Tits, as I think I have said, or implied, are a feature of
Icklingham. They like the fir plantations, which, though of no great
dimensions--for they only make a patch here and there--are to them, by
virtue of their tininess, as the wide-stretching forests of Brazil.
Sitting here, in the spring-time, on the look-out, with a general
alertness for anything, but not thinking of tits in particular, one
may become, gradually, aware--for their softness sinks upon one, one
never sees them suddenly--of one of these little birds dropping, every
few minutes, from the branches of a fir to the ground, and there
disappearing. In a lazy sort of way you watch--to be more direct I once
watched--and soon I saw there were a pair. They crossed one another,
sometimes, going or coming, and, each time, the one that came had
something very small in its bill. Walking to the tree, I found, at only
a foot or two from its trunk, a perfectly circular little hole, opening
smoothly from amongst the carpet of pine-needles, with which the ground
was covered. Against this I laid my ear, but there were no chitterings
from inside, all was silent in the little, future nursery--for
evidently the nest was a-making. But how, now, was I to watch the birds
closely? When I sat quite near they would not come, the cover being
not very good; when I lay, at full length, behind a fir-trunk, and
peeped round it, I could see, indeed, the ground where the hole was,
but not the hole itself, which was just what I wanted to, inasmuch
as, otherwise, I could not see the birds enter it. How they did so
was something of a mystery, for they just flew down and disappeared,
without ever perching or hopping about--at least I had never seen them
do so. Here, then, was a difficulty--to lie, and yet see the hole, or
to sit or stand, and look at it, without frightening the birds away.
But Alexander cut the Gordian knot, and I, under these circumstances,
climbed a fir-tree. There was one almost by the side of the one they
flew to, and the closeness of its branches, as well as my elevated
situation amongst them--birds never look for one up aloft--would, I
thought, prevent their noticing me. Up, therefore, I got, to a point
from which I looked down, directly and comfortably, on their little
rotunda. Soon one of the coal-tits flew into its tree--the same one
always--and dropping, softly, from branch to branch, till it got to the
right one, dived from it right into the tiny aperture, and disappeared
through that, in a feather-flash. It was wonderful. There was no
pause or stay, not one light little perch on the smooth brink, not a
flutter above it even, no twist or twirl in the air, nothing at all;
but he just flew right through it, as though on through the wide fields
of air. I doubt if he touched the sides of it, even, though the hole
looks as small as himself. And it is the same every time. With absolute
precision of aim each bird comes down on that dark little portal, and
vanishes through it, like a ball disappearing through its cup. If they
touch it at all, they fit it like that.
For upwards of an hour, now, the two birds pass and repass one another,
popping in and out and carrying something in with them each time,
but such a small something that I can never make out what it is--a
little pinch of stuff, one may call it, only just showing in the beak.
Sometimes it is green, as though the birds had picked off tiny pieces
of the growing pine-needles, and sometimes it looks brown, which may
mean that they have pulled off some bark--but always very small. An
attempt to follow the birds on their collecting journeys, and see what
they get, is unsuccessful. They fly, very quickly, into the tops of the
firs, which stand dark and thick all around, and are immediately lost
to view. Whatever the material is, they come to the nest with it every
five or six minutes, nor do they once make their entrance except by
flying directly through the aperture. They would be ashamed, I think,
to perch and hop down into it. Very pretty it was to see these little
birds coming and going--especially coming. Sometimes they would be
with me quite suddenly, and yet so quietly, so mousily, they never
gave me a start. At other times I used to see them coming, fluttering
through the sun-chequered lanes of the fir-trees, till, reaching their
very own one, they would sink, as it were, through its frondage, full
of caution and quietude, descending, each time, by the same or nearly
the same little staircase of boughs, from the bottom step of which
they flew down. Some days afterwards, they were still building their
nest, but after that I had to leave. The nest itself I pulled up and
examined, a year afterwards, and it disproved all my theories as to
what the birds had been building it with. It was of considerable
size--round, as was the cavern in which it lay--and composed, almost
wholly, of three substances, viz. moss, wool, and rabbits’ fur. The two
latter had been employed to form the actual cup or bed--the blankets,
so to speak--whilst the moss made the mattress. All three were in great
abundance, and no royal personage, I think--not even Hans Andersen’s
real princess--can ever have slept in a softer or warmer bed. It seems
wonderful--almost incredible--that these two tiny birds, carrying,
each time, such a tiny little piece, in their bills, could ever have
got so great a mass of materials together. There it was, however, one
more example of the great results which spring from constantly repeated
small causes. The cavity in which the nest was placed, was, no doubt,
a natural one, but the hole by which the birds entered it was so very
round, that it must, I think, have been their own work, or, at least,
modified by them. It looked just as if a woodpecker had made it.
It was in a hedge opposite to a plantation like this--a hedge made
of planted branches of the Scotch fir, such as are common in these
parts--that I once watched a pair of long-tailed tits building their
much more wonderful nest. Like the coal-tits they are joint-labourers,
and both seem equally zealous. Often they arrive together, each with
something in its bill. One only enters, the other stays outside and
waits for it to come out, before going in itself. This, at least, is
the usual régime. Occasionally, if the bird inside stays there a very
long time, the other gets impatient, and goes in too, so that both are
in the nest together--but this one does not often see. It is a prettier
sight to see one hang at the entrance with a feather in his bill,
which is received by the other--just popping out its head--upon which
he flies away. This is in the later stages, when the nest is being
lined, and when the birds come, time after time, at intervals of a few
minutes, each with a feather in its bill. White these feathers often
are, and of some size (so that they look very conspicuous). I have seen
a bird, once, with two--two broad, soft, white ones that curled round,
backwards, on each side of its head, so as almost to hide it. Such
feathers must be brought from some particular place--a poultry-yard
most probably--and both birds arriving with them, at the same time, is
proof, or at least strong evidence, that they do their collecting in
company. I have noticed, too, that if one bird comes with a feather of
a different kind--for instance, a long straight one instead of a soft
curled one--the other does too, showing how close is the association.
At other times they bring lichen--with which the whole of the nest,
outside, is stuck over--and so tiny are the pieces they carry, that I
have, time after time, been unable to see them, even though sitting
near and using the glasses. I have been so struck with this, that,
sometimes, I have thought the lichen was carried rather in the mouth
than in the bill, by which means it would be moistened, and so stick
the easier on the outside surface of the nest.
[Illustration: A PRETTY PAIR
_Long-Tailed Tits Building_]
It is most interesting to see the nest growing under the joint labours
of the two little architects, and it does so at a quicker pace than
one would have thought possible. At first it is a cup, merely, like
most other nests--those of the chaffinch, goldfinch, linnet, &c.--and
it is because the birds will not leave off working, but continue to
build, that the cup becomes deeper and deeper till it is a purse or
sack. Here, as I imagine, we see the origin of the domed nest. It was
not helped forward by successive little steps of intelligence, but
only by the strength of the building instinct, which would not let the
birds make an end. The same cause has produced also, as I believe, the
supernumerary nests which so many birds make, and which are such a
puzzle to many people, who wonder at what seems to them extra labour,
rather than extra delight. Even naturalists are always talking about
the labour and toil of a bird, when building, but this, in my opinion,
is an utterly erroneous way of looking at it. As Shakespeare says, “the
labour we delight in physics pain,” and what delight can be greater
than that of satisfying an imperious and deep-seated instinct? It is in
this that our own greatest happiness lies, whilst the inability, from
various causes, to do so, constitutes misery. But with the building
bird there is no real labour, nothing that really makes toil, only a
fine exhilarating exercise which must be a pleasure in itself, and to
which is added that pleasure which ease and excellence in anything
we do and wish to do, confers. The best human equivalent for the joy
which a bird must feel in building its nest, is, I think, that of a
great artist or sculptor, whose soul is entirely absorbed in his work.
Those who pity the toils of such men in producing their masterpieces
may, with equal propriety, pity the bird; but here, too, the latter has
the advantage, for not even the sway of genius can be so o’ermastering
as that of a genuine instinct, the strength of which we must estimate
by those few primary ones--we call them passions--which are left in
ourselves.
It is this mighty joy in the breast of the little tit, which, by the
help of natural selection, has produced, as I believe, his wonderful
little nest, and if we watch him building we may get a hint as to how
the charming little round door that gives admission to it, has come
about. He did not contrive it, but by having, always, his one way in
and out, and continuing to build, it grew to be there; for even when
the nest is but a shallow cup, open all round, the birds enter and
leave it by one uniform way, so that this way must be left, right up to
the very last, by which time it has become that neat little aperture,
which looks so nicely thought out. Something like design may, perhaps,
now have entered into the construction, which would account for the
hole getting, gradually, higher, in the side of the nest--though this,
too, I am inclined to attribute to the mere love of building. The bird
builds everywhere that it can, and thus the place where it enters
gets higher, with the rest of the nest. When, however, the top of the
nest, on one side, is pulled over, so as to meet the other side,[25]
where the entrance is, it can go no higher, since, if it did, the bird
would either be kept in or out. Thus, as it appears to me, the exact
position of the hole in the nest, which is a somewhat curious one, is
philosophically accounted for.
When one of a pair of long-tailed tits enters the nest, he first
pays attention to that part of it which is exactly opposite to him,
as he does so. This he raises with his beak, and, also, by pushing
with his head and breast. He then, often, disappears in the depths
of the cup, and you see the sides of it swell out, now in one place
and now in another, as he butts and rams at them, which he does not
only with his head, but by kicking with his legs, behind him. Then he
turns round, the long tail appearing where the head has lately been,
whilst the head emerges, projecting over the rim in exactly the same
place as where he entered, but looking, now, outwards. This part he
now pushes down with his chin, just as he raised the other with his
head and beak, and having done this, he comes out. But often, sitting
in the nest as he entered it, he turns his head right round, on one
side or another, examining and manipulating the edges; and sometimes,
bending it down over the rim, he presses or arranges a lichen, on the
outside. This, however, he does more rarely than one would think, his
best attention being given to the interior. Sometimes, too, he flutters
his wings in the nest, as though to aid in the moulding of it. There
is one extraordinary power which these tits possess, which is that of
turning their bodies quite round in the nest, whilst keeping the tail
motionless, and in exactly the same place all the time. I have often
seen--or seemed to see--them do this, but as the tail sticks upright,
and is--till the cup gets too deep--a very conspicuous object, it would
not be easy to be mistaken. How they do it I know not--they are little
contortionists--but I have often noticed how loosely and flexibly the
long tail feathers of these birds seem just stuck into the body. There
is another thing that I have seen them do, viz. turn the head entirely
round without any part of the body seeming to share in the movement;
but here, I think, there must have been some hocus-pocus.
I have spoken of these tits having but one way of entering and leaving
the nest, even when all ways lie open to them: but, more than this,
they have one set path, by which they approach and retire from it. You
first notice this when one of the birds passes, inadvertently, on the
wrong side of some twig or bough, which makes a conspicuous feature in
its accustomed path. The eye is caught by the novelty, and you realise,
then, that it is one. This happens but rarely, and, when it does, it
has sometimes struck me that the bird feels a little confused, or not
quite easy, in consequence. It has such a feeling, I feel sure, which,
though slight, yet just marks its consciousness of having deviated
from a routine. Possibly the feeling is stronger than I am imagining,
for on one occasion, at least, I have seen a bird that had got the
wrong side of a twig palisade, so to speak, in approaching its nest,
turn back and pass it, on the right side. The nest, in this instance
also, was in one of those fine, open hedges, made of the branches of
the Scotch fir--planted and growing--which are common in this part of
Suffolk, and through these there was a regular “approach” to the house,
not straight, but in a crescent, as though for a carriage to drive
up--the “sweep” of the days of Jane Austen--and the birds always went
up and down it like dear little orthodox things as they are. During
the later stages of construction, the hole in the side of the nest
becomes so small and tight, that even these _petite_ little creatures
have, often, to struggle quite violently, in order to force themselves
through it; and this, I think, also, is evidence that the door is not
due to design--that the bird never has the thought in its mind, “There
must be a door to get in and out by.” Instead of that, it keeps getting
in and out, and this, of necessity, makes the door. These tits, when
building, seem to rest, for a little, in the nest, before leaving it,
and sometimes one will sit, for some minutes, quite still, with its
head projecting through the aperture, looking like a cleverly-painted
miniature in a round frame. At other times the tail projects, and
that, though not quite such a picture, has still a charm of its own.
Nothing can look prettier than these soft, little pinky, feathery
things, as they creep, mousily, into their soft little purse of a nest:
nothing can look prettier than they do, as they sit inside it, pulling,
pushing, ramming, patting, and arranging: finally, nothing can look
prettier than they look, as they again creep out of it, and fly away.
It is a joy to watch them building, and their perpetual feat of turning
in a way which ought to dislocate their tail, without dislocating it,
is an ever-recurring miracle. Charming in and about the nest, they are;
charming, too, in the way they approach it. They come up so softly and
quietly, creeping from one tree or bush to another, seeming almost to
steal through the air. They have a pretty, soft note, too, a low little
“chit, chit,” which they utter, at intervals, and which often tells
you they are there, before you catch sight of them. To hear that soft
chittery note, and then to catch a soft pinkiness, with it, are two
very pleasant sensations. Another is to see the one bird working in the
nest, and to hear the other chittering in the neighbourhood, whilst it
waits for it to come out.
In the absence of both the owners from the nest they were building, I
have seen a wren creep very quietly into it, and, after remaining there
for a little, creep as quietly out again. He carried nothing away with
him, that I could see, so that pillage may not have been his object,
though I know not what else it could have been. Perhaps it was simple
curiosity, or, again, it may have been but a part of his routine work.
Such a nest, with its hole of entrance, may have seemed to him like
any other chink or cavity, which he would have been prepared to enter
on general principles of investigation. Nests, however, in process
of building by one bird, are looked at by others as useful supplies
of material for their own--little depôts scattered over the country.
I have seen a pair of hedge-sparrows fly straight to a blackbird’s,
and then on, with grass in their bills. Another blackbird’s nest,
the building of which I was watching, supplied a blue tit with moss,
whilst, in the very same tree, a pair of golden-crested wrens had
theirs entirely demolished by an unfeeling hen chaffinch.
In my own experience it is the hen chaffinch, alone, that builds the
nest, and I have even seen her driving away a cock bird, which I took
to be her mate. After putting him to flight, this particular hen made
fifteen visits to the nest, at intervals of about ten minutes, bringing
something in her beak each time, and worked at it, singly, with great
fervour and energy. To the actions which I have been describing in the
long-tailed tits--viz. pressing herself down in it, ramming forward
with her breast, kicking out with her feet, behind, and so on--actions,
I suppose, common to most nest-building birds--she added that one of
clasping the rim tightly with her tail, bent strongly down for the
purpose, which I have referred to, before, in the blackbird. I could
not, however, repeat the comments which I have made when describing
it in her case. Whatever may have been the origin of the habit, it
has become, in the chaffinch, a mere business-like affair--purely
utilitarian, doubtless, in its inception and object. Though upon
this and other occasions of the nest-building, the hen chaffinch,
alone, has seemed to be the architect, it by no means follows that
this is always the case. A process of transition is, as I believe,
taking place in this respect with the males of various birds. With
the long-tailed tits, for instance, we have just seen how prettily
husband and wife can work together; and that they do so in the great
majority of instances, I have little doubt. Yet the first time that
I ever watched these birds building, it was only one of the pair who
did anything; the other--doubtless the male--though he came each time
with his mate, never brought anything with him, and did not once enter
the nest. He did not even go very near it, but merely stayed about, in
the neighbourhood, till the worker came out, on which the two flew off
together. This has been exactly the behaviour of the cock blackbird
during nidification, in such cases as have fallen under my observation;
and here I have been a very close watcher, for hours at a time, and
for several days in succession. Yet I have, myself, seen the cock
flying off with grass, from a field, whilst Mr. Dewar has seen him fly
up with some into the ivy on a wall, where a nest was known to be in
construction. The cock nightingale attends the hen, when building, in
just the same way that the cock blackbird does, but I have not yet seen
him take a part in its construction. Now to take the blackbird--since
here we have a clear case of individual difference--is it a process
of transition from one state of things to another, that we see, or
has the transition been made, and are the exceptional instances due
to reversion merely? But then, which are the exceptional instances,
or in which direction is the change proceeding? Is the male becoming,
or was he once, a builder or a non-builder? For myself, I incline to
the transitional view, and inasmuch as the lapse of such a habit as
nest-building must be consequent upon a loss of interest in it--which
would mean a decay of the instinct--this does not seem to me consistent
with the extremely attentive manner in which the cock follows the hen
about, and the manifest interest which he takes in all she does. It
seems to me more likely, therefore, that he is learning the art than
losing it. Still, as an instinct might weaken very gradually, it is
impossible to do more than conjecture which way the stream is running,
if we look only at a single species. The true way would be to take all
the species of the genus to which the one in question belongs, and
find out the habits of the majority, in regard to this special point.
If both the male and female of the genus _Turdidæ_ help, as a rule,
in building the nest, then this, no doubt, was the ancient state of
things, and _vice versâ_.
One might suppose--it would seem likely on a _primâ facie_ view of
it--that where the cock bird took no part in the building of the
nest, he would take none, either, in incubating the eggs. This is
so with the blackbird--at least I have never come upon the male
sitting, and whenever I have watched a nest where eggs were being
incubated, there has never been any change upon it; the birds, that
is to say, have never relieved one another, but the hen, having gone
off, has always returned, the nest being empty in the interval. But
if the suppression, in the male bird, of these two activities--of
nest-building and incubation--are related, by a parity of reasoning one
would suppose that he would take no part in the feeding of the young.
This, however, with the blackbird, is by no means the case, for the
cock is as active, here, and interested as the hen--or nearly so. At
least he recognises a duty, and performs it to the best of his ability.
It is the same with the wagtail, and, no doubt, with numbers of other
birds--a fact which seems to suggest that the instinct of incubation,
and that of parental love, are differentiated, the second not making
its appearance till after the eggs are hatched. This, at first sight,
seems likely, and then--if one considers it a little--unlikely, or,
perhaps, impossible. It is from birth that the maternal love, the
στοργἡ dates, and birth, here, is represented by the egg. True, there
is a second birth when the egg is hatched, which makes it possible
that the true στοργἡ has waited for this. Yet the mother continues to
brood upon the young in the same way that she has been doing on her
eggs, and, except for the feeding, which does not commence immediately,
the whole pretty picture looks so much the same that it is difficult
to think a new element has been projected into it. No one, whilst the
young are still tiny, could tell whether they or the eggs were being
brooded over by the parent bird. An interesting point occurs here.
When incubation is shared by the two sexes, the hatching of the eggs
must frequently, one would think, take place whilst the male bird is
sitting. What, then, are his feelings when this happens? By what,
if any, instinct is he swayed? If we suppose that the true στοργἡ
dates, in the mother’s breast, from the hatching of the egg, and the
appearance of the formed young, does, now, a similar feeling take
possession of the male? Does he too feel the στοργἡ, seeing that the
young have been born from the egg, under his breast? If so, we could
understand his subsequent devotion to the young, as shown by his
feeding them with the same assiduity as the mother. But what, then,
of the mother? She has been away at this second birth, so that if her
psychology would have been affected, in any way, by the act--if it
can be called an act--of hatching out the eggs, it ought not to be so
affected now; she should be less a mother, in fact, than the cock.
This, however--unless the eggs always are hatched out under the hen--is
contradicted by facts, so that it seems plain that whatever special
tie there may be between the female bird, as distinct from the male,
and the young, must date from the laying of the eggs. But if this be
so--and it seems the plain way of nature--what is it that makes the
cock bird incubate? Is he moved by a feeling of the same nature, if
weaker, as that which animates the hen, or has he, merely, caught the
habit from her? The fact that some male birds leave the whole duty
of incubation to the hen, and yet help to feed the young, seems to
point in the latter direction, since imitation might well have acted
capriciously, whereas one would suppose that feelings analogous, in
their nature, in the two sexes, would show themselves at the same
time. It would, however, be a stronger evidence for imitation, as the
cause of the parental activities of the male, were he to take his
part in incubation, but leave the young to the female. I do not know
if there is any species of bird, where the cock acts in this way.
Perhaps it may be impossible to answer these, or similar, questions,
but light might, conceivably, be thrown upon them by a more extensive
knowledge of the relative parts played by the male and female bird in
nidification, incubation, and the rearing of the young, throughout
a large number of species. These, however, are not the questions
with which ornithologists busy themselves. By turning to a natural
history of British birds, one can always find how many eggs are
laid by any species, their coloration--often illustrated by costly
plates--and when and where the laying takes place; but in regard to
the matters above-mentioned--or, indeed, most other matters--little or
no information is forthcoming. One might think that such works were
written for the assistance of bird-nesters only, and whether they are
or not, that is the end which they, principally, fulfil. I believe,
myself, that if the habits--especially the breeding habits--of but one
species in every group or genus had been thoroughly studied, so that we
knew, not only what it did, but how it did it, the result would make an
infinitely more valuable work, even in regard to British birds only,
than any now in existence, though all the other species were left out
of it, and little or nothing was said about the number of eggs, their
coloration, and the time at which they were laid.
If the male bird has only caught the habit of feeding the young from
the female, we can the better understand why, in so many species,
the cock feeds the hen, and this without any reference to whether
she is able or unable to feed herself. As the young birds grow up in
the nest, they resemble their parents more and more, and it would be
easier for the male to confuse them with the female, and thus take to
feeding her too, or to transfer the habit from the one to the other,
than it would be for the female, with a maternal instinct to guide
her, to do the same by the male. Yet this, too, would be possible, and
if, in any species, the female is accustomed to feed the male also, I
would account for it in a similar way. This habit, on the part of the
cock bird, has become, in some cases, a part of his ordinary courting
attentions to the hen; and here, I believe, we have the true meaning
of that billing, or “nebbing,” as it is called, which so many birds
indulge in at this season. This habit, with its grotesque resemblance
to kissing, has always struck me as both curious and interesting, but
one seldom, in works of ornithology, meets with a reference to it,
much less with any attempt to explain its philosophy. Where birds,
now, merely, bill, they once, in my opinion, fed each other--or the
male fed the female--but pleasure came to be experienced in the
contact alone, and the passage of food, which was never necessary,
gradually became obsolete. I think it by no means improbable that our
own kissing may have originated in much the same way; and that birds,
when thus billing, experience the same sort of pleasure that we do,
when we kiss, must be obvious to any one who has watched them. With
pigeons, to go no further, the act is simply an impassioned one. It
would be strong evidence of the origin of this habit having been
as I suppose, if we only found it amongst birds the young of which
are fed by their parents. As far as I know, I believe this to be the
case, but my knowledge does not enable me to speak decidedly, nor
have I been able to add to it, in this particular, by consulting the
standard works. Birds whose young are not fed from the bill, by their
parents, are, as I think--for I am not certain in regard to all--the
gallinaceous or game birds, the rapacious ones (_accipitres_), the
plovers and stilt-walkers, the bustards, the ostriches, &c. In none of
these, so far as I know, do the male and female either feed or “neb”
one another--there is neither the thing, nor the form, or symbol, of
it. Birds where there is either the one or the other, or both, belong,
amongst others, to the crow, parrot, gull, puffin, tit or finch tribes,
and all these feed the young. In the grebe family, too, the two customs
obtain, but whether they are combined in any one species of it, I
cannot with certainty say. It would not, of course, follow that a bird
which fed its young, should, also, feed its mate, or that the pair,
when caressing, should seize each other’s bills; but is there any
species belonging to those orders where the chick shifts for itself,
as soon as it is hatched, or, at the least, does not receive food from
the parent’s beak or crop, which does either, or both, of these things?
In conclusion, I can only wonder that a habit so salient, and which,
to me, seems so curious--especially in the case of the caress merely,
for a caress it certainly is--should not, apparently, have been thought
worth consideration--hardly, even, worth notice. Of all beings, man,
alone, is supposed to kiss. Birds, I assert, do, in the proper and
true meaning of the word, kiss, also, and I believe that the origin
of the custom has been the same, or approximately[26] the same, in
each instance. To take food from one’s mouth, and put it into some one
else’s, is an act of attention, I believe, amongst some savage tribes.
I am not quite sure, now I come to think of it, that the hen wagtail
does do all the incubation--as I said, some lines back, she did--but
I think that this is the case, as when I watched a pair I never saw
the two birds together, either at or near the nest, and only once in
the neighbourhood of it, all the time the eggs were being hatched. The
nest, in this case, had been built, very prettily, in the last year’s
one of a thrush, which it quite filled, and which made a splendid cup
for it. It was interesting to see the hen bird at work. Each time,
after flying down from the ivied wall of my garden, in which the nest
was situated, she would feed, a little, making little runs over the
lawn, after insects, with often a little fly, but just above the grass,
at the end of the little run, the tail still flirting up and down.
Then she would fly off for more materials, appear on the lawn, again,
in a few minutes, with some in her bill, run, with them, to under the
wall, fly up into the ivy, and, upon coming out, go through it all
again. Thus, the wagtail makes building and eating alternate with one
another, unlike the house-martins, which build, says White, “only in
the morning, and dedicate the rest of the day to food and amusement.”
The yellow, widely-gaping bills of the fledgling wagtails, as they hold
their four heads straight up, in the nest, together, look just like
delicate little vases of Venetian glass, made by Salviati; or, treating
them all as one, they resemble an artistic central table-ornament, of
the same manufacture. It is the inside that one sees. Just round the
edge, is a thin rim of light, bright yellow, whilst all the rest is a
deep, shining gamboge--not as it looks when painted on anything, but
the colour of a cake of it--“all transfigured with celestial light.”
No prettier design than this could be found, I am sure, for a beaker.
Wagtails--I am speaking, always, of the water-wagtail--collect a number
of flies, or other insects, as they run about, over the grass, before
swallowing them, or flying, with them, to feed their young--that
pretty office, which has been dwelt upon only from one point of view.
Marry! when a tigress carries off a man to her cubs, and watches them
play with him--an account of which, I believe a true one, I have
read--we see it from another, such shallow, partial twitterers as we
are. There is as much of beneficence in the one thing, I suppose,
as the other--the flies, at least, would think so, creatures that,
but a moment ago, were as bright, happy, and ethereal as the bird
itself--their tiger.
“Oh yet we trust that, somehow, good
Will be the final goal of ill.”
Why, yes, one must go on trusting, I suppose (nothing else for it), but
meanwhile one of this pair of wagtails has a good-sized something in
his bill, to which he keeps adding, and as he sometimes, also, drops a
portion of it, and again picks it up, it must be composed of a number
of different entities. This living bundle he deposits, after a time,
on the lawn, and then eats it piecemeal, after which he runs over the
grass, making little darts, and eating at once, on secural. Shortly
afterwards, however, I see him, again, with such another fardel, and
with this he keeps walking about, or standing still, for quite a long
time, without swallowing it--indeed, he has now stood still for so long
that I am tired of watching him. This is interesting, I think, for as
I have never seen birds collect insects, like this, except when young
were in the nest, I have no doubt this wagtail’s idea is to feed his.
But, first, his own appetite prevents him from doing so, and, then, it
is as though there were a conflict between the two impulses, producing
a sort of paralysis, by which nothing is done. I make sure that this
is the male bird; but now appears the other--the female, “for a
ducat”--carrying what I can make out, with the glasses, to be a bundle
of flies, to which she keeps adding, and, shortly, she repairs, with
them, to the nest. The male now comes again, and runs about, collecting
a similar packet; and I can notice how, sometimes, he is embarrassed
to pick up one fly more, without losing any he has, and how he secures
it, sometimes, sideways in the beak, when he would, otherwise, have
made a straightforward peck at it. Not only this, but, with his beak
full of booty, he will--I have just seen him--pursue insects in the
air. Whether he secures them, under these circumstances, I cannot, with
assurance, say, but he turns and zigzags about, as does a fly-catcher,
and certainly seems to be doing so. There is the attempt, at least, and
would he attempt what he was not equal to? I have no doubt, myself,
that he performs this feat, and yet what a wonderful feat it is! Both
birds now feed the young--for the female has been collecting, for some
time, again. Now, instead of, or besides, flies, each bird has in its
bill a number of long, slender, white things, which hang down on each
side of it, and must, I think, be grubs of some sort, though I do not
know what. But stay--beneficence again!--are they--not flies in their
entirety indeed, but--oh optimism and general satisfactoriness!--fly
entrails, protruding, bursting, hanging, forced out by the cruel beak?
Yes, that is it, it is plain now--too plain--and some of the flies
are moving. I have seen a wasp tear open and devour a bluebottle--a
savage sight--and it looked something the same. But all hail, maternal
affection!--and appetite! to bring in the wasp. “Banquo and Macbeth,
all hail!”
I believe that most birds that feed their young with insects brought
in the bill, collect them in this way. Indeed the habit is common
throughout the bird-world, and may be observed, equally, in the
blackbird or thrush, with worms, and in the puffin, with fish--in this
last case, perhaps, we see the feat in its perfection. The smallest
of our woodpeckers I have watched bringing cargo after cargo of
live, struggling things to his hole, but the green woodpecker, for a
reason which, for aught I know, I shall be the first to make known,
does not do this. From behind some bushes which quite hid me, and
which commanded the nest, I have watched the domestic economy of two
pairs of these birds as closely as, in such a species, it well can be
watched. The glasses, turned full upon the hole, I fixed on a little
stick platform, just on a level with my eyes, as I sat. Thus no time
was lost in getting them to bear, but the instant one of the birds flew
in, I had it, as it were, almost upon the platform in front of me. In
this luxurious manner I have seen scores and scores of visits made
to the nest, but never once, before the bird made its entry, through
the hole, have I been able to detect anything held by it in the beak,
which was always fast closed. Had anything in the shape of an insect
projected from it, I must certainly have seen it, but this was never
the case, and I can, therefore, say with confidence, that the green
woodpecker does not feed its young by bringing them insects in its
bill, as does the lesser spotted, and, no doubt, the greater spotted
one also--all the woodpeckers, probably, that have not changed their
habits, in relation to their food and manner of feeding. I am the more
sure of this, because, as the little woodpecker collected a number of
insects, each time, there can be little doubt that the green one would
do this, likewise, were he accustomed to feed the young in the same
way. How, then, does he feed them? I give the answer from my notes.
“At 12.10 the male woodpecker flies to the hole, and, almost
immediately, enters. In a few minutes he looks out, cautiously, turning
his head from side to side. I can make out nothing in the bill, but I
notice that he works the mandibles, just a very little. Then he draws
in his head, but projecting it, again, almost immediately, something
is now evident, protruding from the mandibles, on both sides. It
is white, brilliantly white, and looks like a mash of something. It
reminds me of what I have seen oozing or flowing from the bills of
rooks, as they left the nest after feeding their young--but even
whiter, it seemed, as the sun shone on it. Insects it does not in
the least resemble, except, by possibility, a pulp of their white
interiors. If so, however, it must represent multitudes of them. But
where are the wings, legs, and crushed bodies? It is formless, and
seems to well out of the bill.” On a subsequent occasion, I saw the
same outflow--“a thick, milky fluid,” I this time describe it as--from
the bill of the female; so that, principally through this, but, also,
because of many other little indications, such as that working by the
bird of its mandibles--as before noticed--in leaving the nest, and
an occasional little gulp or less pronounced motion of the throatal
muscles, as though it were swallowing something down, the head being at
the same time raised, I came to the conclusion that these woodpeckers
feed their young by some process of regurgitation. This confirms an
opinion which has long been gaining ground with me, viz. that the green
woodpecker is now almost wholly an ant-eater. Here, at least, where
the country is open and sandy, and where, till lately, there has been
a great and happy dearth of posts and palings, I believe that this is
the case. I have often watched the bird, in trees, and have seen it
give, now and again, a spear with the bill against the trunk; but this
has never been continued for long, and that eager and absorbed manner
which a bird has when actively feeding, has never, in my experience,
gone along with it. I doubt, myself, whether insects are really secured
on these occasions, for there is something so nonchalant and lazy in
the way the stabs are delivered, that they have more the appearance of
a mere habit than of a means to an end. Sometimes there is a little
more animation, but it soon flags, and the bird desists and sits idle.
Very different are its actions, and its whole look and appearance,
when feeding on the ground. Now its interest--its _keenness_--is
manifest, whilst a certain careful, systematic, and methodical way of
proceeding, shows it to be occupied in the main daily business of life.
There are four clearly marked stages in the process by which a green
woodpecker extracts ants from the nest. First there is a preliminary
probing of the ground, the beak being inserted--always, I think, in
the same place--gently, and with great delicacy--tenderly as it were,
and as Walton would recommend; next comes a sharp, quick hammering, or
pickaxing, with the beak, into the soil, after which the bird throws
the loosened earth from side to side, with so quick a motion that the
head seems almost to move in a circle. Finally, there is the quiet and
satisfied insertion of the bill, many times in succession, into the
excavation that has been made, followed, each time, by its leisurely
withdrawal. At each of these withdrawals the head is thrown up, and the
bird seems to swallow down, and enjoy, what it has just been filling
its beak with--as no doubt is the case.
The greater part of both the morning and afternoon seems to be spent
by these woodpeckers in thus depopulating ants’ nests, so that the
negligent and desultory nature of any further foraging operations,
which they may carry on amongst the trees, is amply accounted for. The
bird is full of ants, which it has been swallowing wholesale, without
any effort of searching. It cannot still be hungry, and, when it is, it
will repair to those Elysian fields again. The tree, in fact, is now
used more as a resting-place than for any other purpose, except that of
breeding; and thus this species, with its marvellous tongue, specially
adapted for extracting insects from chinks in the bark of trees, is on
the road to becoming as salient an instance of changed habits, as is
Darwin’s ground-feeding woodpecker, in the open plains of La Plata.
Sure I am that here, at any rate, the green woodpecker feeds, almost
wholly, upon ants, but if there be a doubt on the matter, ought not the
contents of the excrements to decide it? I have examined numbers of
these, which were picked up by me both in the open and at the foot of
trees, and, in every case, the long narrow sac, of which the outer part
consists, was filled, entirely, with the remains of ants. These I have
turned out upon a sheet of white paper, and examined under a magnifying
glass, but I have never been able to find the smallest part or particle
of any other insect. This has surprised me, indeed, nor is it quite in
accordance with the contents of other excrements which I have looked at
in other parts of the country--for instance in Dorsetshire. There, the
shards of a small beetle were sometimes mixed, in a small proportion,
with the remains of the ants, and, once or twice, these formed the bulk
of the excrement. These shards, however, seemed to me to be those of a
ground-going species of beetle. What I have called the remains of the
ants, contained in these excrements, were, or seemed to be, almost the
whole of them--head, thorax, abdomen, legs, &c.--everything, in fact,
except the soft parts, and juices of the body. Whether these, in the
bird’s crop or stomach, would help to make a white milky fluid I do not
know, but I think that they must do.
If the great staple of the green woodpecker’s food has come, now, to
consist of ants, as I am sure is the case, the reason of its feeding
its young, not as do other woodpeckers--the lesser spotted one, for
instance--but by regurgitation, is at once apparent. Ants are too
minute to be carried in the beak, and must, therefore, be brought up
_en masse_, if the young are not to starve. We might, therefore, have
surmised that, if ants were the sole or chief diet, the young must be
fed in this way, and the fact that they are fed in this way is evidence
of the thing which would account for it. In the green woodpecker we
have an interesting example of a species that has broken from the
traditions of its family, and is changing under our eyes; but it does
not seem to attract much attention--only the inevitable number of the
eggs, their colour, the time at which they are laid, &c. &c.
These woodpeckers must mate, I think, for life--as most birds, in my
opinion, do--for they nest in the same tree, year after year, and go in
pairs during the winter. It is very interesting, then, to see a pair
resting together, after they have had their fill of ant-eating. First,
one will fly into the nearest plantation, or small clump of trees, on
the trunk of one of which it alights, and there clings, motionless.
Shortly afterwards, the other comes flying in, perhaps with the wild
laugh, but, instead of settling on the same tree, it chooses one close
beside it, and there, side by side, and each on its own, the two hang
motionless for a quarter of an hour, perhaps, or twenty minutes. Then,
suddenly, there is a green and scarlet flash, as one flies off. The
other stays, still motionless, as though she cared not. “Let him e’en
go”--but, all at once, there is another flash, and she is gone, too,
with equal suddenness--the dark trees darker without them. I have,
more than once, seen a pair resting, like this, on two small birches,
or firs, near each other, each about the same height from the ground,
quite still, and seeming to doze. It seems, therefore, to be their
regular habit, as though they did not care to sleep on the same tree,
but preferred adjoining rooms, so to speak. The birds’ tails, when thus
resting, are not fanned out, and although they are, sometimes, pressed
against the tree, at other times they will not be touching it at all,
so that the whole weight is supported by the claws, evidently with the
greatest ease. I have taken particular notice of this, and from the
length of time that a bird has sometimes remained, thus hanging, and
the restful state that it was, all the while, in, I cannot think that
the tail is of very much value as a support, though stress is often
laid upon its being so. I do not know how it is, but a little close
observation in natural history will give the lie to most of what one
hears or reads, and has hitherto taken for granted. It all looks very
plausible in books, but one book, when you ever do get hold of it,
seems to disagree with all the other books, and that one is the book of
nature.
There is another point, in which the green woodpecker either differs
from its family, or shows that its family has not been sufficiently
observed. I have read, somewhere--I am not quite sure where, but it was
a good work, and one of authority--this sentence: “Some birds, such
as woodpeckers and (I forget the other) are supposed never to fight.”
I can understand how this idea has got about, because thrushes, which
are commoner birds than woodpeckers, and easier to watch, are, also,
thought not to fight. Of the thrush, and his doughty deeds, of an early
morning, I shall have no space to speak in this volume, but I here
offer my evidence that the green woodpecker, at any rate, is “a good
fellow, and will strike.” As, however, I shall have to quote, at some
length, from my notes, I will defer doing so to the following chapter.
Perhaps I shall be saying a little too much about the green woodpecker,
but let it be taken in excuse that, feeling all his charm, and having
made a special study of him, I yet say less than I know.
[Illustration: GREEN WOODPECKER]