BIRDS OF THE FARMHOUSE--SPEECH OF A STARLING--POPULATION OF A GABLE--THE
KING OF THE HEDGE--THE THRUSHES' ANVIL.
Wick farmhouse is thatched, and has many gables hidden with ivy. In
these broad expanses of thatch, on the great `chimney-tuns' as country
folk call them, and in the ivy, tribes of birds have taken up their
residence. The thatch has grown so thick in the course of years by the
addition of fresh coats that it projects far from the walls and forms
wide, far-reaching eaves. Over the cellar the roof descends within
three or four feet of the ground, the wall being low, and the eaves here
cast a shadow with the sun nearly at the zenith.
On the higher parts of the roof, especially round the chimneys, the
starlings have made their holes, and in the early summer are
continuously flying to and fro their young, who never cease crying form
food the whole day through. A tall ash tree stands in the hedgerow,
about fifty yards from the house. On this tree, which is detached, so
that they can see all round, the starlings perch before they come to the
roof, as if to reconnoitre and to exchange pourparlers with their
friends already on the roof; for if ever birds talk together starlings
do. Many birds utter the same notes over and over again; others sit on
a branch and sing the same song, as the thrush; but the starling has a
whole syllabary of his own, every note of which evidently has its
meaning, and can be varied and accented at pleasure.
His whistle ranges from a shrill, piercing treble to a low, hollow bass;
he runs a complete gamut, with `shakes,' trills, tremulous vibrations,
every possible variation. He intersperses a peculiar clucking sound,
which seems to come from the depths of his breast, fluttering his wings
all the while against his sides as he stands bolt upright on the edge of
the chimney. Other birds seem to sing for the pure pleasure of singing,
shedding their notes broadcast, or at most they are meant for a mate
hidden in the bush. The starling addresses himself direct to his
fellows: I think I may say he never sings when alone, without a
companion in sight. He literally speaks to his fellows. I am persuaded
you may almost follow the dialogue and guess the tenor of the discourse.
A starling is on the chimney-top; yonder on the ash tree are four or
five of his acquaintance. Suddenly he begins to pour forth a flood of
eloquence--facing them as he speaks: Will they come with him down to the
field where the cows are grazing? There will be sure to be plenty of
insects settling on the grass round the cows, and every now and then
they tear up the herbage by the roots and expose creeping things.
"Come," you may hear him say, modulating his tones to persuasion, "come
quickly; you see it is a fresh piece of grass into which the cows have
been turned only a few hours since; it was too long for us before, but
where they have eaten we can get at the ground comfortably. The
water-wagtail is there already; he always accompanies the herd, and will
have the pick and choice of everything. Or what do you say to the
meadow by the brook? The mowers have begun, and the swathe has fallen
before their scythes; there are acres of ground there which we could not
touch for weeks; now it is open, and the place is teeming with good
food. The finches are there as busy as may be between the swathes--
chaffinch and greenfinch, hedge-sparrow, thrushes, and blackbirds too.
Are you afraid? Why, no one shoots in the middle of a summer's day.
Still irresolute? (with an angry shrillness). Will you or will you
not? (a sharp short whistle of interrogation). You are simply idiots
(finishing with a scream of abuse). I'm off!"
Seeing him start, the rest follow at once, jealous lest he should enjoy
these pleasures alone. As he flies every few minutes he closes his
wings, so that for half a dozen yards he shoots like an arrow through
the air; then rapidly uses them, and again closes and shoots forward,
all the timekeeping a level straight course; going direct to his object.
The starlings that breed in the roof, though they leave the place later
on and congregate in flocks roosting in trees, still come back now and
then to revisit their homes, especially as the new year opens, when they
alight on the house frequently and consult on the approaching important
period of nesting. If you should be sitting near a window close under
the roof where they are busy, reading a book, with the summer sunshine
streaming in, now and then a flash like lightning will pass across the
page. It is a starling rapidly vibrating his wings before he perches on
the thatch; the swift succession of light and shadow as the wings
intercept the rays of the sun causes an impression on the eye like that
left by a flash of lightning. They are beautiful birds: on their
plumage, when seen quite close, the light plays in iridescent gleams.
Upon the roof of the old farmstead, too, the chirp of the sparrow never
ceases the livelong day. It is amusing to see these birds in the
nesting season carrying up long straws--towing their burden through the
air with evident labour--or feathers. These they sometimes drop just as
they arrive at their destination. Eager to utter a chirp to their
mates, they open their beaks, and away floats the feather, but they
catch it again before it reaches the ground. Fluffy feathers are great
favourites. The fowls, as they fly up to roost on the beams in the
sheds, beat out feathers from their clumsy wings; these lie scattered on
the ground, marking the spot. These roosting-places are magazines from
which the small birds draw their supplies for domestic purposes. The
sparrows have their nests in lesser holes in the thatch: sometimes they
use a swallow's nest built of mortar under the eaves, to which the
owners have not returned.
The older folk still retain some faint superstitions about swallows,
looking upon them as semi-consecrated and not to be killed or interfered
with. They will not have their nests knocked down. If they do not
return to the eaves but desert their nests it is a sign of misfortune
impending over the household. So, too, if the rooks quit the rookery or
the colonies of bees in the hives on the sunny side of the orchard decay
and do not swarm, but seem to die off, it is an evil omen. If at night
a bird flutters against the window-pane in the darkness--as they will
sometimes in a great storm of wind, driven, perhaps, from their
roosting-places by the breaking of the boughs, and attracted by a light
within--the knocking of their wings betokens that something sad is about
to happen. If an invalid asks for a pigeon--taking a fancy to a dish of
pigeons to eat--it is a sign either of coming dissolution or of extreme
illness.
But the swallows rarely fail to come in the spring, and soon begin to
repair their nests or build new ones with mortar from the roads; a rainy
day is very useful to them, and they alight at the edge of the puddles,
finding the mud already mixed and tempered for them there. In such
weather they will fly backwards and forwards by the side of a hedge for
a length of time, skimming just above the grass, when, looking down on
them instead of up at them, the white bar across the lower part of the
body just before the tail forks is very noticeable. The darker feathers
have a glossy bluish tinge on the black. They seem fond of flying round
and near horses and cattle, as if insects were more numerous near
animals. While driving on a sultry day I have watched a swallow follow
the horse for a mile or more.
It is a pleasant sight to watch them gliding just above the surface of
smooth water, dipping every now and then. Once, while observing some
swallows flying over a lake, on a windy day, when there were waves of
some size, I saw a swallow struck by the crest of a wave and
overwhelmed. It was about twenty yards from a lee shore, and the bird
floated on the water, rising and sinking with the waves till they threw
it on the bank. It was much exhausted, but when placed on a stone in
the warm sunshine soon recovered and flew off.
As another proof that quick as they are on the wing, they do not always
judge their position or course precisely, I know a case where a swallow,
in less than ten yards after leaving her nest under the eaves of a
house, flew with great force against a door in the garden wall painted a
dull blue. The beak was partly broken and the bird completely stunned:
she died in a few minutes. There was some one in the garden close by at
the time: his presence may have frightened the swallow; yet they are not
usually timid where their nests are undisturbed. Perhaps in her hurry
the dull blue colour of the gate may have deceived her sight; but she
must have travelled that way a hundred times before.
Swallows frequently come down the great chimneys at the farmhouse and
are found in the rooms, but are always allowed to escape from the
window. Swallows are said not to perch; but I have seen them repeatedly
perch on those sticks which, where the thatch has somewhat decayed,
project a few inches above the roof-tree. Sometimes a row of half a
dozen may be observed settled on the roof here. You may see them, too,
perch on the topmost boughs of the tall damson trees in the orchard; and
again, later in the autumn, after nesting is over, they assemble in
hundreds--one might almost say thousands--in the withy bed by the brook,
settling on the slender willow wands. There they twitter together for
an hour or more every evening. They can rise without the slightest
difficulty from the ground, if it is level and not encumbered with
grass, as from the surface of the roads. On dull cold days they settle
on the house more frequently than when it is bright and sunny.
At one end of the farmhouse, which is an irregular building, there is a
quiet gable, and in it a casement arched over by the thatch, and shaded
by a thick growth of ivy. The casement is low, and not more than eight
or nine feet from the ground; the ivy has climbed the wall, it has
spread too over the massive wall of the garden which just there abuts
upon the house, so that there is a secluded corner formed by the angle.
Here some time ago a number of logs of timber--oak, such as are sawn up
into posts for field gateways--were left leaning half against the garden
wall, half against the house, just under the window. There they have
remained (there is never any hurry about things in the country) so long
that the moss has begun to encase the lower portions. What with the
projecting thatch, the thick ivy, the timber thrown carelessly beneath,
the lichen-grown garden wall, and a large bush of lilac in the angle,
the place could hardly be more quiet, and is consequently a favourite
resort of the birds.
Within reach from the window the swallows have their nests, and the
sparrows their holes, on the right hand; within reach on the left hand,
among the ivy, the water-wagtail has built her nest year after year.
The wagtail may always be seen about the place--now in the cow-yards
among the cattle, now in the rickyard, and even close to the door of the
dwelling-house, especially frequenting the courtyard in front of the
dairy. As he flies he rises up and then sinks again, in a succession of
undulations, now spreading the tail out and now closing it. On the
ground he generally alights near water; he is continually jerking the
tail up and down.
One spring a cuckoo came to this nest in the ivy close to the casement;
she was seen flying near the house several times, and, being observed to
visit the ivy-covered gable, was finally traced to the wagtail's nest.
For several days in succession, and several times a day, the cuckoo
came, and would doubtless have left an egg had not she been shot by a
person who wanted a cuckoo to stuff.
It is difficult to understand upon what principle the cuckoo selected a
nest thus placed. The ordinary considerations put forward as guiding
birds and animals in their actions quite fail. Instinct would scarcely
choose a spot so close to a house--actually on it; the desire of safety
would not lead to it either, nor the idea of concealment. She might, no
doubt, have found nests enough at a distance from houses, and much more
likely to escape observation. Was there any kind of feeling that this
particular wagtail was more likely to take care of the offspring than
others?
I doubt the cuckoo's alleged total indifference to her young. They
certainly linger in the neighbourhood of the nests which they have
selected to deposit their eggs in. On another occasion a cuckoo used a
wagtail's nest in a different part of the garden here--in some ivy that
had grown round the decaying stump of an old fir tree. This bird was
watched, but not interfered with; she came repeatedly, and was seen on
the nest, and the egg observed. Afterwards a cuckoo sang continuously
day after day on an ash tree close to the garden.
Lower down in the ivy, behind the logs of timber under the casement, the
hedge-sparrow builds every year; and on the wood itself where the trunks
formed a little recess was a robin's nest. The hedge-sparrow, unlike
his noisy namesake, is one of the quietest of birds: he slips about in
the hedges and bushes all round the garden so quietly and unobtrusively
that unless you watch carefully you will not see him. Yet he does not
seem shy, and if you sit still will come along the hawthorn within a
yard.
In the thatch--under the eaves of the cellar, which are not more than
four feet from the ground and come up to the ivy of the gable--the wren
has a nest. Some birds seem always to make their nests in one
particular kind of way, and generally in the same kind of tree or bush;
robins, house-sparrows, and starlings, on the other hand, adjust their
nests to all sorts of places.
The window of a room in which I used to sleep overlooked the orchard,
and there was a pear tree trained against the wall, some of the boughs
of which came up to the window-sill. This pear tree acted as a ladder,
up which the birds came. Pear trees are a good deal frequented by many
birds; their rough bark seems to shelter numerous insects. The window
was left open all night in the sultry summer weather, and presently a
robin began to come in very early in the morning. Encouraged by finding
that no one disturbed him, at last he grew bold enough to perch morning
after morning on the rail at the foot of my bed. First he seemed to
examine the inside of the window, then went on the floor, and, after a
good look round, finally finished by sitting on the wooden framework for
a few minutes before departing.
This went on some time; then a wren came too; she likewise looked to see
if anything edible could be found in the window first. Old-fashioned
windows often have a broad sill inside--the window frame being placed
nearly at the outer edge of the wall, so that the thickness of the wall
forms a recess, which is lined with board along the bottom. Now this
wooden lining was decayed and drilled with innumerable holes by boring
insects, which threw up tiny heaps of sawdust, as one might say, just as
moles throw up mounds of earth where they tunnel. Perhaps these formed
an attraction to the wren. She also frequently visited an old-fashioned
bookcase, on the top of which--it was very low--I often left some old
worm-eaten folios and quartos, and may have occasionally picked up
something there. Once only she ventured to the foot of the bed. After
leaving the room she always perched on a thin iron projection which held
the window open, and uttered her singularly loud notes, their metallic
clearness seeming to make the chamber ring. Starlings often perched on
the same iron slide, and sparrows continually; but only the robin and
wren came inside. Tomtits occasionally entered and explored the same
board-lining of the window, but no farther. They will, however,
sometimes explore a room.
I know a parlour the window of which was partly overhung by a similar
pear tree, besides which there were some shrubs just outside, and into
this room, being quiet and little used, the tomtits ventured every now
and then. I fancy the placing of flowers in vases, on the table or on
the mantelpiece attracts birds to rooms, if they are still. Insects
visit the flowers; birds look for the insects: and this room generally
abounded with cut flowers. Entering it suddenly one day, a tomtit flew
from side to side in great agitation, and then dropped on the floor and
allowed me to pick it up without an effort to escape. The bird had
swooned from fright, and was quite helpless--the eyes closed. On being
placed outside the window, in five minutes it came to itself and flew
off feebly. In this way birds may frequently become a prey to cats and
hawks when to all appearance they might easily escape--becoming so
overwhelmed with alarm as to lose the power of motion.
The robin is a most pugnacious creature. He will fight furiously with a
rival; in fact, he never misses an opportunity of fighting. But he
always chooses the very early morning for these encounters, and so
escapes suspicion, except, of course, from people who rise early too.
It is even said that the young cock robins, when they are full-grown,
turn round on their own parents and fight with them vigorously. Neither
is he a favourite with the upper class of cottagers--for there is an
`upper ten' even among cottagers--who have large fruit-gardens. In
these they grow quantities of currants for preserving purposes. The
robin is accused of being a terrible thief of currants, and meets with
scant mercy.
Sometimes while walking slowly along the footpath in a lane with hedges
each side a robin will dart out of the hawthorn and pick up a worm or
grub almost under your feet; then in his alarm at your presence drop it,
and rush back in a flutter. Other birds will do the same thing, from
which it would seem that the old saying that the eye sees what it comes
to see is as applicable to them as to human beings. Their eyes, ever on
the watch for food, instantly detect a tiny creeping thing several yards
distant, though concealed by grass; but the comparatively immense bulk
of a man appears to escape notice till they fly almost up against it.
I fancy that the hive-bee and some kindred insects have a special
faculty of seeing colour at a distance, and that colours attract them.
It can hardly be scent, because when flowers are placed in a room and
the window left open the wind generally blows strongly into the
apartment, and odours will not travel against a breeze. It seems
natural that in both cases the continual watch for certain things should
enable bird and insect to observe the faintest indication. Slugs,
caterpillars, and such creatures, too, in moving among the grass, cause
a slight agitation of the grass-blades; they lift up a leaf by crawling
under it, or depress it with their weight by getting on it. This may
enable the bird to detect their presence, even when quite hidden by the
herbage, experience having taught it that when grass is moved by the
wind broad patches sway simultaneously, but when an insect or
caterpillar is the agent only a single leaf or blade is stirred.
At the farmhouse here, robins, wrens, and tomtits are always hanging
about the courtyard, especially close to the dairy, where one or other
may be constantly seen perched on the palings; neither do they scruple
to enter the dairy, the brewhouse, or wood-house adjacent, when they see
a chance. The logs (for fuel) stored in the latter doubtless afford
them insects from under the dead bark.
Among the most constant residents in the garden at Wick Farm are the
song thrushes. They are the tamest of the larger birds; they come every
morning right under the old bay-window of the sitting-room on the shady
side of the house, where the musk-plant has spread abroad and covered
the stone-pitching for many yards, except just a narrow path paved with
broad flagstones. The musk finds root in every interstice of the
pitching, but cannot push up through the solid flat flags; a fungus,
however, has attempted even that, and has succeeded in forcing a great
stone, weighing perhaps fifteen or twenty pounds, from its bed, so that
instead of being level it forms an inclined plane. The carpet of musk
yields a pleasant odour; in one corner, too, the `monkey-plant' grows
luxuriously, and the grass of the green or lawn is for ever trying to
encroach upon the paving. In the centre of the green is a bed of
gooseberries and a cherry tree; and though the fruit is so close to the
window, both thrush and blackbird make as free with it as if it was in
the hedgerow.
The thrush, when he wishes to approach the house, flies first to the
cover of these gooseberries; then, after reconnoitring a few minutes,
comes out on the green and gradually works his way across it to the
stone-pitching, and so along under the very window. The blackbird comes
almost as often to the lawn, but it is in a different way. His manner
is that of a bold marauder, conscious that he has no right, and aware
that a shot from an ambuscade may lay him low, but defiantly risking the
danger. He perches first on a bush, or on the garden wall, under the
sheltering boughs of the lime trees, at a distance of some twenty yards;
then, waiting till all is clear, he makes a desperate rush for the fruit
trees or the lawn. The moment he has succeeded in violently seizing
some delicious morsel off he goes, uttering a loud chuckle--half as a
challenge, half as a vent for his pent-up anxiety.
This peculiar chuckle is so well known by all the other birds as a note
of alarm that every one in the garden immediately move; his position, if
only a yard or two. When you are stealing down the side of the
hedgerow, endeavouring to get near enough to observe the woodpecker in a
tree, or with a gun to shoot a pigeon, the great anxiety is lest you
startle a blackbird. If he thinks you have not seen him, he is cunning
enough to slip out the other side noiselessly and fly down beside the
hedge just above the ground for some distance. He then crosses the
field to a hedge on the other side, and, just as he safely lands himself
in a thick hawthorn bush a hundred yards away, defiantly utters his cry.
The pigeon or the woodpecker will instantly glance round; but, the cry
being at a distance, if you keep still a minute or two they will resume
their occupation. But if you should disturb the blackbird on the side
of the bank next you, where he knows you must have seen or heard him, or
if he is obliged to come out on your side of the hedge, then he makes
the meadow ring with his alarm-note, and immediately away goes pigeon or
woodpecker, thrushes fly further down the hedge, and the rabbits feeding
in the grass lift up their heads and, seeing you, rush to their burrows.
In this way the blackbird acts as a general sentinel.
He has two variations of this cry. One he uses when just about to
change his feeding ground and visit another favourite corner across the
field; it is as much as to say, "Take notice, all you menials; I, the
king of the hedge, am coming." The other is a warning, and will very
often set two or three other blackbirds calling in the same way, whose
existence till then was unsuspected. These calls are quite distinct
from his song.
Sometimes, when sitting on a rail in the shade of a great bush--a rail
placed to close a gap--I have had a blackbird come across the meadow and
perch just above my head. Till the moment of alighting he was ignorant
of my presence, and for a second the extremity of his astonishment
literally held him speechless at his own temerity. The next--what an
outcry and furious bustle of excitement to escape! So in the garden
here he makes a desperate rush, seizes his prey, and off again twenty or
thirty yards, exhibiting an amusing mixture of courage and timidity.
This process he will repeat fifty times a day. No matter how terribly
frightened, his assurance quickly returns, and another foray follows; so
that you begin by thinking him the most cowardly and end by finding him
the most impudent of birds.
I own I love the blackbird, and never weary of observing him. There is
a bold English independence about him--an insolent consciousness of his
own beauty. He must somehow have read Shakespeare, for he seems quite
aware of his `orange-tawny bill' and deep black hue. He might really
know that he figures in a famous ballad, and that four-and-twenty of his
species were considered a dish to set before a king.
It is a sight to see him take his bath. In a meadow not far from the
house here is a shallow but clear streamlet, running down a deep broad
ditch overshadowed by tall hemlock and clogweed, arched over with
willow, whose leaves when the wind blows and their under-side is exposed
give the hedge a grey tint, with maple and briar. Hide yourself here on
a summer morning among the dry grass and bushes, and presently the
blackbird comes to stand a minute on a stone which checks the tiny
stream like a miniature rock, and then to splash the clear water
overhead and back with immense energy. He repeats this several times,
and immediately afterwards flies to an adjacent rail, where, unfettered
by boughs, he can preen his feathers, going through his toilet with the
air of a prince. Finally, he perks his tail up, and challenges the
world with the call already mentioned, which seems now to mean, "Come
and see Me; am I not handsome?"
On a warm June day, when the hedges are covered with roses and the air
is sweet with the odour of mown grass, it is pleasant to listen to the
blackbirds in the oaks pouring forth their rich liquid notes. There is
no note so sweet and deep and melodious as that of the blackbird to be
heard in our fields; it is even richer than the nightingale's, though
not so varied. Just before noonday--between eleven and twelve--when the
heat increases, he leaves the low thick bushes and moist ditches and
mounts up into an oak tree, where, on a branch, he sits and sings. Then
another at a distance takes up the burden, till by-and-by, as you
listen, partly hidden in a gateway, four or five are thus engaged in the
trees of a single meadow.
He sings in a quiet, leisurely way, as a great artist should--there is
no haste, no notes thickening on notes in swift crescendo. His voice
(so to speak) drops from him, without an effort, and is so clear that it
may be heard at a long distance. It is not a set song; perhaps, in
strict language, it is hardly a song at all, but rather a succession of
detached notes with intervals between. Except when singing, the
blackbird does not often frequent trees; he is a hedge-bird, though
sometimes when you are looking at a field of green corn or beans one
will rise out of it and fly to a tree--a solitary tree such as is
sometimes seen in the midst of an arable field. At Wick Farm, sitting
in the cool parlour, or in the garden under the shade of the trees, you
may hear him almost every morning in the meadows that come right up to
the orchard hedge. That hedge is his favourite approach to the garden:
he flies to it first, and gradually works his way along under cover till
nearer the cultivated beds. Both blackbird and thrush are particularly
fond of visiting a patch of cabbages in a shady, quiet corner: there are
generally two or three there after the worms and caterpillars, and so
forth.
The thrushes build in the garden in several places, especially in an
ivy-hidden arbour--a wooden frame completely covered with ivy and
creeping flowers. Close by is a thick box-hedge, six feet high and
nearly as much through, and behind this is a low-thatched tool-house,
where spades, moletraps, scythes, reaping-hooks, and other implements
are kept. Here lies a sarsen-stone, hard as iron, about a foot thick,
the top of which chances to be smooth and level. This is the thrush's
favourite anvil.
He searches about under the ivy, under which the snails hide in their
shells in the heat of the day, and brings them forth into the light.
The shell is too large for his beak to hold it pincer-fashion, but at
the entrance--the snail's doorway--he can thrust his bill in, and woe
then to the miserable occupant! With a hop and flutter the thrush
mounts the stone anvil, and there destroys his victim in workmanlike
style. Up goes his head, lifting the snail high in the air, and then,
smash! the shell comes down on the stone with all the force he can use.
About two such blows break the shell, and he then coolly chips the
fragments off as you might from an egg, and makes very few mouthfuls of
the contents. On the stone and round about it lie the fragments of many
such shells--relics of former feasts. Sometimes he will do this close
to the bay-window--if all is quiet--using the stone-flags for an anvil,
if he chances to find a snail hard by; but he prefers the recess behind
the box-hedge. The thrushes seem half-domesticated here; they are tame,
too, in the hedges, and will sit and sing on a bough overhead without
fear while you wait for a rabbit on the bank beneath.