Produced by Eric Eldred
BIRDS IN TOWN & VILLAGE
BY
W. H. HUDSON,
F.Z.S.
AUTHOR OF "THE PURPLE LAND," "IDLE DAYS IN PATAGONIA," "FAR AWAY AND
LONG AGO," ETC.
1920
PREFACE
This book is more than a mere reprint of _Birds in a Village_ first
published in 1893. That was my first book about bird life, with some
impressions of rural scenes, in England; and, as is often the case with
a first book, its author has continued to cherish a certain affection
for it. On this account it pleased me when its turn came to be reissued,
since this gave me the opportunity of mending some faults in the
portions retained and of throwing out a good deal of matter which
appeared to me not worth keeping.
The first portion, "Birds in a Village," has been mostly rewritten with
some fresh matter added, mainly later observations and incidents
introduced in illustration of the various subjects discussed. For the
concluding portion of the old book, which has been discarded, I have
substituted entirely new matter-the part entitled "Birds in a Cornish
Village."
Between these two long parts there are five shorter essays which I have
retained with little alteration, and these in one or two instances are
consequently out of date, especially in what was said with bitterness in
the essay on "Exotic Birds for Britain" anent the feather-wearing
fashion and of the London trade in dead birds and the refusal of women
at that time to help us in trying to save the beautiful wild bird life
of this country and of the world generally from extermination. Happily,
the last twenty years of the life and work of the Royal Society for the
Protection of Birds have changed all that, and it would not now be too
much to say that all right-thinking persons in this country, men and
women, are anxious to see the end of this iniquitous traffic.
W. H. H.
September, 1919.
CONTENTS
PAGE
BIRDS IN A VILLAGE:
I
II
III
IV
V
VI
VII
VIII
IX
X
XI
EXOTIC BIRDS FOR BRITAIN
MOOR-HENS IN HYDE PARK
THE EAGLE AND THE CANARY
CHANTICLEER
IN AN OLD GARDEN
BIRDS IN A CORNISH VILLAGE:
I. TAKING STOCK OF THE BIRDS
II. DO STARLINGS PAIR FOR LIFE?
III. VILLAGE BIRDS IN WINTER
IV. INCREASING BIRDS IN BRITAIN
V. THE DAW SENTIMENT
VI. STORY OF A JACKDAW
BIRDS IN TOWN & VILLAGE
BIRDS IN A VILLAGE I
About the middle of last May, after a rough and cold period, there came
a spell of brilliant weather, reviving in me the old spring feeling, the
passion for wild nature, the desire for the companionship of birds; and
I betook myself to St. James's Park for the sake of such satisfaction as
may be had from watching and feeding the fowls, wild and semi-wild,
found gathered at that favored spot.
I was glad to observe a couple of those new colonists of the ornamental
water, the dabchicks, and to renew my acquaintance with the familiar,
long-established moorhens. One of them was engaged in building its nest
in an elm-tree growing at the water's edge. I saw it make two journeys
with large wisps of dry grass in its beak, running up the rough,
slanting trunk to a height of sixteen to seventeen feet, and
disappearing within the "brushwood sheaf" that springs from the bole at
that distance from the roots. The wood-pigeons were much more numerous,
also more eager to be fed. They seemed to understand very quickly that
my bread and grain was for them and not the sparrows; but although they
stationed themselves close to me, the little robbers we were jointly
trying to outwit managed to get some pieces of bread by flying up and
catching them before they touched the sward. This little comedy over, I
visited the water-fowl, ducks of many kinds, sheldrakes, geese from many
lands, swans black, and swans white. To see birds in prison during the
spring mood of which I have spoken is not only no satisfaction but a
positive pain; here--albeit without that large liberty that nature
gives, they are free in a measure; and swimming and diving or dozing in
the sunshine, with the blue sky above them, they are perhaps unconscious
of any restraint. Walking along the margin I noticed three children
some yards ahead of me; two were quite small, but the third, in whose
charge the others were, was a robust-looking girl, aged about ten or
eleven years. From their dress and appearance I took them to be the
children of a respectable artisan or small tradesman; but what chiefly
attracted my attention was the very great pleasure the elder girl
appeared to take in the birds. She had come well provided with stale
bread to feed them, and after giving moderately of her store to the
wood-pigeons and sparrows, she went on to the others, native and exotic,
that were disporting themselves in the water, or sunning themselves on
the green bank. She did not cast her bread on the water in the manner
usual with visitors, but was anxious to feed all the different species,
or as many as she could attract to her, and appeared satisfied when any
one individual of a particular kind got a fragment of her bread.
Meanwhile she talked eagerly to the little ones, calling their attention
to the different birds. Drawing near, I also became an interested
listener; and then, in answer to my questions, she began telling me what
all these strange fowls were. "This," she said, glad to give
information, "is the Canadian goose, and there is the Egyptian goose;
and here is the king-duck coming towards us; and do you see that large,
beautiful bird standing by itself, that will not come to be fed? That is
the golden duck. But that is not its real name; I don't know them all,
and so I name some for myself. I call that one the golden duck because
in the sun its feathers sometimes shine like gold." It was a rare
pleasure to listen to her, and seeing what sort of a girl she was, and
how much in love with her subject, I in my turn told her a great deal
about the birds before us, also of other birds she had never seen nor
heard of, in other and distant lands that have a nobler bird life than
ours; and after she had listened eagerly for some minutes, and had then
been silent a little while, she all at once pressed her two hands
together, and exclaimed rapturously, "Oh, I do so love the birds!"
I replied that that was not strange, since it is impossible for us not
to love whatever is lovely, and of all living things birds were made
most beautiful.
Then I walked away, but could not forget the words she had exclaimed,
her whole appearance, the face flushed with color, the eloquent brown
eyes sparkling, the pressed palms, the sudden spontaneous passion of
delight and desire in her tone. The picture was in my mind all that day,
and lived through the next, and so wrought on me that I could not longer
keep away from the birds, which I, too, loved; for now all at once it
seemed to me that life was not life without them; that I was grown sick,
and all my senses dim; that only the wished sight of wild birds could
medicine my vision; that only by drenching it in their wild melody could
my tired brain recover its lost vigour.
II
After wandering somewhat aimlessly about the country for a couple of
days, I stumbled by chance on just such a spot as I had been wishing to
find--a rustic village not too far away. It was not more than
twenty-five minutes' walk from a small station, less than one hour by
rail from London.
The way to the village was through cornfields, bordered by hedges and
rows of majestic elms. Beyond it, but quite near, there was a wood,
principally of beech, over a mile in length, with a public path running
through it. On the right hand, ten minutes' walk from the village, there
was a long green hill, the ascent to which was gentle; but on the
further side it sloped abruptly down to the Thames.
On the left hand there was another hill, with cottages and orchards,
with small fields interspersed on the slope and summit, so that the
middle part, where I lodged, was in a pretty deep hollow. There was no
sound of traffic there, and few farmers' carts came that way, as it was
well away from the roads, and the deep, narrow, winding lanes were
exceedingly rough, like the stony beds of dried-up streams.
In the deepest part of the coombe, in the middle of the village, there
was a well where the cottagers drew their water; and in the summer
evenings the youths and maidens came there, with or without jugs and
buckets, to indulge in conversation, which was mostly of the rustic,
bantering kind, mixed with a good deal of loud laughter. Close by was
the inn, where the men sat on benches in the tap-room in grave discourse
over their pipes and beer.
Wishing to make their acquaintance, I went in and sat down among them,
and found them a little shy--not to say stand-offish, at first. Rustics
are often suspicious of the stranger within their gates; but after
paying for beer all round, the frost melted and we were soon deep in
talk about the wild life of the place; always a safe and pleasant
subject in a village. One rough-looking, brown-faced man, with iron-grey
hair, became a sort of spokesman for the company, and replied to most of
my questions.
"And what about badgers?" I asked. "In such a rough-looking spot with
woods and all, it strikes me as just the sort of place where one would
find that animal."
A long dead silence followed. I caught the eye of the man nearest me and
repeated the question, "Are there no badgers here?" His eyes fell, then
he exchanged glances with some of the others, all very serious; and at
length my man, addressing the person who had acted as spokesman before,
said, "Perhaps you'll tell the gentleman if there are any badgers here."
At that the rough man looked at me very sharply, and answered stiffly,
"Not as I know of."
A few weeks later, at a small town in the neighbourhood, I got into
conversation with a hotel keeper, an intelligent man, who gave me a good
deal of information about the country. He asked me where I was staying,
and, on my telling him, said "Ah, I know it well--that village in a
hole; and a very nasty hole to get in, too--at any rate it was so,
formerly. They are getting a bit civilized now, but I remember the time
when a stranger couldn't show himself in the place without being jeered
at and insulted. Yes, they were a rough lot down in that hole--the
Badgers, they were called, and that's what they are called still."
The pity of it was that I didn't know this before I went among them! But
it was not remembered against me that I had wounded their
susceptibilities; they soon found that I was nothing but a harmless
field naturalist, and I had friendly relations with many of them.
At the extremity of the straggling village was the beginning of an
extensive common, where it was always possible to spend an hour or two
without seeing a human creature. A few sheep grazed and browsed there,
roaming about in twos and threes and half-dozens, tearing their fleeces
for the benefit of nest-building birds, in the great tangled masses of
mingled furze and bramble and briar. Birds were abundant there--all
those kinds that love the common's openness, and the rough, thorny
vegetation that flourishes on it. But the village--or rather, the large
open space occupied by it, formed the headquarters and centre of a
paradise of birds (as I soon began to think it), for the cottages and
houses were widely separated, the meanest having a garden and some
trees, and in most cases there was an old orchard of apple, cherry, and
walnut trees to each habitation, and out of this mass of greenery, which
hid the houses and made the place look more like a wood than a village,
towered the great elms in rows, and in groups.
On first approaching the place I heard, mingled with many other voices,
that of the nightingale; and as it was for the medicine of its pure,
fresh melody that I particularly craved, I was glad to find a lodging in
one of the cottages, and to remain there for several weeks.
The small care which the nightingale took to live up to his reputation
in this place surprised me a little. Here he could always be heard in
the daytime--not one bird, but a dozen--in different parts of the
village; but he sang not at night. This I set down to the fact that the
nights were dark and the weather unsettled. But later, when the weather
grew warmer, and there were brilliant moonlight nights, he was still a
silent bird except by day.
I was also a little surprised at his tameness.
On first coming to the village, when I ran after every nightingale I
heard, to get as near him as possible, I was occasionally led by the
sound to a cottage, and in some instances I found the singer perched
within three or four yards of an open window or door. At my own cottage,
when the woman who waited on me shook the breakfast cloth at the front
door, the bird that came to pick up the crumbs was the nightingale--not
the robin. When by chance he met a sparrow there, he attacked and chased
it away. It was a feast of nightingales. An elderly woman of the village
explained to me that the nightingales and other small birds were common
and tame in the village, because no person disturbed them. I smile now
when recording the good old dame's words.
On my second day at the village it happened to be raining--a warm,
mizzling rain without wind--ind the nightingales were as vocal as in
fine bright weather. I heard one in a narrow lane, and went towards it,
treading softly, in order not to scare it away, until I got within eight
or ten yards of it, as it sat on a dead projecting twig. This was a twig
of a low thorn tree growing up from the hedge, projecting through the
foliage, and the bird, perched near its end, sat only about five feet
above the bare ground of the lane. Now, I owe my best thanks to this
individual nightingale, for sharply calling to my mind a common
pestilent delusion, which I have always hated, but had never yet raised
my voice against--namely, that all wild creatures exist in constant fear
of an attack from the numberless subtle or powerful enemies that are
always waiting and watching for an opportunity to spring upon and
destroy them. The truth is, that although their enemies be legion, and
that every day, and even several times on each day, they may be
threatened with destruction, they are absolutely free from apprehension,
except when in the immediate presence of danger. Suspicious they may be
at times, and the suspicion may cause them to remove themselves to a
greater distance from the object that excites it; but the emotion is so
slight, the action so almost automatic, that the singing bird will fly
to another bush a dozen yards away, and at once resume his interrupted
song. Again, a bird will see the deadliest enemy of its kind, and unless
it be so close as to actually threaten his life, he will regard it with
the greatest indifference or will only be moved to anger at its
presence. Here was this nightingale singing in the rain, seeing but not
heeding me; while beneath the hedge, almost directly under the twig it
sat on, a black cat was watching it with luminous yellow eyes. I did not
see the cat at first, but have no doubt that the nightingale had seen
and knew that it was there. High up on the tops of the thorn, a couple
of sparrows were silently perched. Perhaps, like myself, they had come
there to listen. After I had been standing motionless, drinking in that
dulcet music for at least five minutes, one of the two sparrows dropped
from the perch straight down, and alighting on the bare wet ground
directly under the nightingale, began busily pecking at something
eatable it had discovered. No sooner had he begun pecking than out
leaped the concealed cat on to him. The sparrow fluttered wildly up from
beneath or between the claws, and escaped, as if by a miracle. The cat
raised itself up, glared round, and, catching sight of me close by,
sprang back into the hedge and was gone. But all this time the exposed
nightingale, perched only five feet above the spot where the attack had
been made and the sparrow had so nearly lost his life, had continued
singing; and he sang on for some minutes after. I suppose that he had
seen the cat before, and knew instinctively that he was beyond its
reach; that it was a terrestrial, not an aerial enemy, and so feared it
not at all; and he would, perhaps, have continued singing if the sparrow
had been caught and instantly killed.
Quite early in June I began to feel just a little cross with the
nightingales, for they almost ceased singing; and considering that the
spring had been a backward one, it seemed to me that their silence was
coming too soon. I was not sufficiently regardful of the fact that their
lays are solitary, as the poet has said; that they ask for no witness of
their song, nor thirst for human praise. They were all nesting now. But
if I heard them less, I saw much more of them, especially of one
individual, the male bird of a couple that had made their nest in a
hedge a stone's throw from the cottage. A favourite morning perch of
this bird was on a small wooden gate four or five yards away from my
window. It was an open, sunny spot, where his restless, bright eyes
could sweep the lane, up and down; and he could there also give vent to
his superfluous energy by lording it over a few sparrows and other small
birds that visited the spot. I greatly admired the fine, alert figure of
the pugnacious little creature, as he perched there so close to me, and
so fearless. His striking resemblance to the robin in form, size, and in
his motions, made his extreme familiarity seem only natural. The robin
is greatly distinguished in a sober-plumaged company by the vivid tint
on his breast. He is like the autumn leaf that catches a ray of sunlight
on its surface, and shines conspicuously among russet leaves. But the
clear brown of the nightingale is beautiful, too.
This same nightingale was keeping a little surprise in store for me.
Although he took no notice of me sitting at the open window, whenever I
went thirty or forty yards from the gate along the narrow lane that
faced it, my presence troubled him and his mate only too much. They
would flit round my head, emitting the two strongly contrasted sounds
with which they express solicitude--the clear, thin, plaintive, or
wailing note, and the low, jarring sound--an alternate lamenting and
girding. One day when I approached the nest, they displayed more anxiety
than usual, fluttering close to me, wailing and croaking more vehemently
than ever, when all at once the male, at the height of his excitement,
burst into singing. Half a dozen notes were uttered rapidly, with great
strength, then a small complaining cry again, and at intervals, a fresh
burst of melody. I have remarked the same thing in other singing birds,
species in which the harsh grating or piercing sounds that properly
express violent emotions of a painful kind, have been nearly or quite
lost. In the nightingale, this part of the bird's language has lost its
original character, and has dwindled to something very small.
Solicitude, fear, anger, are expressed with sounds that are mere
lispings compared with those emitted by the bird when singing. It is
worthy of remark that some of the most highly developed melodists--and I
am now thinking of the mocking-birds--never, in-moments of extreme
agitation, fall into this confusion and use singing notes that express
agreeable emotions, to express such as are painful. But in the
mocking-bird the primitive harsh and grating cries have not been lost
nor softened to sounds hardly to be distinguished from those that are
emitted by way of song.
III
By this time all the birds were breeding, some already breeding a second
time. And now I began to suspect that they were not quite so undisturbed
as the old dame had led me to believe; that they had not found a
paradise in the village after all. One morning, as I moved softly along
the hedge in my nightingale's lane, all at once I heard, in the old
grassy orchard, to which it formed a boundary, swishing sounds of
scuttling feet and half-suppressed exclamations of alarm; then a
crushing through the hedge, and out, almost at my feet, rushed and
leaped and tumbled half-a-dozen urchins, who had suddenly been
frightened from a bird-nesting raid. Clothes torn, hands and faces
scratched with thorns, hat-less, their tow-coloured hair all disordered
or standing up like a white crest above their brown faces, rounded eyes
staring--what an extraordinarily wild appearance they had! I was back
in very old times, in the Britain of a thousand years before the coming
of the Romans, and these were her young barbarians, learning their
life's business in little things.
No, the birds of the village were not undisturbed while breeding; but
happily the young savages never found my nightingale's nest. One day the
bird came to the gate as usual, and was more alert and pugnacious than
ever; and no wonder, for his mate came too, and with them four young
birds. For a week they were about the cottage every day, when they
dispersed, and one beautiful bright morning the male bird, in his old
place near my window, attempted to sing, beginning with that rich,
melodious throbbing, which is usually called "_jugging_," and following
with half-a-dozen beautiful notes. That was all. It was July, and I
heard no more music from him or from any other of his kind.
* * *
I have perhaps written at too great length of this bird. The nightingale
was after all only one of the fifty-nine species I succeeded in
identifying during my sojourn at the village. There were more. I heard
the calls and cries of others in the wood and various places, but
refused, except in the case of the too elusive crake, to set down any in
my list that I did not see. It was not my ambition to make a long list.
My greatest desire was to see well those that interested me most. But
those who go forth, as I did, to look for birds that are a sight for
sore eyes, must meet with many a disappointment. In all those fruit and
shade trees that covered the village with a cloud of verdure, and in the
neighbouring woods, not once did I catch a glimpse of the green
woodpecker, a beautiful conspicuous bird, supposed to be increasing in
many places in England. Its absence from so promising a locality seemed
strange. Another species, also said to be increasing in the
country--the turtledove, was extremely abundant. In the tall beech woods
its low, monotonous crooning note was heard all day long from all sides.
In shady places, where the loud, shrill bird-voices are few, one prefers
this sound to the set song of the woodpigeon, being more continuous and
soothing, and of the nature of a lullaby. It sometimes reminded me of
the low monotone I have heard from a Patagonian mother when singing her
"swart papoose" to sleep. Still, I would gladly have spared many of
these woodland crooners for the sake of one magpie--that bird of fine
feathers and a bright mind, which I had not looked on for a whole year,
and now hoped to see again. But he was not there; and after I had looked
for myself, some of the natives assured me that no magpie had been seen
for years in that wood.
For a time I feared that I was to be just as unlucky with regard to the
jay, seeing that the owner of the extensive beech woods adjoining the
village permitted his keeper to kill the most interesting birds in
it--kestrels and sparrowhawks, owls, jays, and magpies. He was a new
man, comparatively, in the place, and wanted to increase his preserves,
but to do this it was necessary first to exclude the villagers--the
Badgers, who were no doubt partial to pheasants' eggs. Now, to close an
ancient right-of-way is a ticklish business, and this was an important
one, seeing that the village women did their Saturday marketing in the
town beyond the wood and river, and with the path closed they would have
two miles further to walk. The new lord wisely took this into
consideration, and set himself to win the goodwill of the people before
attempting any strong measures. He walked in the lanes and was affable
to the cottage women and nice to the children, and by and bye he
exclaimed, "What! No institute! no hall, or any place where you can meet
and spend the long winter evenings? Well, I'll soon see to that." And
soon, to their delight, they had a nice building reared on a piece of
land which he bought for the purpose, furnished with tables, chairs,
bagatelle boards, and all accessories; and he also supplied them with
newspapers and magazines. He was immensely popular, but appeared to
think little of what he had done. When they expressed their gratitude to
him he would move his hand, and answer, "Oh, I'm going to do a great
deal more than that for you!"
A few months went by, then he caused a notice to be put up about the
neighbourhood that the path through the wood was going to be closed "by
order." No one took any notice, and a few weeks later his workmen
appeared on the scene and erected a huge oakwood barrier across the
path; also a notice on a board that the wood was strictly private and
trespassers would be prosecuted. The villagers met in force at the
institute and the inn that evening, and after discussing the matter over
their ale, they armed themselves with axes and went in a body and
demolished the barrier.
The owner was disgusted, but took no action. "This," he said, "is their
gratitude"; and from that day he ceased to subscribe to the local
charities or take his walks in the village. He had given the institute,
and so could not pull it down nor prevent them from using it.
It was refreshing to hear that the Badgers had shown a proper spirit in
the matter, and I was grateful to them for having kept the right-of-way,
as on most days I spent several hours in the beautiful woods.
To return to the jay. In spite of the keeper's persecution, I knew that
he was there; every morning when I got up to look out of the window
between four and five o'clock, I heard from some quarter of the village
that curious subdued, but far-reaching, scolding note he is accustomed
to utter when his suspicions have been aroused.
That was the jay's custom--to come from the woods before even the
earliest risers were up, and forage in the village. By and bye I
discovered that, by lying motionless for an hour or so on the dry moss
in the wood, he would at length grow so bold as to allow himself to be
seen, but high up among the topmost branches. Then, by means of my
binocular, I had the wild thing on my thumb, so to speak, exhibiting
himself to me, inquisitive, perplexed, suspicious, enraged by turns, as
he flirted wings and tail, lifted and lowered his crest, glancing down
with bright, wild eyes. What a beautiful hypocrisy and delightful power
this is which enables us, sitting or lying motionless, feigning sleep
perhaps, thus to fool this wild, elusive creature, and bring all its
cunning to naught! He is so much smaller and keener-sighted, able to
fly, to perch far up above me, to shift his position every minute or
two, masking his small figure with this or that tuft of leaves, while
still keeping his eyes on me--in spite of it all to have him so close,
and without moving or taking any trouble, to see him so much better than
he can see me! But this is a legitimate trickery of science, so innocent
that we can laugh at our dupe when we practise it; nor do we afterwards
despise our superior cunning and feel ashamed, as when we slaughter wild
birds with far-reaching shot, which they cannot escape.
* * *
All these corvine birds, which the gamekeeper pursues so relentlessly,
albeit they were before him, killing when they killed to better purpose;
and, let us hope, will exist after him--all these must greatly surpass
other kinds in sagacity to have escaped extermination. In the present
condition of things, the jay is perhaps the best off, on account of his
smaller size and less conspicuous colouring; but whether more cunning
than the crow or magpie or not, in perpetual alertness and restless
energy or intensity of life, he is without an equal among British birds.
And this quality forms his chief attraction; it is more to the mind than
his lifted crest and bright eyes, his fine vinaceous brown and the patch
of sky-blue on his wings. One would miss him greatly from the woods;
some of the melody may well be spared for the sake of the sudden,
brain-piercing, rasping, rending scream with which he startles us in our
solitary forest walks.
It is this extreme liveliness of the jay which makes it more distressing
to the mind to see it pent in a cage than other birds of its family,
such as the magpie; just as it is more distressing to see a skylark than
a finch in prison, because the lark has an irresistible impulse to rise
when his singing fit is on. Sing he must, in or out of prison, yet there
can be little joy in the performance when the bird is incessantly teased
with the unsatisfied desire to mount and pour out his music at heaven's
gate.
Out of the cages, jays make charming and beautiful pets, and some who
have kept them have assured me that they are not mischievous birds. The
late Mark Melford one time when I visited him, had two jays, handsome
birds, in bright, glossy plumage, always free to roam where they liked,
indoors or out. We were sitting talking in his garden when one of the
jays came flying to us and perched on a wooden ledge a few feet from and
above our heads, and after sitting quietly for a little while he
suddenly made a dash at my head, just brushing it with his wings, then
returned to his perch. At intervals of a few moments he repeated this
action, and when I remarked that he probably resented the presence of a
stranger, Melford exclaimed, "Oh, no, he wants to play with you--that's
all."
His manner of playing was rather startling. So long as I kept my eyes on
him he remained motionless, but the instant my attention wandered, or
when in speaking I looked at my companion, the sudden violent dash at my
head would be made.
I was assured by Melford that his birds never carried off and concealed
bright objects, a habit which it has been said the jay, as well as the
magpie, possesses.
"What would he do with this shilling if I tossed it to him?" I asked.
"Catch it," he returned. "It would simply be play to him, but he
wouldn't carry it off."
I tossed up the shilling, and the bird had perhaps expected me to do so,
as he deftly caught it just as a dog catches a biscuit when you toss one
to him. After keeping it a few moments in his beak, he put it down at
his side. I took out four more shilling pieces and tossed them quickly
one by one, and he caught them without a miss and placed them one by one
with the other, not scattered about, but in a neat pile. Then, seeing
that I had no more shillings he flew off.
After these few playful passages with one of his birds, I could
understand Melford's feeling about his free pet jays, magpies and
jackdaws; they were not merely birds to him, but rather like so many
delightful little children in the beautiful shape of birds.
* * *
There was no rookery in or near the village, but a large flock of rooks
were always to be seen feeding and sunning themselves in some level
meadows near the river. It struck me one day as a very fine sight, when
an old bird, who looked larger and blacker and greyer-faced than the
others, and might have been the father and leader of them all, got up on
a low post, and with wide-open beak poured forth a long series of most
impressive caws. One always wonders at the meaning of such displays. Is
the old bird addressing the others in the rook language on some matter
of great moment; or is he only expressing some feeling in the only
language he has--those long, hoarse, uninflected sounds; and if so, what
feeling? Probably a very common one. The rooks appeared happy and
prosperous, feeding in the meadow grass in that June weather, with the
hot sun shining on their glossy coats. Their days of want were long past
and forgotten; the anxious breeding period was over; the tempest in the
tall trees; the annual slaughter of the young birds--all past and
forgotten. The old rook was simply expressing the old truth, that life
was worth living.
These rooks were usually accompanied by two or three or more crows--a
bird of so ill-repute that the most out-and-out enthusiast for
protection must find it hard to say a word in its favour. At any rate,
the rooks must think, if they think at all, that this frequent visitor
and attendant of theirs is more kin than kind. I have related in a
former work that I once saw a peregrine strike down and kill an owl--a
sight that made me gasp with astonishment. But I am inclined to think of
this act as only a slip, a slight aberration, on the part of the falcon,
so universal is the sense of relationship among the kinds that have the
rapacious habit; or, at the worst, it was merely an isolated act of
deviltry and daring of the sharp-winged pirate of the sky, a sudden
assertion of over-mastering energy and power, and a very slight offence
compared with that of the crow when he carries off and devours his
callow little cousins of the rookery.
* * *
One of the first birds I went out to seek--perhaps the most medicinal of
all birds to see--was the kingfisher; but he was not anywhere on the
river margin, although suitable places were plentiful enough, and
myriads of small fishes were visible in the shallow water, seen at rest
like dim-pointed stripes beneath the surface, and darting away and
scattering outwards, like a flight of arrows, at any person's approach.
Walking along the river bank one day, when the place was still new to
me, I discovered a stream, and following it up arrived at a spot where a
clump of trees overhung the water, casting on it a deep shade. On the
other side of the stream buttercups grew so thickly that the glazed
petals of the flowers were touching; the meadow was one broad expanse of
brilliant yellow. I had not been standing half a minute in the shade
before the bird I had been seeking darted out from the margin, almost
beneath my feet, and then, instead of flying up or down stream, sped
like an arrow across the field of buttercups. It was a very bright day,
and the bird going from me with the sunshine full on it, appeared
entirely of a shining, splendid green. Never had I seen the kingfisher
in such favourable circumstances; flying so low above the flowery level
that the swiftly vibrating wings must have touched the yellow petals; he
was like a waif from some far tropical land. The bird was tropical, but
I doubt if there exists within the tropics anything to compare with a
field of buttercups--such large and unbroken surfaces of the most
brilliant colour in nature. The first bird's mate appeared a minute
later, flying in the same direction, and producing the same splendid
effect, and also green. These two alone were seen, and only on this
occasion, although I often revisited the spot, hoping to find them
again.
Now, the kingfisher is blue, and I am puzzled to know why, on this one
occasion, it appeared green. I have, in a former work, _Argentine
Ornithology_, described a contrary effect in a small and beautiful
tyrant-bird, _Cyanotis azarae_, variously called, in the vernacular,
"All-colored or Many-colored Kinglet." It has a little blue on its head,
but its entire back, from the nape to the tail, is deep green. It lives
in beds of bulrushes, and when seen flying from the spectator in a very
strong light, at a distance of twenty or thirty yards, its colour in
appearance is bright cerulean blue. It is a sunlight effect, but how
produced is a mystery to me. In the case of the two green kingfishers, I
am inclined to think that the yellow of that shining field of buttercups
in some way produced the illusion.
Why are these exquisite birds so rare, even in situations so favourable
to them as the one I have described? Are they killed by severe frosts?
An ornithological friend from Oxfordshire assures me that it will take
several favourable seasons to make good the losses of the late terrible
winter of 1891-92. But this, as every ornithologist knows, is only a
part of the truth. The large number of stuffed kingfishers under glass
shades that one sees in houses of all descriptions, in town and country,
but most frequently in the parlours of country cottages and inns, tell a
melancholy story. Some time ago a young man showed me three stuffed
kingfishers in a case, and informed me that he had shot them at a place
(which he named) quite close to London. He said that these three birds
were the last of their kind ever seen there; that he had gone, week
after week and watched and waited, until one by one, at long intervals,
he had secured them all; and that two years had passed since the last
one was killed, and no other kingfisher had been seen at the place. He
added that the waterside which these birds had frequented was resorted
to by crowds of London working people on Saturday afternoons, Sundays
and other holidays; the fact that hundreds, perhaps thousands, of pairs
of tired eyes would have been freshened and gladdened by the sight of
their rare gem-like beauty only made him prouder of his achievement.
This young man was a cockney of the small shop-keeping class--a
Philistine of the Philistines--hence there was no call to feel surprise
at his self-glorification over such a matter. But what shall we say of
that writer whose masterly works on English rural life are familiar to
everyone, who is regarded as first among "lovers of nature," when he
relates that he invariably carried a gun when out of doors, mainly with
the object of shooting any kingfisher he might chance to see, as the
dead bird always formed an acceptable present to the cottager's wife,
who would get it stuffed and keep it as an ornament on her parlour
mantelshelf!
Happily for the kingfisher, and for human beings who love nature, the
old idea that beautiful birds were meant to be destroyed for fun by
anyone and everyone, from the small-brained, detestable cockney
sportsman I have mentioned, to the gentlemen who write books about the
beauties of nature, is now gradually giving place to this new one--that
it would be better to preserve the beautiful things we possess. Half a
century before the author of "Wild Life in a Southern Country" amused
himself by carrying a gun to shoot kingfishers, the inhabitants of that
same county of Wiltshire were bathed in tears--so I read in an old
Salisbury newspaper--at the tragic death of a young gentleman of great
distinction, great social charm, great promise. He was out shooting
swallows with a friend who, firing at a passing swallow, had the
misfortune to shoot and kill _him._
At the present time when gentlemen practise a little at flying birds, to
get their hand in before the first of September, they shoot sparrows as
a rule, or if they shoot swallows, which afford them better practice,
they do not say anything about it.
IV
Where the stream broadened and mixed with the river, there existed a
dense and extensive rush-bed--an island of rushes separated by a deep
channel, some twelve or fourteen yards in width from the bank. This was
a favourite nesting-place of the sedge-warblers; occasionally as many as
a dozen birds could be heard singing at the same time, although in no
sense together, and the effect was indeed curious. This is not a song
that spurts and gushes up fountain-like in the manner of the robin's,
and of some other kinds, sprinkling the listener, so to speak, with a
sparkling vocal spray; but it keeps low down, a song that flows along
the surface gurgling and prattling like musical running water, in its
shallow pebbly channel. Listening again, the similitude that seemed
appropriate at first was cast aside for another, and then another still.
The hidden singers scattered all about their rushy island were small,
fantastic, human minstrels, performing on a variety of instruments, some
unknown, others recognizable--bones and castanets, tiny hurdy-gurdies,
piccolos, banjos, tabours, and Pandean pipes--a strange medley!
Interesting as this concert was, it held me less than the solitary
singing of a sedge-warbler that lived by himself, or with only his mate,
higher up where the stream was narrow, so that I could get near him; for
he not only tickled my ears with his rapid, reedy music, but amused my
mind as well with a pretty little problem in bird psychology. I could
sit within a few yards of his tangled haunt without hearing a note; but
if I jumped up and made a noise, or struck the branches with my stick,
he would incontinently burst into song. It is a very well-known habit of
the bird, and on account of it and of the very peculiar character of the
sounds emitted, his song is frequently described by ornithologists as
"mocking, defiant, scolding, angry," etc. It seems clear that at
different times the bird sings from different exciting causes. When,
undisturbed by a strange presence, he bursts spontaneously into singing,
the music, as in other species, is simply an expression of overflowing
gladness; at other times, the bird expressed such feelings as alarm,
suspicion, solicitude, perhaps anger, by singing the same song. How does
this come about?
I have stated, when speaking of the nightingale, that birds in which the
singing faculty is highly developed, sometimes make the mistake of
bursting into song when anxious or distressed or in pain, but that this
is not the case with the mocking-birds. Some species of these brilliant
songsters of the New World, in their passion for variety (to put it that
way), import every harsh and grating cry and sound they know into their
song; but, on the other hand, when anxious for the safety of their
young, or otherwise distressed, they emit only the harsh and grating
sounds--never a musical note. In the sedge-warbler, the harsh, scolding
sounds that express alarm, solicitude, and other painful emotions, have
also been made a part of the musical performance; but this differs from
the songs of most species, the mocking birds included, in the
extraordinary rapidity with which it is enunciated; once the song begins
it goes on swiftly to the finish, harsh and melodious notes seeming to
overlap and mingle, the sound forming, to speak in metaphor, a close
intricate pattern of strongly-contrasted colours. Now the song
invariably begins with the harsh notes--the sounds which, at other
times, express alarm and other more or less painful emotions--and it
strikes me as a probable explanation that when the bird in the singing
season has been startled into uttering these harsh and grating sounds,
as when a stone is flung into the rushes, he is incapable of uttering
them only, but the singing notes they suggest and which he is in the
habit of uttering, follow automatically.
The spot where I observed this wee feathered fantasy, the tantalizing
sprite of the rushes, and where I soon ceased to see, hear, or think
about him, calls for a fuller description. On one side the wooded hill
sloped downward to the stream; on the other side spread the meadows
where the rooks came every day to feed, or to sit and stand about
motionless, looking like birds cut out of jet, scattered over about half
an acre of the grassy, level ground. Stout old pollard willows grew here
and there along the banks and were pleasant to see, this being the one
man-mutilated thing in nature which, to my mind, not infrequently gains
in beauty by the mutilation, so admirably does it fit into and harmonize
with the landscape. At one point there was a deep, nearly stagnant pool,
separated from the stream by a strip of wet, rushy ground, its still
dark surface covered with water-lilies, not yet in bloom. They were just
beginning to show their polished buds, shaped like snake's heads, above
the broad, oily leaves floating like islands on the surface. The stream
itself was, on my side, fringed with bulrushes and other aquatic plants;
on the opposite bank there were some large alders lifting their branches
above great masses of bramble and rose-briar, all together forming as
rich and beautiful a tangle as one could find even in the most luxuriant
of the wild, unkept hedges round the village. The briars especially
flourished wonderfully at this spot, climbing high and dropping their
long, slim branches quite down to the surface of the water, and in some
places forming an arch above the stream. A short distance from this
tangle, so abundantly sprinkled with its pale delicate roses, the water
was spanned by a small wooden bridge, which no person appeared to use,
but which had a use. It formed the one dry clear spot in the midst of
all that moist vegetation, and the birds that came from the wood to
drink and search for worms and small caterpillars first alighted on the
bridge. There they would rest a few moments, take a look round, then fly
to some favourite spot where succulent morsels had been picked up on
previous visits. Thrushes, blackbirds, sparrows, reed-buntings,
chaffinches, tits, wrens, with many other species, succeeded each other
all day long; for now they mostly had young to provide for, and it was
their busiest time.
The unsullied beauty and solitariness of this spot made me wish at first
that I was a boy once more, to climb and to swim, to revel in the
sunshine and flowers, to be nearer in spirit to the birds and dragon
flies and water-rats; then, that I could build a cabin and live there
all the summer long, forgetful of the world and its affairs, with no
human creature to keep me company, and no book to read, or with only one
slim volume, some Spanish poet, let me say Melendez, for
preference--only a small selection from his too voluminous writings; for
he, albeit an eighteenth-century singer, was perhaps the last of that
long, illustrious line of poets who sang as no others have sung of the
pure delight-fulness of a life with nature. Something of this charm is
undoubtedly due to the beauty of the language they wrote in and to the
free, airy grace of assonants. What a hard, artificial sound the rhyme
too often has: the clink that falls at regular intervals as of a
stone-breaker's hammer! In the freer kinds of Spanish poetry there are
numberless verses that make the smoothest lines and lyrics of our
sweetest and most facile singers, from Herrick to Swinburne, seem hard
and mechanical by comparison. But there is something more. I doubt, for
one thing, if we are justified in the boast we sometimes make that the
feeling for Nature is stronger in our poets than in those of other
countries. The most scientific critic may be unable to pick a hole in
Tennyson's botany and zoology; but the passion for, and feeling of
oneness with Nature may exist without this modern minute accuracy. Be
this as it may, it was not Tennyson, nor any other of our poets, that I
would have taken to my dreamed-of solitary cabin for companionship:
Melendez came first to my mind. I think of his lines to a butterfly:
De donde alegre vienes
Tan suelta y tan festiva,
Las valles alegrando
Veloz mariposilla?*
* May be roughly rendered thus:
Whence, blithe one, comest thou
With that airy, happy flight--
To make the valleys glad,
O swift-winged butterfly?
and can imagine him--the poet himself--coming to see me through the
woods and down the hill with the careless ease and lightness of heart of
his own purple-winged child of earth and air--_tan suelta y tan
festiva_. Here in these four or five words one may read the whole secret
of his charm--the exquisite delicacy and seeming artlessness in the
form, and the spirit that is in him--the old, simple, healthy, natural
gladness in nature, and feeling of kinship with all the children of
life. But I do not wish to disturb anyone in his prepossessions. It
would greatly trouble me to think that my reader should, for the space
of a page, or even of a single line, find himself in opposition to and
not with me; and I am free to admit that with regard to poetry one's
preferences change according to the mood one happens to be in and to the
conditions generally. At home in murky London on most days I should
probably seek pleasure and forgetfulness in Browning; but in such
surroundings as I have been describing the lighter-hearted, elf-like
Melendez accords best with my spirit, one whose finest songs are without
human interest; who is irresponsible as the wind, and as unstained with
earthly care as the limpid running water he delights in: who is brother
to bird and bee and butterfly, and worships only liberty and sunshine,
and is in love with nothing but a flower.