without chilling. Imagination cannot surely conceive, or caprice wish
for an atmospheric temperature more delightful than what this day
affords; having mingled with it just that portion of vital air which
brisks up animality, without consuming the sustenance of life;
satisfying the body with health, and filling the heart with gratitude.
Fine threads of gossamer float lazily along the air, marking by this
peculiar feature the autumn of our year. On our commons, and about our
thistly hedge-rows, flocks of goldfinches[53] (fringilla carduelis), the
united produce of the summer months, are sporting and glistening in the
sunny beam, scattering all over the turf the down of the thistle, as
they pick out the seed for their food. But this beautiful native has
only a few short weeks in which it will have liberty to enjoy society
and life. Our bird-catchers will soon entrap it; and of those that
escape his toils, few will survive to the spring, should our winter
prove a severe one. Long as I have noticed this bird, it has appeared to
me that it never makes any plants generally its food, except those of
the syngenesia class, and on these it diets nearly the whole year. In
the spring season it picks out the seeds from the fir cones. During the
winter months it very frequently visits our gardens, feeding on the
seeds of the groundsel (senecio vulgaris), which chiefly abounds in
cultivated places, and vegetates there throughout the coldest seasons.
This, however, is an humble plant; and when covered by the snow, the
poor birds are half famished for want. We then see them striving to
satisfy their hunger by picking some solitary green head of the plant
remaining above the frozen snow, and so tame, that they will suffer a
very near approach before they take flight. As the frost continues, our
little garden visitors diminish daily, and by spring only a few pairs
remain of all the flocks of autumn. Yet it is very remarkable,
notwithstanding this natural predilection, how readily this bird
conforms to a perfect change in its diet, and in all the habits of its
life. Most of our little songsters, when captured as old birds, become
in confinement sullen and dispirited; want of exercise, and of
particular kinds of food, and their changes, alter the quality of the
fluids: they become fattened, and indisposed to action by repletion;
fits and ailments ensue, and they mope and die. But I have known our
goldfinch, immediately after its capture, commence feeding on its canary
or hemp-seed, food it could never have tasted before, nibble his sugar
in the wires like an enjoyment it had been accustomed to, frisk round
its cage, and dress its plumage, without manifesting the least apparent
regret for the loss of companions or of liberty. Harmless to the labors
or the prospects of us lords of the creation, as so many of our small
birds are, we have none less chargeable with the commission of injury
than the goldfinch; yet its blameless, innocent life does not exempt it
from harm. Its beauty, its melody, and its early reconciliation to
confinement, rendering it a desirable companion, it is captured to cheer
us with its manners and its voice, in airs and regions very different
from its native thistly downs, and apple-blossom bowers.
The tree-creeper (certhia familiaris) is as little observed as any
common bird we possess. A retired inhabitant of woods and groves, and
not in any manner conspicuous for voice or plumage, it passes its days
with us, creating scarcely any notice or attention. Its small size, and
the manner in which it procures its food, both tend to secrete him from
sight. It feeds entirely on small insects, which it seeks between the
crevices in the bark of trees, or under the mosses and lichens that
invest their limbs. In these pursuits its actions are more like those of
a mouse than of a bird, darting like a great moth from tree to tree,
uttering a faint trilling sound as it fixes on their boles, running
round them in a spiral direction, when with repeated wriggles having
gained the summit, it darts to another, and commences again; and so
intent is it on the object of pursuit, and unsuspicious of harm, that I
have seen it swept from the tree with a stick. Mr. Pennant thinks that
it retires into milder regions upon the advance of winter; but many
certainly remain with us. In the early part of the spring, when food is
comparatively scarce in the woods, it will frequent the mossy trees in
our orchards and gardens; but after a very short examination of them, is
away to its usual retirements, seeking no familiarity with us,
notwithstanding the social epithet it has obtained. This little creature
is observed in no great numbers; yet its actions and manners seem to be
such as would tend to its increase. The female lays eight or nine eggs;
it roosts securely in the holes of large trees; and from its manner of
feeding, and the places it inhabits, it can scarcely be destroyed by
birds of prey; yet, from some counteracting cause, our little certhia,
instead of increasing, apparently becomes a scarcer bird. The limits
that are appointed to the increase of all the inferior orders of
creation are very worthy of remark. There may be periods when a great
augmentation of individual species takes place; but this circumstance is
local, or temporary, and future numbers do not result from it. Some
motive for the increase, no doubt, existed; but, the object being
accomplished, it ceases, and apparent events, or imperceptible causes,
reduce the profusion of the race, so that certain numbers only continue.
This little tree-creeper, though always active, seems to possess most
animation and restlessness in the autumnal months.
The yellow wagtail (motacilla flava) is so regularly seen with us in his
season, as to be quite a common bird, breeding in our fields; yet
generally observed as he is, he always invites our attention, by his
graceful form and brilliant plumage, either actively running in our
path, or sporting in the pastures with that animation and ease so
remarkable in all this family, that we may justly distinguish them as
the gentles of our fields. With manners and habits similar to the common
gray ones, yet there seems to be but little intimate association between
the species; and though they are occasionally intermixed, we most
commonly observe them feeding by themselves and frolicking with their
own particular race. In autumn, when their broods are united with them,
they assemble in large parties towards the evening preparatory to their
nightly roost, selecting low spreading bushes hanging over the pool, or
as near the water as they can, and thus become secured from capture by
nocturnal vermin. Being in full beauty at this time, the fine yellow
breasts of the male birds render them very conspicuous as they glance
about the dry bents of the pasture. Autumn advancing, we lose these
flights; but now and then a single bird will appear in one of those
occasional bright sunny days that even winter will produce, looking like
some deserted straggler who has lost its passage, or from some other
cause remaining with us, chasing the gnat on the margin of the sheltered
pool, and then, when the sunny ray passes away, he departs with it, is
hidden we know not where, supported by means we are not acquainted with,
till another partial gleam allures him from retirement. In April, the
flights once more appear with all the fine feather and freshness of
autumnal birds, running about the furrows in arable fields, and catching
the insects disturbed by the plow in its progress. Soon building their
nest, and attending their families, they become bleached by the sun and
rain of the season, and remain shabby for weeks. Though they may follow
the course of the swallow and other migrating birds, yet their peculiar
manner of flight seems to preclude long-continued exertion; not sailing
and poising in air like the hirundines and others, but proceeding by
jerks, by risings and sinkings, which at every pause require muscular
action to set them in progress anew, which for any length of time could
hardly be continued. It is probable that their migrations are not very
remote. The mode of life assigned to these creatures requires great
activity of body; for living solely upon insects and winged animals,
they are constantly capturing or pursuing; and their length of tail,
which is perpetually in motion, seems to aid and balance the operations
of the body. In the evening, when the winged creatures are at rest, or,
from the state of the atmosphere, in repose, the wagtail resorts to the
pastures, feeding under the very bodies and noses of the cattle, who now
become the starters of his game, which, moving from the animal, are
captured by the bird. Being drowsy, and settling almost as soon as
disturbed, their prey would escape, was the wagtail less nimble in his
actions—for he does not appear to perceive the insect, except when it
moves. How differently formed is this bird and the gray flycatcher!
Though both are solely insectivorous, yet they secure their prey by very
distinct means, the latter seldom capturing on the ground or using his
legs in pursuit; the other uses actively his slender legs and extended
wings to aid him. The swallow race, again, feed unlike them both, and
haunting the pool, the stream, the mead, or the higher regions of the
air, which his fraternity possess as a peculiar domain, satisfy their
wants in peace, without collision or contention for the object.
Admirably adapted to the requirements of each creature as their
dispositions and institutions are known to be, yet their peculiar modes
of dieting, or inclination for particular food, and formation of the
organs that digest it, should not be utterly unheeded, because by these
appointments of Omniscience, abundance is produced for every race of
created things in all places, without variance or unfitting exertions to
procure it. Could we unite into one district a human being from every
square mile upon the surface of the globe, unshackled by bigotry or the
tenets of any faith, they probably, without reluctance, having the
means, might feed upon and be nourished by one natural diet—we will say
the flesh of the ox, with potatoes or rice—but this is by no means the
case with the inferior animals. Most of them, having different
conformations and inclinations, are supported by variety of diet; by
which means every station and place is made an abode, and maintains its
inhabitants, for the “Creator hath opened his hand, and filled all
things living with plenteousness.”
As a brief note, not a disquisition, upon the subject, is designed, we
will pass over the habits and dispositions of beasts and insects,
strongly charactered as they are, and only instance a few of our land
birds, as affording the most familiar instances; and we shall find that
it is not the genera only, but the individuals which compose them in
many instances, that are supported by different aliment. And first,
those birds which we denominate as Rapacious, such as falcons, hawks,
owls, live upon animal food which they capture, kill, and devour;
abstaining, unless stimulated by necessity, from creatures they may find
dead. Then come the pies: of these, the raven and crow likewise eat
animal food, but it is generally such as has been killed by violence or
ceased to exist, only in cases of want[54] killing for themselves. The
rook, the daw, the magpie, consume worms, grubs, and are not addicted,
except from hunger, to eating other animal matters. The two first feed
at times in society; the latter associates with neither, but feeds in
places remote from such as are frequented by them. The jay too eats
grubs and such things, but seeks them out under hedges, in coverts and
places which others of his kind abandon to him. The cuckoo seems
principally to live upon the eggs of birds with a few insects and larvæ
occasionally; the wryneck upon emmets, from heaps under hedges near
concealment—the woodpeckers upon insects found upon trees; and when they
seek for the emmet, they prefer the antheaps of commons and open
places;—the halcyon upon small fishes:—thus all these creatures, even
when they require similar aliment, diet at their separate boards. Of the
Gallinaceous birds, the wood-grouse is supported by the young shoots of
the pine in his forests; but the black and red grouse live upon berries
found on the moor, the seeds and tops of the heath; the partridge upon
seeds in the field, blades of grass or of corn; the pheasant upon mast,
acorns, berries from the hedge or the brake. The bustard is content to
live upon worms alone, found in early morning upon downs and wide
extended plains, where none dispute his right or compete with him, but
one species of plover. The doves make their principal meals in open
fields, upon green herbage and seeds. The stare again feeds upon worms
and insects, but in places remote from the bustard, nor does he contend
with the rook, or the daw, but takes his meat and is away.
The Passerine birds, indeed, are remarkably dissimilar in their manner
of feeding. The missel-thrush will have berries from the mistletoe, or
seeks for insects and slugs in wild and open places, the heath or the
down. The song-thrush makes his meal from the snail on the bank, or worm
from the paddock; but the blackbird, though associating with him, leaves
the snails, contenting himself with worms from the hedge-side, or
berries from the brier or the bush. The fieldfare consumes worms in the
mead or haws from the hedge. The crossbill will have seeds from the
apple, or cone of the fir—the green-finch, seeds from the uplands, or
door of barn, or rick-yard. The bunting is peculiarly gifted with a bony
knob in the roof of his bill, upon which he breaks down the hard seeds
he is destined to feed upon. The bull-finch selects buds from trees and
bushes. The goldfinch is nurtured by thistle seeds, or those of other
syngenesious plants. Sparrows feed promiscuously. Linnets shell out
seeds from the cherlock, or the rape, or the furze on the common. One
lark will feed in the corn-fields, another in the mead, another in the
woodlands—one titmouse upon insects frequenting the alder and willow;
some upon those which are hidden under mosses, and lichens on large
trees; a third upon coleopterous creatures, secreted in the hedge-row
and the coppice. The gray wagtail finds food with us all the year; but
the yellow one must seek it in other regions. The nightingale diets upon
a peculiar grub, and when that is not found in the state he prefers, he
departs. The domestic swallow feeds round our houses, or in the meadow;
but the bank swallow never comes near us, chases his food beneath the
crag, and along the stream. The swift prefers the higher ranges of the
air, dieting upon the flies that mount into those regions. The goat-
sucker does not notice the creatures of the day, capturing the moths and
dorrs of the night. The wheatear feeds only upon such insects as he
finds upon fallow lands, the down or the heath; and thus almost every
individual might be characterized by some propensity of appetite, by
some mode or place of feeding; and hence individuals are found as
tenants of the homestead, the wild, the stream, the air, rock, down, and
grove—in every place finding plenty, and fulfilling their destination
without rivalry or contention: nor perhaps is there any race of
creatures that associates more innocently, or passes their lives more
free from bickering and strife, than these our land birds do,
persevering, from period to period, with undeviating habits and
propensities, manifesting an original appointment and fixed design of
Providence, whose bounteous table, wherever we look around, is spread
for all, and good things meted out to each by justice, weight, and
measure.
I am neither inclined to seek after, nor desirous of detailing, the
little annoyances that these wildings of nature, in their hard struggles
for existence, may occasionally produce; being fully persuaded that the
petty injuries we sometimes sustain from birds are at others fully
compensated by their services. We too often, perhaps, notice the former,
while the latter are remote, or not obtrusive. I was this day (Jan. 25)
led to reflect upon the extensive injury that might be produced by the
agency of a very insignificant instrument, in observing the operations
of the common bunting (emberiza miliaris); a bird that seems to live
principally, if not entirely, upon seeds, and has its mandibles
constructed in a very peculiar manner, to aid this established
appointment of its life. In the winter season it will frequent the
stacks in the farm-yard, in company with others, to feed upon any corn
that may be found scattered about; but, little inclined to any
association with man, it prefers those situations which are most lonely
and distant from the village. It could hardly be supposed that this
bird, not larger than a lark, is capable of doing serious injury; yet I
this morning witnessed a rick of barley, standing in a detached field,
entirely stripped of its thatching, which this bunting effected by
seizing the end of the straw, and deliberately drawing it out, to search
for any grain the ear might yet contain; the base of the rick being
entirely surrounded by the straw, one end resting on the ground, the
other against the mow, as it slid down from the summit, and regularly
placed as if by the hand; and so completely was the thatching pulled
off, that the immediate removal of the corn became necessary. The
sparrow and other birds burrow into the stack, and pilfer the corn; but
the deliberate operation of unroofing the edifice appears to be the
habit of this bunting alone.
Old simplicities, tokens of winds and weather, and the plain observances
of rural life, are everywhere waning fast to decay. Some of them may
have been fond conceits; but they accorded with the ordinary manners of
the common people, and marked times, seasons, and things, with
sufficient truth for those who had faith in them. Little as we retain of
these obsolete fancies, we have not quite abandoned them all; and there
are yet found among our peasants, a few who mark the blooming of the
large white lily (lilium candidum), and think that the number of its
blossoms on a stem will indicate the price of wheat by the bushel for
the ensuing year, each blossom equivalent to a shilling. We expect a
sunny day, too, when the pimpernel (anagallis arvensis) fully expands
its blossoms; a dubious, or a moist one, when they are closed. In this
belief, however, we have the sanction of some antiquity to support us;
Sir F. Bacon records it; Gerarde notes it as a common opinion
entertained by country people above two centuries ago; and I must not
withhold my own faith in its veracity, but say that I believe this
pretty little flower to afford more certain indication of dryness or
moisture in the air, than any of our hygrometers do. But if these be
fallible criterions, we will notice another, that seldom deceives us.
The approach of a sleety snow-storm, following a deceitful gleam in
spring, is always announced to us by the loud untuneful voice of the
missel-thrush (turdus viscivorus), as it takes its stand on some tall
tree, like an enchanter calling up the gale. It seems to have no song,
no voice, but this harsh predictive note; and it in great measure ceases
with the storms of spring. We hear it occasionally in autumn, but its
voice is not then the prognostic of any change of weather. The missel-
thrush is a wild and wary bird, keeping generally in open fields and
commons, heaths, and unfrequented places, feeding upon worms and
insects. In severe weather it approaches our plantations and
shrubberies, to feed on the berry of the mistletoe, the ivy, or the
scarlet fruit of the holly or the yew; and should the redwing or the
fieldfare presume to partake of these with it, we are sure to hear its
voice in clattering and contention with the intruders, until it drives
them from the place, though it watches and attends, notwithstanding, to
its own safety. In April it begins to prepare its nest. This is large
and so openly placed, as would, if built in the copse, infallibly expose
it to the plunder of the magpie and the crow, which at this season prey
upon the eggs of every nest they can find. To avoid this evil, it
resorts to our gardens and our orchards, seeking protection from man,
near whose haunts those rapacious plunderers are careful of approaching;
yet they will at times attempt to seize upon its eggs even there, when
the thrush attacks them and drives them away with a hawklike fury; and
the noisy warfare of the contending parties occasionally draws our
attention to them. The call of the young birds to their parents for food
is unusually disagreeable, and reminds us of the croak of a frog. The
brood being reared, it becomes again a shy and wild creature, abandons
our homesteads, and returns to its solitudes and heaths.
The extraordinary change of character which many creatures exhibit, from
timidity to boldness and rage, from stupidity to art and stratagem, for
the preservation of a helpless offspring, seems to be an established
ordination of Providence, actuating in various degrees most of the races
of animated beings; and we have few examples of this influencing
principle more obvious than this of the missel bird, in which a creature
addicted to solitude and shyness will abandon its haunts, and associate
with those it fears, to preserve its offspring from an enemy more
merciless and predaceous still. The love of offspring, one of the
strongest impressions given to created beings, and inseparable from
their nature, is ordained by the Almighty as the means of preservation
under helplessness and want. Dependent, totally dependent as is the
creature, for every thing that can contribute to existence and support,
upon the great Creator of all things, so are new-born feebleness and
blindness dependent upon the parent that produced them; and to the
latter is given intensity of love, to overbalance the privations and
sufferings required from it. This love, that changes the nature of the
timid and gentle to boldness and fury, exposes the parent to injury and
death, from which its wiles and cautions do not always secure it; and in
man the avarice of possession will at times subdue his merciful and
better feelings. Beautifully imbued with celestial justice and humanity
as all the ordinations which the Israelites received in the wilderness
were, there is nothing more impressive, nothing more accordant with the
divinity of our nature, than the particular injunctions which were given
in respect to showing mercy to the maternal creature cherishing its
young, when by reason of its parental regard it might be placed in
danger. The eggs, the offspring, were allowed to be taken; but “thou
shalt in anywise let the dam go;” “thou shalt not, in one day, kill both
an ewe and her young.” The ardent affection, the tenderness, with which
I have filled the parent, is in no way to lead to its injury or
destruction: and this is enforced, not by command only, not by the
threat of punishment and privation, but by the assurance of temporal
reward, by promise of the greatest blessings that can be found on earth,
length of days and prosperity.
The jack snipe (scolopax gallinula) is with us here, as I have always
known it, a transitory visitor in the winter only—a solitary, unsocial
bird—an anchorite from choice. With the exception of our birds of prey,
the manner of whose existing requires it, and a few others, all the
feathered tribe seem to have a general tendency towards association,
either in flocks, family parties, or pairs; but the individuals of this
species pass a large portion of their lives retired and alone, two of
them being rarely, or perhaps never, found in company, except in the
breeding season. They are supposed to pair and raise their young in the
deep marshy tracts or reedy districts of the fen counties, which afford
concealment from every prying eye, and safety from all common injuries.
Driven by the frosts of winter from these watery tracts, their summer’s
covert, they separate, and seek for food in more favored situations,
preferring a little, lonely, open spring, trickling from the side of a
hill, tangled with grass and foliage, or some shallow, rushy streamlet
in a retired valley. Having fixed on such a place, they seldom abandon
it long, or quit it for another; and though roused from it, and fired at
repeatedly through the day, neither the noise nor any sense of danger
seems to alarm them; and, if we should seek for the little judcock on an
ensuing morning, we find it at its spring again. The indifference with
which it endures this daily persecution is amazing. It will afford
amusement or vexation to the young sportsman throughout the whole
Christmas vacation; and, from the smallness of its body, will finally
often escape from all its diurnal dangers. The rail, and several other
birds, confide for safety more in their legs than their wings, when
disturbed; but this snipe makes little use of its feet, and takes to its
wings with such reluctance, from an apparent indolence of disposition,
that, could it be seen in the rushes, or tufts of herbage, where it
hides, it might be captured by the hand. It leaves us early in the
spring. Fond of concealment as this little bird usually is, yet there
are times when it is infinitely less so than at others; and, I think,
upon the relenting of a frost, or when there is a tendency to a thaw, it
shows unusual alacrity, springs from its rushy drain almost as readily
as the common snipe, and occasions, for the moment, a doubt of the
species. The mandible of this species is of a weak and spongy nature.