A Year with the Birds

Here also come the Wood-pigeons, and in late summer the Turtle-doves – far worse enemies to the cottager than the rooks; here all the common herd of Blackbirds, Thrushes, Sparrows, Chaffinches, and Greenfinches, help to clear the growing vegetables of crawling pests at the rate of hundreds and thousands a day, yet the owners of the allotments have been accustomed since their childhood to destroy every winged thing that comes within their cruel reach. Short-sighted, unobservant as they are, they decline to be instructed on matters of which they know very little, but stick to what they know like limpets. For my part, I decline to protect my gooseberries and currants from the birds; their ravages are grossly exaggerated, and what they get I do not grudge them, considering their services during the rest of the year.[34 - This year (1886) I took all the sparrows’ nests on my house, and examined the young birds. Only one or two young peas and grains had been given them: they had been fed largely on insects.]

Beyond the allotments the ground falls to the brook which I mentioned as descending from Chipping Norton to join the Evenlode. This brook is dammed up just below to supply an old flour-mill, and has been so used for centuries; its bed is therefore well lined with mud, and when the water is let out, which often happens (for the mill is on its last legs, and supports itself by aid of a beer-license which is the plague of the village), this mud appears in little banks under the shelving rat-riddled lip of the meadow. Here is a chance for some of the more unusual birds, as every ornithologist would say if he saw the stream; but both water and mud are often thick with the dye from the Chipping Norton tweed-mill, and no trout will live below the point at which the poisoned water comes in. Strange to say, the poisoning does not seem to affect the birds. Two pairs of Gray Wagtails, which I seldom see in the Evenlode, passed a happy time here from July to December last year, preferring some turn of the brook where the water broke over a few stones or a miniature weir; and through August and September they were joined by several Green Sandpipers. These beautiful birds, whose departure I always regret, are on their way from their breeding-places in the North to some winter residence; they stay only a few weeks in England, and little is known about them. Many a time have I stalked them, looking far along the stream with a powerful glass in hopes of catching them at work with their long bills; each effort comes to the same provoking conclusion, the bird suddenly shooting up from beneath your feet, just at a place which you fancied you had most carefully scanned. When they first arrive they will fly only to a short distance, and the bright white of their upper tail-feathers enables you to mark them down easily for a second attempt; but after a few days they will rise high in the air, like a snipe, when disturbed, and uttering their shrill pipe, circle round and round, and finally vanish.

It should be noted that this species is called the Green Sandpiper because its legs are green; such are the wilful ways of English terminology.[35 - Mr. Aplin tells me, however, that the upper parts, in summer at least, “have a decided wash or gloss of green”: Mr. Seebohm calls it “dull olive-brown.”] It is the only Sandpiper we have, beside the common species, which invariably prefers the Evenlode, where it may every now and then be seen working its rapid way along the edge of the water, quite unconcerned at a spectator, and declining to go off like a champagne cork. Both kinds come in spring and late summer, but the Green Sandpiper is much more regular in his visits, and stays with us, in autumn at least, much longer. A stray pair found their way here last winter in a hard frost, and rose from beneath my feet as I walked along the Evenlode on December 24th. This is the only time I have ever seen them here except in the other brook; and I have very little doubt that they were total strangers to the locality. Had they ever been here before, I make bold to say that they would have gone to their old haunts.

Beyond the brook lies a magnificent meadow nearly a mile long, called the Yantle, in which, a century and a half ago, the little Warren Hastings used to lie and look up with ambitious hopes and fears at the hills and woods of Daylesford. This meadow was once doubtless the common pasture ground of the parish: it now serves as ager publicus for great numbers of winged families bred in our gardens and orchards. Goldfinches, linnets, starlings, redstarts, pipits, wagtails, white-throats, and a dozen or two of other kinds, spend their whole day here when the broods are reared. The Yellow Wagtails are always conspicuous objects; not that they are brilliantly coloured, for the young ones are mostly brown on the back, and would hardly catch an inexperienced eye, but because of the playfulness of their ways and their graceful, wavy flight. Young birds play just like kittens, or like the fox-cubs I once caught playing in Daylesford wood at the mouth of their earth, and watched for a long time as they rolled and tumbled over each other. Only yesterday (July 15, 1885) I watched a host of young willow-wrens, whitethroats, titmice, and others, sporting with each other in a willow-coppice, and mixing together without much reserve. Once I was taken aback by the sight of two young buntings at play; for a time they quite deceived me by their agility, fluttering in the air like linnets, unconscious that a single winter was to turn them into burly and melancholy buntings. The student of birds who sighs when the breeding season is over and the familiar voices are mute, is consoled by the sight of all these bright young families, happy in youth, liberty, and abundance. His knowledge, too, is immensely increased by the study of their habits and appearance. His sense of the ludicrous is also sometimes touched, as mine was yesterday when I went to see how my young swallows were getting on under the roof of an outhouse, and found them all sitting in a row on a rafter, like school-children; or when the young goldfinches in the chestnut tree grew too big for their nest, but would persist in sitting in it till they sat it all out of shape, and no one could make out how they contrived to hold on by it any longer. Young birds too, like young trout, are much less suspicious than old ones, and will often let you come quite close to them. In Magdalen Walk at Oxford the young birds delight to hop about on the gravel path, supplying themselves, I suppose, with the pebbles which they need for digestion; and here one day in July a young Robin repeatedly let me come within two yards of him, at which distance from me he picked up a fat green caterpillar, swallowed it with great gusto, and literally smacked his bill afterwards. The very close examination thus afforded me of this living young Robin disclosed a strong rufous tint on the tail-coverts, of which I can find nothing in descriptions of the bird; if this is usually the case, it should indicate a close connection with the Redstarts, the young of which resemble the young Robin also in the mottled brown of the rest of their plumage.

Our meadows are liable to flood occasionally in the winter, and also in a summer wetter than usual. One stormy day in July, some years ago, I espied two common Gulls standing in the water of a slight flood, apparently quite at home. But our Rooks found them out, and considering the Yantle sacred to themselves and such small birds as they might be graciously pleased to allow there, proceeded to worry them by flying round and round above them incessantly until the poor birds were fain to depart. Rooks are very hostile to intruders, and quite capable of continued teasing; I have watched them for a whole morning persecuting a Kestrel. No sooner did the Kestrel alight on the ground than the Rooks ‘went for it,’ and drove it away; and wherever it went they pursued it, backwards and forwards, over a space of two or three miles.

In winter the floods will sometimes freeze. One very cold day, as I was about to cross the ice-bound meadow, I saw some little things in motion at the further end, like feathers dancing about on the ice, which my glass discovered to be the tails of a family of Long-tailed Tits. They were pecking away at the ice, with their tails high in the air. As I neared them they flew away, and marking the place where they were at work, I knelt down on the ice and examined it with the greatest care. Not a trace of anything eatable was to be found. Were they trying to substitute ice for water? Not a drop of water was to be found anywhere near. I have seen Fieldfares and Redwings doing the same thing in Christ Church meadow at Oxford, but the unfrozen Cherwell was within a few yards of them.[36 - Stone-chats have been observed busy in this way near Oxford. – A. H. M.] Whether or no the Long-tails were trying to appease their thirst, I may suggest to those who feed the starving birds in winter, that they should remember that water as well as food is necessary to support life.

The Yantle is a great favourite with Plovers, Turtle-doves, and Wood-pigeons, and in the winter it is much patronized by Fieldfares and Redwings. And a day or two ago I surprised four Curlew here (March 21), on their way from the sea to their inland breeding-places. But enough of the village and its gardens and out-lying meadows; in the next chapter we will stroll further afield.

CHAPTER V.

A MIDLAND VILLAGE: RAILWAY AND WOODLAND

Beyond the Yantle we come upon a line of railway, running down from Chipping Norton to join the main line to Worcester. Just as the waters of the Evenlode are reinforced at this point in its course by the two contingent streams I described in the last chapter, so the main railway is here joined by two subsidiary lines, the one coming from Chipping Norton and the other from Cheltenham over the Cotswolds. Paradoxical as it may seem, I do not hesitate to say that this large mileage of railway within a small radius acts beneficially upon our bird-life. Let us see how this is.

In the first place, both cuttings and embankments, as soon as they are well overgrown with grass, afford secure and sunny nesting-places to a number of birds which build their nests on the ground. The Whin-chat for example, an abundant bird here every summer, gives the railway-banks its especial patronage. The predatory village-boys cannot prowl about these banks with impunity except on Sundays, and even then are very apt to miss a Whin-chat’s nest. You may see the cock-bird sitting on the telegraph wires, singing his peaceful little song, but unless you disturb his wife from her beautiful blue eggs you are very unlikely to find them in the thickening grass of May or June. And even if she is on the nest, she will sit very close; I have seen an express train fly past without disturbing her, when the nest was but six or eight feet from the rails. The young, when reared, will often haunt the railway for the rest of the summer, undismayed by the rattle and vibration which must have shaken them even when they were still within the egg. Occasionally a Wheatear will make its appearance about the railway, but I have no evidence of its breeding there; nor is the Stone-chat often to be seen here, though it is a summer visitor not far off among the hills.

Let me say incidentally that no one who has either good eyes or a good glass ought ever to confound the two Chats together. In the breeding season the fine black head of the cock Stone-chat distinguishes him at once; but even the female should never be the subject of a blunder, if the observer has been at all used to attend to the attitudes of birds. The Stone-chat sits upright and almost defiant, and is a shorter and stouter bird than the Whin-chat, which perches in an attitude of greater humility, and always seems to me to deprecate your interference rather than to defy it. And it is quite in keeping with this that the ‘chat’ of the latter is not so loud and resonant as that of the former, as I have satisfied myself after careful observation of both; the Stone-chat penetrating to my dull ears at a greater distance than his cousin.[37 - The chat of the Whin-chat is a dissyllable, ‘u-tic’; that of the Stone-chat a monosyllable, ‘chat.’ (O. V. A.)] This really means that the bill of the one, and in fact his whole muscular system, is stronger than the same in the other, and the τὸ θυμοεῖδες of his constitution is more largely developed.

If I walk alongside of the railway, as it passes between the water-meadows and the corn-fields which lie above them, divided on each side from these by a low-lying withy-bed, I always keep an eye upon the telegraph-wires ahead, knowing by long experience that they will tell me what birds are breeding or have bred about here. As autumn approaches, great numbers indeed of visitors, Swallows, Martins, Linnets, and others, will come and sun themselves here, and even tempt a Sparrow-hawk or Kestrel to beat up and down the line; but in early summer, beside the Whin-chats, and the Whitethroats nesting in great numbers in the thick quickset hedges which border the line, it is chiefly the melancholy tribe of Buntings that will attract my notice.

I trust my friends the Buntings will not take offence at being called melancholy; I cannot retract the word, except in what is now called “a parliamentary sense.” I have just been looking through a series of plates and descriptions of all the Buntings of Europe, and in almost every one of them I see the same deflected tail and listless attitude,[38 - The Meadow Bunting (Emberiza cia) seemed to me, when I met with it in Switzerland this summer, to be more lively and restless than other Buntings.] and read of the same monotonous and continually repeated note. The Buntings form in fact, though apt to be confused with one another owing to their very strong family likeness, perhaps the most clearly-marked and idiosyncratic genus among the whole range of our smaller birds. This may be very easily illustrated from our three common English species. Look at the common Corn Bunting, as he sits on the wires or the hedge-top; he is lumpy, loose-feathered, spiritless, and flies off with his legs hanging down, and without a trace of agility or vivacity; he is a dull bird, and seems to know it. Even his voice is half-hearted; it reminds me often of an old man in our village who used to tell us that he had “a wheezing in his pipes.” Near him sits a Yellow Bunting (Yellowhammer), a beautiful bird when in full adult plumage of yellow head, orange-brown back, white outer tail-feathers, and pink legs; yet even this valued old friend is apt to be untidy in the sit of his feathers, to perch in a melancholy brown study with deflected tail, and to utter the same old song all the spring and summer through. This song, however (if indeed it can be called one), is a much better one than that of the Corn Bunting, and is occasionally even a little varied.[39 - See Note B (#pgepubid00007) at the end of the volume.]

Just below, on an alder branch or withy-sapling, sits a fine cock Reed Bunting, whose jet-black head and white neck make him a conspicuous object in spite of the sparrow-like brown of his back and wings. Except in plumage, he is exactly like his relations. He will sit there, as long as you like to stay, and shuffling his feathers, give out his odd tentative and half-hearted song. Like the others he builds on or close to the ground, in this case but a few yards from the rails, and his wife, like theirs, lays eggs streaked and lined in that curious way that is peculiar to Buntings alone. I have not had personal experience of our rarer Buntings, the Ortolan, the Snow Bunting, or even the Cirl Bunting, as living birds; but all the members of this curious race seem to have the characteristics mentioned above in a greater or less degree, and also a certain hard knob in the upper mandible of the bill, which is said to be used as a grindstone for the grain and seeds which are the food of them all in the adult state.

Keeping yet awhile to the railway, let us notice that even the station itself meets with some patronage from the birds. In the stacks of coal which are built up close to the siding, the Pied Wagtails occasionally make their nests, fitting them into some hospitable hole or crevice. These, like all other nests found in or about the station, are carefully protected by the employés of the company. In a deep hole in the masonry of the bridge which crosses the line a few yards below the station, a pair of Great Titmice built their nest two years ago, and successfully brought up their young, regardless of the puffing and rattling of the trains, for the hole was in the inside of the bridge, and only some six feet from the rails of the down line. A little coppice, remnant of a larger wood cut down to make room for the railway, still harbours immense numbers of birds; here for example I always hear the ringing note of the Lesser Whitethroat; and here, until a few years ago, a Nightingale rejoiced in the density of the overgrown underwood.

A Ring-ousel, the only specimen, alive or dead, which I have seen or heard of in these parts, was found dead here one morning some years ago, having come into collision with the telegraph wires in the course of its nocturnal migration. It was preserved and stuffed by the station-master, who showed it to me as a piebald Blackbird.

A little further down the line is another bridge, in which a Blue-tit found a hole for its nest last year; this also was in the inside of the bridge, and close to the up-line. This bridge is a good place from which to watch the Tree-pipit, and listen to its charming song. All down the line, wherever it passes a wood or a succession of tall elms and ashes, these little grayish-brown birds build their nest on or close to the grassy banks, and take their station on the trees or the telegraph-wires to watch, to sing, and to enjoy themselves. A favourite plan of theirs is to utter their bright canary-like song from the very top twig of an elm, then to rise in the air, higher and higher, keeping up their energies by a quick succession of sweet shrill notes, till they begin to descend in a beautiful curve, the legs hanging down, the tail expanded and inclined upwards, and the notes getting quicker and quicker as they near the telegraph-wires or the next tree-top. When they reach the perching-place, it ceases altogether. So far as I have noticed, the one part of the song is given when the bird is on the tree, the other when it is on the wing. The perching-song, if I may call it so, is possessed by no other kind of Pipit; but the notes uttered on the wing are much the same with all the species.

The young student of birds may do well to concentrate his attention for awhile on the Pipits, and on their near relations, the Larks and the Wagtails. These three seemed to form a clearly-defined group; and though in the latest scientific classification the Larks have been removed to some distance from the other two (which form a single family of Motacillidae), it must be borne in mind that this is in consequence only of a single though remarkable point of difference. Apart from definite structural characters, a very little observation will show that their habits are in most respects alike. They all place their nests on the ground; and they all walk, instead of hopping; the Larks and the Pipits sing in the air, while the Pipits and the Wagtails move their tails up and down in a peculiar manner. All are earth-loving birds, except the Tree-pipit and the Wood lark.

We may now leave the railway, and enter the woodland. Most of the birds that dwell here have been already mentioned; and I shall only mention in passing the Jays, the Magpies, and the Crows, those mischievous and predatory birds, which probably do more harm to the game in a single week of April or May, than the beautiful mice-eating Kestrel does during the whole year. They all rob the nests of the pheasants and partridges, both of eggs and young; and when I saw one day in the wood the bodies of some twenty robbers hung up on a branch, all belonging to these three species, I could not but feel that justice had been done, for it is not only game birds who are their victims. A large increase of these three species would probably have a serious result on the smaller winged population of a wood.

Among the more interesting inhabitants of the wood, there are two species which have not as yet been spoken of in these chapters – the Grasshopper Warbler and the Nightingale. The former has no right to be called a warbler, except in so far as it belongs to one of those three families mentioned in a former chapter, in which all our British ‘warblers’ are now included. It has no song, properly so called; but no one who has the luck to watch it alive, even without a detailed examination of its structure, will doubt its true relationship to the Sedge-warbler and the Reed-warbler. It is not a water-haunting bird, but still rather recalls the ways of its relations, by choosing deep ditches thickly grown with grass and reeds, and sheltered by bramble-bushes; it seems to need something to climb up and down, and to creep about in; like the sedge-birds, it seldom flies any distance, and one is tempted to fancy that all these species would gradually lose the use of their wings as genuine organs of flight, if it were not for the yearly necessities of migration.

I once had a remarkable opportunity of watching this very curious bird. It was about the beginning of May, before the leaves had fully come out; a time which is very far the best in the year for observing the smaller and shyer birds. Intent on pairing or nest-building, they have little fear, if you keep quite quiet, and you can follow their movements with a glass without danger of losing sight of them in the foliage. I was returning from a delicious morning ramble through Bruerne wood, and was just rounding the last corner of it, where a small plantation of baby saplings was just beginning to put on leaf, when my ear caught the unmistakable ‘reel’ of this bird. Some other birds of the warbler kind, Wren, Robin, Sedge-bird, can produce a noise like the winding-up of a watch, but none of these winds it up with such rapidity, or keeps it going so long as the Grasshopper Warbler, nor does any cricket or grasshopper perform the feat in exactly the same way. Our bird’s noise – we cannot call it a voice – is like that of a very well-oiled fisherman’s reel,[40 - Or like a delicate electric bell, heard at some distance, while the door of your room is slowly opened and again closed.] made to run at a very rapid rate, and its local name of the ‘reel-bird’ is a perfectly just and good one.

I was on the outside of a little hedge, and the noise proceeded from the saplings on its further side. In order to see the bird I must get over the hedge, which could not be done without a scrunching and crackling of branches sufficient to frighten away a much less wary bird than this. There seemed, however, to be no other chance of getting a sight of the bird, so through the hedge I went; and tumbled down on the other side with such a disturbance of the branches that I gave up all hope of attaining my object.

Great was my astonishment when I saw only a few yards from me a little olive-brown bird creeping through the saplings, which I knew at once to be the Grasshopper Warbler. I then took up a fixed position, the little bird after a minute or two proceeded to do the same, and for some time I watched it with my glass, as it sat on a twig and continued to utter its reel. It was only about ten paces from me, and the field-glass which I carried placed it before me as completely as if it had been in my hands. What struck me most about it was its long supple olive-green neck, which was thrust out and again contracted as the reel was being produced; this being possibly, as I fancy, the cause of the strange ventriloquistic power which the bird seems to possess; for even while I watched it, as the neck was turned from side to side, the noise seemed to be projected first in one direction and then in another.[41 - Another cause is doubtless the crescendo and diminuendo which the bird uses: see a valuable note in The Birds of Cumberland, by the Rev. H. A. Macpherson and W. Duckworth.] The reel was uttered at intervals, and as a general rule did not continue for more than a quarter of a minute, but one spell of it lasted for forty seconds by my watch. It is said to continue sometimes for as much as twenty minutes, but I have never been fortunate enough to hear it for anything approaching to that length of time.

Our interview was not to last very long. It unluckily happened that my little terrier, who accompanies me in all my walks, and is trained to come to heel when anything special is to be observed, had been out of sight when I broke the hedge; and now he must needs come poking and snuffing through the saplings just as if a Grasshopper Warbler were as fair game as a mole or a water rat. Nevertheless, so astonishing was the boldness of this bird that he allowed the dog to hunt about for some time around him without being in the least disconcerted.[42 - In May this year (1886) I nearly trod upon a pair of these birds, near the same wood: yet they showed no fear, allowed me to approach them within six paces, and continued to reel close at hand.] When at last he made off he retreated in excellent order, merely half flying, half creeping with his fan-like tail distended, until he disappeared in the thick underwood. I would have taken the dog under my arm and tried for another interview, which no doubt he would have given me, if I had not been obliged to depart in order to catch a train to Oxford. This bird was undoubtedly a male who was awaiting the arrival of the females: just at this time they not only betray themselves more easily by the loudness of their reel, but also are well known to be less shy of showing themselves than at any other period of their stay with us. This is the case with most of our summer migrants. Only a few minutes before I found this bird, I had been watching a newly-arrived cock Nightingale, who had not yet found his mate, and was content to sing to me from the still leafless bough of an oak-tree, without any of the shyness he would have shown two or three weeks later.

We have every spring a few pairs of Nightingales in our woods. Except when a wood has been cleared of its undergrowth, they may always be found in the same places, and if the accustomed pair is missing in one it is almost sure to be found in another. The edge of a wood is the favourite place, because the bird constantly seeks its food in the open; also perhaps because the best places for the nest are often in the depth of an overgrown hedge, where the cover is thicker than inside a wood. Sitting on the sunny side of such a wood, I have often had ample opportunity of hearing and watching a pair: for though always somewhat shy, they are not frightened at a motionless figure, and will generally show themselves if you wait for them, on some prominent bough or bit of railing, or as they descend on the meadow in quest of food.

I am always surprised that writers on birds have so little to say of the beauty of the Nightingale’s form and colouring. It is of the ideal size for a bird, neither too small to be noticed readily, nor so large as the somewhat awkwardly built Blackbird or Starling. All its parts are in exquisite proportion; its length of leg gives it a peculiarly sprightly mien, and tail and neck are formed to a perfect balance. Its plumage, as seen, not in an ornithologist’s cabinet, but in the living and moving bird a little distance from you, is of three hues, all sober, but all possessing that reality of colour which is so satisfying to the eye on a sunny day. The uniform brown of the head, the wings, and the upper part of the back, is much like the brown of the Robin, a bird which in some other respects strangely resembles the Nightingale; but either it is a little brighter, or the larger surface gives it a richer tone. In both birds the brown is set off against a beautiful red; but this in the Nightingale is only distinct when it flies or jerks the tail, the upper feathers of which, as well as the longer quills, and especially the innermost ones, are of that deep but bright russet that one associates with an autumn morning. And throat and breast are white; not pure white, but of the gentle tone of a cloud where the gray begins to meet the sunshine.

In habit the Nightingale is peculiarly alert and quick, not restless in a petty way, like the fidgety Titmice or the lesser warblers, but putting a certain seriousness and intensity into all it does. Its activity is neither grotesque nor playful, but seems to arise from a kind of nervous zeal, which is also characteristic of its song. If it perches for an instant on the gorse-bush beneath the hedgerow which borders the wood, it jerks its tail up, expands its wings, and is off in another moment. If it alights on the ground, it rears up head and neck like a thrush, hops a few paces, listens, darts upon some morsel of food, and does not dally with it. As it sings, its whole body vibrates, and the soft neck feathers ripple to the quivering of the throat.

I need not attempt to describe that wonderful song, if song it is, and not rather an impassioned recitative. The poets are often sadly to seek about it; Wordsworth at least seems to have caught its spirit: —

“O Nightingale, thou surely art
A creature of a fiery heart.”

And Wordsworth, as he tells us in the next stanza, found the cooing of the stock-dove more agreeable to his pensive mind. I never yet heard a Nightingale singing dolefully, as the poets will have it sing;[43 - As in Milton’s “most musical, most melancholy.” But as Coleridge remarks in a note to his own poem of the Nightingale, in Sibylline Leaves, these words of Milton are spoken in the character of the melancholy man, and have therefore a dramatic rather than a descriptive propriety. Coleridge’s own conception of the song is the true one and most happily expressed.] its varied phrases are all given out con brio, and even that marvellous crescendo on a single note, which no other bird attempts, conveys to the mind of the listener the fiery intensity of the high-strung singer. It is a pity to compare the songs of birds; our best singers, Thrush, Blackbird, Blackcap, Robin, and Garden-warbler, all have a vocal beauty of their own; but it may safely be said that none approaches the Nightingale in fire and fervour of song, or in the combination of extraordinary power with variety of phrase. He seems to do what he pleases with his voice, yet never to play with it; so earnest is he in every utterance – and these come at intervals, sometimes even a long silence making the performance still more mysterious – that if I were asked how to distinguish his song from the rest, I should be inclined to tell my questioner to wait by a wood side till he is fairly startled by a bird that puts his whole ardent soul into his song. But if he will have a description, let him go to old Pliny’s tenth book, or rather to Philemon Holland’s translation of it, which is much better reading than the original; and there he will find the most enthusiastic of the many futile attempts to describe the indescribable.

The Nightingale’s voice is heard no more after mid-June; and from this time onwards the woods begin to grow silent, especially after early morning. For a while the Blackcap breaks the stillness, and his soft sweet warble is in perfect keeping with the quiet solitude. But as the heat increases, the birds begin to feel, as man does, that the shade of a thick wood is more oppressive than the bright sunshine of the meadows; and on a hot afternoon in July you may walk through the woodland and hardly catch a single note.

But on the outskirts of a wood, or in a grassy ‘ride,’ you may meet with life again. The Titmice will come crooning around you, appearing suddenly, and vanishing you hardly know how or whither; Wood-pigeons will dash out of the trees with that curious impetuosity of theirs, as if they were suddenly sent for on most pressing business. A Robin will perch on a branch hard by, and startle you with that pathetic soliloquy which calls up instantly to your memory the damp mist and decaying leaves of last November. The Green Woodpecker may be there, laughing at you from an elm, or possibly (as I have sometimes seen him) feeding on the ground, and looking like a gorgeous bird of the tropics.

Other birds of the Woodpecker kind are not common in our woods. The Greater Spotted Woodpecker has only once fairly shown himself to me; the Lesser Spotted Woodpecker, which I have heard country folk call the French Heckle, seldom catches the eye,[44 - A Woodpecker on a railway bridge is a curiosity. But a Lesser Spotted bird was once seen on the stonework of the bridge which spans the Chipping Norton branch line, by the Rev. S. D. Lockwood, Rector of my parish, who knows the bird well.] though to judge by the number of stuffed specimens which adorn the parlours of inns and farm-houses, it can by no means be very rare. For this name ‘heckle,’ and all its curious local variants, I may refer the reader to Professor Skeat’s most valuable etymological contribution to Newton’s Edition of Yarrell’s Birds;[45 - Vol. ii. pp. 461-463. Hickwall seems to be the recognized orthography; but I spell the word as it was pronounced.] but why, one may ask, should it be called the French Heckle? A very old game-keeper, who described to me by this name a bird which was certainly the Lesser Spotted Woodpecker, also used the expression English Heckle for the Wryneck – a bird (he said) much plainer than the French Heckle, and apt to hiss at you if you try to take its eggs. I imagine that French is here contrasted with English to indicate superior brightness and dapperness of plumage.

There is yet one bird of our woods – or rather of one wood, thickly planted with oaks – of which I have as yet said nothing. I had long suspected his presence in that wood, but my search for him was always in vain. One day in May, 1888, I luckily turned down a little by-path which led me through a forest of young ashes, and brought me out into a wide clearing carpeted with blue-bells and overshadowed by tall oaks. Here I heard a sibilant noise, which in the distance I had taken for the Grasshopper Warbler; though I had had doubts of it, as it was not prolonged for more than two or three seconds. Now also I heard, from the thick wood beyond the clearing, a series of plaintive notes, something like those of the Tree Pipit, and this stopped me again as I was turning away. I listened, and heard these notes repeated several times, feeling more and more certain each time that I had heard them before in this very wood, and suspected them to be the call-notes of the Wood-warbler, a bird with which, strangely enough, I had never had any personal acquaintance.

The sibilant noise was all this time going on close at hand. The wood was comparatively silent owing to the east wind, and I could concentrate my attention on these new voices without distraction. I noticed that the sibilation was preceded by three or four slightly longer and more distinct notes, and as this answered to my book-knowledge of the Wood-warbler, I became more and more anxious to see the bird. But he would not let me see him. And then came the puzzling plaintive notes again, as different as possible from the sibilant ones, and it became absolutely necessary to discover whether they were uttered by the same creature.

At last I thought I had made sure of the bird in one particular little thicket not more than ten or twelve yards from me, and crept on as softly as possible out of the clearing into the underwood. Of course the dead twigs crackled under my feet and the branches had to be put forcibly aside, and the voice retreated as I neared it. I thought of a certain morning in the Alps, and of a provoking and futile hunt after Bonelli’s Warbler; but pushing on a little further into a small open space, I stopped once more, and then firmly resolved not to move again.

I had a long time to wait. Sometimes the plaintive voice, but oftener the sibilant notes, would be uttered quite close to me, and the singer would stay for some time in the same bush, hidden from my sight, but near at hand. And at last, as a fisherman sees the surface of the smooth black pool in an instant broken, and then feels his fish, I caught sight of a momentary motion in the leaves not ten yards away from me. A minute later I saw the bird, and knew at once that I had the Wood-warbler before me. There was nothing now to do but to stand motionless and see more of it.

By degrees it seemed to grow used to my presence, and showed itself to me without any sign of alarm. What can be more delightful than to watch in perfect solitude and security the bird you have been looking for so long? There was the yellow throat, the delicate white breast, the characteristic streak over the eye – all plainly visible as he sat facing me; and when he kindly turned his tail to me and preened his feathers, I could see the greenish-brown back, and note the unusual length of wing. Several times, when close to me, he gave utterance to that curious ‘shivering’ sibilation (to use Gilbert White’s apt word), his bill opening wide to give the last shake, his head lifted upwards, the long wings quivering slightly, and the whole body vibrating under the effort. One thing more was needed – a visible proof that the long-drawn plaintive notes were his notes too, and this I had the pleasure of securing by a little more patience. But when my little warbler uttered these notes, his bill was not opened wide, nor did his frame vibrate with any apparent effort; they seemed rather an inward soliloquy or a secret signal (as indeed they were), and always ended up with a short note and a sudden closing of the bill, as if to say, “All’s right, that’s well over.”

Then behind me I heard the undoubted double call-note of a warbler, which probably I myself caused the little bird’s wife to utter, trespassing as I surely was in the neighbourhood of the nest. It did just cross my mind that I ought to search for that nest, but I gave up the idea almost at once, and bade adieu in peace to my new friends. They had shown themselves to me without fear, and they should have no reason to dislike me.

Beyond the woods where these birds live, we come out on scrubby fields, often full of thistles, and spotted with furze-bushes. These fields are the special favourites of the Linnets and Goldfinches; the Linnets are in great abundance, the latter, since the Wild Birds’ Act came into operation, by no means uncommon in autumn.

We cannot but pause again and again as we make our way through the gorse and brushwood, for the little Linnet in his full summer dress is hardly less beautiful than the Goldfinch, and all his ways and actions are no less cheering and attractive. The male birds differ much, perhaps according to age, in brilliancy of plumage; but a fine cock Linnet in full dress of crimson breast and crown, white wing-bars and tail-feathers, and chestnut back, is to my thinking as splendid a little bird as these islands can show. I can never forget the astonishment of a companion who hardly knew the bird, when I pointed him out a Linnet in this splendid costume one July day on a Radnorshire hill.

The ground now rises towards the hills which form the limit of our western horizon. On these hills may now and then be seen a few birds which we seldom meet with in the lower grounds, such as the Stone-chat, the Brambling, the Wheatear; but as the hills are for the most part cultivated, and abound in woods and brooks, the difference between the bird life of the uplands and the lowlands is not remarkable at any time of the year.

It may be worth while, however, to note down in outline the chief movements of the birds in our district in the course of a single year. In January, which is usually the coldest month in the year, the greater number of our birds are collected in flocks in the open country, the villages only retaining the ordinary Blackbirds, Thrushes, Robins, &c. The winter migrants are in great numbers in the fields, but they and almost all other birds will come into villages and even into towns in very severe weather. In February, villages, orchards, and gardens are beginning to receive more of the bird population, while the great flocks are beginning to break up under the influence of the approach of spring. In March the same process goes on more rapidly; the fields are becoming deserted and the gardens fuller. But meanwhile hedges, woods, thickets and streams are filling with a population from beyond the seas, some part of which penetrates even into the gardens, sharing the fruit-trees with the residents, or modestly building their nests on the ground. As a rule, though one of a very general kind, it may be laid down that our resident birds prefer the neighbourhood of mankind for nesting purposes, while the summer migrants build chiefly in the thickets and hedges of the open country; so that just at the time when Chaffinches, Greenfinches, Goldfinches, and a host of other birds are leaving the open country for the precincts of the village, their places are being taken by the new arrivals of the spring. Or if this rule be too imperfect to be worth calling a rule at all (for all the Swallow kind but one British species build in human habitations), it is at least true that if a garden offers ample security for nesting, the proportion of residents to migrants taking advantage of it will be much greater than in a wood or on a heath.

Just as the population of the open country begins to decrease in numbers in early spring, so it increases rapidly in the first weeks of summer. The young broods that have spent their infancy in or near the village now seek more extended space and richer supplies of food, and when the hay is cut, they may be found swarming in all adjacent hedges and on the prostrate swathes, while the gardens are comparatively empty. But before July is over an attentive watcher will find that his garden is visited by birds which were not born and bred there; while the residents are away in the fields, the migrants begin to be attracted to the gardens by the ripening fruits of all kinds. White-throats, Willow-warblers, Chiff-chaffs, haunt the kitchen-garden for a while, then leave it on their departure for the coast and their journey southwards. After this last little migration, the villages and gardens remain almost deserted except by the Blackbirds and Thrushes, the Robins and the Wrens, until the winter drives the wilder birds to seek the neighbourhood of man once more. Even then, unless the garden be well timbered, they will be limited to a very few species, except in the hardest weather; and it is remarkable how little variety will be found among our winter pensioners – those recipients of out-door relief, who spoil their digestions by becoming greedy over a food which is not natural to them.

This rough attempt to sketch the local migrations of birds must be understood as applying to my own village only, and to gardens which are not surrounded with extensive parks.

CHAPTER VI.

THE ALPS IN SEPTEMBER

As I observed in a former chapter, the movements of the birds of the Alps are, or ought to be, of very great interest to the ornithologist, owing partly to the wonderful variety of food and climate afforded by the gigantic structure of this mountain district, and partly to its geographical position, lying as it does in the very centre of the various routes of migration in spring and autumn.

I had long been anxious to obtain some more reliable information about these movements than I had acquired when my third chapter was written, and to obtain it as far as possible at first hand; and I eagerly seized the opportunity, in September of the present year (1886), of a visit to relations in Germany, to make a rapid détour to the Alps, about the time when the more delicate birds would be beginning to leave the higher valleys and pastures, now fast becoming too cold at night to suit their tender frames. I was able to remain only a very few days, but I saw and heard enough to occupy my attention fully during that short time, and am disposed to hope that by setting down my experiences I may attract the attention of autumn travellers to a matter which lends new interest to a hackneyed region, after the flowers have disappeared, and when the days are getting too short for ambitious mountain-climbing.