Jays in many ways resemble magpies, being quite as cunning and just as

destructive; and even those who are most averse to the persecution of

any wild creature are compelled to warn the jay off their premises if

they wish their game to thrive, or the song-birds in their shrubberies

to live in security. For this beautiful but unprincipled bird is a most

diligent and successful bird's-nester; and, in spite of its conspicuous

plumage, so stealthy in its mischief, that a pair will "work" a

shrubbery thoroughly without betraying themselves even to the gardeners.

Even if the clamour of the small birds attracts you to the spot, you

will see nothing to explain their alarm, and the cat that you afterwards

come upon watching for a mouse under the bushes is saddled with the

blame which ought really to be fastened upon the pretty wretches that

are watching you from the foliage overhead. The magpie and jay are, I

confess, two birds that I like to see--on other people's grounds. On my

own I should prefer them stuffed, and right handsomely do they lend

themselves to the artistic taxidermist. In combination and contrast no

two birds are more beautiful, and as an ornament for a hall or

billiard-room are not to be surpassed. For to the maximum of admiration

there goes only the minimum of compunction.

[Illustration: THE MAGPIES' FORTRESS]

But this is not the case with another of the brutal gamekeeper's

victims, that exquisite little falcon, the kestrel. All day long it is

busy at the good work which the owl takes up at nightfall, for it lives

almost entirely upon mice, and, these failing, upon large insects,

especially the destructive cockchafer. It so very rarely molests a bird

that, hawk though it is, you never see the smaller feathered-folk in

alarm at its approach. "He is no enemy of theirs, and mingles freely

with them, almost unheeded." Observe what consternation the sparrow-hawk

brings to the little songsters when he is abroad; but how different when

the kestrel passes overhead! The chaffinch, instead of uttering cries of

alarm, continues his merry notes; and the larks and pipits pay no

attention to the little bird of prey. When it hovers over the farmyard,

or hunts round the ricks, no anxious hen clucks to her scattered family

any note of warning or recall, the sparrows continue at their meal, and

the swallows, unconcerned and trustful, wheel twittering in the air. Its

nest is sometimes found in holes in buildings where doves and starlings

are its companions. But for mice of all kinds the kestrel has only

unrelenting and ceaseless hostility; and it has been calculated that a

single pair will account in a season for the astonishing number of ten

thousand.

Its favourite method of hunting makes the kestrel a familiar bird by

sight, and gives it its name of "windhover," for,

"as if let down from the heaven there

By viewless silken thread,"

it hangs suspended in the air over a given spot, until it either

[Illustration: WHERE THE KESTRELS BUILD]

sees a mouse below it, upon which it then drops with lightning speed, or

else decides that there is nothing there, when it moves on a little

further and hovers again, thus beating a field or moor thoroughly over

before it leaves it. And while it is thus engaged the gamekeeper steals

upon it and shoots it, and, taking it home, the mutton-headed ignoramus

that he is, nails it up on his "tree," in the company of that other good

friend of man, the owl.

"_Long-necked Heron, dread of nimble eels._"

LEYDEN.

"_Unhappy bird! our fathers' prime delight,_

_Who fenced thine eyry round with sacred laws,_

_Nor mighty princes now disdain to wear_

_Thy waving crest, the mark of high command._"

SOMERVILLE.

But the gamekeeper's enormities reach their climax when he murders that

noble bird the heron. His master perhaps has a field or two that runs

down to a stream, and in the advertisement, by which the thrifty farmer

makes annually a few pounds, of "so many acres of shooting to let,"

there is added, the "right of fishing in the river so-and-so." So if by

any chance a poor heron, strayed from the upper reaches where some

nobleman or gentleman preserves this fine bird, comes on the farmer's

meadows, the farmer's gamekeeper (it is sport exactly to his taste)

stalks it from behind the line of willows and kills it as it stands

there. He will probably get a shilling for it from the birdstuffer, and

that is quite enough reason to him for destroying the heron. It is a

great pity these miserable men are allowed to fire anything but blank

cartridge. On the larger estates the head-gamekeeper is often a man of

intelligence and a sound naturalist, and owls and kestrels are not

murdered, and the heron, of course, goes free. But on either side of him

may be a farmer who keeps a "gamekeeper" who steals eggs and young birds

from his aristocratic neighbours, so that his master may let his

"shooting" to some "city gents from London," and who, though there maybe

a heronry on the adjoining estate, kills the birds when he gets the

chance, because, as he says, he has to "preserve the fishing," but

really because he can get a few pence for its skin. Sometimes a heron

appears in a poulterer's shop and finds a purchaser who is curious in

matters of eating[B] and wishes to taste a fowl that once was so highly

prized as to be the dish of honour in the game course at banquets of

State.

[B] The proper sauce for it, by the way, was gamelyn or cameline,

which, we are told, was "a dainty Italian sauce, composed of nuts,

bread-crumbs, ginger, cinnamon and vinegar."

But there are not, I fancy, many men, except farmers' "gamekeepers" and

their confederates the so-called "naturalists,"

[Illustration: "_Enhancing every charm by its transient brilliance_"]

who would pull a trigger upon a heron. The admiration of Nature is very

sincere in the educated Englishmen of to-day, and by far the greater

number of them would rather see the beautiful creature making their

estate its home than kill it. It is, indeed, the very genius of

beautiful solitude, and by its mere presence raises the commonplace to

the picturesque.

Take a secluded bend of any stream, with its alders and willows, its

wild flowers stealing down to the water's edge to see their faces in the

glass, and yellow flags boldly wading out by their companies and

battalions into mid-stream. The dragon-flies poise upon the tips of the

reeds, or with rustling wings dart and wheel upon the water, puzzling

the coot's flotilla of puff-balls paddling about among the

water-daisies. The scene is sweetly pretty, and when on a sudden a

kingfisher on sapphire wings comes flashing past, enhancing every charm

by its transient brilliance, the pretty becomes lovely, and the little

common reach of water catches a glimpse of fairyland possibilities, and

of beauties something rarer than of every day. Then let a heron on its

broad slow-moving wings come up the stream, and lo! the whole scene

changes. It becomes at once unfamiliar, of another world, exotic. The

heron's long legs are dropped down, the long neck stretched out and,

almost as a spectre might appear, there stands "the bird so gaunt," its

crest-feathers slightly raised, its eyes scrutinising the banks. Silent

as the great bird is, you must keep more silent still. For it is

watching and listening as only the bird can do that fishes by sound as

well as by sight. If it is satisfied, the aigrette, "fit for the turban

of a king," droops flat to its head, the neck is retracted, the wings

comfortably closed, and the heron relapses into that beautiful attitude

of patient watchfulness that Art delights in. And as it stands there,

motionless in misty grey, in the utter silence of the tranquil corner,

it looks like one of the jinns of Arabian tales, for its being there

seems to bewitch the place and the stream becomes haunted.

So I remember once how when I was in India lying down in the jungle

waiting for a bear to be driven, a sambhur-stag with splendid antlers

came spectrally into the open space that my rifle covered. An instant

before it was empty. Not a leaf stirred, and yet there, on the sudden,

stood the great-horned stag, only a few paces from me, listening to the

distant voices of the beaters. An instant later, and it stepped into the

jungle again and vanished as silently, completely, as a ghost. And I

rubbed my eyes and blinked, but I know that it came and that it went.

And where, to come back to our heron, is the fisher now? A minute ago it

seemed as if it would never move: a statue in feathers set up there

among the forget-me-nots for the stream-folk to worship. But while your

eye has been following that fat perch loitering by the side of its

shadow, as if they were company for each other, in that little clear

patch of water by the bank which a shaft of sunlight pierces to the

pebbled floor, the heron, with half a dozen stately, noiseless steps has

changed its ground, and passing behind that thick spray of willow that

droops "aslant the stream," is out of sight. Come away, yourself, as

quietly as you can: the poor heron is not often left in peace by those

who see it. Be, then, one of the few who treat the noble bird with

courtesy.

It is not given to many to see a large heronry at breeding time, but

should the opportunity offer, it is well worth your while. The size of

the birds alone makes them interesting, and the spectacle of so many

flying to and fro at once and the grotesque nestlings flopping about on

their nests or standing grimly but with uncertain foothold at the edges,

their half-humorous, half-wicked looks and gestures, will keep your

glasses to your eyes as long as friends will wait for you. The noises

that proceed from old and young alike are both solemn and comical,

disconcerted fragments of croaks and squeaks, mingled with such

discordant scraps of sound as a child trying to blow a coach-horn might

produce. The young ones too keep falling off their perches, probably

because the instinct to try and stand on one leg is too strong for their

prudence and their thin knee-joints. They manage, as a rule, to scramble

and flap themselves on to other standpoints, but very often, failing to

make good their foothold, they fall to the ground, when the parents seem

to lose all further interest in them. To these accidents probably is

due the superstition alluded to by Marvel:

"The heron from the ash's top,

The eldest of its young lets drop,

As if it, stork-like, did pretend

That tribute to its lord to send."

In the old cruel days when falconry was for a time so "fashionable," the

heron--or rather the heronsewe, hornsea, hornsey or hernshaw, for these

are the older names of the bird we call heron and hern--was the fowl

chiefly flown at with the largest and fiercest falcons, and the

penalties for killing the bird, except with hawks or the long-bow, were

very severe. But modern falconers, whose sport is now as humane as sport

can ever be, have to be content with water-fowl for their prime flights.

For the heron is annually becoming rarer as a wild bird, and before long

will probably only be seen in the vicinity of private heronries, where

the courtesies of country neighbourhood protect it from wilful

molestation, and suffice to preserve for all lovers of Nature the

charming sight of these birds, by some hill-bound tarn, "sole-sitting on

the shores of old romance," seated aloft on "the pines, the heron's

ancient home," or, like the spirit of tranquil solitude, beautifying the

pleasant reaches of a river.

CHAPTER VI

THE SEA-EAGLE--GUILLEMOTS--EGG-GATHERING--THE PARADISE OF THE

PUFFINS--THE STORMY-PETREL--THE SEA-EAGLE'S VICTIMS--THE BLACK-BACKED

GULL--THE SKUA--AMONG THE CORMORANTS AND GULLS

CHAPTER VI.

"_The Eagle of the sea from Atlas soars_

_Or Teneriffe's hoar peak--_

_The watchful helmsman from the stern descries_

_And hails her course--_

_She mounts Alp-high and with her lower'd head_

_Suspended eyes the bulging sails, disdains_

_Their tardy course, outflies the hurrying rack,_

_And disappearing mingles with the clouds._"

GRAHAME.

The following lines of Spenser's, though multitudes have been written

upon the eagle, have never been improved upon:

"An eagle in his kingly pride,

Soaring through his wide empire of the air

To weather his broad sails."

"Sailing with supreme dominion, through the azure deep of air"--"Eagles,

golden-feathered, who do tower above us in their beauty, and must reign,

in right thereof,"--but it is no use to go on quoting, for the poets'

tributes to their flight alone would fill many pages. To feel the full

force of them, to understand how little exaggeration there is in them,

one must have seen an eagle, unconscious of observation, at its ease in

the air.

I remember how once in India I enjoyed the splendid sight of an

"ossifrage" launching itself from its seat upon a huge dead tree into

the valley. Something below had attracted its attention, a kite perhaps,

or a crow, flying towards carrion, and the enormous bird came hurtling

down with a veritable crash of its wings. And then suddenly it checked

itself in its fall, and opening its "broad sails" to the utmost, till

each feather stood apart from the other, it silently floated away across

the valley. The speed of its flight was prodigious, but it was

absolutely noiseless, and the great thing, once launched, never moved a

feather, but sped away in a straight level line, as if under the

attraction of some invisible, irresistible magnet, to a gorge on the

other side, and so disappeared from view.

It was a most noble and a memorable performance. First the instant of

impetuous downward plunge, so headlong that the wind fairly rattled

through its plumage; and then, with such spectral suddenness, the

recovery of position, and the imperial tranquillity of its horizontal

flight. When the eagle's wings are fully extended, the tips of the long

feathers curve slightly upwards, giving a singular grace to its flight

and a very curious impressiveness to the bird's appearance,

"sailing with supreme dominion

Thro' the azure deep of air."

[Illustration: THE EAGLE OF THE SEA]

The largest eagle we have in Great Britain is the erne or white-tailed

eagle--the sea-eagle. Not that it fishes for its food; indeed, it seldom

eats fish unless it happens to rob another bird. But it levies toll upon

the sea-birds themselves, harrying the guillemot and puffin, and making

them its prey. By preference it builds upon the loftiest crags on the

stormiest shores, but if it can find rocks inland that are rugged

enough, and that overlook some stretch of water where the wild-fowl

come, it will build its eyrie there, and scourge the surrounding country

(not sparing the sheepfolds), to supply its young.

They are not uncommon in the wildest parts of Scotland and Ireland, and

though, of course, persecuted everywhere, they succeed by their

extraordinary wariness and admirable judgment as to breeding-places in

keeping their ground. For the erne has the expert eye of an engineer for

an "inaccessible" spot, and having found one that nothing that moves on

feet can reach, it returns to it year after year, and brings out its

young in security. All that our poets have written of their eagles of

fancy may, for majesty in flight, be fairly applied to this bird. "When

the tempest's at its loudest, on the gale the eagle rides,"--"playmate

of the storm,"--"triumphant on the bosom of the storm, glances the

fire-clad eagle's wheeling form,"--"a swift eagle, in the morning glare,

breasting the whirlwind with impetuous flight,"--all these are quite

applicable to the sea-eagle, for folk say that no tempest that ever blew

could keep the erne at home. When the sea-birds are driven inland, the

ernes remain to wheel about as if enraptured in the storm-distracted

sky--and "like spirits hardened by despair, joy in the savage tempest."

There is nothing mean about it. A law to itself, and therefore lawless;

stronger than any other fowl it ever sees, and therefore a tyrant; a

bird of prey, and therefore pitiless. Its eyrie is a citadel that cannot

be stormed, and the fierce-eyed robber, seated on its eminence,

overlooks the townships of the gulls, and as it pleases takes manorial

tithe of the fish plunder they bring up from the sea, and of their

young,

"Voracious from the billows' breast

Marked far away, his destined feast."

[Illustration: GUILLEMOTS]

Its cry is a cruel, clear-ringing bark, very characteristic of the

fierce baron of the cliffs, and when circling in company a pair can be

heard yelping to each other until eye and ear together fail to catch

sight or sound of them. When they are young the sea eagles, as yet

unconscious perhaps of their birthright of supremacy, roam about among

the moors and valleys, finding their food where they can, killing weakly

lambs, or joining the raven in an ignoble meal on carrion.

Sometimes, strange to say, this creature of vast spaces and dizzy

heights will nest in trees or even among reeds upon the ground. But its

characteristic haunts are the wildest and most rugged sea-cliffs, and

its hunting-grounds the rocky islets or tall upstanding bluffs and

"peopled rocks" upon which the sea-folk cluster in their colonies.

"_The high and frowning scaur, the haunt of sea-fowl_"

MACKAY.

"_The pregnant cliffs, the sea-birds' citadels_"

MONTGOMERY.

"_Yonder peopled rocks,_

_To whose wild solitude, from worlds unknown,_

_The birds of passage transmigrating come--_

* * * * *

_By Heaven's directive spirit here to raise_

_Their temporary realm._"

MALLET.

No one, however indifferent he may be to the ordinary sights and sounds

of Nature, can maintain even the affectation of unconcern when visiting

for the first time the

[Illustration: "THE SEA-BIRDS' CITADEL"]

ledged and terraced rocks upon which the brave guillemots congregate. As

the boat approaches the sea-girt nesting-home of these delightful birds,

the cliff, looked at through glasses, seems garrisoned by a multitude of

little soldiers in black and white. They are standing to attention,

shoulder to shoulder, along every ledge, in level lines where continuous

foothold permits it, in little knots on every broader plateau, while the

summit is thronged. As the boat gets nearer you see that, besides the

white-breasted birds standing upright, there are just as many showing

their black backs sitting on the ground, or rather propped up on their

tails.

The latter are sitting-birds, for the eggs are so large as compared with

the mothers that they cannot be sate upon in the ordinary brooding

manner of other fowls. So the guillemot, when she wishes to sit, walks

up to her egg and then with her beak pushes it between her legs, and so

straddling as it were over it, she remains always at an angle, her body

resting against the egg, instead of nestling down upon it.

Long before the invaders' boat comes into the shadow of the cliff, the

birds take alarm at the visitation, and at first by dozens, then by

hundreds, and finally by their thousands, spring upwards or dive

downwards from their places, and fill the air with an indescribable

murmur and flurry of wings--

"Far adown, like snow

Shook from the bosom of a wintry cloud,

And drifting on the wind in feathery flakes."

But the brave guillemots do not scream or cry out. Some of them grunt

their dissatisfaction at disturbance, and but for this they betray no

symptoms of annoyance or anger. Nor do they circle round their

threatened home, but rising from their places in a fast-thickening

cloud, they scatter for a minute or two through the air, and then settle

upon the sea and wait.

"There on the waters floating like a fleet

Of tiny vessels, argosies complete

Such as brave Gulliver deep-wading, drew

'Victorious from the ports of Blefuscu.'"

Nothing, surely, can be more beautiful than the sudden uprising of many

birds, whether the scarlet battalions of flamingoes leaving in sumptuous

tumult the Egyptian marshes; the gay parrot flights when changing

feeding-grounds in the Australian bush, or this sight of our myriad

guillemots as with one accord they fill the air with their white wings,

and, beautifully stooping to the sea, spread themselves in a sheet of

pied dots upon the green water. And as you land you feel that all those

thousands of eager eyes are watching you, thousands of little hearts

thumping with misgiving at your intrusion. And here and there one bird

is sometimes seen still bravely "holding the fort," not with any

defiance, but a calm, good-soldierly courage that commands respect. And

now and again a mother will return, too anxious about her egg to

remember the risk to herself, or, remembering it, too anxious to care

about the risk; she comes with hurrying wing, and, before the very eyes

of the unmannerly trespasser, takes possession of her treasure, and

tucking it in between her legs turns her back upon the company and

trusts to Kismet for the result.

But those gaunt and grim-faced rocks, ribbed and wrinkled by the

wear-and-tear of sea and weather, are only the nurseries of the

guillemots, not their homes; for they live for nine months of the year

upon the dancing sea, never coming back to the solid crags at all. Early

in spring the first of them, the advanced couriers of the colony,

reappear from the ocean, reconnoitring their egg-towers, and then they

disappear again, as if to convey the news to the rest that the earth

still stands where it did. And then about May the guillemots begin to

come in earnest, and, astounding as the fact is, each bird actually

seems to remember the very spot upon which it laid its eggs the year

before, for we are told that the professional egg-hunters, who for a

score of years or more have regularly rifled the sea-birds' terraces,

are accustomed to find, year after year, in particular places, eggs of a

particular shape, or size, or colour. For there are few eggs, if any,

that differ so boldly both in the ground colour

[Illustration: THE SEA-PARROTS AT HOME]

and the markings as the guillemot's. Some have been taken spotless and

colourless, like a heron's; others altogether sienna, as the kestrel's

sometimes is; while between these two extremes of no-colour and

all-colour stretches as infinite a variety of markings as on the pebbles

on the shore. Perhaps the most beautiful of all are those where the

ground is a clear, bright green-blue, and the spots--large and

irregularly scattered, of a rich chocolate shading into brown-pink--make

on it a strong, bold, well-defined pattern, without any of the

intermediate specks and streaks and zigzags that are characteristic of

this bird's eggs. They are not laid in any nest, but on the bare flat

rock, sometimes protected from the violence of the wind by lying in an

indentation or where the rock is rough faced. But as a rule the

guillemot does not seem to expect her egg to be blown off the spot where

it is laid, and (though there are woful exceptions) she is right, for in

due time a dusky fuzz-ball, with a noble appetite for little fishes,

takes the place of each egg.

Then it is, alas for the poor parent guillemots! that the sea-eagle

comes on its broad pinions, yelping, and, swift as the wind, swoops

down, grazing the surface of the rock, and, regardless of the indignant

mob that rises in protest, flaps off with careless wing back to the

eyrie, where its eaglets are waiting for food. And every time the

sea-eagle comes and goes there is one fuzz-ball less than there was.

"She seeks her aërie hanging

In the mountain-cedar's hair

And her brood expect the clanging

Of her wings through the wild air,

Sick with famine."

But if tens are taken, thousands are left, and ere long the old birds,

finding their young ones restless, and fearing,

[Illustration: "WHERE THE SEA-FOLK CLUSTER"]

perhaps, as they may well do, that a fierce gust may sweep them over the

precipice on to ledges below, or that inexperience may tempt them too

near the dangerous brink, take the little ones on their backs--so the

climbers say--and fly down with them to the sea. Even if the chicks fall

off in the course of the descent, it does them no harm to plunge into

the water. It must astonish the youngsters to find themselves sousing

into the sea, but the next instant they have discovered that all is

right, and before their screaming mother has recovered from her concern

at the accident, they are swimming about merrily and enjoying their

first bath. And once in the ocean they remain there,

_"In the blue vale of water 'twixt the waves_

_Ever the same, yet ever changed; no mark,_

_No spot whereon to fix a local love,_

_No home to be remembered for its peace,_

_No shapely bough, well known and best beloved_

_Within the crowded forest,"_

till the following May calls them back to the rocks and the cares and

pleasures of domestic life.

Man is, of course, the chief enemy of these sea-bird colonies, for in

the bleak and barren islands where they breed, human life could be

scarcely supported if it were not for the annual harvests of eggs and

young. The guillemots' eggs are collected by tens of thousands. This

work commences at Flamborough, for instance, in the middle of May. For

the first nine days the climber has a good run of eggs; for the next

nine, eggs are scarce. At the end of that time all the birds who had

been first robbed have laid again, and he has a second run of large

hauls, averaging from two to three hundred a day. Then comes a second

"slack" of nine days, after which there is, as it were, the aftermath,

sometimes hardly worth the trouble and danger of gathering, sometimes

equal in value to the first harvest. The birds themselves, too, are

eaten, more especially the puffin.

St. Kilda has been described as "the paradise of puffins: every

available spot is burrowed and honeycombed with their holes, and the sea

is often black with birds." Hither in the nesting season come the

islanders--men, women, and children--and with short rods, at the end of

which are nooses of horsehair or string, drag the little "bougies," as

they call them, out of their burrows. The birds are plucked (the

feathers being carefully put by for sale), cleaned, rubbed over with

salt, and hung up in strings to the roofs of the cabins, where the

peat-smoke partially "cures" them, and in this state they form one of

the chief and choicest items of the St. Kildan's austere fare. But

altogether apart from its attractions at the "hardy Norseman's" winter

board, the puffin is a very charming little bird. Its very quaintness

makes it engaging, for, whether you take it in profile, with its

grotesque beak in completest evidence, or full-face, with its queer,

owl-like look, its genuine unaffected comicality commends it to your

amused and kindly regard. For it is a most amiable fowl. It never seems

to quarrel with its kind, and even when it does the disagreement is

rather the make-believe of clowns than in serious earnest. The puffin is

almost voiceless, its usual sound being a purring noise, which, when it

is submitted to the extreme indignity of handling, becomes a kind of

half-hearted grumbling. No birds are more sociable than the

"sea-parrots": they are never seen alone, and even in their colonies

they are not exclusive, admitting any other sea-fowl that likes to join

them to equal rights of citizenship. But you must not put your fingers

into its beak. Puffins are not called "parrots" for nothing.

When breeding commences, the islands or headlands that they frequent

present scenes of most delightful activity.

"Above, around, in cloudy circles wheeled,

Or sailing level on the polar gale

That cool with evening rose, a thousand wings,

The summer nations of these pregnant cliffs

Play'd sportive round."

Puffins are busy in all directions, digging out holes to lay their eggs

in, or putting last year's burrows into thorough repair. Both parents

join in the work of excavation, taking turns, and while the one is

employed the other either sits with a most absurd expression of pompous

self-satisfaction, like a fat little owl-faced page, in close

attendance, or flits about in idle amusement in company with vast

numbers of the temporarily unemployed. Though so short-winged and

plump-bodied, they fly with singular speed, and wheel and circle with

great grace; but it is when they dive that they are at their best.

Regardless of height, they plunge head-foremost from their cliffs into

the sea, and, using their wings just as if they were still in the air,

literally fly under the water. But they never stay away long, for all

their thoughts are in those little burrows on the cliff, and the

constant flying to and fro of the anxious pairs, their whirlings in the

air before settling and after rising, keep the air alive with noisy

wings, and fill the scene with bustle and happy animation.

So close sometimes are their nest-holes crowded that it is impossible to

walk without putting the foot in them, and it even happens that these

accommodating birds, when hard pressed for room, inhabit "semi-detached"

holes, and live two families in one. But here too falls the shadow of

the sea-eagle, and the poor parrots' nurseries, when the young ones sit

outside their burrows, innocent of danger, pay heavy tribute to the

paramount lord of the northern sky. No erne's nest is completely

furnished unless it be strewn with puffins' beaks.

"The fierce sea-eagle

In port terrific, from his lonely eyrie

(Itself a burden for the tallest tree)

Looks down o'er land and sea as his dominion,

Or from long chase ascending with his prey

Feeds his eaglets in the noonday sun."

Oddly enough, "the fierce sea-eagle" and the poor puffin find another

connecting link, less strained than that of being the eater and the

eaten, in the rabbit. The erne will often take up its quarters for a

time near a warren, and the sea-parrots do the same; but their reasons

are very different, for while the former goes among the coneys for its

meals, the latter does so to borrow the use of their burrows. And they

live together on apparent terms of amity, much as the burrowing-owl and

the prairie-dog live together on the Texan wastes.

[Illustration: PETRELS NESTING]

"_Amidst the flashing and feathery foam_

_The stormy-petrel finds a home,_

_A home if such a place may be_

_For her who lives on the wide, wide sea,_

_On the craggy ice, in the frozen air,_

_And only seeketh her rocky lair_

_To warm her young and teach them spring_

_At once o'er the wave on their stormy wing._"

BARRY CORNWALL.

Nesting with them, in some of these haunts on the wild west coast of

Scotland, is found the stormy-petrel, the tiny bird which sailors, in

the old days of sailing-ships, held in such superstitious dread, and

which are still called Mother Carey's chickens. Who Mother Carey was

Jack probably did not care, thinking only that she was a personage of

very evil intentions towards ships and those "who go down to the sea" in

them, and wishing, when he saw the little things running along the waves

that held the ship in chase, that she had kept her chickens at home. But

wiser bookmen tell us that the name comes from Mater Cara, quoting in

proof of it, that the French call the petrels "les oiseaux de Notre

Dame," which may or may not be the explanation--most probably not. For

in the same dull way they tell us that Davey Jones' locker means the

locker of the ghost of the prophet Jonas, because West Indian negroes

happen to call a ghost "duffy!" All of which reads very much like

nonsense, worse nonsense indeed than Jack's own phrases--which, like all

good fairy-tales, have most meaning when they have none at all.

However all this may be, the salts of the past thought the stormy-petrel

a bird of ill-omen, and they were not far wrong, for when all the other

birds, dreading the coming tempest, had left the ship, the chickens

remained.

"Still ran the stormy-petrels on the waves."

Being alone, they became conspicuous, and though they had been there all

along, but unobserved when flying with larger birds, the sailors,

noticing them for the first time, thought they had just arrived as

heralds of the squall. For no weather, however bad, will drive the

petrels to shelter, and so deft are they with wing and foot, that when

the seas are driving "mast high" they may be seen paddling and skipping,

on tip-toe as it were, over the green curves of the breakers, or running

along them sheltered from the gale under their lee. And though it is no

larger, this tiny scoffer of the hurricane, than a starling, it is

curious to think how many hundreds of brave men have felt a sinking at

the heart when they saw the black diminutive bird skimming the furious

billows that pursued the vessel. Nowadays, going under steam instead of

canvas, the seaman does not trouble

[Illustration: GULLS]

himself much about wind, and still less about the bird that our ancient

mariners used to think brought it.

What a shock for the old salts, who dreaded the killing of a petrel, to

hear that under the name "Blasquet chickens" they have been eaten on

toast, like snipe, and declared to be "delicious eating." Yet such is

the fact; and seeing that the bird does not feed on fish, there is no

reason why it should not, unlike most sea-fowl, be palatable.

For the food of petrels, strange to say, is oil. At any rate, nothing

else is found in their stomachs, but where the oil comes from--whether

they collect it from the surface of the sea, or whether by some chemical

process of their own they convert other material into oil--no one can

say with certainty.

Oddly enough, too, the little stormy-petrel in its breeding haunts does

not fly by day, but feeds its young at night; and here, again, reason is

puzzled for an explanation. They lay their eggs in crevices of the

rocks, in heaps of _débris_, or old rabbit-holes; but these are only to

be found by searching, as there are no birds on the wing while the sun

is shining, and they do not, like all others, betray their nurseries by

going to and fro in the daylight with food. What strange contrasts! For

more than nine months of the year the petrel is "the playmate of the

storm"--

"Where the ocean rolls the proudest,

Through the foam the sea-bird glides"--

always in attendance upon the tempest, an omen of ship-wreck and

sea-terror:

"The petrel telleth her tale in vain,

And the mariner curseth the warning bird

Who bringeth him news of the storm unheard;"

and then for the rest of the twelvemonth it lurks in little holes in

rocks, under heaps of stones, in rabbit-burrows, coming out only when it

is dark, a bat-like creature of dusty crevices and dusky twilight,

mortally afraid apparently of everything that moves by day, and shunning

on land the men whom at sea it seemed to triumph over and to doom.

And how terrible the declension from being "Mother Carey's chickens,"

mysteriously shaken out of the old dame's lap in the sky to bring men to

their death by drowning, to "Blasquet chickens," picked out by ragged

little islanders from the chinks in which they are hidden, and then

eaten by tourists and townsfolk, fried upon toast!

Nor are these birds' only enemies human ones, for in the predatory

black-backed gulls they find untiring and cruel persecutors. As

persistent and as cunning as crows, they loiter about the nesting-places

of the smaller birds, searching out their eggs and young, and chasing

the parents. Even large birds, like the cormorant, dare not leave their

nests unprotected, as the air above is full of keen-eyed, black-backed

gulls, and every eminence has its patient, sinister

[Illustration: NEST OF LESSER BLACK-BACKED GULL]

watchman waiting for some incautious mother to leave her eggs exposed,

and in a twinkling the thief pounces on it.

Their courage, too, is extraordinary. The nest that is shown in the

illustration is not in any of the usual sites that this gull selects,

and is chosen for that reason, as showing the fearlessness of these

birds, for it is built in a sheep-walk which the woolly folk had

frequently to traverse, and was found out by the shepherd seeing all his

flock, as they passed in single file, jumping at the same spot. On going

to find the reason for this agility, the hen-bird was discovered sitting

on her eggs.

Of all the gulls, this is perhaps the least of a sea-bird. For it lives

almost altogether on land, searching the beach and rocks for dead fish

and other food cast up by the tide, and boldly coming inland to feed in

ploughed lands, or follow the course of rivers, or pick up a living in

harbours and docks, going back to the water to rest and sleep. Very

different is the scene when the visitor, landing on one of their

breeding-rocks or islands, disturbs the hosts of the lesser black-backed

gulls, to that when he landed among the uncomplaining puffins. For the

gulls resent the intrusion with wild cries and threats, and, instead of

flying away, patiently disconsolate, to wait for the intruders'

departure, wheel and whirl overhead, with angry clamour and noisy wings,

making believe to swoop down on the trespassers, and shouting at them to

go away. And they have good reason for their indignation, for their

visitors carry off their eggs by the boat-load for sale among the

hard-living islanders.

[Illustration: AMONG THE SKUAS]

But the black-back is a mischievous and predatory bird, doing infinite

injury to more valuable species, like the eider-duck, whom it harries

without remorse; and so one

[Illustration: A COLONY OF CORMORANTS]

can read of its eggs being cooked by the million without any keener

feeling of regret than if they were apples. And, after all, the

wholesale robbery of their nests does not reduce their myriads, for more

than enough are hatched every year to fill the gaps caused by death.

Being, too, so courageous, the gull escapes persecution by its larger

companions, and even the sea-eagle prefers, with so large a choice of

more timid victims, to leave such obstreperous birds alone. When

threatened by the great bird of prey they join for the common defence,

and the eagle is often seen, at long distances from the

breeding-places, pursued by shouting gulls, and ignominiously mobbed out

to sea.

[Illustration: BLACK-THROATED DIVER]

With them, on these retaliatory sallies, goes that most intrepid of

sea-fowl, the skua--one of the many birds that the sailor calls

"molly-hawks," and that the lesser creatures dread like a bird of prey.

For such it really is, living chiefly upon the fish the other birds have

caught, upon the birds themselves, and during the nesting season upon

the eggs and young of all species indiscriminately: so reckless in

attack that nothing on wings dares to oppose it, and so powerful that

full-grown gulls, if they persist in the fight, succumb to it. He laughs

the sea-eagle to scorn, challenging it by loud squalls to a duel. But

the erne knows better than to join in a conflict from which neither

honour nor profit can come, and spreading his great square-cut wings to

the breeze, drifts swiftly away from the spot over the moorland that the

skua calls its own. Where the herring-fishers are at work, there the

skua is sure to be, gobbling as much as it can find for itself, and

chasing all the other birds to make them drop their shares. Nor when

there are eggs in its nest does the skua hesitate to threaten human

beings that approach it, and indeed actually to attack them; while there

are few dogs, if any, that have ever encountered an angry skua, and had

experience of its sharp beak and battering wings, that care to face the

fierce fowl a second time.

CHAPTER VII

THE KINGFISHER--THE MYSTERY AND FOLK-LORE OF THE HALCYON--THE WATER-VOLE

AT HOME--IN THE WATER-MEADOWS--THE MOORHEN AND ITS HAUNTS--THE

REED-WARBLER--THE SEDGE-WARBLER--MUSIC OF THE SUMMER NIGHTS--WAKING THE

SUN

CHAPTER VII

"_The long-leaved willow, on whose bending spray,_

_The py'd Kingfisher, having got his prey,_

_Sate with the small breath of the water shaken,_

_Till he devoured the fish that he had taken._"

So writes Michael Drayton in the sixteenth century, and how true an

observer of Nature the old poet was is proved by the words of our latest

ornithologist: "It alights on some twig bending over the stream, its

weight causing it to swing gently to and fro, whence it scans the young

trout sporting in the pool below, and suddenly it will drop into the

water, and almost before the spectator is aware of the fact, is back

again on its perch with a struggling fish in its beak." Nor must the

meaning of Drayton's "py'd" be mistaken, for in his day, and indeed much

later, anything of more than one colour was called pied, so long as

gaiety of tint was the result of the combination. So Shakespeare calls

the daisy "pied," and Ben Jonson the rainbow.

But to come back to our kingfisher, "famousèd for

[Illustration: THE KING OF THE POOL]

colours rare," sitting upon its twig with the tiny fish in its beak.

Only, however, for half an instant, for the bird raps its little captive

sharply upon the twig, perhaps more than once, and then it is gone where

all little fishes go that kingfishers chance to catch. Sometimes,

indeed, it is not content to swallow the wee thing in a commonplace way,

but, as the toucans often do with their food, must needs throw it up

into the air, and catch it with open throat head first as it falls. And

if you listen you will hear the kingfisher compliment itself upon its

cleverness with a congratulatory little chirrup. So, too, when it misses

its aim at a passing fish--for it does miss it sometimes--it comes back

to its perch with a cheery little "peep-peep," as much as to say "Never

mind." And when it flies off down the stream, startled by your sudden

coming, you may, if you have quick ears, hear it comforting itself in a

nervous sort of way with a succession of "peeps," but if you go and hide

behind the hedge or a bush, you will very soon see it returning, a swift

flash of orange and blue, and lo! there is the kingfisher back again

just where you first saw it, on its pliant twig, "with the small breath

of the water shaken," and its clever eye fixed upon the water beneath.

For, like flycatchers, shrikes and other birds, it returns, if it can,

always to one "post of observation," and just as the dragon-fly at the

edge of the stream keeps flying back to the same reed after every

excursion, so the kingfisher, though you have just seen it go darting

off like a blue gem on wings, in and out of ever so many twists and

turns of the little stream, comes back, and in a surprisingly short

time, to the very spot it started from.

This habit brings many of them to their death, for there are still, in

spite of all the appeals of the humane, the protests of lovers of

Nature, and the threatenings of the law, numbers of men who call

themselves fishermen who try to do these lovely birds to death. That

"halcyons" eat fish, and nothing else if they can get enough of them, is

beyond all doubt, and when there are five young ones in the nest in the

bank, they must kill a great number. But granting all this, the fact

remains, that the man who would go about to compass the killing of a

kingfisher is not an angler of the best type.

However, in spite of them and all other enemies, this sweet ornament of

our rivers is still abundant, and there is no secluded stream where the

lover of Nature may not enjoy himself with the sight of it at its work,

patient and clever, or admire its rare beauty as it flashes up and down.

"There came

Swift as a meteor's flashing flame

A kingfisher from out the brake,

And almost seemed to leave a wake

Of brilliant hues behind."

Indeed, it takes a very quick eye, sometimes, to make out the form of

the bird as it passes: all that is seen is a sudden trail of sapphire

blue, which, meteor-like, vanishes before you have time to say "There

it is." And what is its real colour? Sitting opposite you on its perch,

the throne from whence this little king surveys its subject fishes, the

bird is a beautiful chestnut and white, and its legs and feet are coral

red. Then it dives, and as it goes down its plumage flashes a pure,

clear blue, and as it comes up, taking the light at another angle, it is

a lovely mixture of azure that is half emerald-green and of

emerald-green that is half azure. For all these colours go to the

painting of a kingfisher; but, as a rule, when it is flying from you it

is simply a streak of sapphire. The young birds of the first year have

their colours fainter, but even then are sweetly pretty, and there are

not many sights in our wild Nature more completely attractive than that

of the young brood sitting about close together on the roots among which

their nest has been tunnelled out, while the old ones fly backwards and

forwards, fishing for them and feeding them. And whatever happens, they

all keep on saying "Peep-peep" to one another, in the happiest,

contentedest way conceivable.

Their nest is a yard back in the bank. It takes the old birds two or

three weeks to dig it out (though sometimes they will begin housekeeping

in some convenient hole that the water-rat has left or the sand-martin

deserted), and at the end of the tunnel, on a flooring of fish-bones,

are laid the exquisite white round eggs, with shells so translucent that

when they are fresh they look more pink than white.

[Illustration: THE CAVE-HAUNTING MARTLET]

Yet poets and others who draw so many morals from the pearl being found

in what they are pleased to call a "foul" oyster, never allude,

strangely enough, to Nature's pretty lesson of the kingfisher, which

comes arrayed in all its loveliness of plumage from the very dirtiest of

holes. For it is a sad fact that kingfishers have the most magnificent

contempt for everything like "sanitary arrangements;" yet once they have

left their nests they are the chiefest jewels of the stream, among the

prettiest things to be seen in all a summer's day. Where they built was

apparently once a mystery, for in the long-ago days of Greece and Rome

the "halcyon" was supposed to go off somewhere near Sicily and other

isles, and nest upon the open seas; and so fond were both pagan men and

pagan gods of the little bird, that--so poets pretended--the seas were

never stormy while the halcyons were nesting, and the word has passed

into our language as the symbol of calm security and rest and peace. So

in Keats:

"O magic sleep! O comfortable bird!

That broodest over the troubled sea of mind

Till it is hushed and smooth."

And in Shelley:

"Far, far away, O ye

Halcyons of memory,

Seek some far calmer nest

Than this abandoned breast."

And in Milton and Dryden, and Kirke White and Coleridge, and ever so

many more. Another belief, which, strange to say, still holds its own in

England, is that a dead halcyon hung up will turn its beak always in the

direction of the wind. So Shakespeare says of courtiers who "turn their

halcyon beaks with every gale and vary of their masters"; and Marlowe,

before him, asks "How now stands the wind? Into what corner peers my

halcyon's bill?"

But oddest of all is the following superstition from an English book of

the twelfth century:--"These little birds, if they are preserved in a

dry place, when dead never decay; and if they are put among clothes and

other articles, they preserve them from the moth and give them a

pleasant odour. What is still more wonderful, if when dead they are hung

up by their beaks in a dry situation, they change their plumage every

year, as if they were restored to life, as though the vital spark still

survived and vegetated through some mysterious remains of its energy."

None of our British birds probably feels a severe winter more keenly

than the kingfisher, for when the streams are frost-bound and icicles

hang from the willows where it used to perch so blithely in the summer

days, the little creature is in a desperate plight. Insect-eating birds

have a last resource in berries and vegetable food, but the kingfisher,

when the streams are frozen and the ponds all ice-locked, has nothing to

fall back upon, and so he wanders off to the seashore and the mouths of

rivers that are still open. "Even here," says a writer, "the poor

kingfisher often fares badly, and after an unusual spell of frost

numbers of them are picked up starved to death. Sometimes they are found

frozen to the branch on which they have been sitting." But in open

weather its life is as joyous as any bird's can be, and is passed among

the prettiest of scenery.

You will note, or may fancy that you do, that it is

[Illustration: "WHEN THE PONDS ARE ALL ICE-LOCKED"]

always the most delightful bends of the streams, the most charming nooks

and corners of the waterways and pools that the kingfisher haunts. Where

the scenery is open and tame, he is only a passer-by. But where his

beauty adds the one charm of life, and beautiful life, that was needed

to make some special "bit" of loveliness complete, there the kingfisher

lives. It is a sweet little poem, this bird. Does it see any of the

beauty that we do in these archways of willow and alder, this exquisite

embroidery of forget-me-nots upon the brink, this clump of yellow flags

and fair tall willow-herb? One could almost imagine that it does, so

careful is it to pitch its camp just where Nature is at its best. Here

the banks are flowered and prettily uneven with mossy stumps and roots

"peeping out upon the brook." The moor-hen is at home here, and that

delightful, harmless little beast the water-vole.

I remember once seeing a water-vole sitting up at its front door in the

sun, nibbling its crisp salad of young reed-shoot: on one side of it

grew a tuft of "faint sweet cuckoo-flower," and just above it was a

great rosette of primroses, and I thought I had never seen anything more

enchanting than this quiet little touch of innocent and pretty spring.

One of them has his hole yonder where there is a little overhanging

bulge in the bank, and that little platform which seems neatly laid with

rushes is his dining-room, and from it, running either way, you can

easily trace the small animal's regular path to points where he can

slip into the water quietly. If he were to jump in off his doorstep he

would make a splash: a great indiscretion in a water-rat. So he toddles

off to the right or the left as his fancy takes him, till he comes to a

conveniently shelving place where he can take to water without noise.

Under that green moss-furred root, over which his pathway so clearly

goes, is the kingfisher's nest. The hole runs in straight for about

three feet, and at the end is "the nest," and the little birds sitting

in it can tell by the stoppage of the light at the entrance that father

or mother has come back with a fish, and they hurry forward, crouching

low, with out-stretched necks (for the tunnel is only three inches

high), to get the food first. So the strongest or hungriest gets fed

first, and when it has had enough it stays behind when the next race to

the opening takes place, and the weaker or lazier take their turns till

all are satisfied. And this is the simple explanation of that which so

often puzzles people--"How do the old birds know that all the young ones

have been fed? can they count, or do they know them all one from the

other?"

No, they cannot count, and they do not know one from another. If you

watch a bird at a nest, it gives the food to the nearest mouth: it never

picks and chooses. But young birds know when they have had enough--for

the present. If you are feeding a young bird you have taken from the

nest, how ferociously it takes the first bit, and the second, and

perhaps the third; and then how utterly and suddenly its appetite

collapses! It refuses, in the most dogged and sulky way, to open its

beak though you tempt it ever so much. It has had enough, and it knows

it, and isn't going to burst for you or for anybody else. It is just the

same in the nest. The first two or three pieces of food may all follow

one another down the same throat, but next time the mother comes there

is one mouth shut tight. And so it goes on. One by one the mouths are

shut up, and the mother comes at last with a titbit, and finds every one

of the little ones asleep, on full stomachs, and as haughtily regardless

of her and her provender as if they would never need feeding any more.

So the mother eats it herself, and sits down on the top of the sleepers.

This is the whole secret of the mystery. While the little birds are

hungry they keep on asking for more: as soon as they are stuffed full

they convey that information to the parents by holding their tongues. So

all get fed.

And a word here as to that odd superstition which is still current, that

the British Museum will give "a hundred pounds for a complete

kingfisher's nest." Every year the "authorities" are written to by

people in the country offering to send them one at the price, but of

course it was never offered, and indeed a kingfisher's nest has not been

wanted, since the beautiful section of a river-bank, with the nest, and

young, and old ones all complete, was set up in the Bird Gallery at the

British Museum in 1883. But the kingfisher's nest is not the only

article that a deluded public seems to imagine the British Museum is

still pining for, for as a letter to the _Times_ by Sir J. Flower in

1894 tells us, offers are regularly received of tortoise-shell tom-cats

at the most exorbitant prices, and inquiries continue to come in, asking

if it is true that the Museum has offered a hundred pounds for "an

entire cigar-ash."

Nowhere can the lover of Nature find more to spend his time over than in

the pretty haunts of this pretty bird. As a schoolboy I have spent many

hours in water-meadows watching the bird-life about me, and, sitting on

some mossy stump in the middle of the marsh-marigolds or on some rail

that straddled across the water, enjoyed the little spectacles, comic

and serious, that various companies of amateurs--moor-hen and water-rat,

bunting and reed-warbler and weasel--presented for my entertainment.

My visits to the kingfisher's osier-beds were often really Platonic.

There were no eggs to be taken that I had not enough of and to spare in

my collection. Albeit the chance of a cuckoo's egg always made looking

into every nest I found "a pleasurable expectation," which was just

often enough fulfilled to make the quest a perpetual hope.

Not that the keeper--"arbiter of this terraqueous swamp"--would have

believed me if he had caught me, and no monkey in Brazilian forests

hated the jaguar more

[Illustration: DID I HEAR SOME ONE?]

than I hated the keeper. Sometimes just as I was really happy, and doing

nothing more criminal than watching a water-rat that was trying to

balance itself on an arrowhead stem while it reached up to the seeds, I

would hear his detestable splashing--stealthy, he thought it, no doubt,

the clumsy wretch, but noisy enough to warn my Red Indian ears a long

way off--and I had to go. His own squelching feet and big body forcing a

way through the osiers, which whipped his face as he went, hid the noise

of my retreat as I slipped along like some fox, hardly scaring the birds

that I passed, and cunningly stepping from point to point so as scarcely

to make a splash. And so out at the other end and up into the high road

and home as hard as I could run.

On one occasion, all but taken by surprise, I suddenly heard the

keeper's step close by, and had to slip into the water and sit there,

like a coot, with only my head above the surface, and that half-hidden

by reeds--and he passed, oh! so close to me, stopped for an instant to

wonder to himself, perhaps, why the water was rippling so, and then went

on, so cautiously, so cunningly, knowing that a boy was somewhere about,

and expecting to pounce on him; while I just as cautiously rose from my

sloppy, weedy lair, and crept off in the other direction, and got into

the dusty road, my boots squelching dreadfully, and making as I jogged

along (as Ben Jonson says) "great S's like a watering-pot."

And what was there in the osiers to amuse a boy? First of all, there

were the water-rats, always funny, but never so comical as when cutting

reeds. You would see one go down under the water, and the reed would

begin "twiddling" and quivering in response to the sharp brown teeth at

work below, but instead of falling, the reed would lean up against the

next one, and when the vole came up to look for it, it would not see it,

but it used to say "Bless me, how odd!" and go under again, and begin

cutting another one down, bothering the dragon-fly who was sitting on it

very much by the vibration. Then it would come up again, catch hold of

it, and swim away to the stump where its hole was, and drag it up and

cut it into lengths like an imitation beaver making a dam, and stop

every now and again and look round, though there was only myself and the

dragon-fly to appeal to, as much as to say, "There! that's the way it's

done." And if there were two of them, to see the way they stroked each

other's cheeks with their tiny paws, just as the wallabies do, putting

one hand on each side of the other's face, was as pretty as could be.

Then there were the dabchicks, who came swimming along under water right

over one's feet, looking like bags of bubbles, or as if they were all

covered with globules of quicksilver, and stopping to eat something at

the bottom, as if they were fish, not birds. Then they would come to the

top for air, catch sight of me, and with a horrified little "Goodness

gracious!" bob under water again and go off straight down the little

canal, a streak of bubbles.

"_The Coot bald, else clean black that whiteness it doth bear_

_Upon her forehead starred, the Water-hen doth wear_

_Upon her little tail, in one small feather set._"

DRAYTON.

"_There have I watched the downy Coot_

_Pacing with safe and steady foot,_

_The surface of the floating field,_

_And though the elastic floor might yield_

_In chinks, and let the water flow_

_In beads of crystal from below,_

_Yet was the tremulous region true_

_To that rough traveller passing through._"

FABER.

[Illustration: THE WATER HEN]

Above all, there was the moorhen, a bird that one can surely never be

tired of watching, it is so full of quips and cranks. It has a little

red wafer on its nose and queer little patches of white under its tail,

which it keeps on flicking as it goes in a comical automatic sort of

way, in time with its steps, as if its tail were a kind of pedometer

measuring off the distances it walks. And when it is in the water

swimming, it jerks its head backwards and forwards, as if doing so

helped it along and it could not help jerking every time it kicked out

its legs. And when it is in the water, how it bobs about! You can never

depend upon it for an instant, going in the direction it started for;

something or other is sure to attract its attention, especially if it

has its brood behind it, and its mate is on the watch, making a great

show of vigilance and unnecessary sagacity. The young ones--trying to

follow the mother's movements as she darts at a fly here, pecks at

something there, suddenly stands on her head to fetch something up from

down below, or makes an unexpected dash at an insect that is skimming

across to the reeds--twist and wind about and get in each other's way,

like a squad of badly-managed boats, that keep on fouling and ramming

one another, and all the time keep up a feeble little chorus of

disconsolate cheep-cheep. But they are learning their lessons all the

time, and it is delightful to watch their imitations. They gape at the

passing flies, make sudden little excursions, three inches at a time,

after something they think they see, and ridiculously attempt to dive,

as they notice their mother do. But they are so light and so weak that

the resistance of the water is too much for them, and all they can do is

to put their heads under water and kick in the air with their legs,

exactly like little boys trying to turn somersaults on the grass, but

only getting half over.

Indeed, whatever the moorhens are doing, they are interesting, and there

is an alert sprightliness about them when in company that is infinitely

amusing. When an old bird is alone (it is impossible to tell cock from

hen) it is very self-respecting and purposeful. As it goes upon the

grass there is a high-stepping, aristocratic gait about its walk that

even the affected little flirt of the tail accentuates, and when he is

in the water, with some object-point in view, he swims both fast and

straight. And what beautiful homes they find, where the yellow iris

grows, and the marsh-marigold, and tangles of forget-me-not, where the

stream filters in the shallows through beds of cress, or deepens into

pools, so that the water-lily may spread its pads at ease. And there are

beds of bulrush and feathery-headed reeds, into which they paddle; and

if you do not mind wet feet, you can go and look right along the little

"pleached" alleys they have made for themselves, to the end where the

nest, a heap of rushes with a comfortable hollow smooth-lined with finer

material, closes the passage. No bird nests more becomingly than the

moorhen, or more picturesquely; and if it were not that I remembered the

enjoyment I used to find in wading after them, and (with some shame be

it said) the excellence of the eggs when hard-boiled cold, I should look

back with more repentance than I do to the wholesale manner in which I

used to fill my handkerchief full of the large speckled eggs, and

triumphantly distribute them along the table at tea-time. Alas! for

Clare's supposition that

"At distance from the water's edge

Or hanging sallow's farthest stretch

The moorhen builds her nest of sedge

Safe from destroying schoolboy's reach."

While I robbed her--a moorhen by judicious robbery can be made to go on

laying twenty eggs and upwards--the mother would get into the water

under the shadow of the reeds, and with only her head out, watch the

spoliation in progress. And sometimes, coming upon her asleep, perhaps,

on her nest after her young ones had hatched, it was a sight to see how

suddenly she vanished, and how the chicks scrambling out after her in a

twinkling, stood on their heads, thinking they too had dived out of

sight. I have often taken up the little fluff-balls in my hand, and

wished to take them home, but kinder thoughts have supervened, and I

have laid them back on the water and watched them paddle off to the

shelter where the poor mother, only her red-spot beak showing above

water, crouched, clucking nervously in stage whispers, "This way, this

way."

Sitting at ease one day watching a family party, I became aware of a rat

that was watching them as well--a common brown farmyard rat--that, with

so many others of his kind, haunt osier-beds and streams, and, by their

depredations, bring discredit upon the water-vole. The miscreant was on

the bank; the "moor-chickens" were paddling in a dutiful, unsuspicious

fashion behind their mother, when one of them, coming to some weeds,

must needs scramble on to the top, to show what a clever bird it was.

Something it found there interested it for an instant, and meanwhile all

the rest went on. Then I saw the rat slip into the water, and swim

towards the little platform of weeds; and the chick saw it too, and

wondered, no doubt, what it was. But it decided that the thing did not

look quite right somehow, and got into the water to follow its brothers

and sisters. If it had known what was behind it, and had paddled at its

best pace, it would have beaten the rat easily; but it was in no hurry,

and went slowly across towards the bank. Close behind it swam the rat.

The little bird was doomed. In my cap I had some dabchick's eggs, and I

took one out, and trusting to luck to miss the bird, threw it at the

beast. There was a smart splash in the water, just where I had hoped to

see it, close to the rat's nose, and the next instant the chick was

swimming for dear life after its mother and the rat was scrambling up

the bank. I wonder what each of them thought of that dabchick's egg?

Nothing so "wonderful" as that ever happens to us in our lives. With

birds and beasts it happens every day. But they do not go crazy at the

constant repetition of miracles, for, fortunately, they do not

understand them.

"Fen sparrows chirp and fly to fetch

The withered reed-down rustling nigh;

And by the sunny side the ditch

Prepare their dwelling warm and dry."

Next to moorhens, the most constant companion of the visitor to the

sedgy margins of a pond or osier-bed is the reed-warbler. To many eyes

the reed-and the sedge-warblers look alike, and to most ears their songs

sound alike. Nor in their comings and goings and general behaviour is

there much to distinguish them as they creep about in their shady

coverts

[Illustration: THE REED MUSICIANS]

or momentarily flit across some narrow space, or with a flight like a

flying-fish's in the water, suddenly appear on the surface of the reeds,

skim their level tops, and as suddenly drop down out of sight again.

They come to England together, and together seek the same haunts. The

only way to make them betray themselves is by throwing something among

the reeds, when each of them will at once protest, sometimes scolding

like a whitethroat, sometimes breaking out into a bold, beautiful song.

Each bird, too, occasionally forgets its shyness, and coming out from

its retreat perches well in sight and fearlessly sings its loudest. But

their nests are unmistakable; for while the sedge-warbler always builds

upon some support, the reed-sparrow hangs its nest between supports, but

never upon them. Yet as you loiter near their pretty nesting-places, it

does not matter much which of the birds you disturb, for either will

sing for you as long as you remain, and it is a charming sight to see

the little olive-green bird clinging to a reed or a willow-withe, and

with stretched throat singing with all its might. A very little wind

makes it sway, and this, with the bird's strange ventriloquist powers,

makes the song seem to sway, too, and as you watch it, the small

creature grows quite mystical, with its notes, now near now far, and its

beautiful little body swinging to and fro in the chequered shadow of the

tall plumed reeds. And sometimes, while he is singing, the hen-bird, as

if excited by his song, begins too, in a harsher voice but not

unmusical, and once started you will hear the duet going on behind you

long after you have left. In the warm evenings, when out with my net

moth-hunting along the river side, I have often heard them singing among

the sedge and willows, and later, coming home in the dark, have found

them still in full song.

As a matter of fact, our short nights in summer have often as much

melody as the days. Not so much chatter and chirruping and twittering,

but quite as much song, for there are none of our singing-birds that,

when the fancy takes them, will not add a beauty to a fine night by

their music. Sleeping out of doors (I do so as often as I can get the

chance), I have at one time or another heard them all, the cuckoo and

the owl together, the robin and the nightingale.

There is one exception, the skylark, and inasmuch as I have never heard

it singing in the dark, I always consider it either the sleepiest or the

most methodical of all birds. To call the lark lazy and a "slug-abed,"

to use Shakespeare's word, sounds, I know, like treason, for has not

every poet from Chaucer onwards told us that it wakes the day; and is

not "to rise with the lark" a household word for being up very early?

But if we come to prosy facts, they are all dead against the skylark,

for by the time it begins to think of awaking the day, the other birds

have been already doing it for hours. Of course, it may be that the sun

does not pay any attention to the other birds, regards them as

unlicensed watchmen who have no business to try and wake him up before

his proper time, and that he waits for the lark, as the only genuine

certificated waker-up of the firmament, before he gets out of bed.

Robins and blackcaps, woodlarks and reed-warblers are perhaps mere

irresponsible amateurs. The skylark is the one properly diploma'd

professor. He alone really knows when the sun ought to be awakened; the

rest only think they know.

To tell the truth, if Phœbus were to attend to every bird that

chooses to call him, he might just as well breakfast overnight; lie down

on the sofa with his hat and boots on, or not go to sleep at all.

Moreover, the skylark has the merit of punctuality and is regular. He is

always up and singing by the time there is light enough to see him by.

The sun can rely upon him, which is more than can be said for the robin,

who, though I do not wish to say anything about him that might injure

his character, sings in the mornings decidedly tipsily, as if he had

been out all night at a party and were just coming home "with the milk."

But no treason of the robin! More than any other bird it has endeared

itself to our race, and our earliest literature bears witness to the

national affection for "the charitable ruddock." Somehow or another, the

pretty fancy has attached itself to the bird, that it "covers the bodies

of unburied men," and long before Shakespeare utilised it to beautify a

passage it had passed into the proverbs of the country. But even those

who do not remember the charming legend with which the story of "The

Babes in the Wood" familiarises every English nursery, love the robin

for its beautiful confidence in man and woman, and for its brave-hearted

song. While the trees are still bare in spring, and before the thrushes

and blackbirds have begun to try their voices, the robin chants his

cheery song, so full of bright faith and gladsome hope that the hearer

cannot but take fresh heart on hearing him sing of better times. In

summer, when "varied music burthens every bough," the voice of the

little preacher of the wood is lost for a while, but by-and-by, when the

songsters all have gone southward with the sunshine, and the chill rain

drips from empty boughs upon the russet drifts of autumn leaves, the

robin mounts the vacant choir, and out of the fulness of his own brave

little heart utters his sweet brief canticle, "thanking God" so it seems

"for a life so fair," and bidding all the sad who listen to him to renew

their hopes and be light-hearted, to continue in their joy. And so to

December and the end of the year, which the robin-redbreast always sings

out with a happy Christmas carol.

INDEX

Among the Osiers, boyish sport, 202-5

Artifices of birds, 63

Birds:

of the seasons, 13, 14

calendar of, 47

of the months, 54

little noticed, 101

of the sea, 158

flight of coloured, 162

in the poets (_see_ POETS)

Bird-pests, 104, 105

Bird-voices, expressiveness of, 113

song of caged birds, 33, 34

Bittern, its folk-names, 48

Black-backed gull (_see_ GULL)

Blackbird, 30

curious folk-belief about, 31

what becomes of its surplus numbers, 31

its nest, 32

its "piping," 33, 34-37

Blackcap, 101

its song mistaken for the nightingale's, 102

its eggs and nest, 117, 118

"Blasquet chickens," 177

Boyish sport among the osiers, 202-205

British Museum, curious notions as to what it wants, 201, 202

Caged Birds Singing, 33, 34

Calendar of birds, 47

Cat concerts, 35

Colour in flights of birds, 162

Coot, 50

Corn-crake, 113

its cry, 114, 117

Cuckoo, 99

its foster-parents, 100

food and song, 101

Curlew, folk-lore of, 49

Cushat (_see_ WOOD-PIGEON)

Dabchicks, 205

"Davy Jones's locker," 173, 174

Dotterel, 64

its note, 67

Eagle, 71, 72

in poetry, 153

its flight, 154

(_see_ ERNE)

Egg-gathering at Flamborough, 167

Eider-duck, 182

Erne, 155

its haunts, 156

its young, 157, 158

its raids on young birds, 165

raids on puffins and rabbits, 170

and black-backed gull, 183

and skua, 184

Evening sounds, 67, 114, 117

Falcon, 72, 75, 76

a falconry, 75

the Laggar-falcon, 71

Fern-owl, its song, 67

its flight, 68, 69

Fieldfares, 54

Finches, 50

the goldfinch a pest in New Zealand, 104

Flamingoes, 162

Flitter-mouse, 117

Flycatchers, 191

Gamekeepers, their stupidity, 144

Garden-warbler, 101, 102

Goatsucker (_see_ FERN-OWL)

Goldfinch a pest in New Zealand, 104

Grasshopper warbler, 119

Great Tit (_see_ TIT)

Grouse, 70

Guillemots, 161, 162

their haunts and young, 163

their eggs, 164

the raids on their young, 165-167

Gull, the Black-backed, 178

its habits and resorts, 181-183

Günther, Dr., on the Great Tit of Rowfant, 128, 129

Halcyon (_see_ KINGFISHER)

Hawks, chased by swallows, 40

British, 75

Heron, 48, 143

its persecution by gamekeepers, 144

its effect in landscape, 147

its post of observation, 148

a heronry at breeding-time, 149

in hawking days, 150

"Hewel," the (Woodpecker), 49

Insects, destruction of, by swallow, 39

Jay, 138

Kestrel, 139

its destruction of mice, 140-143

Kingfisher, its effect in the landscape, 147

its haunts and habits, 189-192

it colouring, nest and eggs, 193, 194

the mystery of the halcyon, 195

folk-beliefs, 196

hardships in winter, 196

its association with the picturesque, 199, 200

the method of feeding its young, 200, 201

£100 for its nest, 201, 202

Laggar-Falcon, 71

Lark: the skylark, 69

its song, 103, 104

a pest in New Zealand, 104

its late rising and regular song, 214, 215

the woodlark, its song, 102

Lighthouses and migrants, 20, 21

Lion's cries, 34-37

Magpie, 136-138

Mavis (_see_ THRUSH)

Merle (_see_ BLACKBIRD)

Migration and overcrowding, 16

flights of migrants, 20, 21

mystery of migration, 21-26

mortality among migrants, 25

what makes "home" for a bird, 56-58

Mice, destruction of, by kestrel, 140

"Molly-hawks," 184, 185

Months, birds of the, 54

Moorhen, 199, 206, 207

its young, 208

haunts and nest, 209

a rat adventure, 210, 211

"Mother Carey's chickens," 173

Night, bird-music in summer, 213, 214

Nightingale, migration of, 19, 20

song of, 33

in spring, 56

the blackcap's similarity of song, 102

Nightjar (_see_ FERN-OWL)

Nuthatch, 123, 124

its nest-hole, 125

Ossifrage, the, in India, 154

Owl, 133

its utility, 134

its ill-names, 135

the burrowing owl, 170

(_see_ FERN-OWL)

Ox-eye (_see_ TIT)

Parrots, 162

Partridges, 76-79

Peregrine (_see_ FALCON)

Pests, birds which have become, 104, 105

Petrel, 173

in folklore, 174

excellent eating, 177

mystery of its nesting, 177

its burrows, 178

Pheasant, 76-80

Poets, the, and the birds:

Barry Cornwall, the _Petrel_, 173, 178

the _Sparrow_, 109

Beattie, the _Ringdove_, 118

Bloomfield, the _Robin_ and _Wren_, 83

Burns, the _Mavis_, 14

the _Moorcock_, 70

the _Corn-crake_, 113

Byron, the _Partridge_ and _Pheasant_, 76

Clare, the _Partridge_, 47

the _Moorhen_, 209

Cowper, the _Sparrow_, 105

Cunningham, the _Magpie_, 136

Drayton, the _Blackbird_ ("woosell,") 33

the _Bittern_, 48

the _Dotterel_, 64

the _Kingfisher_, 189

the _Coot_, 206

Faber, the _Sea-fowl_, 167

the _Kingfisher_, 192

the _Coot_, 206

Grahame, the _Merle_, 30

the _Eagle_, 153

the _Grouse_, 70

Hood, the _Blackbird_, 31

Hurdis, the _Rook_, 55

Ingelow, Jean, the _Finch_, 70

Keats, the _Thrush_, 14

the _Swallow_, 38

the _Finch_, 59

Leyden, the _Heron_, 143

the _Woodlark_, 103

Mackay, the _Gulls_, 162

Mallet, on _Migration_, 21

the _Sea-fowl_, 169

Marvel, the _Hewel_ (woodpecker), 50

the _Heron_, 150

Montgomery, the _Nuthatch_, 123

the _Sea-eagle_, 170

Pope, the _Magpie_, 136

Prior, the _Sparrow_, 106

the _Turtle-dove_, 120

Scott, the _Blackbird_, 30

Shakespeare, the _Throstle_, 14

Shelley, the _Ringdove_, 59

the _Skylark_, 103-4

the _Owl_ (Aziola), 133

the _Eagle_, 190

Shenstone, the _Rook_, 93

Somerville, the _Heron_, 143

Southey, the _Nuthatch_, 123

Spenser, the _Eagle_, 153

Tennyson, the _Thrush_, 14

Thomson, the _Rook_, 55

the _Woodlark_, 102

White, Gilbert, the _Rook_, 55

Wordsworth, the _Bittern_ and _Woodcock_, 83

the _Cuckoo_, 99

Prairie-dog, 170

Ptarmigan, 71

Puffin, 167

haunts and habits, 168, 169

its nest-hole, 170

Rabbit, and its enemy the erne, 170

Rat and blackbird's nest, 32

Reed-warbler, 211-213

Ring-dove (_see_ WOOD-PIGEON)

Robin, and wren, 86, 89

early song of, 215

Rook, 55

and crow, 93

value to the farmer, 94-96

its habits, 97

its young, 98

Rowfant, the great tit of, 128, 129

Sambhur-stag, 148

St. Kilda and its puffins, 167, 168

Sea-eagle (_see_ ERNE)

Seabirds, haunts of, 158

Seasons, birds of the, 13, 14

Sedge-warbler, 211-213

Shrikes, 191

Skua, 184-5

Skylark (_see_ LARK)

Snails, 27

Song of caged birds, 33

meaning of song, 34, 35

song of warriors and savages, 37

expressiveness of bird-voices, 113

music of summer nights, 213, 214

Sparrow, its wildness, 60, 61

a pest in America and Colonies, 105, 106

the sparrow-line in the U.S., 105

a popular favourite, 106

the London sparrow, 108

the soldier and sailor's comrade, 109, 110

Squirrel and blackbird's nest, 32

Summer nights, music of, 213, 214

Swallow, in folklore, 38

its speed, care of young, destruction of insects, 39

hawk-chasing, 40

at brooding-time, 41, 42

migration of, 43, 55

Throstle (_see_ THRUSH)

Thrush, 14

is it a migrant? 15, 19

identification with throstle and mavis, 26

food of, 27

song of, 29

in winter, 29

companion of blackbird, 30

appearance in March, 55

Tit, the great, 126

a curious experience, 127

strange nesting-place, 129, 130

Toucans, 191

Turtle-dove, migration of, 19

nest and nest-building, 119, 120

its flight, 123

Voices of Birds (_see_ SONG)

Vole (_see_ WATER-VOLE)

Wagtail, 50, 53

Water-hen (_see_ MOORHEN)

Water-rat, 93

and moorhen, 210, 211

Water-vole, 93, 199, 200

cutting reeds, 205

Whelks, 27

Woodcock, 83

in the poets, 84

Woodlark (_see_ Lark)

Woodpecker, 49, 50

Wood-pigeon, 59

its tameness, 60

defence of young, 61-63

Wren, 84, 85

in folklore, 86, 89

Wryneck, 125

Yaffingale (_see_ WOODPECKER)

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L. T. MEADE.

Professor W. T. GAIRDNER, M.D.

WM. WRIGHT, D.D.

Canon LIDDELL, M.A.

J. MONRO GIBSON, D.D.

R. F. HORTON, D.D.

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G. F. PENTECOST, D.D.

The EDITOR.

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_Royal 8vo, gilt edges, 7s. 6d._

GOOD WORDS VOLUME

1894

Edited by DONALD MACLEOD, D.D.

ONE OF H.M. CHAPLAINS

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KITTY ALONE

_SHORT STORIES BY_

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LANOE FALCONER

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_AND ARTICLES BY_

The Bishop of WINCHESTER.

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The Dean of YORK.

Sir WM. H. FLOWER, Ll.D.

The Dean of GLOUCESTER.

Archdeacon SINCLAIR, D.D.

JUSTIN MCCARTHY, M.P.

"SHIRLEY."

JOHN HUNTER, D.D.

GEORGE MATHESON, D.D.

KATHARINE HINKSON.

WILLIAM CANTON.

AUGUSTUS JESSOPP, D.D.

THE EDITOR, &c. &c.

_WITH OVER 300 ILLUSTRATIONS BY_

GORDON BROWNE.

ALEX. ANSTED.

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W. H. OVEREND.

A. J. GOODMAN.

CHARLES WHYMPER.

F. H. TOWNSEND.

HERBERT RAILTON.

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[Illustration: (_Specimen of Illustrations from "Good Words," 1894_)]

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SUNDAY EVENINGS

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* * * * *

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_Two Vols. medium 8vo, 21s. each_

THE COMMEDIA AND CANZONIERE

OF DANTE ALIGHIERI

A New Translation

WITH BIOGRAPHICAL INTRODUCTION, AND NOTES CRITICAL

AND HISTORICAL

AND TWO PORTRAITS

BY E. H. PLUMPTRE, D.D., DEAN OF WELLS

VOLUME I. Life. _Hell, Purgatory._

VOLUME II. _Paradise, Minor Poems._ Studies:

The Genesis and Growth of the Commedia. Estimates of Dante. Dante

as an Observer and Traveller. Portraits of Dante, &c.

_The Spectator_ says:--"No man aiming at literary reputation can

think his education complete unless he studies Dante, in

translations or in the original. No book about Dante has been

published in England that will stand comparison with Dean

Plumptre's. He deserves the gratitude of all true lovers of good

literature for writing it. We have nothing further to say of it

except that, take it for all in all, the only fitting epithet we

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all the success which it richly deserves."

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congratulated upon the completion of his labour of love.... In the

English rendering of the _Paradiso_, as well as in the notes to

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great advantage over other translators and commentators.... For

students of Dante, the 'Studies' will be found most valuable and

interesting. A large quantity of material has been collected and

arranged as it only could have been by one thoroughly conversant

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the accomplishment of his work."

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so much help as this work will give him in understanding and

enjoying the message of Dante to men. The second volume deepens the

impression made by the first. The parts interlace as well as

complete each other; the volumes are two, the book is one. The Dean

'stands on his achievement.' It is no unworthy pedestal."

_The Academy_ says:--"The whole work is a monument of many years'

devoted study; it is illustrated throughout by an unusual range of

reading and culture in other fields of literature; and it is

accompanied by a most copious and valuable index of subjects and

names."

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Typographical errors corrected by the etext transcriber:

netting over the avairy=> netting over the aviary {pg 128}