BIRDS
IN THE CALENDAR

BY F. G. AFLALO

LONDON: MARTIN SECKER
NUMBER FIVE JOHN STREET ADELPHI

CONTENTS

[11]

THE PHEASANT

As birds are to be considered throughout
these pages from any standpoint but
that of sport, much that is of interest in
connection with a bird essentially the
sportsman’s must necessarily be omitted. At
the same time, although this gorgeous
creature, the chief attraction of social gatherings
throughout the winter months, appeals
chiefly to the men who shoot and eat it, it is
not uninteresting to the naturalist with opportunities
for studying its habits under
conditions more favourable than those encountered
when in pursuit of it with a gun.

In the first place, with the probable exception
of the swan, of which something is
said on a later page, the pheasant stands
alone among the birds of our woodlands in
its personal interest for the historian. It is
not, in fact, a British bird, save by acclimatisation,
at all, and is generally regarded
as a legacy of the Romans. The time and
manner of its introduction into Britain are,
it is true, veiled in obscurity. What we know,[12]
on authentic evidence, is that the bird was
officially recognised in the reign of Harold,
and that it had already come under the ægis
of the game laws in that of Henry I, during
the first year of which the Abbot of Amesbury
held a licence to kill it, though how he contrived
this without a gun is not set forth in
detail. Probably it was first treed with the
aid of dogs and then shot with bow and arrow.
The original pheasant brought over by the
Romans, or by whomsoever may have been
responsible for its naturalisation on English
soil, was a dark-coloured bird and not the
type more familiar nowadays since its
frequent crosses with other species from the
Far East, as well as with several ornamental
types of yet more recent introduction.

In tabooing the standpoint of sport,
wherever possible, from these chapters,
occasional reference, where it overlaps the
interests of the field-naturalist, is inevitable.
Thus there are two matters in which both
classes are equally concerned when considering
the pheasant. The first is the real
or alleged incompatibility of pheasants and
foxes in the same wood. The question of[13]
rivalry between pheasant and fox, or (as I
rather suspect) between those who shoot
the one and hunt the other, admits of only
one answer. The fox eats the pheasant; the
pheasant is eaten by the fox. This not very
complex proposition may read like an excerpt
from a French grammar, but it is the epitome
of the whole argument. It is just possible—we
have no actual evidence to go on—that
under such wholly natural conditions
as survive nowhere in rural England the two
might flourish side by side, the fox taking
occasional toll of its agreeably flavoured
neighbours, and the latter, we may suppose,
their wits sharpened by adversity, gradually
devising means of keeping out of the robber’s
reach. In the artificial environment of a
hunting or shooting country, however, the fox
will always prove too much for a bird dulled by
much protection, and the only possible modus
vivendi between those concerned must rest on
a policy of give and take that deliberately
ignores the facts of the case.

More interesting, on academic grounds at
any rate, is the process of education noticeable
in pheasants in parts of the country[14]
where they are regularly shot. Sport is a
great educator. Foxes certainly, and hares
probably, run the faster for being hunted.
Indeed the fox appears to have acquired
its pace solely as the result of the chase,
since it does not figure in the Bible as a
swift creature. The genuine wild pheasant
in its native region, a little beyond the
Caucasus, is in all probability a very different
bird from its half-domesticated kinsman in
Britain. I have been close to its birthplace,
but never even saw a pheasant there. We
are told, on what ground I have been unable
to trace, that the polygamous habit in
these birds is a product of artificial environment;
but what is even more likely is that
the true wild pheasant of Western Asia
(and not the acclimatised bird so-called in
this country) trusts much less to its legs
than our birds, which have long since learnt
that there is safety in running. Moreover,
though it probably takes wing more readily,
it is doubtful whether it flies as fast as the
pace, something a little short of forty miles
an hour, that has been estimated as a common
performance in driven birds at home.[15]

The pheasant is in many respects a very
curious bird. At the threshold of life, it
exhibits, in common with some of its near
relations, a precocity very unusual in its
class; and the readiness with which pheasant
chicks, only just out of the egg, run about
and forage for themselves, is astonishing to
those unused to it. Another interesting
feature about pheasants is the extraordinary
difference in plumage between the sexes, a
gap equalled only between the blackcock
and greyhen and quite unknown in the
partridge, quail and grouse. Yet every now
and again, as if resentful of this inequality
of wardrobe, an old hen pheasant will assume
male plumage, and this epicene raiment
indicates barrenness. Ungallant feminists
have been known to cite the case of the
“mule” pheasant as pointing a moral for the
females of a more highly organised animal.

The question of the pheasant’s natural
diet, more particularly where this is not
liberally supplemented from artificial sources,
brings the sportsman in conflict with the
farmer, and a demagogue whose zeal
occasionally outruns his discretion has even[16]
endeavoured to cite the mangold as its staple
food. This, however, is political, and not
natural history. Although, however, like all
grain-eating birds, the pheasant is no doubt
capable of inflicting appreciable damage on
cultivated land, it seems to be established
beyond all question that it also feeds greedily
on the even more destructive larva of the
crane-fly, in which case it may more than
pay its footing in the fields. The foodstuff
most fatal to itself is the yew leaf, for which,
often with fatal results, it seems to have an
unconquerable craving. The worst disease,
however, from which the pheasant suffers
is “gapes,” caused by an accumulation of
small red worms in the windpipe that all
but suffocate the victim.

Reference has been made to the bird’s
great speed in the air, as well as to its efficiency
as a runner. It remains only to add
that it is also a creditable swimmer and has
been seen to take to water when escaping
from its enemies.

The polygamous habit has been mentioned.
Ten or twelve eggs, or more, are laid in the
simple nest of leaves, and this is generally[17]
placed on the ground, but occasionally in a
low tree or hedge, or even in the disused nest
of some other bird.

Comparatively few of the birds referred to
in the following pages appeal strongly to the
epicure, but the pheasant, if not, perhaps,
the most esteemed of them, is at least a
wholesome table bird. It should, however,
always be eaten with chip potatoes and bread
sauce, and not in the company of cold lettuce.
Those who insist on the English method of
serving it should quote the learned Freeman,
who, when confronted with the Continental
alternative, complained bitterly that he
was not a silkworm!

[21]

THE WOODCOCK

There are many reasons why the
woodcock should be prized by the
winter sportsman more than any other bird
in the bag. In the first place, there is its
scarcity. Half a dozen to every hundred
pheasants would in most parts of the country
be considered a proportion at which none
could grumble, and there are many days on
which not one is either seen or shot. Again,
there is the bird’s twisting flight, which,
particularly inside the covert, makes it
anything but an easy target. Third and last,
it is better to eat than any other of our wild
birds, with the possible exception of the
golden plover. Taking one consideration with
another, then, it is not surprising that the
first warning cry of “Woodcock over!”
from the beaters should be the signal for a
sharp and somewhat erratic fusillade along
the line, a salvo which the beaters themselves
usually honour by crouching out of harm’s
way, since they know from experience that
even ordinarily cool and collected shots are[22]
sometimes apt to be fired with a sudden zeal
to shoot the little bird, which may cost one
of them his eyesight. According to the poet,

and so no doubt they do at meal-time after
sunset, but we are more used to flushing
them amid dry bracken or in the course of
some frozen ditch. Quite apart, however,
from its exhilarating effect on the sportsman,
the bird has quieter interests for the naturalist,
since in its food, its breeding habits, its
travels, and its appearance it combines
more peculiarities than perhaps any other
bird, certainly than any other of the sportsman’s
birds, in these islands. It is not,
legally speaking, a game bird and was not
included in the Act of 1824, but a game licence
is required for shooting it, and it
enjoys since 1880 the protection accorded
to other wild birds. This is excellent, so far
as it goes, but it ought to be protected during
the same period as the pheasant, particularly
now that it is once more established as a
resident species all over Britain and Ireland.

This new epoch in the history of its adventures
in these islands is the work of the[23]
Wild Birds’ Protection Acts. In olden times,
when half of Britain was under forest, and
when guns were not yet invented that could
“shoot flying,” woodcocks must have been
much more plentiful than they are to-day.
In those times the bird was taken on the
ground in springes or, when “roding” in
the mating season, in nets, known as “shots,”
that were hung between the trees. When the
forest area receded, the resident birds must
have dwindled to the verge of extinction,
for on more than one occasion we find even
a seasoned sportsman like Colonel Hawker
worked up to a rare pitch of excitement after
shooting woodcock in a part of Hampshire
where in our day these birds breed regularly.
Thanks, however, to the protection afforded by
the law, there is once again probably no county
in England in which woodcocks do not nest.

At the same time, it is as an autumn
visitor that, with the first of the east wind in
October or November, we look for this untiring
little traveller from the Continent.
Some people are of opinion that since it has
extended its residential range fewer come
oversea to swell the numbers, but the arrivals[24]
are in some years considerable, and if a
stricter watch were kept on unlicensed
gunners along the foreshore of East Anglia,
very much larger numbers would find their
way westwards instead of to Leadenhall. As it
is, the wanderers arrive, not necessarily, as has
been freely asserted, in poor condition, but
always tired out by their journey, and
numbers are secured before they have time
to recover their strength. Yet those which do
recover fly right across England, some continuing
the journey to Ireland, and stragglers
even, with help no doubt from easterly gales,
having been known to reach America.

The woodcock is interesting as a parent
because it is one of the very few birds that
carry their young from place to place, and
the only British bird that transports them
clasped between her legs. A few others, like
the swans and grebes, bear the young ones on
the back, but the woodcock’s method is
unique. Scopoli first drew attention to his own
version of the habit in the words “pullos
rostro portat,” and it was old Gilbert White
who, with his usual eye to the practical,
doubted whether so long and slender a bill[25]
could be turned to such a purpose. More recent
observation has confirmed White’s objection
and has established the fact of the woodcock
holding the young one between her thighs,
the beak being apparently used to steady her
burden. Whether the little ones are habitually
carried about in this fashion, or merely on
occasion of danger, is not known, and indeed
the bird’s preference for activity in the dusk
has invested accurate observation of its habits
with some difficulty. Among well-known
sportsmen who were actually so fortunate as
to have witnessed this interesting performance,
passing mention may be made of the
late Duke of Beaufort, the Hon. Grantley
Berkeley, and Sir Ralph Payne-Gallwey.

Reference has already been made to the
now obsolete use of nets for the capture of
these birds when “roding.” The cock-shuts,
as they were called, were spread so as to do
their work after sundown, and this is the
meaning of Shakespeare’s allusion to “cock-shut
time.” This “roding” is a curious performance
on the part of the males only, and
it bears some analogy to the “drumming” of
snipe. It is accompanied indeed by the same[26]
vibrating noise, which may be produced from
the throat as well, but is more probably made
only by the beating of the wings. There appears
to be some divergence of opinion as to
its origin in both birds, though in that of the
snipe such sound authorities as Messrs. Abel
Chapman and Harting are convinced that it
proceeds from the quivering of the primaries,
as the large quill-feathers of the wings are
called. Other naturalists, however, have preferred
to associate it with the spreading tail-feathers.
Whether these eccentric gymnastics
are performed as displays, with a view to impressing
admiring females, or whether they
are merely the result of excitement at the
pairing season cannot be determined. It is
safe to assume that they aim at one or other
of these objects, and further no one can go
with any certainty. The word “roding” is
spelt “roading” by Newton, who thus gives
the preference to the Anglo-Saxon description
of the aërial tracks followed by the bird, over
the alternative derivation from the French
“roder,” which means to wander. The flight
is at any rate wholly different from that to
which the sportsman is accustomed when one[27]
of these birds is flushed in covert. In the latter
case, either instinct or experience seems to
have taught it extraordinary tricks of zigzag
manœuvring that not seldom save its life
from a long line of over-anxious guns; though
out in the open, where it generally flies in a
straight line for the nearest covert, few birds
of its size are easier to bring down. Fortunately,
we do not in England shoot the bird
in springtime, the season of “roding,” but
the practice is in vogue in the evening twilight
in every Continental country, and large
bags are made in this fashion.

In its hungry moments the woodcock, like
the snipe, has at once the advantages and
handicap of so long a beak. On hard ground,
in a long spell of either drought or frost, it
must come within measurable distance of
starvation, for its only manner of procuring
its food in normal surroundings is to thrust its
bill deep into the soft mud in search of earthworms.
The bird does not, it is true, as was
once commonly believed, live by suction, or,
as the Irish peasants say in some parts, on
water, but such a mistake might well be
excused in anyone who had watched the[28]
bird’s manner of digging for its food in the
ooze. The long bill is exceedingly sensitive
at the tip, and in all probability, by the aid
of a tactile sense more highly developed than
any other in our acquaintance, this organ
conveys to its owner the whereabouts of
worms wriggling silently down out of harm’s
way. On first reaching Britain, the woodcock
remains for a few days on the seashore to
recover from its crossing, and at this time of
rest it trips over the wet sand, generally in
the gloaming, and picks up shrimps and such
other soft food as is uncovered between tidal
marks. It is not among the easiest of birds
to keep for any length of time in captivity,
but if due attention be paid to its somewhat
difficult requirements in the way of suitable
food, success is not unattainable. On the
whole, bread and milk has been found the
best artificial substitute for its natural diet.
With the kiwi of New Zealand, a bird not
even distantly related to the woodcock, and
a cousin rather of the ostrich, but equipped
with much the same kind of bill as the subject
of these remarks, an even closer imitation of
the natural food has been found possible in[29]
menageries. The bill of the kiwi, which has
the nostrils close to the tip, is even more
sensitive than that of the woodcock and is
employed in very similar fashion. At Regent’s
Park the keeper supplies the bird with fresh
worms so long as the ground is soft enough for
spade-work. They are left in a pan, and the kiwi
eats them during the night. In winter, however,
when worms are not only hard to come by in
sufficient quantity but also frost-bitten and
in poor condition, an efficient substitute is
found in shredded fillet steak, which, whether
it accepts it for worms or not, the New
Zealander devours with the same relish.

When a woodcock lies motionless among
dead leaves, it is one of the most striking
illustrations of protective colouring to be
found anywhere. Time and again the sportsman
all but treads on one, which is betrayed
only by its large bright eye. There are men
who, in their eagerness to add it to the bag,
do not hesitate in such circumstances to
shoot a woodcock on the ground, but a man
so fond of ground game should certainly be
refused a game licence and should be allowed
to shoot nothing but rabbits.

[33]

THE WOODPIGEON

The woodpigeon is many things to
many men. To the farmer, who has
some claim to priority of verdict, it is a
curse, even as the rabbit in Australia, the
lemming in Norway, or the locust in Algeria.
The tiller of the soil, whose business brings
him in open competition with the natural
appetites of such voracious birds, beasts, or
insects, regards his rivals from a standpoint
which has no room for sentiment; and the
woodpigeons are to our farmers, particularly
in the well-wooded districts of the West
Country, even as Carthage was to Cato the
Censor, something to be destroyed.

It is this attitude of the farmer which makes
the woodpigeon pre-eminently the bird of
February. All through the shooting season
just ended, a high pigeon has proved an
irresistible temptation to the guns, whether
cleaving the sky above the tree-tops, doubling
behind a broad elm, or suddenly swinging
out of a gaunt fir. Yet it is in February, when
other shooting is at an end and the coverts[34]
no longer echo the fusillade of the past four
months, that the farmers, furious at the sight
of green root-crops grazed as close as by
sheep and of young clover dug up over every
acre of their tilling, welcome the co-operation
of sportsmen glad to use up the balance of
their cartridges in organised pigeon battues.
These gatherings have, during the past five
years, become an annual function in parts of
Devonshire and the neighbouring counties,
and if the bag is somewhat small in proportion
to the guns engaged, a wholesome
spirit of sport informs those who take part,
and there is a curiously utilitarian atmosphere
about the proceedings. Everyone
seems conscious that, in place of the usual
idle pleasure of the covert-side or among
the turnips, he is out for a purpose, not merely
killing birds that have been reared to make
his holiday, but actually helping the farmers
in their fight against Nature. As, moreover,
recent scares of an epidemic not unlike
diphtheria have precluded the use of the
birds for table purposes, the powder is burnt
with no thought of the pot.

The usual plan is to divide the guns in[35]
small parties and to post these in neighbouring
plantations or lining hedges overlooking
these spinneys. At a given signal the firing
commences and is kept up for several hours,
a number of the marauders being killed and
the rest so harried that many of them must
leave the neighbourhood, only to find a
similar warm welcome across the border.
Some such concerted attack has of late years
been rendered necessary by the great increase
in the winter invasion from overseas.
It is probable that, as most writers on the
subject insist, the wanderings of these birds
are for the most part restricted to these
islands and are mere food forays, like those
which cause locusts to desert a district that
they have stripped bare for pastures new. At
the same time, it seems to be beyond all
doubt the fact that huge flocks of woodpigeons
reach our shores annually from Scandinavia,
and their inroads have had such
serious results that it is only by joint action
that their numbers can be kept under. For
such work February is obviously the month,
not only because most of their damage to the
growing crops and seeds is accomplished at[36]
this season, but also because large numbers
of gunners, no longer able to shoot game,
are thus at the disposal of the farmers and
only too glad to prolong their shooting for a
few weeks to such good purpose.

Many birds are greedy. The cormorant has
a higher reputation of the sort to live up to
than even the hog, and some of the hornbills,
though less familiar, are endowed with Gargantuan
appetites. Yet the ringdove could
probably vie with any of them. Mr. Harting
mentions having found in the crop of one of
these birds thirty-three acorns and forty-four
beech-nuts, while no fewer than 139 of
the latter were taken, together with other
food remains, from another. It is no uncommon
experience to see the crop of a woodpigeon
that is brought down from a great
height burst, on reaching the earth, with a
report like that of a pistol, and scatter its
undigested contents broadcast. Little wonder
then, that the farmers welcome the slaughter
of so formidable a competitor! It is one of
their biggest customers, and pays nothing
for their produce. One told me, not long ago,
that the woodpigeons had got at a little patch[37]
of young rape, only a few acres in all, which
had been uncovered by the drifting snow,
and had laid it as bare as if the earth had
never been planted. Seeing what hearty meals
the woodpigeon makes, it is not surprising
that it should sometimes throw up pellets
of undigested material. This is not, however,
a regular habit, as in the case of hawks and
owls, and is rather, perhaps, the result of
some abnormally irritating food.

Pigeons digest their food with the aid of a
secretion in the crop, and it is on this soft
material, popularly known as “pigeons’
milk,” that they feed their nestlings.
This method suggests analogy to that of
the petrels, which rear their young on fish-oil
partly digested after the same fashion.
Indeed, all the pigeons are devoted parents.
Though the majority build only a very pretentious
platform of sticks for the two eggs,
they sit very close and feed the young ones
untiringly. Some of the pigeons of Australia,
indeed, go even further. Not only do they
build a much more substantial nest of leafy
twigs, but the male bird actually sits
throughout the day, such paternal sense of[38]
duty being all the more remarkable from the
fact that these pigeons of the Antipodes
usually lay but a single egg. Australia, with
the neighbouring islands, must be a perfect
paradise for pigeons, since about half of the
species known to science occur in that region
only. The wonga-wonga and bronze-wing
and great fruit-pigeons are, like the “bald-pates”
of Jamaica, all favourite birds with
sportsmen, and some of the birds are far
more brightly coloured than ours. It is,
however, noticeable that even the gayest
Queensland species, with wings shot with
every prismatic hue, are dull-looking birds
seen from above, and the late Dr. A. R.
Wallace regarded this as affording protection
against keen-eyed hawks on the forage.
His ingenious theory receives support from
the well-known fact that in many of the
islands, where pigeons are even more plentiful,
but where also hawks are few, the former
wear bright clothes on their back as well.

The woodpigeon has many names in rural
England. That by which it is referred to in
the foregoing notes is not, perhaps, the most
satisfactory, since, with the possible exception[39]
of the smaller stock-dove, which
lays its eggs in rabbit burrows, and the rock-dove,
which nests in the cliffs, all the members
of the family need trees, if only to roost and
nest in. A more descriptive name is that of
ringdove, easily explained by the white
collar, but the bird is also known as cushat,
queest, or even culver. The last-named,
however, which will be familiar to readers of
Tennyson, probably alludes specifically to
the rock-dove, as it undoubtedly gave its
name to Culver Cliff, a prominent landmark
in the Isle of Wight, where these birds
have at all times been sparingly in evidence.

The ringdove occasionally rears a nestling
in captivity, but it does not seem, at any
time of life, to prove a very attractive pet.
White found it strangely ferocious, and another
writer describes it as listless and uninteresting.
The only notable success on
record is that scored by St. John, who set
some of the eggs under a tame pigeon and
secured one survivor that appears to have
grown quite tame, but was, unfortunately,
eaten by a hawk. At any rate, it did its kind
good service by enlisting on their side the[40]
pen of the most ardent apologist they have
ever had. Indeed, St. John did not hesitate
to rate the farmers soundly for persecuting
the bird in wilful ignorance of its unpaid
services in clearing their ground of noxious
weeds. Yet, however true his eloquent plea
may have been in respect of his native
Lothian, there would be some difficulty in
persuading South Country agriculturists of
the woodpigeon’s hidden virtues. To those,
however, who do not sow that they may
reap, the subject of these remarks has
irresistible charm. There is doubtless monotony
in its cooing, yet, heard in a still
plantation of firs, with no other sound than
perhaps the distant call of a shepherd or
barking of a farm dog, it is a music singularly
in harmony with the peaceful scene.
The arrowy flight of these birds when they
come in from the fields at sundown and fall
like rushing waters on the tree-tops is an
even more memorable sound. To the sportsman,
above all, the woodpigeon shows itself
a splendid bird of freedom, more cunning
than any hand-reared game bird, swifter on
the wing than any other purely wild bird, a[41]
welcome addition to the bag because it is hard
to shoot in the open, and because in life it was
a sore trial to a class already harassed with
their share of this life’s troubles.

[45]

BIRDS IN THE HIGH HALL GARDEN

All March the rooks were busy in the
swaying elms, but it is these softer
evenings of April, when the first young
leaves are beginning to frame the finished
nests, and the boisterous winds of last month
no longer drown the babble of the tree-top
parliament at the still hour when farm
labourers are homing from the fields, that
the rooks peculiarly strike their own note in
the country scene. There is no good reason
to confuse these curious and interesting fowl
with any other of the crow family. Collectively
they may be recognised by their love of fellowship,
for none are more sociable than they.
Individually the rook is stamped unmistakably
by the bald patch on the face, where the
feathers have come away round the base of
the beak. The most generally accepted explanation
of this disfigurement is the rook’s
habit of thrusting its bill deep in the earth in
search of its daily food. This, on the face of
it, looks like a reasonable explanation, but
it should be borne in mind that not only do[46]
some individual rooks retain through life the
feathers normally missing, but that several
of the rook’s cousins dip into Nature’s larder
in the same fashion without suffering any
such loss. However, the featherless patch on
the rook’s cheeks suffices, whatever its cause,
as a mark by which to recognise the bird
living or dead.

Unlike its cousin the jackdaw, which commonly
nests in the cliffs, the rook is not,
perhaps, commonly associated with the immediate
neighbourhood of the sea, but a
colony close to my own home in Devonshire
displays sufficiently interesting adaptation
to estuarine conditions to be worth passing
mention. Just in the same way that gulls
make free of the wireworms on windswept
ploughlands, so in early summer do the old
rooks come sweeping down from the elms on
the hill that overlooks my fishing ground and
take their share of cockles and other muddy
fare in the bank uncovered by the falling tide.
Here, in company with gulls, turnstones, and
other fowl of the foreshore, the rooks strut
importantly up and down, digging their
powerful bills deep in the ooze and occasionally[47]
bullying weaker neighbours out of their
hard-earned spoils. The rook is a villain, yet
there is something irresistible in the effrontery
with which one will hop sidelong on a gorging
gull, which beats a hasty retreat before its
sable rival, leaving some half-prized shellfish
to be swallowed at sight or carried to the
greedy little beaks in the tree-tops. While
rooks are far more sociable than crows, the
two are often seen in company, not always on
the best of terms, but usually in a condition
suggestive of armed neutrality. An occasional
crow visits my estuary at low tide, but,
though the bird would be a match for any
single rook, I never saw any fighting between
them. Possibly the crow feels its loneliness
and realises that in case of trouble none of
its brothers are there to see fair play. Yet
carrion crows, like herons, are among the
rook’s most determined enemies, and cases
of rookeries being destroyed by both birds
are on record. On the other hand, though the
heron is the far more powerful bird of the two,
heronries have likewise been scattered, and
their trees appropriated, by rooks, probably
in overwhelming numbers. Of the two the[48]
heron is, particularly in the vicinity of a
preserved trout stream, the more costly
neighbour. Indeed it is the only other bird
which nests in colonies of such extent, but
there is this marked difference between herons
and rooks, that the former are sociable only in
the colony. When away on its own business,
the heron is among the most solitary of birds,
having no doubt, like many other fishermen,
learnt the advantage of its own company.

One of the most remarkable habits in the
rook is that of visiting the old nests in mid-winter.
Now and again, it is true, a case of
actually nesting at that season has been
noticed, but the fancy for sporting round the
deserted nests is something quite different
from this. I have watched the birds at the
nests on short winter days year after year,
but never yet saw any confirmation of the
widely accepted view that their object is the
putting in order of their battered homes for
the next season. It seems a likely reason,
but in that case the birds would surely be
seen carrying twigs for the purpose, and I
never saw them do so before January. What
other attraction the empty nurseries can[49]
have for them is a mystery, unless indeed
they are sentimental enough to like revisiting
old scenes and cawing over old memories.

The proximity of a rookery does not affect
all people alike. Some who, ordinarily dwelling
in cities, suffer from lack of bird neighbours,
would regard the deliberate destruction
of a rookery as an act of vandalism. A
few, as a matter of fact, actually set about
establishing such a colony where none previously
existed, an ambition that may
generally be accomplished without extreme
difficulty. All that is needed is to transplant
a nest or two of young rooks and lodge them
in suitable trees. The parent birds usually
follow, rear the broods, and forthwith found
a settlement for future generations to return
to. Even artificial nests, with suitable supplies
of food, have succeeded, and it seems that
the rook is nowhere a very difficult neighbour
to attract and establish.

Why are rooks more sociable than ravens,
and what do they gain from such communalism?
These are favourite questions with
persons informed with an intelligent passion
for acquiring information, and the best[50]
answer, without any thought of irreverence,
is “God knows!” It is most certain that we,
at any rate, do not. So far from explaining
how it was that rooks came to build their
nests in company, we cannot even guess how
the majority of birds came to build nests at
all, instead of remaining satisfied with the
simpler plan of laying their eggs in the
ground that is still good enough for the
petrels, penguins, kingfishers, and many
other kinds. Protection of the eggs from rain,
frost, and natural enemies suggests itself as
the object of the nest, but the last only would
to some extent be furthered by the gregarious
habit, and even so we have no clue as to why
it should be any more necessary for rooks
than for crows. To quote, as some writers do,
the numerical superiority of rooks over ravens
as evidence of the benefits of communal
nesting is to ignore the long hostility of
shepherds towards the latter birds on which
centuries of persecution have told irreparably.
Rooks, on the other hand, though also
regarded in some parts of these islands as
suspects, have never been harassed to the
same extent; and if anything in the nature[51]
of general warfare were to be inaugurated
against them, the gregarious habit, so far
from being a protection, would speedily and
disastrously facilitate their extermination.
Another curious habit noticed in these birds
is that of flying on fine evenings to a considerable
height and then swooping suddenly
to earth, often on their backs. These antics,
comparable to the drumming of snipe and
roding of woodcock, are probably to be explained
on the same basis of sexual emotion.

The so-called parliament of the rooks probably
owes much of its detail to the florid imagination
of enthusiasts, always ready to exaggerate
the wonders of Nature; but it also seems
to have some existence in fact, and privileged
observers have actually described the trial and
punishment of individuals that have broken
the laws of the commune. I never saw this procedure
among rooks, but once watched something
very similar among the famous dogs of
Constantinople, which no longer exist.

The most important problem however in
connection with the rook is the precise extent
to which the bird is the farmer’s enemy or his
friend. On the solution hangs the rook’s fate[52]
in an increasingly practical age, which may
at any moment put sentiment on one side
and decree for it the fate that is already overtaking
its big cousin the raven. Scotch
farmers have long turned their thumbs down
and regarded rooks as food for the gun, but
in South Britain the bird’s apologists have
hitherto been able to hold their own and avert
catastrophe from their favourite. The evidence
is conflicting. On the one hand, it seems undeniable
that the rook eats grain and potato
shoots. It also snaps young twigs off the trees
and may, like the jay and magpie, destroy the
eggs of game birds. On the other hand, particularly
during the weeks when it is feeding its
nestlings, it admittedly devours quantities of
wireworms, leathergrubs, and weevils, as well
as of couch grass and other noxious weeds,
while some of its favourite dainties, such as
thistles, walnuts, and acorns, will hardly be
grudged at any time. It is not an easy matter
to decide; and, if the rook is to be spared,
economy must be tempered with sentiment, in
which case the evidence will perhaps be found
to justify a verdict of guilty, with a strong
recommendation to mercy.

[55]

THE CUCKOO

With the single exception of the
nightingale, bird of lovers, no other
has been more written of in prose or verse
than the so-called “harbinger of spring.”
This is a foolish name for a visitor that does
not reach our shores before, at any rate, the
middle of April. Even Whitaker allows us
to recognise the coming of spring nearly a
month earlier; and for myself, impatient if
only for the illusion of Nature’s awakening,
I date my spring from the ending of the
shortest day. Once the days begin to
lengthen, it is time to glance at the elms for
the return of the rooks and to get out one’s
fishing-tackle again. Yet the cuckoo comes
rarely before the third week of April, save in
the fervent imagination of premature heralds,
who, giving rein to a fancy winged by desire,
or honestly deceived by some village cuckoo
clock heard on their country rambles,
solemnly write to the papers announcing the
inevitable March cuckoo. They know better
in the Channel Islands, for in the second week[56]
of April, and not before, there are cuckoos in
every bush—hundreds of exhausted travellers
pausing for strength to complete the rest of
their journey to Britain. Not on the return
migration in August do the wanderers assemble
in the islands, since, having but
lately set out, they are not yet weary enough
to need the rest. The only district of England
in which I have heard of similar gatherings
of cuckoos is East Anglia, where, about the
time of their arrival, they regularly collect in
the bushes and indulge in preliminary
gambols before flying north and west.

Cuckoos, then, reach these islands about
the third week of April, and they leave us
again at the end of the summer, the old birds
flying south in July, the younger generation
following three or four weeks later. Goodness
knows by what extraordinary instinct these
young ones know the way. But the young
cuckoo is a marvel altogether in the manner
of its education, since, when one comes to
think of it, it has no upbringing by its own
parents and cannot even learn how to cry
“Cuckoo!” by example or instruction. Its
foster-parents speak another language, and[57]
its own folk have ceased from singing by the
time it is out of the nest. A good deal has
been written about the way in which the
note varies, chiefly in the direction of greater
harshness and a more staccato and less
sustained note, towards the end of the
cuckoo’s stay. According to the rustic rhyme,
it changes its tune in June, which is probably
poetic licence rather than the fruits of actual
observation. It is, however, commonly agreed
that the cuckoo is less often heard as the
time of its departure draws near, and the
easiest explanation of its silence, once the
breeding season is ended, is that the note,
being the love-call of a polygamous bird, is
no longer needed.

In Australia the female cuckoo is handsomely
barred with white, whereas the male
is uniformly black; but with our bird it is
exceedingly difficult to distinguish one sex
from the other on the wing, and, were it not
for occasional evidence of females having been
shot when actually calling, we might still
believe that it is the male only that makes
this sound. The note is joyous only in the
poet’s fancy, just as he has also read sadness[58]
into the “sobbing” of the nightingale.
There is, indeed, when we consider its life,
something fantastic in the hypothesis that
the cuckoo can know no trouble in life,
merely because it escapes the rigours of our
winter. Eternal summer must be a delight,
but the cuckoo has to work hard for the
privilege, and it must at times be harried to
the verge of desperation by the small birds
that continually mob it in broad daylight.
This behaviour on the part of its pertinacious
little neighbours has been the occasion of
much futile speculation; but the one certain
result of such persecution is to make the
cuckoo, along with its fellow-sufferer, the
owls, preferably active in the sweet peace of
the gloaming, when its puny tyrants are
gone to roost. Much heated argument has
raged round the real or supposed sentiment
that inspires such demonstrations on the
part of linnets, sparrows, chaffinches, and
other determined hunters of the cuckoo.
It seems impossible, when we observe the
larger bird’s unmistakable desire to win free
of them, to attribute friendly feelings to its
pursuers. Yet some writers have held the[59]
curious belief that, with lingering memories
of the days when, a year ago, they devoted
themselves to the ugly foster-child, the little
birds still regard the stranger with affection.
If so, then they have an eccentric way of
showing it, and the cuckoo, driven by the
chattering little termagants from pillar to
post, may well pray to be saved from its
friends. On the other hand, even though convinced
of their hostility, it is not easy to
believe, as some folks tell us, that they mistake
the cuckoo for a hawk. Even the human
eye, though slower to take note of such differences,
can distinguish between the two, and
the cuckoo’s note would still further undeceive
them. The most satisfactory explanation
of all perhaps is that the nest memories
do in truth survive, not, however, investing
the cuckoo with a halo of romance, but rather
branding it as an object of suspicion, an
interloper, to be driven out of the neighbourhood
at all costs ere it has time to billet its
offspring on the hard-working residents. All
of which is, needless to say, the merest guesswork,
since any attempt to interpret the
simplest actions of birds is likely to lead us[60]
into erroneous conclusions. Yet, of the two, it
certainly seems more reasonable to regard
the smaller birds as resenting the parasitic
habit in the cuckoo than to admit that they
can actually welcome the murder of their own
offspring to make room in the nest for the
ugly changeling foisted on them by this
fly-by-night.

On the lucus a non lucendo principle, the
cuckoo is chiefly interesting as a parent. The
bare fact is that our British kind builds no
nest of its own, but puts its eggs out to hatch,
choosing for the purpose the nests of numerous
small birds which it knows to be suitable.
Further investigation of the habits of this
not very secretive bird, shows that she first
lays her egg on the ground and then carries
it in her bill to a neighbouring nest. Whether
she first chooses the nest and then lays the
egg destined to be hatched in it, or whether
she lays each egg when so moved and then
hunts about for a home for it, has never been
ascertained. The former method seems the
more practical of the two. On the other hand,
little nests of the right sort are so plentiful in
May that, with her mother-instinct to guide[61]
her, she could always find one at a few
moments’ notice. Some people, who are
never so happy as when making the wonders
of Nature seem still more wonderful than
they really are, have declared that the cuckoo
lays eggs to match those among which she
deposits them, or that, at any rate, she
chooses the nests of birds whose eggs approximately
resemble her own. I should have
liked to believe this, but am unfortunately
debarred by the memory of about forty
cuckoo’s eggs that I took, seven-and-twenty
summers ago, in the woods round Dartford
Heath. The majority of these were found in
hedgesparrows’ nests, and the absolute dissimilarity
between the great spotted egg of
the cuckoo and the little blue egg of its so-called
dupe would have impressed even a
colour-blind animal. Occasionally, I believe,
a blue cuckoo’s egg has been found, but such
a freak could hardly be the result of design.
As a matter of fact, there is no need for any
such elaborate deception. Up to the moment
of hatching, the little foster-parents have in
all probability no suspicion of the trick that
has been played on them. Birds do not take[62]
deliberate notice of the size or colour of their
own eggs. Kearton somewhere relates how
he once induced a blackbird to sit on the eggs
of a thrush, and a lapwing on those of a redshank.
So, too, farmyard hens will hatch the
eggs of ducks or game birds and wild birds
can even be persuaded to sit on eggs made of
painted wood. Why then, since they are so
careless of appearances, should the cuckoo
go to all manner of trouble to match the eggs
of hedgesparrow, robin or warbler? The bird
would not notice the difference, and, even if
she did, she would probably sit quite as close,
if only for the sake of the other eggs of her
own laying. Once the ugly nestling is hatched,
there comes swift awakening. Yet there is
no thought of reprisal or desertion. It looks
rather as if the little foster-parents are hypnotised
by the uncouth guest, for they see
their own young ones elbowed out of the home
and continue, with unflagging devotion, to
minister to the insatiable appetite of the
greedy little murderer. A bird so imbued as
the parasitic cuckoo with the Wanderlust
would make a very careless parent, and we
must therefore perhaps revise our unflattering[63]
estimate of its attitude and admit that it
does the best it can by its offspring in putting
them out to nurse. This habit, unique among
British birds, is practised by many others
elsewhere, and in particular by the American
troupials, or cattle-starlings. One of these
indeed goes even farther, since it entrusts its
eggs to the care of a nest-building cousin.
There are also American cuckoos that build
their own nest and incubate their own eggs.

On the whole, our cuckoo is a friend to the
farmer, for it destroys vast quantities of
hairy caterpillars that no other bird, resident
or migratory, would touch. On the other
hand, no doubt, the numbers of other small
useful birds must suffer, not alone because
the cuckoo sucks their eggs, but also because,
as has been shown, the rearing of every young
cuckoo means the destruction of the legitimate
occupants of the nest. So far however
as the farmer is concerned, this is probably
balanced by the reflection that a single
young cuckoo is so rapacious as to need all
the insect food available.

The cuckoo, like the woodcock, is supposed
to have its forerunner. Just as the small[64]
horned owl, which reaches our shores a little
in advance of the latter, is popularly known as
the “woodcock owl,” so also the wryneck,
which comes to us about the same time as
the first of the cuckoos, goes by the name of
“cuckoo-leader.” It is never a very conspicuous
bird, and appears to be rarer nowadays
than formerly. Schoolboys know it
best from its habit of hissing like a snake
and giving them a rare fright when they
cautiously insert a predatory hand in some
hollow tree in search of a possible nest. It is
in such situations that, along with titmice
and some other birds, the wryneck rears its
young; and it doubtless owes many an escape
to this habit of hissing, accompanied by a
vigorous twisting of its neck and the infliction
of a sufficient peck, easily mistaken in a moment
of panic for the bite of an angry adder.
Thus does Nature protect her weaklings.

[67]

VOICES OF THE NIGHT

The majority of nocturnal animals,
more particularly those bent on spoliation,
are strangely silent. True, frogs croak
in the marshes, bats shrill overhead at
so high a pitch that some folks cannot hear
them, and owls hoot from their ruins in a
fashion that some vote melodious and romantic,
while others associate the sound
rather with midnight crime and dislike it
accordingly. The badger, on the other hand,
with the otter and fox—all of them sad thieves
from our point of view—have learnt, whatever
their primeval habits, to go about their
marauding in stealthy silence; and it is only in
less settled regions that one hears the jackals
barking, the hyænas howling, and the browsing
deer whistling through the night watches.

There are, however, two of our native birds,
or rather summer visitors, since they leave us
in autumn, closely associated with these
warm June nights, the stillness of which they
break in very different fashion, and these are
the nightingale and nightjar. Each is of considerable[68]
interest in its own way. It is not to
be denied that the churring note of the nightjar
is, to ordinary ears, the reverse of attractive,
and the bird is not much more
pleasing to the eye than to the ear; while the
nightingale, on the contrary, produces such
sweet sounds as made Izaak Walton marvel
what music God could provide for His saints
in heaven when He gave such as this to
sinners on earth. The suggestion was not
wholly his own, since the father of angling
borrowed it from a French writer; but he
vastly improved on the original, and the
passage will long live in the hearts of thousands
who care not a jot for his instructions
in respect of worms. At the same time, the
nightjar, though the less attractive bird of
the two, is fully as interesting as its comrade
of the summer darkness, and there should be
no difficulty in indicating the little that they
have in common, as well as much wherein
they differ, in both habits and appearance.

Both, then, are birds of sober attire. Indeed
of the two, the nightjar, with its soft and
delicately pencilled plumage and the conspicuous
white spots, is perhaps the handsomer,[69]
though, as it is seen only in the gloaming,
its quiet beauty is but little appreciated.
The unobtrusive dress of the nightingale, on
the other hand, is familiar in districts in
which the bird abounds, and is commonly
quoted, by contrast with its unrivalled voice,
as the converse of the gaudy colouring of
raucous macaws and parrakeets. As has been
said, both these birds are summer migrants,
the nightingale arriving on our shores about
the middle of April, the nightjar perhaps a
fortnight later. Thenceforth, however, their
programmes are wholly divergent, for, whereas
the nightjars proceed to scatter over the
length and breadth of Britain, penetrating
even to Ireland in the west and as far north
as the Hebrides, the nightingale stops far
short of these extremes and leaves whole
counties of England, as well as probably the
whole of Scotland, and certainly the whole of
Ireland, out of its calculations. It is however
well known that its range is slowly but surely
extending towards the west.

This curiously restricted distribution of
the nightingale, indeed, within the limits of
its summer home is among the most remarkable[70]
of the many problems confronting the
student of distribution, and successive ingenious
but unconvincing attempts to explain
its seeming eccentricity, or at any rate caprice,
in the choice of its nesting range only
make the confusion worse. Briefly, in spite of
a number of doubtful and even suspicious
reports of the bird’s occurrence outside of
these boundaries, it is generally agreed by
the soundest observers that its travels do
not extend much north of the city of York,
or much west of a line drawn through Exeter
and Birmingham. By way of complicating
the argument, we know, on good authority,
that the nightingale’s range is equally
peculiar elsewhere; and that, whereas it likewise
shuns the departments in the extreme
west of France, it occurs all over the Peninsula,
a region extending considerably farther
into the sunset than either Brittany or Cornwall,
in both of which it is unknown. No
satisfactory explanation of the little visitor’s
objection to Wild Wales or Cornwall has
been found, and it may at once be stated
that its capricious distribution cannot be
accounted for by any known facts of soil,[71]
climate, or vegetation, since the surroundings
which it finds suitable in Kent and Sussex
are equally to be found down in the West
Country, but fail to attract their share of
nightingales.

The song of the nightingale, in praise of
which volumes have been written, is perhaps
more beautiful than that of any other bird,
though I have heard wonderful efforts from
the mocking-bird in the United States and
from the bulbuls along the banks of the
Jordan. The latter are sometimes, more
especially in poetry, regarded as identical
with the nightingale; and, indeed, some
ornithologists hold the two to be closely
related. What a gap there is between the
sobbing cadences of the nightingale and the
rasping note of the nightjar, which, with
specific reference to a Colonial cousin of that
bird Tasmanians ingeniously render as
“more pork”! It seems almost ludicrous to
include under the head of birdsong not only
the music of the nightingale, but also the
croak of the raven and the booming note of
the ostrich. Yet these also are the love-songs
of their kind, and the hen ostrich doubtless[72]
finds more music in the thunderous note of
her lord than in the faint melody of such song-birds
as her native Africa provides. The
nightingale sings to his mate while she is
sitting on her olive-green eggs perching on a
low branch of the tree, at foot of which the
slender nest is hidden in the undergrowth.
So much is known to every schoolboy who
is too often guided by the sound on his errand
of plunder; and why the song of this particular
warbler should have been described
by so many writers as one of sadness, seeing
that it is associated with the most joyous
days in the bird’s year, passes comprehension.
So obviously is its object to hearten the
female in her long and patient vigil that as
soon as the young are hatched the male’s
voice breaks like that of other choristers to
a guttural croak. It is said, indeed—though
so cruel an experiment would not appeal to
many—that if the nest be destroyed just as
the young are hatched the bird recovers all
his sweetness of voice and sings anew while
another home is built.

Although poetic licence has ascribed the
song to the female, it is the male nightingale[73]
only that sings, and for the purpose aforementioned.
The note of the nightjar, on the
other hand, is equally uttered by both sexes,
and both also have the curious habit of
repeatedly clapping the wings for several
minutes together. They moreover share the
business of incubation, taking day and night
duty on the eggs, which, two in number, are
laid on the bare ground without any pretence
of a nest, and generally on open commons in
the neighbourhood of patches of fern-brake.
Like the owls, these birds sleep during the
day and are active only when the sun goes
down. It is this habit of seeking their insect
food only in the gloaming which makes
nightjars among the most difficult of birds
to study from life, and all accounts of their
feeding habits must therefore be received
with caution, particularly that which compares
the bristles on the mouth with baleen
in whales, serving as a sort of strainer for
the capture of minute flying prey. This is an
interesting suggestion, and may even be
sober fact; but its adoption would necessitate
the bird flying open-mouthed among the
oaks and other trees beneath which it finds[74]
the yellow underwings and cockchafers on
which it feeds, and I have more than once
watched it hunting its victims with the beak
closed. I noticed this particularly when
camping in the backwoods of Eastern Canada
where the bird goes by the name of nighthawk.

In all probability its food consists exclusively
of insects, though exceptional cases
have been noted in which the young birds
had evidently been fed on seeds. The popular
error which charges it with stealing the milk
of ewes and goats, from which it derives the
undeserved name of “goat-sucker,” with its
equivalent in several Continental languages,
is another result of the imperfect light in
which it is commonly observed. Needless to
say, there is no truth whatever in the accusation,
for the nightjar would find no more
pleasure in drinking milk than we should in
eating moths.

Here, then, are two night-voices of very
different calibre. These are not our only birds
that break the silence on moonlight nights in
June. The common thrush often sings far
into the night, and the sedge-warbler is a[75]
persistent caroller that has often been mistaken
for the nightingale. The difference in
this respect between the two subjects of these
remarks is that the nightjar is invariably
silent all through the day, whereas the
nightingale sings joyously at all hours. It is
only because his splendid music is more
marked in the comparative silence of the
night, with little or no competition, that his
daylight concert is often overlooked.

[79]

SWIFTS, SWALLOWS AND MARTINS

When the trout-fisherman sees the first
martins and swallows dipping over
the sward of the water-meadows and
skimming the surface of the stream in hot
pursuit of such harried water-insects as have
escaped the jaws of greedy fish, he knows
that summer is coming in. The signs of spring
have been evident in the budding hedgerows
for some weeks. The rooks are cawing in the
elms, the cuckoo’s note has been heard in
the spinney for some time before these little
visitors pass in jerky flight up and down the
valley. Then, a little later, come the swifts—the
black and screaming swifts—which,
though learned folk may be right in sundering
them utterly from their smaller travelling
companions from the sunny south, will always
in the popular fancy be associated with the
rest. Colonies of swifts, swallows, and martins
are a dominant feature of English village life
during the warm months; and though there
are fastidious folk who take not wholly
culpable exception to their little visitors on[80]
the score of cleanliness, most of us welcome
them back each year, if only for the sake of
the glad season of their stay. If, moreover, it
is a question of choice between these untiring
travellers resting in our eaves and the stay-at-home
starling or sparrow, the choice will
surely fall on the first every time.

The swift is the largest and most rapid in
its flight, and its voice has a penetrating
quality lacking in the notes of the rest.
Swifts screaming in headlong flight about a
belfry or up and down a country lane are the
embodiment of that sheer joy of life which,
in some cases with slender reason, we associate
peculiarly with the bird-world. Probably,
however, these summer migrants are as
happy as most of their class. On the wing
they can have few natural enemies, though
one may now and again be struck down by a
hawk; and they alight on the ground so
rarely as to run little risk from cats or weasels,
while the structure and position of their nests
alike afford effectual protection for the eggs
and young. Compared with that of the
majority of small birds, therefore, their
existence should be singularly happy and free[81]
from care; and though that of the swift can
scarcely, perhaps, when we remember its
shrill voice, be described as one grand sweet
song, it should not be chequered by many
troubles. The greatest risk is no doubt that
of being snapped up by some watchful pike
if the bird skims too close to the surface of
either still or running water, and I have even
heard of their being seized in this way by
hungry mahseer, those great barbel which
gladden the heart of exiled anglers whose lot
is cast on the banks of Himalayan rivers.

It is, however, the sparrows and starlings,
rivals for the nesting sites, who show themselves
the irreconcilable enemies of the returned
prodigals. Terrific battles are continually
enacted between them with varying
fortunes, and the anecdotes of these frays
would fill a volume. Jesse tells of a feud at
Hampton Court, in the course of which the
swallows, having only then completed their
nest, were evicted by sparrows, who forthwith
took possession and hatched out their eggs.
Then came Nemesis, for the sparrows were
compelled to go foraging for food with which
to fill the greedy beaks, and during their[82]
enforced absence the swallows returned in
force, threw the nestlings out, and demolished
the home. The sparrows sought other quarters,
and the swallows triumphantly built a new
nest on the ruins of the old. A German writer
relates a case of revolting reprisal on the part
of some swallows against a sparrow that appropriated
their nest and refused to quit.
After repeated failure to evict the intruder,
the swallows, helped by other members of the
colony, calmly plastered up the front door
so effectually that the unfortunate sparrow
was walled up alive and died of hunger. This
refined mode of torture is not unknown in
the history of mankind, but seems singularly
unsuited to creatures so fragile.

The nests of these birds show, as a rule,
little departure from the conventional plan,
but they do adapt their architecture to circumstances,
and I remember being much
struck on one occasion by the absence of any
dome or roof. It was in Asia Minor, on the
seashore, that I came upon a cottage long
deserted, its door hanging by one hinge, and
all the glass gone from the windows. In the
empty rooms numerous swallows were rearing[83]
twittering broods in roofless nests. No doubt
the birds realised that they had nothing to
fear from rain, and were reluctant to waste
time and labour in covering their homes with
unnecessary roofs.

Most birds are careful in the education of
their young, and indeed thorough training at
an early stage must be essential in the case of
creatures that are left to protect themselves
and to find their own food when only a few
weeks old. Fortunately they develop with a
rapidity that puts man and other mammals
to shame, and the helpless bald little swift
lying agape in the nest will in another fortnight
be able to fly across Europe. One of
the most favoured observers of the early
teaching given by the mother-swallow to her
brood was an angler who told me how, one
evening when he was fishing in some ponds at
no great distance from London, a number of
baby swallows alighted on his rod. He kept
as still as possible, fearful of alarming his
interesting visitors, but he must at last have
moved, for, with one accord, they all fell off
his rod together, skimmed over the surface
of the water and disappeared in the direction[84]
from which they had come a few moments
earlier.

Swifts fly to an immense height these July
evenings, mounting to such an altitude as
eventually to disappear out of sight altogether.
This curious habit, which is but imperfectly
understood, has led to the belief that,
instead of roosting in the nest or among the
reeds like the swallows, the males, at any rate,
spend the night flying about under the stars.
This fantastic notion is not, however, likely
to commend itself to those who pause to
reflect on the incessant activity displayed by
these birds the livelong day. So rarely indeed
do they alight that country folk gravely deny
them the possession of feet, and it is in the
last degree improbable that a bird of such
feverish alertness could dispense with its
night’s rest. No one who has watched swifts,
swallows and martins on the wing can fail to
be struck by the extraordinary judgment
with which these untiring birds seem to shave
the arches of bridges, gateposts, and other
obstacles in the way of their flight by so
narrow a margin as continually to give the
impression of catastrophe imminent and[85]
inevitable. Their escapes from collision are
marvellous; but the birds are not infallible,
as is shown by the untoward fate of a swallow
in Sussex. In an old garden in that county
there had for many years been an open doorway
with no door, and through the open space
the swallows had been wont, year after year,
to fly to and fro on their hunting trips. Then
came a fateful winter during which a new
owner took it into his head to put up a fresh
gate and to keep it locked, and, as ill luck
would have it, he painted it blue, which, in
the season of fine weather, probably heightened
the illusion. Back came the happy
swallows to their old playground, and one of
the pioneers flew headlong at the closed gate
and fell stunned and dying on the ground, a
minor tragedy that may possibly come as a
surprise to those who regard the instincts of
wild birds as unerring.

That the young swallows leave our shores
before their elders—late in August or early
in September—is an established fact, and the
instinct which guides them aright over land
and sea, without assistance from those more
experienced, is nothing short of amazing.[86]
The swifts, last to come, are also first to go,
spending less time in the land of their birth
than either swallows or martins. The fact
that an occasional swallow has been seen in
this country during the winter months finds
expression in the adage that “one swallow
does not make a summer,” and it was no
doubt this occasional apparition that in a less
enlightened age seemed to warrant the extraordinary
belief, which still ekes out a precarious
existence in misinformed circles, that
these birds, instead of wintering abroad,
retire in a torpid condition to the bottom of
lakes and ponds. It cannot be denied that
these waters have occasionally, when dredged
or drained, yielded a stray skeleton of a
swallow, but it should be evident to the
most homely intelligence that such débris
merely indicates careless individuals that,
in passing over the water, got their plumage
waterlogged and were then drowned. It seems
strange that Gilbert White, so accurate an
observer of birds, should actually have toyed
with this curious belief, though he leant rather
to the more reasonable version of occasional
hybernation in caves or other sheltered[87]
hiding-places. The rustic mind, however,
preferred, and in some unsophisticated districts
still prefers, the ancient belief in diving
swallows, and no weight of evidence, however
carefully presented, would shake it in its
creed. Fortunately this eccentric view of the
swallow’s habits brings no harm to the bird
itself, and may thus be tolerated as an innocuous
indulgence on the part of those who
prefer this fiction to the even stranger truth.

[91]

THE SEAGULL

So glorious is the flight of the seagull that
it tempts us to fling aside the dry-as-dust
theories of mechanism of flexed wings, coefficient
of air resistance, and all the
abracadabra of the mathematical biologist,
and just to give thanks for a sight so
inspiring as that of gulls ringing high in the
eye of the wind over hissing combers that
break on sloping beaches or around jagged
rocks. These birds are one with the sea, knowing
no fear of that protean monster which,
since earth’s beginning, has always, with its
unfathomable mystery, its insatiable cruelty,
its tremendous strength, been a source of
terror to the land animals that dwell in sight
of it. Yet the gulls sit on the curling rollers
as much at their ease as swimmers in a pond,
and give an impression of unconscious courage
very remarkable in creatures that seem
so frail. Hunger may drive them inland, or
instincts equally irresistible at the breeding
season, but never the worst gale that lashes
the sea to fury, for they dread it in its hour[92]
of rage as little as on still summer nights
when, in their hundreds, they fly off the land
to roost on the water outside the headlands.

It is curious that there should be no mention
of them in the sacred writings. We read
of quails coming in from the sea, likewise of
“four great beasts,” but of seafowl never a
word, though one sees them in abundance on
the coast near Jaffa, and the Hebrew writers
might have been expected to weave them
into the rich fabrics of their poetic imagery as
they did the pelican, the eagle and other birds
less familiar. Although seagulls have of late
years been increasingly in evidence beside
the bridges of London, they are still, to the
majority of folk living far inland, symbolical
of the August holiday at the coast, and their
splendid flight and raucous cries are among
the most enduring memories of that yearly
escape from the smoke of cities.

The voice of gulls can with difficulty be
regarded as musical, yet those of us who live
the year round by the sea find their plaintive
mewing as nicely tuned to that wild environment
as the amorous gurgling of nightingales
to moonlit woods in May. Their voice[93]
may have no great range, but at any rate it
is not lacking in variety, suggesting to the
playful imagination laughter, tears, and other
human moods to which they are in all probability
strangers. The curious similarity
between the note of a seagull and the whining
of a cat bereft of her kittens is very striking,
and was on one occasion the cause of my being
taken in by one of these birds in a deep and
beautiful backwater of the Sea of Marmora,
beside which I spent one pleasant summer.
In this particular gulf, at the head of which
stands the ancient town of Ismidt, gulls,
though plentiful in the open sea, are rarely
in evidence, being replaced by herons and
pelicans. I had not therefore set eyes on a
seagull for many weeks, when early one
morning I heard, from the farther side of a
wooded headland, a new note suggestive of
a wild cat or possibly a lynx. My Greek
servant tried in his patois to explain the
unseen owner of the mysterious voice, but it
was only when a small gull suddenly came
paddling round the corner that I realised my
mistake.

In addition to being at home on the seashore,[94]
and particularly in estuaries and where
the coast is rocky, gulls are a familiar sight
in the wake of steamers at the beginning and
ending of the voyage, as well as following
the plough and nesting in the vicinity of
inland meres and marshes. The black-headed
kind is peculiarly given to bringing up its
family far from the sea, just as the salmon
ascends our rivers for the same purpose.
It is not perhaps a very loving parent, seeing
that the mortality among young gulls, many
of which show signs of rough treatment by
their elders, is unusually great. On most
lakes rich in fish these birds have long
established themselves, and they were, I
remember, as familiar at Geneva and Neuchâtel
as along the shores of Lake Tahoe in
the Californian Sierras, itself two hundred
miles from the Pacific and more than a mile
above sea-level. Gulls also follow the plough
in hordes, not always to the complete satisfaction
of the farmer, who is, not unreasonably,
sceptical when told that they seek wireworms
only and have no taste for grain. Unfortunately
the ordinary scarecrow has no terror
for them, and I recollect, in the neighbourhood[95]
of Maryport, seeing an immense number
of gulls turning up the soil in close proximity
to several crows that, dangling from gibbets,
effectually kept all black marauders away.

Young gulls are, to the careless eye, apt
to look larger than their parents, an illusion
possibly due to the optical effect of their
dappled plumage, and few people unfamiliar
with these birds in their succeeding moults
readily believe that the dark birds are younger
than the white. Down in little Cornish harbours
I have sometimes watched these young
birds turned to good account by their lazy
elders, who call them to the feast whenever
the ebbing tide uncovers a heap of dead
pilchards lying in three or four feet of water,
and then pounce on them the moment they
come to the surface with their booty. The
fact is that gulls are not expert divers. The
cormorant and puffin and guillemot can
vanish at the flash of a gun, reappearing far
from where they were last seen, and can
pursue and catch some of the swiftest fishes
under water. Some gulls, however, are able
to plunge farther below the surface than
others, and the little kittiwake is perhaps the[96]
most expert diver of them all, though in no
sense at home under water like the shag.
I have often, when at anchor ten or fifteen
miles from the land, and attended by the
usual convoy of seabirds that invariably
gather round fishing-boats, amused myself by
throwing scraps of fish to them and watching
the gulls do their best to plunge below the
surface when some coveted morsel was going
down into the depths, and now and again a
little Roman-nose puffin would dive headlong
and snatch the prize from under the gulls’
eyes. Most of the birds were fearless enough;
only an occasional “saddleback”—the
greater black-backed gull of the text-books—knowing
the hand of man to be against it for
its raids on game and poultry, would keep at
a respectful distance.

Considered economically, the smaller gulls
at any rate have more friends than enemies,
and they owe most of the latter not so much
to their appetites, which set more store by
offal and carrion than by anything of greater
value, as to their exceedingly dirty habits.
These unclean fowl are in fact anything but
welcome in harbours given over in summer[97]
to smart yachting craft; and I remember
how at Avalon, the port of Santa Catalina
Island (Cal.), various devices were employed
to prevent them alighting. Boats at their
moorings were festooned with strips of bunting,
which apparently had the requisite effect,
and the railings of the club were protected by
a formidable armour of nails. On the credit
side of their account with ourselves, seagulls
are admittedly assiduous scavengers, and
their services in keeping little tidal harbours
clear of decaying fish which, if left to accumulate,
would speedily breed a pestilence, cannot
well be overrated. The fishermen, though they
rarely molest them, do not always refer to
the birds with the gratitude that might be
expected, yet they are still further in their
debt, being often apprised by their movement
of the whereabouts of mackerel and pilchard
shoals, and, in thick weather, getting many a
friendly warning of the whereabouts of outlying
rocks from the hoarse cries of the gulls
that have their haunts on these menaces to
inshore navigation.

Seagulls are not commonly made pets of,
the nearest approach to such adoption being[98]
an occasional pinioned individual enjoying
qualified liberty in a backyard. Their want
of popularity is easily understood, since they
lack the music of the canary and the mimicry
of parrots. That they are, however, capable
of appreciating kindness has been demonstrated
by many anecdotes. The Rev. H. A.
Macpherson used to tell a story of how a
young gull, found with a broken wing by the
children of some Milovaig crofters, was
nursed back to health by them until it eventually
flew away. Not long after it had gone,
one of the children was lost on the hillside,
and the gull, flying overhead, recognised one
of its old playmates and hovered so as to
attract the attention of the child. Then, on
being called, the bird settled and roosted on
the ground beside him. An even more remarkable
story is told of a gull taken from the
nest, on the coast of county Cork, and brought
up by hand until, in the following spring, it
flew away in the company of some others of
its kind that passed over the garden in which
it had its liberty. The bird’s owner reasonably
concluded that he had seen the last of his
protégée, and great was his astonishment[99]
when, in the first October gale, not only did
the visitor return, tapping at the dining-room
window for admission, as it had always done,
but actually brought with it a young gull,
and the two paid him a visit every autumn
for a number of years.

On either side of the gulls, and closely associated
with them in habits and in structure,
is a group of birds equally characteristic of
the open coast, the skuas and terns. The skuas,
darker and more courageous birds, are familiar
to those who spend their August holiday
sea-fishing near the Land’s End, where,
particularly on days when the east wind
brings the gannets and porpoises close inshore,
the great skua may be seen at its favourite
game of swooping on the gulls and making
them disgorge or drop their launce or pilchard,
which the bird usually retrieves before it
reaches the water. This act of piracy has
earned for the skua its West Country sobriquet
of “Jack Harry,” and against so fierce
an onslaught even the largest gull, though
actually of heavier build than its tyrant, has
no chance and seldom indeed seems to offer
the feeblest resistance. These skuas rob their[100]
neighbours in every latitude; and even in the
Antarctic one kind, closely related to our own,
makes havoc among the penguins, an episode
described by the late Dr. Wilson, one of the
heroes of the ill-fated Scott expedition.

Far more pleasing to the eye are the graceful
little terns, or “sea-swallows,” fairylike
creatures with red legs and bill, long pointed
wings and deeply forked tail, which skim
the surface of the sea or hawk over the
shallows of trout streams in search of dragonflies
or small fish. It is not a very rare experience
for the trout-fisherman to hook a
swallow which may happen to dash by at
the moment of casting; but a much more
unusual occurrence was that of a tern, on a
well-known pool of the Spey, actually mistaking
a salmon-fly for a small fish and
swooping on it, only to get firmly hooked by
the bill. Fortunately for the too venturesome
tern the fisherman was a lover of birds, and
he managed with some difficulty to reel it in
gently, after which it was released none the
worse for its mistake.

[103]

BIRDS IN THE CORN

More than one of our summer visitors,
like the nightingale and cuckoo, are
less often seen than heard, but certainly the
most secretive hider of them all is the landrail.
This harsh-voiced bird reaches our shores in
May, and it was on the last of that month that
I lately heard its rasping note in a quiet park
not a mile out of a busy market town on the
Welsh border, and forgave its monotone because,
more emphatically than even the
cuckoo’s dissyllable, it announced that,
at last, “summer was icumen in.” This
feeble-looking but indomitable traveller is
closely associated during its visit with the
resident partridge. They nest in the same
situations, hiding in the fields of grass and
standing corn, and eventually being flushed in
company by September guns walking abreast
through the clover-bud. Sport is not the theme
of these notes, and it will therefore suffice to
remark in passing on the curious manner in
which even good shots, accustomed to bring
down partridges with some approach to[104]
certainty, contrive to miss these lazy, flapping
fowl when walking them up. Dispassionately
considered, the landrail should be a bird that
a man could scarcely miss on the first occasion
of his handling a gun; in cold fact, it often
survives two barrels apparently untouched.
This immunity it owes in all probability to
its slow and heavy flight, since those whose
eyes are accustomed to the rapid movement
of partridges are apt to misjudge the allowance
necessary for such a laggard and to fire
in front of it. It is difficult to realise that,
whereas the strong-winged partridge is a
stay-at-home, the deliberate landrail has
come to us from Africa and will, if spared by
the guns, return there.

Perhaps the most curious and interesting
habit recorded of the landrail is that of
feigning death when suddenly discovered, a
method of self-defence which it shares with
opossums, spiders, and in fact other animals
of almost every class. It will, if suddenly
surprised by a dog, lie perfectly still and
betray no sign of life. There is, however, at
least one authentic case of a landrail actually
dying of fright when suddenly seized, and it[105]
is a disputed point whether the so-called
pretence of death should not rather be regarded
as a state of trance. Strict regard for
the truth compels the admission that on
the only occasion on which I remember
taking hold of a live corncrake the bird, so
far from pretending to be dead, pecked my
wrist heartily.

Just as the countryfolk regard the wryneck
as leader of the wandering cuckoos, and the
short-eared owl as forerunner of the woodcocks,
so the ancients held that the landrail
performed the same service of pioneer to the
quail on its long journeys over land and sea.
Save in exceptional years, England is not
visited by quail in sufficient numbers to lend
interest to this aspect of a bird attractive on
other grounds, but the coincidence of their
arrival with us is well established.

The voice of the corncrake, easily distinguished
from that of any other bird of our
fields, may be approximately reproduced by
using a blunt saw against the grain on hard
wood. So loud is it at times that I have heard
it from the open window of an express train,
the noise of which drowned all other birdsong,[106]
and it seems remarkable that such a
volume of sound should come from a throat
so slender. Yet the rasping note is welcome
during the early days of its arrival, since,
just as the cuckoo gave earlier message of
spring, so the corncrake, in sadder vein,
heralds the ripeness of our briefer summer.

The East Anglian name “dakker-hen”
comes from an old word descriptive of the
bird’s halting flight; and indeed to see a landrail
drop, as already mentioned, after flying
a few yards, makes one incredulous when
tracing its long voyages on the map. In the
first place, however, it should be remembered
that the bird does not drop back in the grass
because it is tired, but solely because it knows
the way to safety by running out of sight.
In the second, the apparent weakness of its
wings is not real. Quails have little round
wings that look ill adapted to long journeys.
I have been struck by this times and again
when shooting quail in Egypt and Morocco,
yet of the quail’s fitness for travel there has
never, since Bible days, been any question.

The landrail is an excellent table bird.
Personally I prefer it to the partridge, but[107]
this is perhaps praising it too highly. Legally
of course it is “game,” as a game licence must
be held by anyone who shoots it; and,
though protected in this country only under
the Wild Birds Act, Irish law extends this by
a month, so that it may not be shot in that
country after the last day of January. Like
most migratory birds, its numbers vary
locally in different seasons, and its scarcity in
Hampshire, to which White makes reference,
has by no means been maintained of recent
years, as large bags have been recorded in
every part of that county.

The common partridge is—at any rate for
the naturalist—a less interesting subject than
its red-legged cousin, which seems to have
been first introduced from France (or possibly
from the island of Guernsey, where it no
longer exists) in the reign of Charles II.
That this early experiment was not, however,
attended by far-reaching results seems probable,
since early in the reign of George III
we find the Marquis of Hertford and other
well-known sporting landowners making fresh
attempts, the stock of “Frenchmen” being
renewed from time to time during the next[108]
fifty years, chiefly on the east side of England,
where they have always been more in evidence
than farther west. In Devon and Cornwall,
indeed, the bird is very rare, and in Ireland
almost unknown.

Its red legs stand it in good stead, for it
can run like a hare, and in this way it often
baffles the guns. It is not, however, so much
its reluctance to rise that has brought it into
disrepute with keepers as its alleged habit of
ousting the native bird, in much the same
way as the “Hanover” rat has superseded
the black aboriginal, although far from the
“Frenchman” driving the English partridge
off the soil, there appears to be even no truth
in the supposed hostility between the two,
since they do not commonly affect the same
type of country; and even when they meet
they nest in close proximity and in comparative
harmony. Nevertheless the males,
even of the same species, are apt to be
pugnacious in the breeding season.

Both the partridge and landrail run serious
risk from scythe and plough while sitting on
the nest. Landrails have before now been
decapitated by the swing of the scythe, and[109]
a case is on record in which a sitting partridge,
seeing that the plough was coming dangerously
near her nest, actually removed the whole
clutch of eggs, numbering over a score, to
the shelter of a neighbouring hedge. This was
accomplished, probably with the help of the
male, during the short time it took the plough
to get to the end of the field and back, and
is a remarkable illustration of devotion and
ingenuity. Not for nothing indeed is the
partridge a game bird, for it has been seen to
attack cats, and even foxes, in defence of the
covey; and I have seen, in the MS. notes of
the second Earl of Malmesbury, preserved in
the library at Heron Court, mention of one
that drove off a carrion crow that menaced
the family. Both partridge and landrail sit
very close, particularly when the time of
hatching is near, and Charles St. John saw a
partridge, which his dog, having taken off
the nest, was forced to drop, none the worse
for her adventure, go straight back to her
duties; though, as he adds, if it had not been
that she knew that the eggs were already
chipping she would in all probability have
deserted her post for good and all.[110]

Whether or not France is to be regarded as
the original home of the “red leg,” the fact
remains that in that country it is becoming
scarcer every year, its numbers being maintained
only in Brittany, Calvados, Orne, and
Sarthe. Its distribution in Italy is equally
capricious, for it is virtually restricted to
the rocky slopes of the Apennines, the Volterrano
Hills in Tuscany, and the coast ranges
of Elba. It seems therefore that in Continental
countries, as well as with us, the bird extends
its range reluctantly. Game-preservers seem,
however, to agree that partridges and pheasants
are, beyond a certain point, incompatible
as, with a limited supply of natural food, the
smaller bird goes to the wall. Like most
birds, partridges grow bold when pressed by
cold and hunger, and I recollect hearing of a
large covey being encountered ten or twelve
years ago in an open space in the heart of
the city of Frankfort.

[113]

THE MOPING OWL

Music, vocal or otherwise, is always
a matter of taste, and individual
appreciation of birdsong varies like the
rest. One man finds the cuckoo’s cry
intolerably wearisome. Another sees no
romance in the gargling of doves, while
comparatively few care for the piercing
scream of the starling or the rasping note
of the corncrake. Yet few birds perform to a
more hostile audience than the owl. I say
advisedly “the owl,” since the vast majority
of people make no distinction whatever
between our three resident kinds of owl, not
to mention at least half a dozen more visitors.
Some excuse for such carelessness might
perhaps be found in the similar flight and
habits of different owls, but it might have
been thought that greater measure of individual
recognition on their own merits
would have been conceded to birds that
range in size from the dimensions of a sparrow
to those of a duck. But no; an owl is just
an owl. Why the soft and haunting cry of[114]
these birds should not merely displease, but
actually alarm, so many people unaccustomed
to such sounds of the gloaming and darkness
it would be difficult to say; but the voice of
owls may possibly owe some of its disturbing
effect to contrast with their silent flight,
which, thanks to their fluffy plumage, with
its broad quills and long barbs, prevents their
making much more noise than ghosts when
hunting rats and mice in moonlit fields. Only
one other English bird has so quiet a flight,
and that is the nightjar, another creature of
the darkness, which, though no cousin to
these nocturnal birds of prey, is known in
some parts of the country as the “fern-owl.”
Visitors unprepared for the eerie woodland
music of these autumn nights shudder when
they hear the cry of the owl, as if it suggested
midnight crime. For myself I have more
agreeable associations, since I never hear
one of these birds without recalling a gallant
fight I once had with a big Tweed salmon in
the weak light of a young moon, while three
owls hooted amid the ghostly ruins of Norham
Castle. Yet, even apart from this wholly
agreeable memory, I find nothing unpleasant[115]
in their music, and can readily conceive that
the moping owl may sing to his mate as
passionately as Philomel.

Not only is there the popular lack of distinction
between one owl and another
already referred to, but scientific ornithologists
have displayed similar want of finality
in classifying these birds. There are (as in
seals) eared and earless owls, though the
so-called “ears” in the birds are not actually
ears at all, but tufts of feathers that give
rather the impression of horns. There are
bare-legged owls and owls with feather
stockings. There are owls that fly by day
and owls that fly by night, though this is a
less satisfactory distinction than that between
the diurnal butterflies and nocturnal
moths. Any reliable classification of owls
must, in short, rest on certain structural
bony differences of interest only to the student
of anatomy. Nearly all these birds are able
to turn the outer toe completely round, and
most of them, also, have very keen hearing,
which must be an invaluable aid when
hunting small animals in the dark.

Did the ancients actually regard the owl[116]
as a wise bird, or was the fashion of depicting
it in the following of Minerva merely dictated
by the presence of these birds on the Akropolis?
It seems hardly conceivable that they
could so have blundered as to call the owls
that we know clever birds; and the alternative
assumption that owlish intellect can
have appreciably changed in the interval is
even less acceptable. It is probable that too
much significance need not be attached to
such association between the Greek goddess
of wisdom and her attendant owls, for Hindu
symbolism represented Ganesa, god of wisdom,
with the head of an elephant, yet that
animal, which the natives of India know
better than the men of any other race, has
never figured in their folklore as a type noted
for its cunning. About the owl as we know
it to-day, with its spectacled face and blinking
eyes, there is nothing strikingly intelligent,
and schoolboy slang, in which the word does
duty as synonymous with foolishness, discovers
a more accurate appreciation of these
birds.

Seen at its worst, when surprised in the
glare of daylight and mobbed by a furious[117]
rabble of little birds, an owl looks a helpless
fool indeed, though this is not the proper
moment to judge of the bird’s possibilities
under happier circumstances. Why these
small fowl should bully it at all is one of those
woodland problems that no one has yet
solved. The first, and obvious, explanation
is that they know it for their enemy, and it
may be indeed that owls commit depredations
on the nests of wild birds of which we, who
academically regard their food as consisting
of rats, bats and mice—or, in the case of
larger species, of young game and leverets—have
no inkling. If however such is the case,
it is strange that the habit should have been
overlooked by those who have paid close
attention to this curious and interesting
group. Bird-catchers, at any rate, without
troubling to inquire into the reason, turn
the instinct to profitable account, and in
some parts of the country a stuffed owl is
an important item of their stock-in-trade.

The majority of owls that either reside
in or visit these islands are benefactors of
the farmer, and should be spared. The larger
eagle-owl, and snowy owl eat more expensive[118]
food, though, seeing that they come to us—at
any rate in the south country—only in
winter, and even then irregularly, they can
do no damage to young game birds, and are
probably incapable of capturing old. The
worst offender among the residents is the
tawny owl, to which I find the following
reference in the famous Malmesbury MSS.:
“Common here … a great destroyer of
young game and leverets … they sit in
ivy bushes during the day, and I have
known one remain, altho’ its mate was killed,
in the same tree, in such a state of torpor
did it appear to be….” The screech owl is
a harmless bird and a terror to mice, and
any doubt as to its claim on the farmer’s
hospitality would at once be removed by
cursory examination of the undigested pellets
which, in common with hawks, these birds
cast up after their meals.

On the other hand, there is sometimes good
reason for modifying any plea for kindness
to owls. Handsome is as handsome does,
and many of these birds are, during the
nesting season, not only savage in defence
of their young, but actually so aggressive[119]
as to make unprovoked attack on all and
sundry who unwittingly approach closer to
the tree than these devoted householders
think desirable. Accounts of this troublesome
mood in nesting owls come from several
parts of the country, and notably from
Wales. In one case on record a pair of barn
owls had their home in a tree overlooking
Milford Haven, and the vicinity of the nest
soon became dangerous. The male owl tore
a boy’s ear, knocked a man down, and
attacked numerous human beings and dogs
that made use of a path leading past the
tree; and these episodes were in fact of
daily occurrence until some one shot the
bird. Another pair of barn owls nested in a
wood on the shore of Menai Strait, and in
this case the young birds managed to fall
out of the nest, and lay on the ground in
full view of a public right of way. Why the
old birds did not put their offspring back
in the nest no one knew. Possibly they
realised that the talons, which so efficiently
gripped rats, might not prove gentle enough
for the transport of owlets. At any rate,
whatever their reason, they left the young[120]
birds on the ground, feeding them in that
position, and flew at everyone who passed
that way, clawing face and ears, and eventually
establishing a reign of terror. Another
owl behaved in somewhat similar fashion in
a spinney close to Axmouth, South Devon,
punishing a coastguard so severely that the
man took to his heels. Such determined
tactics in defence of the young are the more
singular when we remember that owls are,
in normal circumstances, shy and retiring
birds. Yet they occasionally seem to be
possessed by more sociable instincts, in proof
of which one of the long-eared kind has been
seen feeding in the company of tame hawks;
a pair of owls once nested in a dovecote
close to a keeper’s lodge in the Highlands;
and wild owls have been known to pay
nightly visits to a cage in the Botanic Gardens
at Launceston (Tasmania), in order to bring
food to their captive friends.

Even apart from these rigorous measures
of defence, the nesting habits of owls are
not without interest. The majority lay
their eggs in either hollow trees or ruins, and
it is worth remark that these nocturnal[121]
birds bring up their young in darkness,
whereas the hawks—birds of daylight—rear
theirs in open nests, high up in trees or on
rocky ledges, in the full glare of the sun.
One owl indeed habitually burrows in the
prairies and pampas, in the curious company
of marmots and rattlesnakes, and this
burrowing habit is also, in some parts of the
United States, adopted by the common
barn owl. Owls generally brood from the
laying of the first egg, with the obvious
result that young birds in various stages of
plumage are found together in the nest.
It has been suggested that the body of the
first to leave the egg helps to keep the unhatched
eggs warm while the parents are
away foraging, else its presence would be a
serious handicap. The first little owl to hatch
out is usually ready to leave the nest soon
after the arrival of the last, though these
chicks come into the world more helpless
even than the majority of birds.

[125]

WATERFOWL

Had these notes been written from the
standpoint of sport, the three familiar
groups of birds, which together make up this
world-wide aquatic family, might better
have borne their alternative title “wildfowl”
with its covert sneer at the hand-reared
pheasant and artificially encouraged partridge
that, between them, furnish so much
comfortable sport to those with no fancy for
the arduous business of the mudflats. It is
true that, of late years, the mallard has, in
experienced hands, made a welcome addition
to the bag in covert shooting, as those will
remember who have shot the Lockwood Beat
on the last day of the shoot at Nuneham;
and there is historic evidence of “wild”
duck having been reared for purposes of
sport with hawks in the reign of Charles I.
Yet such armchair shooting of wildfowl was
ignored by Colonel Hawker and the second
Earl of Malmesbury, both of whom, gunning
in the creeks and estuaries of the south coast,
made immense bags of ducks and geese,[126]
working hard for every bird and displaying
Spartan indifference to the rigours of wintry
weather. To hardy sportsmen of their type,
wildfowl offer red-letter days with punt or
shoulder guns, not to be dreamt of under the
ægis of the gamekeeper.

In this country, at any rate, we associate
the V-shaped companies of wigeon and
gaggles of geese with an ice-bound landscape,
though in exceptional years, even where
they no longer stay to breed, these night-flying
northerners linger to the coming of
spring, and Hawker noticed the curious
apparition of grey geese and swallows in
company on the first day of April, 1839.
This wedge formation of flight over land and
sea is not only peculiar to these waterfowl,
but is not apparently adopted by any other
long distance migrants. No satisfactory
explanation of their preference for flying in
this order has been found, but it is thought to
lessen the air resistance, which must be a
consideration for these short-pinioned fowl
that weigh heavy in proportion to their displacement
and at the same time lack the
tremendous spread of wing that enables the[127]
wandering albatross to soar for days together
over the illimitable ocean. With one noticeable
exception, these waterfowl exhibit a
more extraordinary range of size and weight
than any other family of birds, from the
whooper swan, five feet long and twenty-five
pounds on the scales, down to the little teal,
with an overall measurement of only fourteen
inches and a weight that does not exceed as
many ounces. The only other family of birds
running to such extremes is that of the birds
of prey, which include at once the stately
condor of the Andes with its wing-spread of
fifteen feet, and the miniature red-legged
falconet of India and adjoining countries,
in which the same measurement would
scarcely reach as many inches.

Since even game birds are derisively referred
to as “tame” only by those ignorant of
the facts, the birds now under notice differ in
this respect from all those previously dealt
with; and they are geographically apart,
again, from our other domesticated animals,
since they are not, like the barndoor fowl
and most of the rest, of Asiatic origin, but
must often, in the grey of a winter morning,[128]
be conscious of their near relations flying at
liberty across the sky. The geese and ducks
have been remarkably transformed by the
process of domestication, and a comparison
between those of the farmyard and their
kindred in the marshes should illustrate not
only the relative value of most virtues, but
also the all-importance of Aristotle’s how,
when and where. Strictly speaking, no doubt,
the tame birds have degenerated, both
mentally and physically, as surely as the
tame ass. They have lost the acute perceptions
and swift flight of their wild relations.
Economically, on the other hand, they are
immeasurably improved, since the farmer,
indifferent to the more inspiring personality
of the grey goose and the mallard, merely
wants his poultry to be greedy and stupid,
fattening themselves incessantly for Leadenhall
and easily captured when required.

Between swans, geese and ducks there is
little anatomical difference, save in the
matter of size. The swans are the giants of
the race, and the swans of three continents
are white. It was left for Australia, land of
topsy-turveydom, to produce a black swan[129]
(I spare the reader the obvious classical tag),
and this remarkable bird, first observed by
Europeans in the early days of 1697, was
quickly brought to Europe and figures in the
earliest list of animals shown in the London
Zoological Gardens. All these birds have a
curious trick of hissing when angry, and
this habit, perhaps because it is usually accompanied
by a deliberate stretching of the
neck to its full length, is seriously regarded
by some as conscious mimicry of snakes, a
proposition that must be left to individual
taste, but that strikes me as somewhat far-fetched.
At any rate, it gives to these birds
a formidable air, and, though the current
belief in its power of breaking a man’s arm
with a blow from its wing is probably unwarranted,
an angry swan, disturbed on its
nest, is an awesome apparition of which I
have twice taken hurried leave. On the first
occasion, I had nothing but a valuable
camera with me, and it was, in fact, after a
futile attempt to photograph the bird on the
nest that I was moved to seek the boat and
push off from the little island in the Upper
Thames on which it had its home. The other[130]
encounter was on a Devonshire trout stream,
and my only weapon was a fragile trout rod.
The certainty that discretion is, under these
circumstances, the better part of valour is
emphasised by the knowledge that any violence
to the bird would probably lead to a
prosecution. Even the smaller geese can inspire
fear when they dash hissing at intruders;
hence, no doubt, the nursemaid’s favourite
reproach of children too frightened to “say
bo to a goose,” an expression made classical
by Swift.

The majority of these waterfowl are insectivorous
in the nursery stage and vegetarian
when full grown. Fish forms an inappreciable
portion of their food, with the two
notorious exceptions of the goosander and
merganser, though anglers are much exercised
over the damage, real or alleged, done
by these birds to their favourite roach and
dace in the Thames. These swans belong
for the most part to either the Crown or the
Dyers’ and Vintners’ Companies, and the
practice of “uppings,” which consists in
marking the beaks of adult birds and pinioning
the cygnets, is still, though shorn of some[131]
of its former ceremonial, observed some time
during the month of June.

Swans, like both of the other groups, are
distinguished by a separate name for either
sex: pen and cob for the swan, gander and
goose, drake and duck, and the figurative
use of some of these terms in such popular
sayings as “making ducks and drakes of
money,” “sauce for the goose,” etc., is too
familiar to call for more than passing mention.

Nearly all these waterfowl, though seen
on dry land to much the same disadvantage
as fish out of water, are exceedingly graceful
in either air or water, though not all ducks are
as capable of diving as the name would imply.
The proverbial futility of a wild goose
chase recognises the pace of these birds on
the wing, which, though, in common with
that of some other birds, popularly exaggerated,
is considerably faster than, owing to
their short wings and heavy build, might
appear to the careless observer.

Ducks have a curious habit of adding down
to the nest after the eggs are laid and before
incubation, and this provision of warm packing
is turned to account in Iceland and other[132]
breeding places of the eider duck, commercially
the most valuable of all ducks. The
nest is robbed of this down once before the
eggs hatch out, with the result that the
female plucks another store from her own
breast, supplemented if necessary from the
body of the drake. The sitting bird is then
left in peace till the nest has fulfilled its
purpose, when the remaining down is likewise
removed. This down, which combines
warmth and lightness, gives a high market
value to the eider, which, throughout Scandinavian
countries is strictly protected by
law and even more effectually by public
opinion.

The majority of ornamental ducks interbreed
freely in captivity. Those who, apparently
on reliable evidence, distinguish
between the polygamous habit in tame ducks
and the constancy of the mallard and other
wild kinds to a single mate have hastily
assumed that such hybrids are unknown in
the natural state. This, however, is incorrect,
as there have been authentic cases of crosses
between mallard and teal, pochard and scaup
and other species, such hybrids having at[133]
different times been erroneously accepted
as distinct species and named accordingly.

The wild duck’s nest is usually placed on
the ground in some sheltered spot close to
still or running water, and the ducklings
swim like corks, soon learning the proper use
of their flat little bills in gobbling up floating
insects and other waterlogged food. Occasionally
ducks nest in trees and they have
been known to take possession of a deserted
rook’s nest. There has been some discussion
as to whether, in this case, the mother conveys
her ducklings to the water in her bill, but
this has not actually been witnessed. In
cases where, as is often observed, the nest
overhangs the water, it has been suggested
that the young birds may simply be pushed
over the edge and allowed to parachute down
to the surface, as they might easily do without
risk.

Tame ducks are among the most sociable
of birds and can even display bravery when
threatened by a common enemy. The naturalist
Houssay once learnt this as the result of
a somewhat cruel experiment that he made
in order to ascertain whether ducks invariably,[134]
as alleged, fall upon a wounded comrade
and destroy it. Wishing to satisfy himself
on the point, Houssay, having come upon
some ducks in a small pond, deliberately
pelted them with stones till he had wounded
one of their number. Instead, however, of
behaving as he had been led to expect, the
rest of the ducks formed close order round
the wounded bird and sheltered it from
further harm.

Few domestic animals—none, possibly,
with the single exception of the camel—are
less suggestive of “pets” than such gross
poultry, yet even a gander, the most vicious
tempered of them all, has been known to
show lasting gratitude for an act of kindness.
The bird, which had long been the terror of
children in the little Devonshire village near
which it lived, managed one day to get
wedged in a drain, and there it would eventually
have died unseen if a passing labourer
had not seen its plight and set it at liberty.
Down to the day of its death the bird,
though nowise relinquishing its spiteful
attitude towards others, followed its rustic
benefactor about the place like a dog.

[137]

THE ROBIN REDBREAST

Of all the old proverbs that are open to
argument, few offer more material for
criticism than that which has it that a good
name is more easily lost than won; and if
ever a living creature served to illustrate
the converse to the proverbial dog with a
bad name, that creature is the companionable
little bird that we peculiarly associate with
Christmas. Traditionally, the robin is a gentle
little fellow of pious associations and with a
tender fancy for covering the unburied dead
with leaves; but in real life he is a little fire-eater,
always ready to pick a quarrel with his
less pugnacious neighbours. Yet so persistently
does his good name cling, that, while
ever ready to condemn the aggressive sparrow
for the same fault, all of us have a good word
for the robin, and in few of our wild birds
are character and reputation so divergent.

Surely, however, the most interesting
aspect of this familiar bird is its tameness,
not to say attachment to ourselves, and so
marked is its complete absence of fear that
it is a wild bird in name only, and indeed[138]
few cage birds are ever so bold as to perch
on the gardener’s spade on the look-out for
the worms as he turns them up from the
damp soil. The robin might, in fact, furnish
the text of a lay-sermon on the fruits of
kindness to animals, and those dialectical
people who ask whether we are kind to the
robin because it trusts us, or whether, on
the other hand, it trusts us because we are
kind to it, ask a foolish question that raises
a wholly unnecessary confusion between
cause and effect. It is a question that those,
at any rate, who have seen the bird in countries
where it is treated differently will have
no difficulty whatever in answering. Broadly
speaking, the redbreast has the best time of
it in northern lands. This tolerance has not,
as has been suggested, any connection with
Protestantism, for such a distinction would
exclude the greater part of Ireland, where,
as it happens, the bird is as safe from persecution
as in Britain, since the superstitious
peasants firmly believe that anyone killing
a “spiddog” will be punished by a lump
growing on the palm of his hand. The untoward
fate of the robin in Latin countries[139]
bordering the Mediterranean has nothing to
do with religion, but is merely the result of
a pernicious habit of killing all manner of
small birds for the table. The sight of rows
of dead robins laid out on poulterers’ stalls
in the markets of Italy and southern France
inspires such righteous indignation in British
tourists as to make them forget for the
moment that larks are exposed in the same
way in Bond Street and at Leadenhall. In
Italy and Provence, taught by sad experience
the robin is as shy as any other small bird.
It has learnt its lesson like the robins in the
north, but the lesson is different. The most
friendly robin I ever remember meeting with,
out of England was in a garden attached to
a café in Trebizond, where, hopping round
my chair and picking up crumbs, it made me
feel curiously at home. Similar treatment of
other wild birds would in time produce the
same result, and even the suspicious starling
and stand-off rook might be taught to forget
their fear of us. The robin, feeding less on
fruit and grain than on worms and insects,
has not made an enemy of the farmer or
gardener. The common, too common, sparrow,[140]
is another fearless neighbour, but its freedom
from persecution, of late somewhat threatened
by Sparrow Clubs, is due less to affection
than to the futility of making any impression
on such hordes as infest our streets.

No act of the robin’s more forcibly illustrates
its trust in man than the manner in
which, at a season when all animals are
abnormally shy and suspicious, it makes its
nest not only near our dwellings, but actually
in many cases under the same roof as ourselves.
Letterboxes, flowerpots, old boots,
and bookshelves have all done duty, and I
even remember a pair of robins, many years
ago in Kent, bringing up two broods in an
old rat trap which, fortunately too rusty to
act, was still set and baited with a withered
piece of bacon. Pages might be filled with
the mere enumeration of curious and eccentric
nesting sites chosen by this fearless bird,
but a single proof of its indifference to the
presence of man during the time of incubation
may be cited from the MS. notebooks
of the second Earl of Malmesbury, which I
have read in the library at Heron Court.
It seems that, while the east wing of that[141]
pleasant mansion was being built, a pair of
robins, having successfully brought up one
family in one of the unfinished rooms, actually
reared a second brood in a hole made for
a scaffold-pole, though the sitting bird,
being immediately beneath a plank on which
the plasterers stood at work, was repeatedly
splashed with mortar! The egg of the robin
is subject to considerable variety of type.
I think it was the late Lord Lilford who,
speaking on the subject of a Bill for the
protection of wild birds’ eggs, then before
the House of Lords, gave it as his belief
that no ornithologist of repute would swear
to the name of a single British bird’s egg
without positively seeing one or other of
the parent birds fly off the nest. This was,
perhaps, a little overstating the difficulty of
evidence, since any schoolboy with a fancy
for birds-nesting might without hesitation
identify such pronounced types as those of
the chaffinch, with its purple blotches, the
song-thrush with its black spots on a blue
ground, or the nightingale, which resembles
a miniature olive. Eggs, on the other hand,
like those of the house sparrow, redshank[142]
and some of the smaller warblers, are so
easily confused with those of allied species
that Lord Lilford’s caution is by no means
superfluous. Ordinarily speaking, the robin’s
egg is white, with red spots at one end, but
I remember taking at Bexley, nearly thirty
years ago, an immaculate one of coffee colour.
As the robin is a favourite foster-parent
with cuckoos, my first thought was that this
might be an unusually small egg of the
parasitic bird, which was very plentiful
thereabouts. It so happened, however, that
three days after I had abstracted the first
and only egg I took from that nest, there was
a second of the same type; and, much as
I would have liked this also for my collection,
I left it in the nest so as to set all doubts at rest.
My moderation was rewarded, for no one else
found the nest, and in due course the coffee-coloured
egg produced a robin like the rest.

The robin is anything but a gregarious bird.
Its fighting temper doubtless leads it to keep
its own company, and we rarely see more
than one singing on the same bush, or seeking
for food on the same lawn. Yet, though it is
with us all the year, it is known to perform[143]
migrations within these islands, and possibly
also overseas, chiefly connected with commissariat
difficulties, and it is probable that
on such occasions many robins may travel
in company, though I have not been so fortunate
as to come across them in their pilgrimage.
Equally interesting, however, is the
habit which the bird has in Devonshire of
occasionally going down to the rocks on the
seashore, as I have often noticed in the neighbourhood
of Teignmouth and Torquay. What
manner of food the redbreast may find in
such surroundings is a mystery, but there it
certainly spends some of its time, bobbing at
the edge of the rock pools in much the same
fashion as the dipper on inland waters.

Young robins are turned adrift at an early
age to look after themselves, a result of the
parent bird always rearing two families in the
year, and in many cases even three, so that
they have not too much time to devote to
the upbringing of each. Another consequence
of this prolific habit is that the robin has to
make its nest earlier than most of our wild
birds, and its nest has, in fact, been found near
Torquay during the first week of January.[144]

It has long been the pardonable fancy of
Englishmen exiled to new homes under the
palms or pines, in the scorching tropical sun
or in the biting northern blast, to misname
all manner of conspicuous birds after well-remembered
kinds left at home in the woods
and fields of the old country. As might be
expected of a bird so characteristic of
English scenes, and so closely associated
with the festival that always brings nostalgia
to the emigrant, the robin has its share of
these namesakes, and several of them bear
little likeness to the original. In New South
Wales, I remember being shown a “robin”
which, though perhaps a little smaller, was
not unlike our own bird, but the “robin”
that was pointed out to me in the States,
from Maine to Carolina, was as big as a thrush.
Yet it had the red breast, by which, particularly
conspicuous against a background
of snow, this popular little bird is always
recognisable, the male as well as the female.
Indeed, to all outward appearance the sexes
are absolutely alike, a striking contrast to
the cock and hen pheasant, the first bird
dealt with in these notes, as this is the last.