A Year with the Birds

The other bird mentioned in the lines last quoted is, and perhaps will remain, a puzzle. Mr. Rhoades makes it the Goldfinch, following the commentators, who themselves follow an old tradition which will not bear criticism, and in favour of which I can find nothing more convincing than the argument that acantha[80 - For the connection between ἄκανθα and ἀκαλανθίς see Conington’s note on Georg. iii. 338.] means in Greek a thorny or prickly tree, while the Goldfinch’s favourite food is the seed of the thistle. Let us notice, however, first, that it is not the way of the Goldfinch to sit in a thicket and sing, as Virgil describes the Acalanthis; it is a restless, lively, aërial bird, fond of singing on the wing, and by no means disposed to lurk under cover; and secondly, that the word ἄκανθα does not necessarily mean a thistle, but is equally applied to all kinds of thorny trees and shrubs,[81 - Theophrastus, for example, applies it to the Egyptian mimosa, the thorns of which lately proved so damaging to our troops in the Soudan. (Lenz, Botanik der Griechen, p. 735.)] such as the dumi in which Virgil makes the voice of the bird resound.

Where did Virgil get this Greek word acanthis[82 - There is another reading, ‘et acanthida.’] or acalanthis, which he thus appropriated to express some bird familiar to himself? Probably from a very beautiful passage in Theocritus’ seventh Idyll, where, lying on the vine-leaves, Damoetas and Daphnis hear the birds singing, and the murmur of the bees: —

Ἄειδον κορυδοὶ καὶ ἀκανθίδες, ἔστενε τρυγών,

“the larks and the acanthides were singing, and the turtle-dove was moaning.” But what kind of bird was Theocritus himself thinking of? Here we must have recourse to Aristotle, who in his book on birds describes the bird known to the Greeks as acanthis as being “of poor colouring and habits, but having a clear shrill voice.”[83 - Κακόβιοι καὶ κακόχροοι, φωνὴν μέντοι λιγυρὰν ἔχουσιν. —Hist. Anim. ix. 17.] This cannot possibly be the Goldfinch, the happiest and most brightly coloured of our smaller English birds; one too whose song would hardly be picked out to be described as λιγυρά, which word denotes a sustained high and shrill sound, and would not well express a twitter or a quiet warble. Sundevall, the Swedish scholar-naturalist, has pronounced this acanthis of Aristotle to be the linnet; a conclusion with which no one would be likely to agree who is fresh from a sight of that lively bird in its splendid summer plumage, or who knows its gentle twittering song. Let us remember that Aristotle is of all naturalists, down to the time of Willoughby and Ray, the most exact and trustworthy, and that when he uses an adjective to describe a bird or its voice, he means something exact and definite, and is not talking loosely.

Before we try to come to a conclusion about the ἀκανθίς, let us note that Aristotle mentions another small bird, the ἀκανθυλλίς, which, from the name, we may guess to have been one of the same kind as the acanthis. This bird builds a nest which is round and made of flax, and has a small hole by way of entrance. Now let us observe that Italy and Greece are swarming for the greater part of the year with a variety of those small brown or dusky-coloured birds which naturalists roughly call ‘warblers’ – birds for the most part apt to creep and lurk about in thickets or small trees, and having voices more or less shrill, which may very well indeed be called λιγυραί. In England we have some species of this order which are abundant in the summer; e. g. in Oxford, the chiff-chaff, willow-wren, sedge-warbler, and reed-warbler – the two former of which build spherical nests on the ground with a small entrance-hole. These birds correspond with both of Aristotle’s birds in being κακόβιοι —i. e. leading a poor lurking life; κακόχροοι, as being all very sober-coloured and difficult to distinguish from one another, even by a modern expert; in having a clear, sustained, or sibilant song,[84 - A sibilant trill is probably what is meant in a passage of the Greek Anthology (i. 175), λιγυρὸν βομβεῦσιν ἀκανθίδες; suggesting the Grasshopper Warbler (see p. 154 (#x_5_i17)), or the Sedge-warbler.] and lastly in building – some of them, that is – round nests with small holes for ingress and egress.

Now in Italy and Greece the number of species of these little birds is much larger than in England, and it is hardly possible that they could have escaped the notice of either poet or naturalist. It is with these that I think we are to identify the acanthis and acanthyllis of Aristotle, the acanthis of Theocritus, and the acalanthis of Virgil, with which we started this too lengthy discussion. Towards the evening of a hot summer day, when the flocks have to be watered, as he enjoins the shepherd, these little warblers would begin their song afresh, and sing, as does our own Sedge-warbler, far on into the night. Neither Goldfinch nor Linnet would be likely to sing at that time in a thicket of thorn-bushes: those fairy creatures would be playing in the cool air, or seeking the water for a refreshing bath or draught.

There are several other passages in Virgil which invite both translation and discussion; but I must be content with giving one or two, and must dispense with lengthy remarks on them. Every Latin scholar knows the description, in the first Georgic, of the birds flying shorewards before the storm: —

Continuo, ventis surgentibus, aut freta ponti
Incipiunt agitata tumescere et aridus altis
Montibus audiri fragor, aut resonantia longe
Litora misceri et nemorum increbrescere murmur.
Jam sibi tum curvis male temperat unda carinis,
Cum medio celeres revolant ex aequore mergi
Clamoremque ferunt ad litora, cumque marinae
In sicco ludunt fulicae, notasque paludes
Deserit atque altam supra volat ardea nubem.[85 - Georg. i. 356 foll. I quote this time Mr. R. D. Blackmore’s admirable rhyming version.Ere yet the lowering storm breaks o’er the landA sullen groundswell heaves along the strand,On mountain heights dry snapping sounds are heard,The booming shores bedrizzled are and blurred,And soughs of wind sigh through the forest stirred.The wave already scarce foregoes the hullWhen homeward from the offing flies the gull,With screams borne inland by the blast; and whenSea-coots play round the margin of the fen;The heron quits the marsh where she was bredAnd soars upon a cloud far overhead.]

The words mergi and fulicae in these lines have been the subject of much discussion among commentators. That Virgil meant by mergus some particular bird known to himself, there can be little doubt; for he has transferred to the mergus what Aratus (here his original) says of the Heron (ἐρωδιός). And rightly so; for the Heron never goes out to sea to fish, as it needs standing ground and is no swimmer. This mergus stands probably for the Gull in a generic sense; Virgil had doubtless seen them flying to the Campanian coast before a coming storm, and altered Aratus accordingly. The fulica marina is translated by Mr. Blackmore ‘sea-coot,’ which is correct but meaningless, and by Mr. Rhoades[86 - Following Keightley’s Commentary, which is the best we possess on Georg. i. 351-423.] ‘cormorant’; but in this case we have no means of determining the species of which the poet was thinking. He used the word fulica, a coot, to help him out in naming a bird which was something like a coot, but a bird of the sea, and one for which he had no word ready, or none that would suit his metre.

Another beautiful passage is to be found in the twelfth book of the Aeneid; it is one in which our poet is evidently describing an everyday sight of an Italian spring and summer, and writing independently of an original: —

Nigra velut magnas domini cum divitis aedes
Pervolat et pennis alta atria lustrat hirundo,
Pabula parva legens, nidisque loquacibus escas;
Et nunc porticibus vacuis, nunc humida circum
Stagna sonat: similis medios Juturna per hostes
Fertur equis, rapidoque volans obit omnia curru.[87 - Aen. xii. 473. Mr. Mackail translates: “As when a black swallow flits through some rich lord’s spacious house, and circles in flight in the lofty halls, gathering her tiny food for sustenance to her twittering nestlings, and now swoops down the spacious colonnades, now round the wet ponds,” &c.]

Though it seems odd to compare to a swallow the fierce female warrior careering in her chariot, it should be noted that Juturna’s object is not to fight, but by constant rapidity of movement to keep Turnus and Aeneas from meeting each other. This simile is, I think, the most perfect passage about the Swallow that I have ever met with in poetry.

The hirundo of the Romans had of course a generic sense, and included all the different species of Martin and Swallow. When Virgil writes (Georg. iv. 107) of the chattering hirundo which hangs its nest from the beams, he clearly means the House-martin; for the Swallow places his upon the rafters, while the Martin does exactly what Virgil describes. Both Aristotle and Pliny distinguish three or more species of these birds, – the Swallow, Sand-martin, Swift, and possibly the Crag-martin; and their habits seem to have been the same as at the present day.

I shall not trouble my readers with any of Virgil’s passages[88 - Aen. ix. 564; xi. 721, 751; xii. 247.] about the Hawks and Eagles, in all of which he follows Homer more or less closely. Nor need we pause to dwell on the single passage in which he has mentioned the Nightingale; for, beautiful as it is, it is not only based on Homer, but is inferior in truth to Homer’s lines. The older poet sings truthfully of the Nightingale “sitting in the thick foliage of the trees,” and “pouring a many-toned music with many a varied turn;” but Virgil has neither of these touches. Still his lines have a beauty of their own: —

Qualis populea moerens philomela sub umbra
Amissos queritur foetus, quos durus arator
Observans nido implumes detraxit; at illa
Flet noctem, ramoque sedens miserabile carmen
Integrat, et moestis late loca questibus implet.[89 - As in the poplar-shade a nightingaleMourns her lost young, which some relentless swain,Spying, from the nest has torn unfledged, but sheWails the long night, and perched upon a sprayWith sad insistence pipes her dolorous strain,Till all the region with her wrongs o’erflows.– Georg. iv. 511.]

I will finish this chapter by quoting one more passage; in which I think we may see Virgil’s own observation of the habits of birds. It is a famous passage in the sixth Aeneid, where Aeneas has embarked with Charon to cross the Styx, and the ghosts collect upon the bank to beg for passage to the other side; they gather in numbers.

Quam multa in silvis autumni frigore primo
Lapsa cadunt folia, aut ad terrain gurgite ab alto
Quam multae glomerantur aves, ubi frigidus annus,
Trans pontum fugat, et terris immittit apricis.[90 - Aen. vi. 309. “Multitudinous as leaves fall dropping in the forests at autumn’s earliest frost, or birds swarm landward from the deep gulf, when the chill of the year routs them over seas and drives them to sunny lands.”]

This passage is a very embarrassing one, and is not sufficiently cleared up by the commentators. The well-known lines which they quote from Homer (Iliad, iii. 3 foll.), though they may have suggested, are very far from explaining it. The ghosts are praying piteously for passage, and hold out their hands in entreaty, “with strong desire for the further shore:” and they are compared to birds driven on by cold weather, and seeking entrance to warmer lands. Ghosts and birds are alike uneasy; they long for relief in a home that is now their natural one. So far so good. But the birds are arriving from the sea (gurgite ab alto) in the autumn, and this must be a northern sea, and the coast on which they collect must be the threshold of a more genial climate. Where could Virgil have seen birds collecting on the shore from the North, on their way to the South?

Either we must have recourse to the impossible hypothesis that the poet was writing of what he did not understand, or we must recall the fact, which is told us in his life by Suetonius, that he spent a great part of his time in Campania and Sicily, where in an autumn walk by the sea he might have seen what he here refers to. The multitude of migrants from France, Holland, and England take a south-easterly course in their autumn migration, and alight on any resting-place they can find, – ships, islands, or wider sea-coasts like those of South Italy and Sicily. Here Virgil, we may be fairly sure, had seen them, and the longing of their hearts had entered into his, and borne fruit in a noble simile that is his, and not another’s. Their journey, when he saw them, was not ended; like the pale and longing ghosts, they had yet another sea to cross, before they could find a winter’s home in the secure sunshine of the south.

NOTES

Note A. (p. 14 (#x_2_i112).)

I originally intended to have added a short chapter to the book upon the Wild Birds Act and the results obtainable from it; but as other chapters have grown to greater length than I expected, I confine myself to giving in this note, for the convenience of those who are kindly disposed towards the birds, the substance of the Act of 1880, with a few words of explanation. Those who wish for more complete information should send for ‘The Wild Birds Protection Acts 1880 and 1881, with Explanatory Notes’ (published by Horace Cox, The Field Office, 346 Strand, W.C., price 1s.).

The Act in question, which was the result of most careful consideration by experts outside as well as inside Parliament, and was seen through the House of Commons by L. L. Dillwyn, Esq., M.P., one of a family of naturalists, repealed the then existing Acts relating to Wild Birds, which had been passed in the previous years without sufficient care for all interests. Its main provisions were as follows —

1. To protect all wild birds of every description from being caught or killed between the 1st of March and the 1st of August.

2. To except from the above plain rule birds caught or killed by the owner or occupier of land on his own land, or by some person authorized by him.

3. To affix as penalties for offences against the above, for first offence, reprimand and discharge on payment of costs; for subsequent offences, a fine not exceeding five shillings.

4. To schedule a number of birds which may not be caught or killed even on his own land, by owner or occupier, during the close time, and for the catching or killing of which the penalty is a sum not exceeding one pound. These are chiefly rare birds, and a certain number of sea-birds; but among them are Cuckoo, Curlew, Dotterel, Fern-owl or Goat-sucker, Goldfinch, Kingfisher, Lark, Nightingale, Plover, Sandpiper, and Woodpecker.

It will be observed that this Act only protects the living bird of all ages, but not the eggs: so that bird-nesting may still go on with impunity. But the framers of the Act had very good reasons for omitting this, wanton cruelty as it often is; for as the offenders are usually of tender age, they must be appealed to rather by education and moral suasion than by the terrors of the law. It lies with the clergyman and the schoolmaster to see that gross cruelty meets with its proper punishment – cruelty such as that which once occurred in my village, where some boys stopped up with clay the hole of a tree in which a Tit had laid her eggs, because it was too small to allow the entrance of the thieving hands.

The worst kind of bird-nesting is carried on by boys after they leave the village school, when they make this the employment of idle Sundays and holidays. The best remedy for this, and other habits that are worse, is to find other and rational employment for them. Reading-rooms, games, music, etc., I may remark, are usually out of their reach on Sundays, when most of the mischief is done.

Note B. On the Songs of Birds. (pp. 48 (#x_3_i27) and 149 (#x_5_i11).)

As I have some musical knowledge, and have given some attention to the music of birds’ songs, it may be worth while to add one or two remarks on a subject which is as difficult as it is pleasing. I need hardly say that birds do not sing in our musical scale. Attempts to represent their song by our notation, as is done, for example, in Mr. Harting’s Birds of Middlesex, are almost always misleading. Birds are guided in their song by no regular succession of intervals; in other words, they use no scale at all. Their music is of a totally different kind to ours. Listen to a Robin in full song; he, like most other birds, hardly ever dwells for a moment on a single note, but modifies it by slightly raising or lowering the pitch, and slides insensibly into another note, which is perhaps instantly forsaken for a subdued chuckle or trill. The same quality of song may also be well observed in the Black-cap and in the Willow Warbler: the song of the latter descends in an almost imperceptible manner through fractions of a tone, as I have already observed on page 48 (#x_3_i27). Strange as it may seem, the songs of birds may perhaps be more justly compared with the human voice when speaking, than with a musical instrument, or with the human voice when singing; and we can no more represent a bird’s song in musical notation, than the inflections of Mr. Gladstone’s voice when delivering one of his great speeches. The human voice when speaking is musically much freer than when singing; it is not tied down to tones and semitones.

If we remember that there are in our scale only twelve notes to the octave, and that between each of these an infinite number of sounds are possible, we shall get an idea of the endless variety which is open to the birds, and also, but in a less degree, to the human speaking voice.

Some birds, however, occasionally touch notes of our scale, and sometimes, though rarely, two in succession. The Cuckoo, as has often been noticed, sings a major or a minor third when it first arrives; not that the interval is always exact. The Thrush may now and then repeat two or three notes many times over, which almost, if not quite, answer to notes in our scale, usually from C to F of our treble scale. The Nightingale’s crescendo is a good instance of a single definite note; the song of the Chiff-chaff is perfectly plain and unvaried, but its two notes have never corresponded, when I have tested them, to an interval of our scale. Mr. A. H. Macpherson writes to me (Aug. 1886) that he has heard on the Brünig Pass, in Switzerland, three Chiff-chaffs singing at once, all in a different pitch. No. 1 was about a semitone above No. 2; No. 2 about a quarter of a tone above No. 3: the interval being the same in all cases. As my correspondent is a violin-player as well as an ornithologist, his observation may be taken as accurate. The Yellow-hammer’s curious song, which I examined carefully, may certainly be given in musical notation as keeping to a single note (often C or C sharp), but the concluding note of the song it is almost impossible to represent, for the pitch of the original note is raised or lowered by an interval varying from a minor third to less than a semitone. It is to be noted that in this species different individuals (according to my observation) have different modifications of the song; the Yellow-hammers in South Dorset (1886) struck me as singing in a different manner from our Kingham birds, though it would be almost impossible to describe the difference. I think I have noticed the same in the case of the Chaffinch. I have a note, made while travelling in Belgium, to the effect that the Chaffinches there did not seem to sing precisely the same song as ours in England. On the other hand, some observations which I made last year on the Chiff-chaff’s two notes in different localities led me to believe that the various birds were all singing at about the same pitch and in much the same manner.

There are many other interesting points connected with birds’ songs, e. g. the mechanism of the music; the song as a language; the entire absence of song in many birds, some of which, as the Crow, are among the most highly developed and intelligent; and the causes which operate in inducing song. It would be well if some well-qualified naturalist would investigate some of these points with greater attention than they have yet received. It would be hardly possible to find a subject of greater interest to the public, as well as to the savant.

Note C. Fables of the Kingfisher. (p. 242 (#x_7_i52).)

It may be worth while to suggest a possible explanation of the origin of the two curious and beautiful fables about this bird mentioned by Aristotle and Pliny, and current in antiquity. The first of these was, that for seven days before and seven days after the shortest winter day, the sea remained calm; during the first seven (says Aristotle) the bird builds her nest, and in the latter seven occupies herself with eggs and young. The second myth concerned the nest itself: “it is in shape like a cucumber, and larger than the largest sponge; the mouth is small – so small that the sea, as it rises, does not get inside it. It has, however, a great variety of holes, like a sponge, and appears to be made of the bones of a fish!” This last particular is curious, as we know it to be true of the Kingfisher’s nest; and it has led Prof. Sundevall to believe that Aristotle must have received some authentic report of the real nest, and have mixed it up with the mythical account. But his whole account shows plainly that he imagined the nest to be built on the rocks by the seashore, and perhaps even within reach of the waves.

Both these fables may, I think, have been built up on a slender basis of fact – the only fact which the Greeks seem to have known about the bird. Aristotle (Hist. Anim. v. 8. 4) tells us that the ἀλκύων was very seldom seen. “It is the rarest of all birds, for it is only seen at the setting of the Pleiades (about Nov. 9) and at the winter solstice; and it appears at seaports flying as much as round a ship, and then vanishing away.” Whether the bird is still seen in Greece only in late autumn and winter I cannot say; but Mr. Seebohm tells us (Brit. Birds, ii. 345) that in Eastern Europe it is compelled by the cold to migrate, some finding their way to Egypt, and therefore necessarily crossing the Ægean, or passing over Greece or the western coast of Asia Minor. I think it is a fair guess that those known to Aristotle were on their way from Thrace and Scythia to a warmer climate; and this hypothesis would explain not only their short stay, but their connection with the sea and harbours, and their mysterious character. Even supposing that a few haunted the Greek rivers at other times of the year, they would not be often seen there by a people not given either to sporting or to exploring out-of-the-way places; the one fact which would impress itself on the unscientific mind would be the sudden apparition in winter, and especially in mid-winter, of this little blue-green spirit about the harbours, and its as rapid disappearance.

If this be so, I think we have not far to seek for the origin of the two fables. Nothing being known of its nesting, it was assumed that it nested at or about the time when it appeared; and the not unfrequent calm and fine weather of mid-December would confirm the fancy, and give it a new mythical colouring. (The matter-of-fact philosopher does not of course allow that these fine days always occurred in his own experience; they are not always met, he says (v. 8. 3), in this country at the time of the solstice, “but they always occur in the Sicilian Sea.”) When this fable of the nesting-time had once established itself, it would be not very difficult to find a nest among the curiosities of the sea. So the little blue bird came to suffer “a sea-change, into something rich and strange,” through the careless fancy of the imaginative Greek.

Note D. Redpolls in the Alps. (p. 195 (#x_6_i5).)

On page 49 of the first edition of this book there was a paragraph which described the shooting by Anderegg of a Lesser Redpoll (Linota rufescens) on the Engstlen Alp. The date was June 30 (1884), and I had little doubt that the bird (which was a female) was one of a pair which had been breeding there. And this idea was confirmed by the discovery of a nest in the same place by Anderegg in May of the present year (1886), which Mr. Scott Wilson, who was with him at the time, considered to belong to the Lesser Redpoll.