspends her purse-like cradle to a bough, and
trusts to the wind to nurse her progeny.
The canary, the goldfinch, the chaffinch, are skilful _felters_. The
latter, restless and suspicious, attaches to the finished nest, with
much skill and address, a quantity of white lichens, so that the
spotted appearance of the whole completely misleads the seeker, and
induces him to take this charming and cunningly disguised nest for an
accident of vegetation, a fortuitous and natural object.
[Illustration]
Glueing and felting play an important part in the work of the
weavers. It would be a mistake to separate these arts too widely. The
humming-bird consolidates its little house with the gum of trees. Most
birds employ saliva. Some--a strange thing, and a subtle invention of
love!--here make use of processes for which their organs are least
adapted. An American starling contrives to sew the leaves with its
bill, and does so very adroitly.
A few skilful weavers, not satisfied with the bill, bring into play
their feet. The chain prepared, they fix it with their feet, while the
beak inserts the weft. They become genuine weavers.
In fine, skill never fails them. It is very astonishing, but
implements _are_ wanting. They are strangely ill-adapted for the work.
Most insects, in comparison, are wonderfully furnished with arms and
utensils. But these are true workmen, are born workmen. The bird is so
but for a time, through the inspiration of love.
[Illustration]
[Illustration: THE COMMUNITIES OF BIRDS.]
[Illustration]
THE COMMUNITIES OF BIRDS.
ESSAYS AT A REPUBLIC.
The more I reflect upon it, the more clearly I perceive that the bird,
unlike the insect, is not an industrial animal. He is the poet of
nature, the most independent of created beings, with a sublime, an
adventurous, but on the whole an ill-protected existence.
Let us penetrate into the wild American forests, and examine the means
of safety which these isolated beings invent or possess. Let us compare
the bird's resources, the efforts of his genius, with the inventions of
his neighbour, man, who inhabits the same localities. The difference
does honour to the bird; human invention is always acting on the
offensive. While the Indian has fashioned a club and a tomahawk, the
bird has built only a nest.
For decency, warmth, and elegant gracefulness, the nest is in every
respect superior to the Indian's wigwam or the Negro's hut, which,
frequently, in Africa, is nothing but a baobab hollowed by time.
The negro has not yet invented the door; his hut remains open. Against
the nocturnal forays of wild beasts, he obstructs the entrance with
thorns.
Nor does the bird know how to close his nest. What shall be its
defence? A great and terrible question.