A WOOD WREN AT WELLS
East of Wells Cathedral, close to the moat surrounding the bishop's
palace, there is a beautifully wooded spot, a steep slope, where the
birds had their headquarters. There was much to attract them there:
sheltered by the hill behind, it was a warm corner, a wooded angle,
protected by high old stone walls, dear to the redstart, masses of
ivy, and thickets of evergreens; while outside the walls were green
meadows and running water. When going out for a walk I always passed
through this wood, lingering a little in it; and when I wanted to
smoke a pipe, or have a lazy hour to myself among the trees, or
sitting in the sun, I almost invariably made for this favourite spot.
At different hours of the day I was a visitor, and there I heard the
first spring migrants on their arrival--chiff-chaff, willow wren,
cuckoo, redstart, blackcap, white-throat. Then, when April was drawing
to an end, I said, There are no more to come. For the wryneck, lesser
white-throat, and garden warbler had failed to appear, and the few
nightingales that visit the neighbourhood had settled down in a more
secluded spot a couple of miles away, where the million leaves in
coppice and brake were not set a-tremble by the melodious thunder of
the cathedral chimes.
Nevertheless, there was another still to come, the one I perhaps love
best of all. On the last day of April I heard the song of the wood
wren, and at once all the other notes ceased for a while to interest
me. Even the last comer, the mellow blackcap, might have been singing
at that spot since February, like the wren and hedge-sparrow, so
familiar and workaday a strain did it seem to have compared with this
late warbler. I was more than glad to welcome him to that particular
spot, where if he chose to stay I should have him so near me.
It is well known that the wood wren can only be properly seen
immediately after his arrival in this country, at the end of April or
early in May, when the young foliage does not so completely hide his
slight unresting form, as is the case afterwards. For he,
too, is green in colour; like Wordsworth's green linnet,
A brother of the leaves he seems.
There is another reason why he can be seen so much better during the
first days of his sojourn with us: he does not then keep to the higher
parts of the tall trees he frequents, as his habit is later, when the
air is warm and the minute winged insects on which he feeds are
abundant on the upper sun-touched foliage of the high oaks and
beeches. On account of that ambitious habit of the wood wren there is
no bird with us so difficult to observe; you may spend hours at a
spot, where his voice sounds from the trees at intervals of half a
minute to a minute, without once getting a glimpse of his form. At the
end of April the trees are still very thinly clad; the upper foliage
is but an airy garment, a slight golden-green mist, through which the
sun shines, lighting up the dim interior, and making the bed of old
fallen beech-leaves look like a floor of red gold. The small-winged
insects, sun-loving and sensitive to cold, then hold their revels near
the surface; and the bird, too, prefers the neighbourhood of the
earth. It was so in the case of the wood wren I observed at Wells,
watching him on several consecutive days, sometimes for an hour or two
at a stretch, and generally more than once a day. The spot where he
was always to be found was quite free from underwood, and the trees
were straight and tall, most of them with slender, smooth boles.
Standing there, my figure must have looked very conspicuous to all the
small birds in the place; but for a time it seemed to me that the wood
wren paid not the slightest attention to my presence; that as he
wandered hither and thither in sunlight and shade at his own sweet
will, my motionless form was no more to him than a moss-grown stump or
grey upright stone. By and by it became apparent that the bird knew me
to be no stump or stone, but a strange living creature whose
appearance greatly interested him; for invariably, soon after I had
taken up my position, his careless little flights from twig to twig
and from tree to tree brought him nearer, and then nearer, and finally
near me he would remain for most of the time. Sometimes he would
wander for a distance of forty or fifty yards away, but before long he
would wander back and be with me once more, often perching so near
that the most delicate shadings of his plumage were as distinctly seen
as if I had had him perched on my hand.
The human form seen in an unaccustomed place always excites a good
deal of attention among the birds; it awakes their curiosity,
suspicion, and alarm. The wood wren was probably curious and nothing
more; his keeping near me looked strange only because he at the same
time appeared so wholly absorbed in his own music. Two or three times
I tried the experiment of walking to a distance of fifty or sixty
yards and taking up a new position; but always after a while he would
drift thither, and I would have him near me, singing and moving, as
before.
I was glad of this inquisitiveness, if that was the bird's motive
(that I had unconsciously fascinated him I could not believe); for of
all the wood wrens I have seen this seemed the most beautiful, most
graceful in his motions, and untiring in song. Doubtless this was
because I saw him so closely, and for such long intervals. His fresh
yellowish-green upper and white under plumage gave him a wonderfully
delicate appearance, and these colours harmonised with the tender
greens of the opening leaves and the pale greys and silvery whites of
the slender boles.
Seebohm says of this species: "They arrive in our woods in
marvellously perfect plumage. In the early morning sun they look
almost as delicate a yellowish-green as the half-grown leaves amongst
which they disport themselves. In the hand the delicate shading of the
eye-stripe, and the margin of the feathers of the wings and tail, is
exquisitely beautiful, but is almost all lost under the rude handling
of the bird-skinner."
The concluding words sound almost strange; but it is a fact that this
sylph-like creature is sometimes shattered with shot and its poor
remains operated on by the bird-stuffer. Its beauty "in the hand"
cannot compare with that exhibited when it lives and moves and sings.
Its appearance during flight differs from that of other warblers on
account of the greater length and sharpness of the wings. Most
warblers fly and sing hurriedly; the wood wren's motions, like its
song, are slower, more leisurely, and more beautiful. When moved by
the singing passion it is seldom still for more than a few moments at
a time, but is continually passing from branch to branch, from tree to
tree, finding a fresh perch from which to deliver its song on each
occasion. At such times it has the appearance of a delicately coloured
miniature kestrel or hobby. Most lovely is its appearance when it
begins to sing in the air, for then the long sharp wings beat time to
the first clear measured notes, the prelude to the song. As a rule,
however, the flight is silent, and the song begins when the new perch
is reached--first the distinct notes that are like musical strokes,
and fall faster and faster until they run and swell into a long
passionate trill--the woodland sound which is like no other.
Charming a creature as the wood wren appears when thus viewed closely
in the early spring-time, he is not my favourite among small birds
because of his beauty of shape and colour and graceful motions, which
are seen only for a short time, but on account of his song, which
lasts until September; though I may not find it very easy to give a
reason for the preference.
It comforts me a little in this inquiry to remember that Wordsworth
preferred the stock-dove to the nightingale--that "creature of
ebullient heart." The poet was a little shaky in his ornithology at
times; but if we take it that he meant the ring-dove, his preference
might still seem strange to some. Perhaps it is not so very strange
after all.
If we take any one of the various qualities which we have agreed to
consider highest in bird-music, we find that the wood wren compares
badly with his fellow-vocalists--that, measured by this standard, he
is a very inferior singer. Thus, in variety, he cannot compare with
the thrush, garden-warbler, sedge-warbler, and others; in brilliance
and purity of sound with the nightingale, blackcap, etc.; in strength
and joyousness with the skylark; in mellowness with the blackbird; in
sprightliness with the goldfinch and chaffinch; in sweetness with the
wood-lark, tree-pipit, reed-warbler, the chats and wagtails, and so on
to the end of all the qualities which we regard as important. What,
then, is the charm of the wood wren's song? The sound is unlike any
other, but that is nothing, since the same can be said of the wryneck
and cuckoo and grasshopper warbler. To many persons the wood wren's
note is a bird-sound and nothing more, and it may even surprise them
to hear it called a song. Indeed, some ornithologists have said that
it is not a song, but a call or cry, and it has also been described as
"harsh."
I here recall a lady who sat next to me on the coach that took me from
Minehead to Lynton. The lady resided at Lynton, and finding that I was
visiting the place for the first time, she proceeded to describe its
attractions with fluent enthusiasm. When we arrived at the town, and
were moving very slowly into it, my companion turned and examined my
face, waiting to hear the expressions of rapturous admiration that
would fall from my lips. Said I, "There is one thing you can boast of
in Lynton. So far as I know, it is the only town in the country where,
sitting in your own room with the windows open, you can listen to the
song of the wood wren." Her face fell. She had never heard of the wood
wren, and when I pointed to the tree from which the sound came and she
listened and heard, she turned away, evidently too disgusted to say
anything. She had been wasting her eloquence on an unworthy
subject--one who was without appreciation for the sublime and
beautiful in nature. The wild romantic Lynn, tumbling with noise and
foam over its rough stony bed, the vast wooded hills, the piled-up
black rocks (covered in places with beautiful red and blue lettered
advertisements), had been passed by in silence--nothing had stirred me
but the chirping of a miserable little bird, which, for all that she
knew or cared, might be a sparrow! When we got down from the coach a
couple of minutes later, she walked away without even saying good-bye.
There is no doubt that very many persons know and care as little about
bird voices as this lady; but how about the others who do know and
care a good deal--what do they think and feel about the song of the
wood wren? I know two or three persons who are as fond of the bird as
I am; and two or three recent writers on bird life have spoken of its
song as if they loved it. The ornithologists have in most cases been
satisfied to quote Gilbert White's description of Letter XIX.: "This
last haunts only the tops of trees in high beechen woods, and makes a
sibilous grasshopper-like noise now and then, at short intervals,
shaking a little with its wings when it sings."
White was a little more appreciative in the case of the willow wren
when he spoke of its "joyous, easy, laughing note"; yet the willow
wren has had to wait a long time to be recognised as one of our best
vocalists. Some years ago it was greatly praised by John Burroughs,
who came over from America to hear the British songsters, his thoughts
running chiefly on the nightingale, blackcap, throstle, and blackbird;
and he was astonished to find that this unfamed warbler, about which
the ornithologists had said little and the poets nothing, was one of
the most delightful vocalists, and had a "delicious warble." He waxed
indignant at our neglect of such a singer, and cried out that it had
too fine a song to please the British ear; that a louder coarser voice
was needed to come up to John Bull's standard of a good song. No one
who loves a hearty laugh can feel hurt at his manner of expressing
himself, so characteristic of an American. Nevertheless, the fact
remains that only since Burroughs' appreciation of the British
song-birds first appeared, several years ago, the willow wren, which
he found languishing in obscurity, has had many to praise it. At all
events, the merits of its song are now much more freely acknowledged
than they were formerly.
Perhaps the wood wren's turn will come by and by. He is still an
obscure bird, little known, or not known, to most people: we are more
influenced by what the old writers have said than we know or like to
believe; our preferences have mostly been made for us. The species
which they praised and made famous have kept their places in popular
esteem, while other species equally charming, which they did not know
or said nothing about, are still but little regarded. It is hardly to
be doubted that the wood wren would have been thought more of if
Willughby, the Father of British Ornithology, had known it and
expressed a high opinion of its song; or that it would have had
millions to admire it if Chaucer or Shakespeare had singled it out for
a few words of praise.
It is also probably the fact that those who are not students, or close
observers of bird life, seldom know more than a very few of the most
common species; and that when they hear a note that pleases them they
set it down to one of the half-dozen or three or four songsters whose
names they remember. I met with an amusing instance of this common
mistake at a spot in the west of England, where I visited a castle on
a hill, and was shown over the beautiful but steep grounds by a stout
old dame, whose breath and temper were alike short. It was a bright
morning in May, and the birds were in full song. As we walked through
the shrubbery a blackcap burst into a torrent of wild heart-enlivening
melody from amidst the foliage not more than three yards away. "How
well that blackcap sings!" I remarked. "That blackbird," she
corrected; "yes, it sings well." She stuck to it that it was a
blackbird, and to prove that I was wrong assured me that there were no
blackcaps there. Finding that I refused to acknowledge myself in
error, she got cross and dropped into sullen silence; but ten or
fifteen minutes later she returned of her own accord to the subject.
"I've been thinking, sir," she said, "that you must be right. I said
there are no blackcaps here because I've been told so, but all the
same I've often remarked that the blackbird has two different songs.
Now I know, but I'm so sorry that I didn't know a few days sooner." I
asked her why. She replied, "The other day a young American lady came
to the castle and I took her over the grounds. The birds were singing
the same as to-day, and the young lady said, 'Now, I want you to tell
me which is the blackcap's song. Just think,' she said, 'what a
distance I have come, from America! Well, when I was bidding good-bye
to my friends at home I said, "Don't you envy me? I'm going to Old
England to hear the blackcap's song."' Well, when I told her we had no
blackcaps she was so disappointed; and yet, sir, if what you say is
right, the bird was singing near us all the time!"
Poor young lady from America! I should have liked to know whose
written words first fired her brain with desire of the blackcap's
song--a golden voice in imagination's ear, while the finest home
voices were merely silvern. I think of my own case; how in boyhood
this same bird first warbled to me in some lines of a poem I read; and
how, long years afterwards, I first heard the real song--beautiful,
but how unlike the song I had imagined!--one bright evening in early
May, at Netley Abbey. But the poet's name had meanwhile slipped out of
memory; nothing but a vague impression remained (and still persists)
that he flourished and had great fame about the beginning of the
nineteenth century, and that now his (or her) fame and works are
covered with oblivion.
To return to the subject of this paper: the wood wren--the secret of
its charm. We see that, tried by ordinary standards, many other
singers are its superiors; what, then, is the mysterious something in
its music that makes it to some of us even better than the best?
Speaking for myself, I should say because it is more harmonious, or in
more perfect accord with the nature amid which it is heard; it is the
truer woodland voice.
The chaffinch as a rule sings in open woods and orchards and groves
when there is light and life and movement; but sometimes in the heart
of a deep wood the silence is broken by its sudden loud lyric: it is
unexpected and sounds unfamiliar in such a scene; the wonderfully
joyous ringing notes are like a sudden flood of sunshine in a shady
place. The sound is intensely distinct and individual, in sharp
contrast to the low forest tones: its effect on the ear is similar to
that produced on the sight by a vivid contrast in colours, as by a
splendid scarlet or shining yellow flower blooming solitary where all
else is green. The effect produced by the wood wren is totally
different; the strain does not contrast with, but is complementary to,
the "tremulous cadence low" of inanimate nature in the high woods, of
wind-swayed branches and pattering of rain and lisping and murmuring
of innumerable leaves--the elemental sounds out of which it has been
fashioned. In a sense it may be called a trivial and a monotonous
song--the strain that is like a long tremulous cry, repeated again and
again without variation; but it is really beyond criticism--one would
have to begin by depreciating the music of the wind. It is a voice of
the beechen woods in summer, of the far-up cloud of green, translucent
leaves, with open spaces full of green shifting sunlight and shadow.
Though resonant and far-reaching it does not strike you as loud, but
rather as the diffused sound of the wind in the foliage concentrated
and made clear--a voice that has light and shade, rising and passing
like the wind, changing as it flows, and quivering like a
wind-fluttered leaf. It is on account of this harmony that it is not
trivial, and that the ear never grows tired of listening to it: sooner
would it tire of the nightingale--its purest, most brilliant tone and
most perfect artistry.
The continuous singing of a skylark at a vast height above the green,
billowy sun and shadow-swept earth is an etherealised sound which
fills the blue space, fills it and falls, and is part of that visible
nature above us, as if the blue sky, the floating clouds, the wind and
sunshine, has something for the hearing as well as for the sight. And
as the lark in its soaring song is of the sky, so the wood wren is of
the wood.