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IN TWENTY-FOUR
VOLUMES

ADVENTURES AMONG BIRDS

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BPOVENTURES
meMONG BIRDS

BY

Wo.” HUDSON

MCMXXIII
LONDON & TORONTO

- M. DENT & SONS LTD.
NEW YORK: E. P. DUTTON & CO.

All rights reserved
39 399450 Oct 23

139950

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PRINTED IN GREAT BRITAIN

A CONSIDERABLE portion of the matter contained
herein has appeared in the English Review,
Cornhill Magazine, Saturday Review, Nation,
and a part of one chapter in the Morning Post.
These articles have been altered and extended,
and I am obliged to the Editors and Publishers
for permission to use them in this book.

Once I was part of the music I heard
On the boughs or sweet between earth and sky,
For joy of the beating of wings on high

My heart shot into the breast of a bird.

I hear it now and I see it fly,

And a life in wrinkles again is stirred,

My heart shoots into the breast of a bird,
As it will for sheer love till the last long sigh.

MEREDITH.

CONTENTS

CHAPTER I

THE Book: AN APOLOGY

A preliminary warning—Many books about a few birds—
People who discover well-known birds—An excuse for
the multiplicity of bird-books—Universal delight in
wild birds—Interview with a county councillor—A
gold-crest’s visit to a hospital—A rascal’s blessing—
Incident of the dying Garibaldi and a bird.

CHAPTER II

CARDINAL: THE STORY OF MY FIRST CAGED BIRD.

The past recalled by a sound—A caged cardinal—A memory
of childhood—The clergyman’s cardinal—My first caged
bird—History of its escapades and ultimate fate.

CHAPTER III

WELLS-NEXT-THE-SEA, WHERE WILD GEESE CONGREGATE

A restful spot—The marsh and the pine wood—Wild geese
on the marsh—Their tameness there—Alarums and
excursions — Their intelligence — Bird-sanctuary at
Holkham.

CHAPTER IV

GREAT BIRD GATHERINGS

Mr. Richard Lydekker’s search for the crested screamer—
—Extirpation of birds in La Plata—Persecution of sea
birds in England—The fight to save our birds—Our
delight in the spectacle of great bird-gatherings.

vu

PAGE

12

25

34

Vili CONTENTS

CHAPTER V

Birps IN AUTHORITY

A conversation with a aaa ale een masterful
gander—Stories of pet trumpeters—Singular behaviour
of a male sand-martin—Bird sentinels—Dancing per-
formances of lapwings— Ceremonial drinking and
bathing—Bird sports.

CHAPTER VI

A Woop BY THE SEA .

The pine wood at Wells—An Seuhion echo eres
disturbed by a barn owl—Pheasant and blackbird
feeding together—Friendships between birds of different
species—Account of a pet pheasant.

CHAPTER VII

FRIENDSHIP IN ANIMALS

The title justified — Position of eemishin in che genie at
animal qualities—Friendships between horses—A pet
wolf—Peter the fox—Friendships among birds—A
jackdaw and a small boy—Stories of teal—Birds
caring for injured companions—The helping instinct—
Partridge and pony—Strange case of a swan and a
trout.

CHAPTER VIII

THE SACRED BirpD (Phasianus colchicus)

The pheasant in Romano-British times—The mode
craze for it—Destruction of bird life by keepers—A
heronry depopulated—An indiscriminate massacre—
“ Keeping an eye’’ on the hawks—Beauty of the
pheasant in autumn woods—Absence of great soaring
birds from English skies.

CHAPTER IX

A TIRED TRAVELLER (Turdus iliacus) : :

A November day on the east coast—A solitary redwing—
charm of the redwing—Its evening concerts—The
redwing soliloquises—Its beauty—A meditation on
death.

PAGE
43

57

65

84

94

CONTENTS

CHAPTER X

WHITE Duck

Green grass in March—White eta ina Hin eet ante
associations connected with the duck—A legend of
the country of the dead—Beauty and rarity—Sobriquet
of an English queen.

CHAPTER XI

An IMPRESSION OF AXE EDGE

Some lucky Re ee eee that go with
limited opportunities—Axe Edge—Mean farms—The
people of the Peak—Spring on Axe Edge.

CHAPTER XII

BIRDS OF THE PEAK . £ 5 . A :

Seeking information at Buxton—Cuckoo and meadow
pipit on Axe Edge—A one-sided partnership—Song of
the whinchat—Voice of the curlew—The red grouse—
Prologue to Chapter XIII.

CHAPTER XIII

Tut RincG-OvuZEL AS A SONGSTER .

A species unknown to most—A blackbird that is not a
blackbird—First sight of the ring-ouzel—Its song—
Blackbird and ring-ouzel compared—Nesting ring-
ouzels—Thrush-calls of ring-ouzel—A suggested com-
parative study of thrush-languages.

CHAPTER XIV

Brrp Music

Modern indifference to delicate Si le ents due to past
associations—A willow-wren at Harrogate—lIntrinsic
charm of some bird voices—Effect of special circum-
stances—A rain-washed world—Exceptional songs
of chaffinch and whinchat—A wonderful blackbird.

ix

PAGE
103

116

124

132

139

x CONTENTS

CHAPTER XV

In A GREEN COUNTRY IN QUEST OF RARE SONGSTERS

Green England—An imagined journey to the stars—The
silent bicycle—Encounters with blind men—Rambles
in Dorset—Wareham—Story of a good little boy—
A surprising experience at Poole—The threshold of
Hampshire.

CHAPTER XVI

IN A HAMPSHIRE VILLAGE

Rare species and private collectors—An old soldier—Moor-
hen—A family of working folk—A talk with my land-
lady—Her love of bird music—The story of her lost
child.

CHAPTER XVII

THE FURZE-WREN OR FURZE-FAIRY

A new locality for the Dartford warbler—A search for it on
a heath—A litter of feathers—First sight of the furze-
wren—First hearing of its song—Its habits and song
described—Its originality as a songster.

CHAPTER XVIII

Back TO THE WEST COUNTRY

A procession of white cows—Revisiting old friends—Monta-
cute House—Ham Hill stone—A nightingale and a
commercial traveller—A north-countryman at Salisbury
—Poetic feeling of northerners—The commercial
traveller’s disappointment — Between Yeovil and
Glastonbury—The people of Somerset.

CHAPTER XIX

AVALON AND A BLACKBIRD

Excavations and restorations at Glastonbury—Blackbird
music—Its relation to human music: C. A. Witchell’s
theory—A blackbird of genius—Intrinsic beauty of the
blackbird’s voice—Our favourite singer—The black-
bird in early Irish poetry.

PAGE
148

158

167

175

182

CONTENTS

CHAPTER XX

THE LAKE VILLAGE

An enthusiastic excavator—Inhabiting two worlds at once
—The wind in the bulrushes—Drayton on bird life in
the fens—A visionary multitude of wild birds—Cross-
bills in the Mendips—Among the bells in St. Cuthbert’s
tower.

CHAPTER XXI
THE MarsH WARBLER’S Music

Two remarkable trees at chop atas at the eal
A colony of marsh warblers—Distribution of the marsh
warbler—Its high rank as a songster—Its artistic
borrowings—Species whose notes are imitated—The
delight of bird-watching—Varying behaviour of birds
under observation—A lucky accident.

CHAPTER XXII
GOLDFINCHES AT RYME INTRINSECA

Yetminster—Ryme Intrinseca—Mobbed by ehanneeme
Recent increase of goldfinches in Dorset—Effect of bird-
protection orders—Abundance of the goldfinch in
Cobbett’s days—Goldfinches and thistles: a misleading
statement—Recollections of the Argentine goldfinch—
Caged birds—A Spanish poem about a goldfinch—The
translator’s difficulties—A prose rendering of E/ Colovin
de Filts.

CHAPTER XXIII

THE IMMORTAL NIGHTINGALE

The barren days of early March—On the track of the absent
nightingale—The mystery of its return—The immortal
bird of the poets—Its puzzling distribution—The
parish nightingale—A rector’s story of a nightingale—
Birds striking against window-panes—The nightingale
a home-keeping bird—Its human enemies—The fight to
Save our wild birds—Educating the country children.

200

212

228

xii CONTENTS

CHAPTER XXIV

THE CLERK AND THE LAsT RAVENS

The parish clerk at Itchen Abbas—William Neave’s epitaph
—The parish clerk’s reminiscences—A ghost story—
Fascination of the raven—The last ravens at Avington
—Tree-climbing feats—Persecution of tame young
ravens by the old birds.

CHAPTER XXV

THE TEMPLES OF THE HILLs.

History of the chalk hills—Hill-top eines best
aspect—Abundance of wild life in them—Carrion-
crows — Nesting sparrow-hawks—The fascinating
spectacle of the chase—Long-eared owls—The owl as a
practical joker—A keeper’s gibbet—The great woods
of Wiltshire—What is lacking in them.

CHAPTER XXVI
AUTUMN, I9I2

Wells-next-the-Sea—A great man’s reason for residing
there—The enviable chameleon—Black redstart—
Antics of a squirrel—The dreariness of desk-work—
Observations on a pair of late-nesting martins—Con-
flicting instincts—Swallows observed in mid-winter—
A curious story of nesting martins and sparrows.

CHAPTER XXVII
WILD WINGs: A FAREWELL.

An abundance of wild geese—Hooded crows—Their evening
amusements—A sociable mixed gathering—Herons at
play—A ringed dotterel’s fun—Gull and pewit—Kestrel
harried by starlings—Starlings flying in company with
wild geese—Behaviour of starling flocks—Wounded
goose and redshanks—An inquisitive crow—Evening
return of the geese—Migrant crows and fieldfares—
Last sight of the wild geese.

INDEX .

PAGE

248

257

277

292

399

ADVENTURES AMONG BIRDS

CHAPTER I

THE BOOK: AN APOLOGY

A preliminary warning—Many books about a few birds—People
who discover well-known birds—An excuse for the multi-
plicity of bird-books—Universal delight in wild birds—
Interview with a county councillor—A gold-crest’s visit to
a hospital—A rascal’s blessing—Incident of the dying
Garibaldi and a bird.

HE book-buyer in search of something to
read before making his purchase as a rule
opens a book and glances at a few lines on
the first page, just to get the flavour of it and find
out whether or not it suits his palate. The title, we
must presume, has already attracted him as indi-
cating a subject which interests him. This habit of
his gives me the opportunity of warning him at the
very outset that he will find here no adventures of a
wild-fowler, if that’s what he is seeking; no thrilling
records of long nights passed in a punt, with a north
wind blowing and freezing him to the marrow in spite
of his thick woollen clothing and long boots and oil-
skins, and the glorious conclusion of the adventure
when he happily succeeds in sending a thousand
pellets of burning lead into an innumerable multitude
of mallard, widgeon, teal, pochard, and pintail;

how for several successive winters he repeated the
A I

2 ADVENTURES AMONG BIRDS

operation until the persecuted fowl began to diminish
so greatly in numbers that he forsook that estuary
or haunt on the coast to follow them elsewhere, or
transferred his attentions to some other far-distant
point, where other wholesale killers had not been
before him. No, this is not a sporting record, despite
the title, and if long titles were the fashion nowadays,
it would have been proper to call the book “The
Adventures of a Soul, sensitive or not, among the
feathered masterpieces of creation.” This would at
all events have shown at once whence the title was
derived, and would have better served to indicate the
nature of the contents.

It all comes to this, that we have here another book
about birds, which demands some sort of apology.

In England, a small country, we have not too many
species—two or three hundred, let us say, according
to the number of visitants we include or exclude; all
exceedingly well known. For birds are observed more
than any other class of creatures, and we are not only
an observant but a book-writing people, and books
have been written on this subject since the time of
Queen Elizabeth—as a fact the first book (1544) was
before her time—and for the last century have been
produced at an ever-increasing rate until now, when
we have them turned out by the dozen every year.
All about the same few well-known birds! To many
among us it seems that the thing is being over-done.
One friend expostulates thus: ‘What, another book
about birds? You have already written several—
three or four or five—I can’t remember the number.

THE BOOK: AN APOLOGY 3

I don’t know much about the subject, but I should
have thought you had already told us all you know
about it. I had hoped you had finished with that
subject now. There are so many others—Man, for
instance, who is of more account than many sparrows.
Well, all I can say is, I’m sorry.”

If he had known birds, I doubt that he would have
expressed regret at my choice of a subject; for
many as are the observers of birds and writers on
them in the land, there are yet a far greater number
who do not properly know them, and the joy they
are or may be to us.

The people who discover birds are now common
with us, and though the story of their discoveries is
somewhat boring, it amuses at the same time. A lady
of your acquaintance tells you the result of putting
some crumbs on a window-sill—the sudden appear-
ance to feed on the crumbs of a quaint fairy-like
little bird which was not a sparrow, nor robin, nor any
of those common ones, but a sparkling lively little
creature with a crest, all blue above and yellow be-
neath—very beautiful to look at, and fantastic in its
actions. A bird she has never seen before though
all her life has been passed in the country. Was it
some rare visitor from a distant land, where birds
have a brighter plumage and livelier habits than ours?

Two or three years ago a literary friend wrote to
me from the north of England, where he had gone
for a holiday and was staying at a farm, to say that
he wished me there, if only to see a wonderful bird
that visited the house every day. It was probably

4 ADVENTURES AMONG BIRDS

a species, he thought, confined to that part of the
country, and perhaps never seen in the south, and
he wanted very much to know what it was. As |
couldn’t go to him he would try to describe it. Every
morning after breakfast, when he and his people fed
the birds on the lawn, this strange species, to the
number of a dozen or more, would appear on the
scene—a bird about the size of a thrush with a long
sharp yellow beak, the entire plumage of a very dark
purple and green colour, so glossy that it sparkled
like silver in the sunshine. They were also sprinkled
all over with minute white and cream-coloured spots.
A beautiful bird, and very curious in its behaviour.
They would dart down on the scraps, scattering the
sparrows right and left, quarrelling among them-
selves over the best pieces; and then, when satisfied,
they would fly up to the roof and climb and flit about
over the tiles and on the chimneys, puffing their
feathers out and making all sorts of odd noises—
whistling, chattering, tinkling, and so on.

I replied that the birds were starlings, and he was
rather unhappy about it, since he had known the
starling as a common bird all his life, and had imagined
he knew it too well to take it for a strange and rare
species. But then, he confessed, he had never looked
closely at it; he had seen it in flocks in the pastures,
always at a distance where it looks plain black.

If the lady who discovered the blue-tit, or nun,
and my friend who found out the starling, would
extend their researches in the feathered world they
would find a hundred other species as beautiful in

THE BOOK: AN APOLOGY 5

colouring and delightful in their ways as those two,
and some even more so.

Much, too, might be said on the subject of many
books being written about birds. They are not
necessarily repetitions. When a writer of fact or
fiction puts his friends and acquaintances in a book,
as a rule it makes a difference, a decline, in the degree
of cordiality in their relations. That is only, of
course, when the reader recognises himself in the
portrait. He may not do so, portraits not always
being ‘“‘pure realism,” as Mr. Stanhope Forbes says
they are. But whether the reader recognises his own
picture or not, the writer himself experiences a change
of feeling towards his subject. It is, to put it brutally,
similar to that of the boy towards the sucked orange.
There is nothing more to be got out of it. It need
not be supposed for a moment that the fictionist is
friendly towards or interested in his fellow-creatures
for the sake of what he can get out of them—that,
like the portrait-painter, he is on the look-out for a
subject. He has no such unworthy motive, and the
change in his feeling comes about in another way.
Having built up his picture he looks on it and finds
it an improvement, and infinitely more interesting
than the original, and the old feeling inevitably
changes—it is transferred from the man to the picture.
These changes in feeling never occur in the case of
the feathered friends we have made, and find pleasure
in portraying. We may put them again and again
in books without experiencing any diminution in
our feelings towards them. On the contrary, after

6 ADVENTURES AMONG BIRDS

doing our best we no sooner look again on the originals
than we see how bad the portrait is, and would be
glad to put it out of sight and forget all about it.
This lustre, this peculiar grace, this expression which
I never marked before, is not in the picture I have
made; come, let me try again, though it be but to
fail again, to produce yet another painting fit only
for the lumber-room.

After all it does not need a naturalist nor an artist
nor a poet to appreciate and be the better for that
best thing in a wild bird, that free, joyous, joy-
giving nature felt by every one of us. The sight of
a wild, free, happy existence, as far as the fairies’ or
angels’ from ours, yet linked to us by its warm red
blood, its throbbing human-shaped heart, fine senses,
and intelligent mind, emotions that sway it as ours
sway us. A relative, a “little sister,” but clothed
for its glory and joy in feathers that are hard as flint,
light as air and translucent, and wings to lift it above
the earth on which we walk. Is there on earth a
human being who has not felt this? Not one!

I remember going once to see a member of a county
council to try to enlist his interest in the subject of
bird protection for his county. I was told that he was
the biggest man on the council and had immense
weight with his fellow-members on account of his
wealth and social position, that without getting him
on our side it would be difficult to obtain an order.
He was certainly a big man physically, a very giant
in stature, with a tread like that of an elephant when
he entered the vast dim room into which a servant

THE BOOK: AN APOLOGY a

had conducted me. So huge a mass, so heavy and
stolid, as he stood there silently staring at me out of
his great expressionless boiled-gooseberry-coloured
eyes, waiting to hear what I had to say to him. I
said it, and handed him some papers, which I wanted
him to look at. But he was not listening, and when I
finished he held out the papers for me to take them
back. “No,” he said, “I have too many calls on me
—I can’t entertain it.” ‘Will you kindly listen,” I
said, then repeated it again, and he muttered some-
thing and taking the papers once more inclined his
head to indicate that the interview was over, and,
thanking him for his ready sympathy, I went my
way to someone else.

My next visit was to an enthusiastic sportsman.
I told him where I had been, and he exclaimed that
it was a mistake, a waste of time. “That chunk of
a man is no good,” he said. “If he sees a roast goose
on the table he knows what it is and he can dis-
tinguish it from a roast turkey, and that’s all he knows
about birds.” Perhaps it was all he knew, from the
natural history point of view at all events; yet even
this “chunk of a man” had doubtless felt something
of that common universal joy in a bird, which makes
the bird so much to us, for by-and-by it was with
his help that the order for the county was obtained.

Here is a little incident in which we can see just
the feeling a bird is able to inspire in us. A friend
writes to me:

I have just heard from Miss Paget, who says her most inter-
esting news is the visit of a gold-crested wren at the Connaught

8 ADVENTURES AMONG BIRDS

Hospital. It flew in through one of the open windows and at once
became friendly with the patients, perching on their fingers and
being fed by them to their great delight. Then, having cheered
them for a day and night, it flew away and has not been seen
since. The men long for its return, for nothing has pleased and
refreshed and brightened them so much in their wearisome
hours as its companionship.

Miss Rosalind Paget is so well known for her work
in the military hospitals that I hope she will forgive
me for giving her name without her permission when
relating this incident.

But the effect of the bird is due as much to the
voice as to the dainty winged shape, the harmonious
colouring, and the graceful easy motions in the air.
That peculiar aerial vibrant penetrative character of
bird-notes moves us as other sounds do not, and
there are certain notes in which these qualities are
intensified and sometimes suggest an emotion common
to all mankind, which pierce to the listener’s heart,
whatever his race or country may be or his character
or pursuits in life.

I here recall an incident of my young days in a
far land, less civilised than ours. I had a neighbour
in my home for whom I had little love. He was a
greedy rascal, a petty rural magistrate with an itching
palm, and if justice was required at his hands it had
to be bought with money like any other commodity.
One summer afternoon he rode over to my home and
asked me to go for a walk with him by the river.
It was a warm brilliant day in early autumn, and
when we had walked about a couple of miles along
the bank to a spot where the stream was about fifty

THE BOOK: AN APOLOGY 9

yards wide, we sat down on the dry grass under a
large red willow. A flock of birds was in the tree—a
species of a most loquacious kind—but our approach
had made them silent. Not the faintest chirp fell
from the branches that had been full of their musical
jangle a few minutes before. It was a species of
troupial, a starling-like bird of social habits, only
larger than our starling, with glossy olive-brown
plumage and brilliant yellow breast. Pecho amarillo
(yellow breast) is its vernacular name. Now as soon
as we had settled comfortably on the grass the entire
flock, of thirty or forty birds, sprang up into the air,
going up out of the foliage like a fountain, then
suddenly they all together dropped down, and sweep-
ing by us over the water burst into a storm of loud
ringing jubilant cries and liquid notes. My com-
panion uttered a sudden strange harsh discordant
laugh, and turning away his sharp dry fox-like
face, too late to hide the sudden moisture I had seen in
his eyes, he exclaimed with savage emphasis on the first
word—“ Curse the little birds—how glad they are!”

That was his way of blessing them. He was a
hardened rascal, utterly bad, feared and hated by
the poor, despised by his equals; yet the sight and
sound of that merry company, its sudden outburst
of glorious joy, had wrought an instantaneous change
in him that was like a miracle, and for a moment he
was no longer himself, but what he had been in the
past, in some unimaginably remote period of his
existence, a pure-hearted child, capable of a glad,
beautiful emotion and of tears.

ae) ADVENTURES AMONG BIRDS

I will remark in passing that the actual words of
his blessing are hardly translatable; for he didn’t
call them “‘little birds,” but addressed them affec-
tionately as fellow-mortals of diminutive size—“little
children of a thousand unvirtuous mothers” was more
nearly his expression.

One is reminded of a famous historical incident
-—of the exclamation of the dying Garibaldi, when
a small bird of unrecorded species alighted for a
moment on the ledge of his open window, and burst
out into a lively twittering song. “Quanto é allegro!”
murmured the old passing fighter. The exclamation
would have seemed quite natural on the lips of a
dying Englishman, but how strange on his! Does
it find an echo in the heart of the people he liberated,
who appreciate a bird not for its soul-gladdening
voice but for its flavour? It can only be supposed
that Garibaldi during his furious fighting years in
the Argentine Confederation, in the forties of the
last century, had become in some ways de-Italianised
—that he had been infected with the friendly feeling
towards birds of his fellow “pirates and ruffians,”
as they were called, and of the people generally, from
his enemy the Dictator Rosas himself, the ‘Nero
of South America,” down to the poorest gaucho in
the land. They, the fighters, were mostly ruffians
in those days in a country where revolution (with
atrocities) was endemic, but they did not kill or
persecute “God’s little birds,” as they called them.
The foreigners who did such things were regarded
with contempt.

THE BOOK: AN APOLOGY II

Garibaldi was beaten again and again, and finally
driven from the Plate by a better fighter—an English-
man of the name of Brown; but the beaten “pirate”
lived to liberate his own country and to see his people
going out annually in tens of thousands to settle in
the land where he had fought and lost. How melan-
choly to think that from the bird-lover’s point of view
they have been a curse to it, that, but for the wealthy
native and English landowners who are able to give
some protection to wild life on their estates, the
detestable swarm of aliens would have made the
land they have populated as birdless as their
native Italy.

CHAPRTE RVI

CARDINAL: THE STORY OF MY FIRST CAGED BIRD

The past recalled by a sound—A caged cardinal—A memory of
childhood—The clergyman’s cardinal—My first caged bird
—History of its escapades and ultimate fate.

ONCE familiar but long unheard sound coming
PA coszoneay to us will sometimes affect the

mind as it is occasionally affected through
the sense of smell, restoring a past scene and state
so vividly that it is less like a memory than a vision.
It is indeed more than a vision, seeing that this is
an illusion, something apparently beheld with the
outer or physical eyes; the other is a transformation,
a return to that state—that forgotten self—which
was lost for ever, yet is ours again; and for a glorious
moment we are what we were in some distant place,
some long-vanished time, in age and freshness of
feeling, in the brilliance of our senses, our wonder
and delight at this visible world.

Recently I had an experience of that kind on
hearing a loud glad bird-note or call from overhead
when walking in a London West-End thoroughfare.
It made me start and stand still; when, casting up
my eyes, I caught sight of the bird in its cage, hanging
outside a first-floor window. It was the beautiful

cardinal of many memories.
LZ

CARDINAL 13

This is a bird of the finch family of southern South
America—about the size of a starling, but more
gracefully shaped, with a longer tail; the whole upper
plumage clear blue-grey, the underparts pure white;
the face, throat, and a high pointed crest an intense
brilliant scarlet.

It had actually seemed to me at the moment of
hearing, then of seeing it, that the bird had recognised
me as one from the same distant country—that its
loud call was a glad greeting to a fellow-exile seen
by chance in a London thoroughfare. It was even
more than that: this was my own bird, dead so
many, many years, living again, knowing me again
so far from home, in spite of all the changes that
time had wrought in me. And he, my own cardinal,
the first cardinal I ever knew, remembered it all
even as I did—all the little incidents of our life
together; the whole history was in both our minds
at that same moment of recognition.

I was a boy, not yet eight years old, when my
mother took me on one of her yearly visits to Buenos
Ayres. It was a very long day’s journey for us in
those pre-railroad times; for, great and prosperous
as that city and republic now are, it was not so then,
when the people were divided, calling themselves
Reds and Whites (or Blues), and were occupied in
cutting one another’s throats.

In Buenos Ayres we stayed at the house of an
English missionary clergyman, in a street near the
waterside. He was a friend of my parents and used
to come out with his family to us in the summer, and

14 ADVENTURES AMONG BIRDS

in return my mother made his house her home for a
month or so in winter. This was my first visit, and
I remember the house was like a luxurious palace to
my simple mind accustomed to rude surroundings.
It had a large paved courtyard, with ornamental
shrubs and orange and lemon trees growing in it,
and many prettily decorated rooms; also a long
passage or balcony at the back, and, at its far end,
facing the balcony, the door of the study. This
balcony at the back had an irresistible attraction for
me, for on the wall were hung many cages containing
beautiful birds, some unknown to me. There were
several canaries, a European goldfinch, and other
kinds; but the bird that specially attracted me was a
cardinal in fine plumage, with a loud, glad, musical
call-note—just such a note as that with which the
bird in a London thoroughfare had pierced my heart.
But it did not sing, and I was told that it had no song
except that one note, or not more than two or three
notes, and that it was kept solely for its beauty.
To me it was certainly most beautiful.

Every day during our six or seven weeks’ visit I
used to steal out to the balcony and stand by the
hour watching the birds, above all the cardinal with
his splendid scarlet crest, thinking of the joy it would
be to possess such a bird. But though I could not
keep away from the spot, I was always ill at ease when
there, always glancing apprehensively at the closed
door at the end—for it was a glass door, and in his
study behind it the clergyman, a grave studious man,
was sitting over his books. It made me tremble to

CARDINAL 15

think that, though invisible to me in that dim interior,
he would be able to see me through the glass, and,
worse still, that at any moment he might throw open
the door and come out to catch me gazing at his
birds. Nor was this feeling strange in the circum-
stances, for I was a timid, somewhat sensitive little
boy, and he a very big stern man with a large clean-
shaved colourless face that had no friendliness in it;
nor could I forget an unhappy incident which occurred
during his visit to us in the country more than half
a year before. One day, rushing in, I stumbled in
the verandah and struck my head against the door-
handle, and, falling down, was lying on the floor
crying loudly with the pain, when the big stern man
came on the scene.

“What’s the matter with you?” he demanded.

“Oh, P’ve hit my head on the door and it hurts
me so!” I sobbed.

“Does it?” he said, with a grim smile. “Well, it
doesn’t hurt me,” and, stepping over me, he went in.

What wonder that I was apprehensive, would
shrink almost in terror, when by chance he came
suddenly out to find me there, and, after staring or
glaring at me through his gold-rimmed glasses for
a few moments, would pass me by without a word or
smile! How strange, how unnatural, it seemed that
this man I feared and hated should be a lover of
birds and the owner of that precious cardinal!

The long visit came to an end at last, and, glad
to return to the birds I had left—to the purple
cow-birds, the yellow-breasted and the crimson-

16 ADVENTURES AMONG BIRDS

breasted troupials, the tyrant birds, the innumerable
sweet-voiced little crested song-sparrows, and a
hundred more—yet sad to leave the cardinal which
I admired and had grown to love above all birds, I
was taken back to my distant home on the great green
plains. So passed the winter, and the swallow returned
and the peach-trees blossomed once more; the long,
long dry hot summer season followed; then autumn
—the three beautiful months of March, April, and
May, when the sunshine was soft and we were among
the trees, feasting on ripe peaches every day and
all day long.

Then again winter and the annual visit to the
distant town; but none of us children were taken
on this occasion. My mother’s return after one of
these long absences was always a great joy and festival
to us children. To have her with us again, and the
toys and the books and delicious things she brought
us, made us wild with happiness; and on this occasion
she brought me something compared with which all
the other gifts—all the gifts I had ever received in
my life-—were as nothing. She had a large object
covered from sight with a shawl, and, drawing me
to her side, asked me if I remembered my visit to
the city over a year ago, and how the birds at the
parsonage had attracted me? Well, our friend the
clergyman, she went on to say, had gone back to
his own country and would never return. His wife,
who was a very gentle, sweet woman, had been my
mother’s dearest friend, so that she could hardly
speak of her loss without tears. Before going away

CARDINAL 17

he distributed his birds among his closest friends.
He was anxious that every bird should have an owner
who would love it as much as he had loved it himself
and tend it as carefully; and remembering how he
had observed me day after day watching the cardinal,
he thought that he could not leave it in better hands
than mine. And here was the bird in its big cage!

The cardinal was mine! How could I believe it,
even when I pulled the shawl off and saw the beautiful
creature once more and heard the loud note! The
gift of that bird from the stern ice-cold man who had
looked at me as if he hated me, even as I had certainly
hated him, now seemed the most wonderful thing
which had ever happened in the world.

It was a blissful time for me during that late winter
season, when I lived for the bird; then, as the days
grew longer and brighter with the return of the sun,
I was happier every day to see my cardinal’s increasing
delight in his new surroundings. It was certainly a
great and marvellous change for him. The cardinals
are taken as fledglings from the nests in forests on
the upper waters of the Plata river, and reared by
hand by the natives, then sent down to the bird-
dealers in Buenos Ayres; so that my bird had practi-
cally known only a town life, and was now in a world
of greenest grass and foliage, wide blue skies, and
brightest sunshine for the first time. By day his
cage was hung under the grape-vines outside the
verandah; there the warm fragrant wind blew on
him and the sun shone down through the translucent

red and green young vine-leaves. He was mad with
B

18 ADVENTURES AMONG BIRDS

excess of joy, hopping wildly about in his cage, calling
loudly in response to the wild birds in the trees, and
from time to time bursting out in song: not the
three or four to half a dozen notes the cardinal usually
emits, but a continuous torrent, like the soaring
lark’s, so that those who heard it marvelled and
exclaimed that they had never known a cardinal with
such a song. I can say for myself that I have, since
then, listened to the singing of hundreds of cardinals,
both wild and caged, and never heard one with a
song so passionate and sustained.

So it went on from day to day, until the vine-
leaves, grown large, spread a green roof to keep the
hot sun from him—a light roof of leaves which, stirred
by the wind, still let the sparkling sunbeams fall
through to enliven him, while outside the sheltering
vines the bright world was all before him. If any
person, even the wisest, had then told mc that my
cardinal was not the happiest bird in the world—that
not being free to fly he could not be as happy as
others—I should not have believed it; consequently
it came as a shock to me when one day I discovered
the cage empty—that my cardinal had made his
escape! The cage, as I have said, was large, and the
wires were so far apart that a bird the size of a linnet
or siskin could not have been confined in it; but
for the larger cardinal it was a safe prison. Unfor-
tunately one of the wires had become loose—perhaps
the bird had loosened it—and by working at it he had
succeeded in bending it and finally had managed to
squeeze through and make his escape. Running out

CARDINAL 19

into the plantation I was soon apprised of his where-
abouts by his loud call-note; but though he could
not fly, but only hop and flutter from branch to
branch—his wings never having been exercised—he
refused to be caught. I was advised to wait until
he was hungry, then to try him with the cage. This
I did, and, taking the cage, placed it on the ground
under the trees and retired a few paces, holding it
open by means of a string which when released would
cause the door to fly to. He became greatly excited
on seeing the cage, and being very hungry soon came
down to the ground and, to my joy, hopped up to
it. But he did not go in: it seemed to me that he
was considering the matter, if the state he was in
of being pulled in opposite directions by two equally
importunate impulses may be so described. ‘Must
I go in and satisfy my hunger—and live in prison; or
stay out and keep my freedom and go hungry?”
He stood at the door of the cage, looking in at the
seed, then turned and looked at me and at the trees,
then looked at the seed again, and raised and lowered
his shining crest and flirted his wings and tail, and
was excited and in two minds and a quandary;
finally, after taking one more look at the tempting
seed, he deliberately flew or fluttered up to the
nearest branch, then to another, and so on, till he
had gone to the very top of the tree, as if to get as
far from the tempting cage as he could!

It was a great disappointment, and I now deter-
mined to hunt him down; for it was late in the day,
and he was not a cunning wild bird to save himself

20 ADVENTURES AMONG BIRDS

from rats and owls and black and yellow opossums
and other subtle enemies who would come presently
on the scene. I hunted him from the first tree on to
the next, then to another, until I had driven him out
of the plantation to an open place, where he fluttered
over the surface until he came to the bank of the huge
ditch or foss, about twelve feet deep and half as wide
as the Regent’s Park canal. He would drop into it, I
thought, and I would then be able to capture him;
but after a moment’s rest on the bank he rose and
succeeded in flying across, pitching on the other
side. “Now I have him!” I exclaimed, and, getting
over the foss, I was quickly in hot pursuit after him;
for outside the foss the earth spread out level and
treeless, with nothing but grass and giant thistles
growing onit. But his wings were now getting stronger
with exercise, and he led me on and on for about a
mile, then disappeared in a clump of giant thistles,
growing on a warren or village of the vizcachas—
the vizcacha being a big rodent that lives in com-
munities in a dozen or twenty huge burrows, their
mouths placed close together. He had escaped down
one of these holes, and I waited in vain for him to
come out, and in the end was compelled to go home
without him.

I don’t know if I slept that night, but I was up
and out an hour before sunrise, and, taking the cage,
set out to look for him, with little hope of finding
him, for there were foxes in that place—a family of
cubs which I had seen—and, worse still, the large
blood-thirsty black weasels of that country. But no

CARDINAL 21

sooner was I at the spot where I had lost him than
I was greeted with his loud note. And there he was,
hopping out from among the thistles, a most forlorn-
looking object, his plumage wet and draggled, and
his feet thickly covered with wet clay! And he was
glad to see me! As soon as | put the cage down he
came straight to it and, without a moment’s hesitation,
hopped in and began feasting on the seed.

It was a happy ending. My bird had had a lesson
which he would not forget; there would be no more
tugging at the wires, nor would he ever wish to be
free again. So I imagined. But I was wrong. From
that time the bird’s disposition was changed: ever
in a restless anxious state, he would flit from side to
side of his cage, chirping loudly, but never singing—
never one note; the gladness that had made him
sing so wonderfully had quite gone out of him. And
invariably, after hopping about for a few moments,
he would go back to the wire which had been loosened
and bent—the one weak spot which was now repaired
—and tug at and shake it again. And at last, greatly
to my surprise, he actually succeeded in bending the
same wire once more and making his escape!

Once more I went to look for him with the cage in
my hand, but when I found him he refused to be
tempted. I left him for a day to starve, then tried
him again; and then again many and many times
on many following days, for he was now much too
strong on the wing to be hunted down; but though
he invariably greeted and appeared to welcome me
with his loud chirp, he refused to come down, and

22 ADVENTURES AMONG BIRDS

after excitedly hailing me and flirting his feathers for
a few moments he would fly away.

Gradually I grew reconciled to my loss, for, though
no longer my captive—my own bird—he was near
me, living in the plantation and frequently seen.
Often and often, at intervals of a few or of many
days, when my lost, yet not wholly lost, cardinal was
not in my mind, I would come upon him, sometimes
out on the plain, feeding with a flock of purple cow-
birds, or yellow-breasted troupials, or some other
species; and when they would all rise up and fly
away at my approach, he alone, after going a little
distance with them, would drop out of the crowd and
pitch on a stalk or thistle-bush, just, as it would
appear, to look at me and hail me with his loud note
—to say that he remembered me still; then off he
would fly after the others.

That little action of his went far to reconcile me
to his loss—to endear him still more to me, changing
my boyish bitterness to a new and strange kind of
delight in his happiness.

But the end of the story is not yet: even at this
distance, after so many changing and hardening years,
I experience a certain reluctance or heaviness of
heart in telling it.

The warm bright months went by and it was
winter again—the cold season from May to August,
when the trees are bare, the rainy south wind blows,
and there are frosty nights, frosts that would some-
times last all day or even several days. Then it was
that I missed my bird and wondered often what had

CARDINAL 23

become of him. Had he too flown north to a warmer
country with the swallows and other migrants? It
could not be believed. But he was no longer in the
plantation—that little sheltering island of trees in
the level grassy sea-like plain; and I should never
see him more or know what his fate had been.

One day, in August, the men employed about the
place were engaged in a grand annual campaign
against the rats—a sort of spring-cleaning in and
out of doors. The shelter of the huge old foss, and
of the trees and thickets, wood-piles, many out-
buildings and barns full of raw or untanned hides,
attracted numbers of these unpleasant little beasts
and made it a sort of rats’ metropolis; and it was
usual to clear them out in early spring before the
new grass and herbage sprang up and covered the
ground. They were suffocated with smoke, made
deadly with brimstone and tobacco, pumped into
their holes. I was standing by one of the men who
was opening one of the runs after the smoking process,
when I caught sight of a gleam of scarlet colour in a
heap of straw and rubbish he was turning over with
his spade, and, jumping down, I picked up the shining
red object. It was my lost cardinal’s crest! And
there too were his grey wing and tail feathers, white
feathers from his breast, and even some of his bones.
Alas! he had found it too cold to roost in the naked
trees in the cold wind and rain, and, seeking a more
sheltered roosting-place on the ground, had been
caught and carried into its den and devoured by a rat.

I experienced a second and greater grief at his

24 ADVENTURES AMONG BIRDS

miserable end—a feeling so poignant that the memory
has endured till now. For he was my loved cardinal
—my first caged bird. And he was also my last. I
could have no other, the lesson he had taught me
having sunk into my heart—the knowledge that to a
bird too the world is very beautiful and liberty very
sweet. I could even rejoice, when time had softened
my first keen sorrow, that my cardinal had succeeded
in making his escape, since at the last he had experi-
enced those miraculous months of joyous existence,
living the true bird-life for which nature had fashioned
and fitted him. In all the years of his captivity he
could never have known such a happiness, nor can
any caged bird know it, however loudly and sweetly
it may sing to win a lump of sugar or a sprig of ground-
sel from his tender-hearted keeper and delude him
with the idea that it is well with his prisoner—that
no injustice has been done.

CHAPTER III

WELLS-NEXT-THE-SEA, WHERE WILD GEESE
CONGREGATE
A restful spot—The marsh and the pine wood—Wild geese on
the marsh—Their tameness there—Alarums and excursions
—Their intelligence—Bird-sanctuary at Holkham.

HERE are few places in England where

you can get so much wildness and desolation

of sea and sand-hills, wood, green marsh,

and grey saltings as at Wells, in Norfolk, the small
old red-brick town, a mile and a quarter from the
beach, with a green embankment lying across the
intervening marsh connecting town and sea. Here
you can have it all in the space of a half-day’s prowl
or saunter—I cannot say “‘walk,” seeing that I am
as often standing or sitting still as in motion. The
little village-like town in its quietude and sense of
remoteness from the world is itself a restful place to
be in; going out you have on the land side the quiet
green Norfolk country of winding roads and lanes,
old farm-houses and small red villages which appear
almost deserted. As I passed through one the other
day, the thought was in my mind that in this village
not one inhabitant remained, when all at once I
caught sight of a very old man, shrunk and lean and
grey, standing in a cottage garden behind its grey
palings. His clothes, too, like his hair and face, were

25

26 ADVENTURES AMONG BIRDS

a dull grey, so like the hue of the old weathered and
lichen-stained wood of the palings as to make him
almost invisible. It was an instance of protective
resemblance in the human species. He was standing
motionless, leaning on his stick, peering at me out
of his pale dim eyes as if astonished at the sight of a
stranger in that lonely place.

But I love the solitariness on the side towards the
sea best, the green marsh extending to Holkham on
your left hand, once a salt flat inundated by the sea,
but long reclaimed by the making of that same green
bank I have mentioned—the causeway which con-
nects Wells with the beach. On the right side of this
bank is the estuary by which small ships may creep
up to the town at high tide, and the immense grey
saltings extending miles and miles away to Blakeney.
Between the flats and the sea are the sand-hills, rough
with grey marram grass; then the beach, and, if
the tide is up, the sea; but when the water is out,
you look across miles of smooth and ribbed sands,
with no life visible on its desolate expanse except a
troop of gulls resting in a long white line, and very
far out a few men and boys digging for bait in the
sand, looking no bigger than crows at that distance.
Beyond the line of white gulls and the widely scattered
and diminished human forms is the silvery-grey line
of the sea, with perhaps a sail or two faintly visible
on the horizon.

What more could anyone desire ?—what could add
to the fascinations of such a retreat? A wood! Well,
we have that too, a dark pine wood growing on the

WELLS-NEXT-THE-SEA 27

slopes of the sand-hills on the land side and extending
from the Wells embankment to Holkham a couple
of miles away. Many an hour in the late afternoons
and evenings have I spent in that perfect solitude
listening to the sea-wind in the pines when the sound
of wind and sea were one, and finding the deep
shelter warm and grateful after a long ramble over
the sands and dunes and marshes.

For I go not to Wells in “the season,” when days
are long and the sun is hot, the scattering time for
all those who live “too thick,’’ when even into this
remote spot drift a few of the pale town-people with
books in their pockets and cameras and green butter-
fly-nets in their hands. The wild geese are not there
then, they are away breeding in the Siberian tun-
dra or Spitzbergen; and for that wild exhilarating
clangour which they make when passing overhead to
and from the sea, and for the cra-cra of the hooded
crow—his harsh war-cry and curse on everything—
you hear lark and titlark, dunnock and wren, with
the other members of the “feathered choir” even as
in all other green places.

Autumn and winter is my time, and at no other
place in the kingdom can the grey geese be seen to
better advantage, despite the fact that to this spot
the wild-fowler comes annually in numbers, and that
many of the natives, even the poorest, possess a gun
and are always on the look-out for geese. The birds
come in undiminished numbers, probably because
they find here the one green spot on which they
can repose in comparative safety. This spot is the

28 ADVENTURES AMONG BIRDS

reclaimed marsh or meadowland which I have men-
tioned as lying between the Wells embankment and
Holkham. It is not a perfect sanctuary, since the
geese are shot a few times during the winter by the
lord of the manor and his guests; but the dangerous
days are so few and far between at this place that
the geese have come to regard it as a safe refuge,
and are accustomed to congregate daily in large num-
bers, two or three thousand or more being often
seen together.

How intelligent these noble birds are! The whole
human population of the country round are against
them, waiting for them morning and evening in various
hiding-places to shoot them down as they pass over-
head to and from the sea. This incessant persecution
has made them the wariest of all wild birds and most
dificult to approach. Yet here, where their enemies
are most numerous, where they keep the sharpest
watch when feeding and roosting, and when on the
wing fly high to keep out of range of those who lie
in wait for them—on this one green spot they drop
down to rest and feed by the hour and pay but the
slightest attention to the human form and the sights
and sounds of human life! This camping-ground is
backed by the sand-hills and pine wood; on the
opposite side is the coast road and sight of people
driving and walking, and nearer still the line of the
railway from Lynn to Wells. The marsh, too, is
fed by cattle and horses and sheep; there is the
shepherd with his dog, and others from the farms
going about; but the geese do not heed them, nor

WELLS-NEXT-THE-SEA 29

do they show alarm when a train rushes past a couple
of hundred yards away puffing out steam and making *
a mighty noise on that flat moist earth. They have
made the discovery that there is no harm in it not-
withstanding its huge size, its noise and swift motion.

To find at this spot that I was able to look at a
flock of a thousand or two of geese at a short distance
has been one of my most delightful experiences in
bird-watching in England. I had heard of their
tameness from others, but could hardly credit it
until witnessing it myself. The best time was in
fine weather as we occasionally get it in October and
November, when the wind is still and the sunshine
bright and warm, for the birds are then in a drowsy
state and less vigilant than at other times, especially
after a moonlight night when they have been feeding
on the stubble and pastures. You can then get
quite near to them and see them at their best, and
with a good binocular bring them as close to your eyes
as you like. It is a very fine sight—this assemblage
of large wild birds on the green turf sitting or standing
in every attitude of repose. At a distance they look
almost black; seen closely one admires the shading of
their plumage, the dark upper barred greys and
browns, and the buff colouring on neck and breast
and pink beak and legs. The sight is peculiarly fine
when, as frequently happens, great numbers of birds
of other species gather at the same spot as if a parlia-
ment of the feathered nations were being held. Rooks
and crows, both black and hooded, and daws are often
there in hundreds; lapwings too in hundreds, and

30 ADVENTURES AMONG BIRDS

black-headed gulls and starlings and wintering larks,
with other small birds. The geese repose, the others
are mostly moving about in search of worms and
grubs. The lapwings are quietest, inclined to repose
too; but at intervals they all rise up and wheel
about for a minute or so, then drop to earth again.
As I stand motionless leaning on a gate watching
them, having them, as seen through the glasses, no
more than twenty yards away, I note that for all
their quietude in the warm sleepy sunshine they are
wild geese still, that there are always two or three
to half a dozen who keep their heads up and their
eyes wide open for the general good, also that the
entire company is subject at intervals to little con-
tagious gusts and thrills of alarm. It may be some
loud unusual noise—a horse on the road suddenly
breaking into a thunderous gallop, or the “‘hoot-
hoot” of a motor-car; then the enraged scream of a
gull or carrion-crow at strife with his neighbour;
the sleepers wake and put up their heads, but in a
few moments they are reposing again. Then a great
heron that has been standing motionless like a grey
column for an hour starts up and passes swaying and
flapping over them, creating a fresh alarm, which
subsides as quickly as the first. By-and-by a fresh
flock of geese arrive, returning from some inland
feeding-ground, where the gunners have been after
them, flying high with a great clamour which you
hear before they become visible. Arrived at the
refuge, they wheel round and begin their descent,
but do not alight; again they rise to circle about

WELLS-NEXT-THE-SEA 31

and again descend, and when close to the earth,
every bird dropping his bright-coloured legs to touch
the ground, suddenly they change their minds and
rise to wheel about for a minute or two and then go
right away out to sea.

It was no doubt my presence on several occasions
which prevented them from settling down with the
others; for it was no harmless shepherd or farm-
labourer which they perceived looked on standing
motionless by the gate watching their fellows, a
suspicious-looking object in his hand. It might be
a gamekeeper or sportsman whose intention was to
send a charge of shot into the crowd. But this going
away of the flock instead of alighting would prove
too much for the others: they would now be all
awake; the suspicion would grow and grow, every
bird standing up with outstretched neck; then they
would draw closer together, emitting excited cackling
sounds, all asking what it was—what had frightened
their fellows and sent them away—what danger in-
visible to them had they spied from aloft? And
then they would spring simultaneously into the air
with a rushing noise of wings and tempest of screams,
and rising high go straight away over the sea, soon
vanishing from sight, only to return half an hour later
and settle down once more in the same green place.

To the naturalist, to any bird-lover in fact, a large
gathering of big birds is, of all sights, the most ex-
hilarating, especially in this country where the big
birds have been diligently weeded out until few are
left. At Wells I had two matters in my mind to

32 ADVENTURES AMONG BIRDS

enhance the pleasure experienced. One was in the
thought of the birds’ striking intelligence, as shown
by their changed demeanour during their daily visits
to that camping-spot on the marsh where they relax
their extreme wildness. It is often borne in on me
in observing birds that the position of a species or
family in the scale of nature from the point of view of
the anatomist and evolutionist is not a criterion of
its intelligence. Thus the Anatide, or ducks, which
in any natural classification would be placed far below
the crows and parrots, are mentally equal to the
highest of the bird order. It was purely the intelli-
gence of these geese which made it possible for me to
observe them so nearly at that spot, which was no
sand-bar with the protecting sea all round it, but a
small space in the very midst of the enemies’ country.

It gave me even a higher pleasure to think that
there are still a few great landowners in England, like
the present and the late Lord Leicester, who do not
look on our noble bird life as something to be de-
stroyed for sport, or in the interests of sport, until
it has been wiped out of existence. It is not only
the geese which receive protection here. Ducks in
thousands are accustomed to winter in the park at
Holkham. All breeding species, from the beautiful
sheldrake to the small redshank and ringed dotterel,
are protected as much as they can be in a place where
everyone has a gun and wants to get something tor
the pot. In summer the common and lesser tern
have their breeding-place on the sand-hills, and a
watcher is placed there to prevent them from being

WELLS-NEXT-THE-SEA 33

disturbed and harried by trippers and egg-stealing
collectors. One curious result of the protection given
to the terns was that two or three years ago two pairs
of black-headed gulls started breeding close to them.
It was as if these gulls had observed what was being
done and had said to one another: “This is not a
suitable breeding-place for gulls, though a proper
one for terns who prefer sand and shingle; but what
an advantage to have a man stationed there to protect
the nests from being harried! Come, let us make our
nests here, just on the border of the terns’ gullery,
on the chance of our eggs coming in for protection
too.” The experiment turned out well, and last
summer no fewer than sixteen pairs nested and
brought off their young at that spot.

CHAPTER. TV

GREAT BIRD GATHERINGS

Mr. Richard Lydekker’s search for the crested screamer—Extir-
pation of birds in La Plata—Persecution of sea birds in
England—tThe fight to save our birds—Our delight in the
spectacle of great bird gatherings.

HIS chapter is nothing but a digression,

suggested by what goes before; for the

subject touched on in the account of the wild
geese on the east coast is one which stirs the natur-
alist and bird-lover deeply—the delight of witnessing
immense congregations of birds, especially those of
large size and noble appearance. The remembrance
of such scenes is a joy for ever, in many instances
clouded by the thought that the sight which it is a
happiness to recall will be witnessed no more.

Some years ago the distinguished naturalist and
palzontologist, Mr. Richard Lydekker, went out to
Buenos Ayres to look over and arrange the collection
of tertiary fossils in the famous La Plata Museum.
He had read my Naturalist in La Plata with indus-
trious zeal, quoting from it in rather a wholesale way
when compiling his Royal Natural History. He had
also read Darwin and other naturalists who have
described that same region, and had a hundred things
to look at besides the fossils. One thing he desired to
see was the crested screamer—that great spur-winged

34

GREAT BIRD GATHERINGS 35

loud-voiced bird which has puzzled zoologists to
classify, some thinking it ralline others anserine in
its affinities, while Huxley considered it was related
to the archeopteryx. Having established himself
on the back of a horse, Mr. Lydekker—a biological
Dr. Syntax of the twentieth century—set out in
quest of this singular fowl, and eventually in some
wild and lonely spot succeeded in catching sight at
a vast distance of a specimen or two. This did not
satisfy him; he wanted to see the great birds as I had
seen them, when I rode among them across a vast
marshy plain and saw them in pairs and parties, and
in bunches of a score or two to a hundred, like an
innumerable widely scattered flock of grazing sheep
spread out and extending on every side to the horizon.
And he wanted to hear them as I had heard them,
“counting the hours,” as the gauchos say, when at
intervals during the night they all burst out singing
like one bird, and the powerful ringing voices of the
incalculable multitude produce an effect as of thou-
sands and tens of thousands of great chiming bells,
and the listener is shaken by the tempest of sound and
the earth itself appears to tremble beneath him.

All this, our naturalist was informed by persons
on the spot, was pure romance; no such vast congre-
gations of crested screamers were ever seen, and no
such great concerts were ever heard; the bird,
as he had witnessed, was quite rare, and so it had
always been.

This vexed him, and he resolved to have it out
with me on his return to England. The castigation

36 ADVENTURES AMONG BIRDS

was to be made in public and the Naturalist in La
Plata to be for ever discredited. Luckily for my
poor little reputation he had made further inquiries
before quitting the country and discovered that I
had told the simple truth, that the screamer, albeit
a very big bird, had been excessively abundant and
in dry seasons often formed the stupendous gatherings
I had described; finally, that in about a quarter of
a century it had been practically extirpated on the
pampas. All this I had from his own lips on his
return, an almost incredible example of candour, for
it is well known that we naturalists, like the early
Christians, love one another.

Alas! the crested screamer is but one of many
noble species which have met with the same fate in
southern Argentina. The rhea, the great blue heron,
the flamingo, the wood ibis, and the great blue ibis
of the marshes and the great black-faced ibis of the
uplands with its resounding cries as of giants beating
with hammers on iron plates; and storks and upland
geese, and the white and the black-necked swans.
Then follow others of lesser size—the snowy egrets
and other herons and bitterns, glossy ibis, rails and
courlans, big and little, the beautiful golden-winged
jacana, curlews and godwits, and waders and ducks
too numerous to mention. They were in myriads on
the rivers and marshes, they were seen in clouds in
the air, like starlings in England when they con-
gregate at their roosting-places. They are gone now,
or are rapidly going. Their destruction was pro-
ceeding when I left, hating the land of my birth and

GREAT BIRD GATHERINGS 37

the Italian immigration that was blighting it, wishing
only that I could escape from all recollection of the
scenes I had witnessed—of the very land where I
first knew and loved birds.

How amazing it seems that the chief destroyers
should be the South Europeans, the Latins, who are
supposed to be lovers of the beautiful and who are
undoubtedly the most religious of all people! They
have no symbol for the heavenly beings they worship
but a bird. Their religious canvases, illuminations,
and temples, inside and out, are covered with re-
presentations of ibises, cranes, pigeons, gulls, modified
so as to resemble human figures, and these stand for
angels and saints and the third person of the Trinity.
Yet all these people, from popes, cardinals, princes,
and nobles down to the meanest peasant on the land,
are eager to slay and devour every winged creature,
from noble crane and bustard even to the swallow
that builds in God’s house and the minute cutty
wren and fairy-like firecrest—the originals of those
sacred emblematic figures before which they bow
in adoration!

But it is not the Latins only that are concerned
in this dreadful business; our race too—a nobler race
as we try to think—at home, in North America,
Africa, and Australasia, have been only too diligently
occupied in exterminating. Let it not be forgotten
that down to 1868, the date of our first Wild Bird
Protection Act, the chief breeding-places of our sea
birds were invaded every year at holiday time by
train-loads and ship-loads of trippers with guns to

38 ADVENTURES AMONG BIRDS

engage in the wholesale massacre of the birds on the
cliffs and the sea. Nor was it confined to the trippers
from London, Manchester, Birmingham, and other
great centres of population; the fascination of it
drew men of all classes, including those who annually
shot (and even owned) the moors and coverts. For
in June and July the grouse and partridge and phea-
sant were not yet ready for killing, and it was great
fun in the meantime to have a few days with the
gannets, terns, kittiwakes, guillemots, and other
auks. It was nothing to them that the birds were
breeding, that the result of this wholesale slaughter
would be the extirpation of the multitudes of sea
birds which people the cliffs before the century was
out, since they were no man’s birds—only God’s.

Happily there were a few men in England who had
the courage to lift up their voices against this hideous
iniquity, who eventually succeeded in getting an
Act for its suppression. Thus it came about that
our sea birds were saved and we have them still,
and that we were given courage to go on and try to
save our land birds as well.

And with this business we are still occupied, fight-
ing to save our country’s bird life from destruction—
how strange that so long and strenuous a fight should
be necessary to secure such an object! But that it
is a winning fight becomes more evident as the years
go on. There is now a public feeling on our side:
we are not a brutish nation ready to stamp out all
beauty from the earth so long as the killing and stamp-
ing out processes minister to our pleasure or profit.

GREAT BIRD GATHERINGS 39

On the contrary, we can affirm that a majority of the
inhabitants of this country are desirous of preserving
its beautiful wild bird life. Those who are on the
other side may be classified as the barbarians of means
who are devoted mainly to sport, and would cheer-
fully see the destruction of most of our birds above
the size of a thrush for the sake of that disastrous
exotic, the semi-domestic pheasant of the preserves;
secondly, the private collector, that “curse of rural
England”; and last but not least, the regiment of
horrible women who persist in decorating their heads
with aigrettes and carcasses of slaughtered birds. In
the forty odd years that have passed since a first
attempt was made to give some protection to our wild
birds much has been done in England; and happily
in other lands and continents occupied by men of
British race our example is being followed. Would
that the Americans had begun to follow it three
decades sooner, since owing to their tardiness they
have many and great losses to lament. It is not
strange that the crested screamer, with many other
noble species, has quickly been done to death in a
country overrun by Italians, when it is remembered
that in the United States of America the passenger
pigeon, the most abundant species in all that conti-
nent, has been extirpated in very recent times without
an effort having been made to save it. Now that it is
gone the accounts given by Audubon and Fenimore
Cooper of its numbers when its migrating flocks
darkened the sun at noon read like the veriest fables
inventions as wild as those of the crested screamer

40 ADVENTURES AMONG BIRDS

congregations in my La Plata book, and of the
migration of fishes in the Pacific described by
Herman Melville. -

To return to the subject which was uppermost in
my mind when I sat down to write this chapter, or
this digression. It was the peculiar delight produced
in us by the sight and sound of birds, especially those
of large size, in flocks and multitudes. The bird itself
is a thing of beauty, supreme in this respect among
living forms, therefore, as we have seen, the symbol
in art of all that is highest in the spiritual world.
Nevertheless we find that the pleasure of seeing a
single bird is as nothing compared to that of seeing
a numerous company of birds. Take this case of the
wild grey goose—a large, handsome bird, a joy to
look at whether flying or standing motionless and
statuesque with head raised, on the wide level flats
and marshes. But the pleasure is infinitely greater
when I see a flock of a thousand or of two or three
thousand as I do here where I am writing this on the
east coast. They come over me, seen first very far
off as a black line, wavering, breaking, and re-forming,
increasing like a coming cloud and changing its form,
till it resolves itself into the host of great broad-winged
birds, now black against the pale immense sky, now
flashing white in the sun. I hear them too, even
before they become visible, a distant faint clangour
which grows and changes as it comes and is a beau-
tiful noise of many shrill and deep sounds, as of wind
and stringed instruments, producing an orchestral
effect, as of an orchestra in the clouds.

GREAT BIRD GATHERINGS 41

What is the secret of the delight which possesses
me at such a spectacle, which seems at the moment
to surpass all other delights, giving me a joy that will
last for days? It is not merely that the pleasure
in the single bird is intensified, or doubled or in-
creased a hundred-fold. It is not the same old feeling
in a greater degree; there is a new element in it
which makes it different in character. The sight
dwells with pleasure on a pleasant landscape; but if
we then ascend a hill and look upon the scene from
that higher standpoint a quite different feeling is
experienced; the wider horizon is a revelation of
vastness, of a greatness which is practically new,
since the mind had previously become attuned to
earth as viewed from the lower level. Now we get
the element of sublimity. So, in the case of the large
bird seen in flocks and vast numbers—seen and
heard; it is a sudden revelation of wild life in its
nobler aspect—of its glorious freedom and power
and majesty.

We get this emotion in various degrees at the
various breeding stations of our larger birds, notably
on the Yorkshire and Northumberland coasts, the
Bass Rock, the Orkneys and Shetlands, and “utmost
Kilda’s lonely isle.” Those who have experienced
it value it above all the delights this spectacular world
can afford them, and their keenest desire is for its
repetition. It is to taste this feeling that thousands
of persons, some with the pretext of bird-study or
photography, annually visit these teeming stations
within the kingdom, whilst others who are able to

42 ADVENTURES AMONG BIRDS

go further afield seek out the great bird haunts in
other countries.

But the feeling is incommunicable, and is a trea-
sured memory and secret, a joy for ever in the heart.
Those who do not know it—who have had no oppor-
tunity of finding out for themselves—cannot imagine
it. To these it may seem strange that any man should
turn his back on the comforts of civilised life to spend
long laborious days in dreary desert regions, scorched
by tropical suns, devoured by mosquitoes, wading in
pestilential swamps; not for sport, the fascination of
which is universally known, but just for the sake of
seeing a populous rookery or congregation of big birds
in their breeding haunts. Those who do know will
bear these discomforts, and even greater ones, for
the sake of that glorious gladness which the sight
will produce in them. This rather than the notes
and bundle of photographs which they bring back
is what they have gone out to seek.

CHAPTER V

BIRDS IN AUTHORITY

A conversation with a sportsman—Wild geese—A masterful
gander—Stories of pet trumpeters— Singular behaviour
of a male sand-martin—Bird sentinels—Dancing per-
formances of lapwings—Ceremonial drinking and bathing
—Bird sports.

WAS on my way to the West of England, and

I from Waterloo for about a hundred and twenty
miles had but one fellow-traveller in the carriage.

A man of a fine presence, about sixty; from his keen,

alert eyes, hard weathered face, and his dress I took

him to be a sportsman. He very soon let me know
that he was one, as great an enthusiast as one could
meet; and as he was companionable and we talked
the whole time, I got to know a good deal about him.
Shooting and fishing were his chief pleasures and
interest in life: he had followed both from his early
years, in and out of England. For the last ten or
twelve years he had lived at the antipodes, where he
held an important position in one of the colonies;
but somehow the sports he loved best had not the
same relish for him in that distant country as at home,
and he was accustomed to take frequent and long
holidays to have a month on the moors and in the
coverts and to go on shooting and fishing excursions
to the continent. Wild-fowling was perhaps the
43

44 ADVENTURES AMONG BIRDS

kind of sport he loved best of all, and we soon got
on the subject of wild geese.

That bird was much in my mind at the moment,
for I was just back from the east coast, where I had
been staying with the wild geese, so to speak, at
Wells-next-the-Sea, watching them every day in
their great gatherings and listening to their multi-
tudinous resounding cries, which affect one like bells,
“jangled, out of tune and harsh” it may be, but the
sense of wildness and freedom the sound imparts
is exceedingly grateful.

Some of his adventures among the geese caused me
to remark that, even if I had not long ceased to be a
sportsman, I would never again lift a gun against a
wild goose; it was so intelligent a bird that it would
be like shooting at a human being. He had no such
feeling —could not understand it. If geese were
more intelligent than other species, that only made
them the better sporting birds, and the pleasure of
circumventing them was so much the greater. There
was nothing better to get the taste of shooting half-
tame hand-fed driven birds out of the mouth than
a week or two after wild geese. He had just had a
fine time with them on the coast of Norway. This
reminded him of something. Yes, the wild goose
was about as intelligent a bird as you could find.
The friend he had been staying with was the owner
of a small group of islands or islets on the coast of
Norway; he had bought them a good many years
ago purely for sporting purposes, as the geese in-
variably came there on migration and spent some time

BIRDS IN AUTHORITY 45

on the islands. There was one island where the geese
used to congregate every year on arrival in large
numbers, and here one autumn some years ago a
goose was caught by the leg in a steel trap set for
a fox. The keeper from a distance saw the whole
vast gathering of geese rise up and circle round and
round in a cloud, making a tremendous outcry, and
going to the spot he found the bird struggling violently
in the trap. He took it home to another and larger
island close by where his master, my informant’s
friend, had a farm. From that day the wild geese
never settled on that islet, which had been used as a
resting-place for very many years. The bird he had
accidentally caught was an old gander, and had its
leg smashed; but the keeper set to work to repair
the injury, and after binding it up he put the bird
in an outhouse and eventually it got quite well. He
then pinioned it and put it out with the other birds.
A little while before the old gander had been caught
the foxes had become so troublesome at the farm
that it was found necessary to secure all the birds
every night in enclosures and houses made for the
purpose, and as the birds preferred to be out the
keeper had to go round and spend a good deal of time
every evening in collecting and driving them in.
Now before the old wild goose had been able to go
about many days with the others it was noticed that
he was acquiring a kind of mastery over them, and
every day as evening approached he began to try
to lead and, failing in that, to drive them to the
enclosures and buildings. The keeper, curious to see

46 ADVENTURES AMONG BIRDS

how far this would go, began to relax his efforts and
to go round later and later each evening, and as his
efforts slackened the gander’s zeal increased, until
he was left to do the whole work himself and all the
keeper had to do was to go round and shut the doors.
This state of things had now continued for some
years, and the old wild goose was the acknowledged
leader and master of all the birds on the farm.

The story of this wise gander, its readiness in adapt-
ing itself to a wholly new way of life and in taking
in the situation—the danger by night and need of
someone in authority over that heterogeneous crowd
of birds who had lost the power of flight, and, from
being looked after, had grown careless of their own
safety—and, finally, the taking of it all on himself,
putting himself in office as it were, may strike us as
very strange, but it agrees well enough with the
character of the bird as we know it in its domestic
condition. It is common to hear of the masterful
old gander at farmhouses, the ruler and sometimes
tyrant of the farmyard. I have myself observed and
have heard of many instances of long-lasting and
exceedingly bitter feuds between an imperious gander
and some other member of the feathered community,
a turkey cock or Muscovy duck or peacock who re-
fused to be governed by a goose. But I was specially
pleased to have had this story of the bird in Norway
from a sportsman and enthusiastic wild-fowler, one
of the class who do not like to think too much about
the psychology of the creatures it is their pleasure to
follow and destroy.

BIRDS IN AUTHORITY 47

I have also heard of cases of birds of other species
taking on themselves the leadership and guardianship
of their fellows. One from South America relates
to the trumpeter, the strange and delightful Psophia
leucoptera, a quaint, beautiful creature, a little ostrich
in shape, taller than a fowl, very dark, with white
wings, the head and neck glossed with purple and
green. A singular bird, too, in its voice and manner,
when three or four get together and have a sort of
drum and trumpet performance, keeping time to the
music with measured steps and bowings and various
quaint gestures and motions. Alas! they are delicate
birds, and all the beautiful trumpeters we had some
time ago in the Zoological Gardens are now dead—
to come to life again, let us hope, in their distant
home in some Brazilian forest.

About twenty years ago an American naturalist,
one Dr. Rusby, was in a part of Bolivia where it was
common to keep a pet trumpeter, and he says that
the Spanish settlers almost worshipped them on
account of their amiable and affectionate domestic
habits. Early in the morning the trumpeter would
go into a sleeper’s room and salute him on rising by
dancing about the floor, bowing its head and drop-
ping its wings and tail, continuing the performance
until its presence was noticed and it was spoken to,
whereupon it would depart to visit another bed-
room, to repeat the ceremony there, then to another,
until the whole household had been visited and bid
“Good-morning.” Afterwards, when all were up,
it would attach itself to some one member of the

48 ADVENTURES AMONG BIRDS

family and follow him or her about most of the day.
The trumpeter loved and took an interest in every-
one of the house, including the stranger within the
gates, but was specially devoted to one or two
individuals.

It is right to remember that this beautiful dis-
position of the trumpeter and all its pretty actions
have not been acquired through companionship with
human beings: they are mere survivals of its own
wild life in the forest with its own fellows, and possibly
with birds of other species with which it associates.
At all events, I have heard of cases in which a tame
trumpeter, in a country house in Brazil or Venezuela,
where fowls and birds of various kinds were kept and
allowed to roam about at will, placing himself in
charge of the others, attending them at their feeding-
grounds, keeping watch, giving the alarm at the
approach of danger, and bringing or hunting them
home at roosting-time.

If my reader happens not to be of those who regard
a bird merely as a creature to be taken and destroyed
for man’s pleasure or for the decoration of his women,
who like a lovely hat to match the lovely spirit within,
I trust that he will not think that these be tall stories
about a wise grey goose in grey north lands and a
benevolent trumpeter in the tropics, for then he will
perhaps say that the story I have got to tell in
conclusion is taller still.

Tt is a common fact in natural history that the males
of certain species exhibit a good deal of anxiety about
the proper care of the eggs, and exercise supervision

BIRDS IN AUTHORITY 49

and authority over the females, compelling them
during the period of incubation to return to the nest
when they are inclined to stay out too long. Our
swift is a familiar example. But has anyone ever
observed an individual of any species, one of a colony,
presumably a male, exercising this kind of mastership
over a number of females in the absence of their
mates? Yet this is exactly what I witnessed on
one occasion, and if I were to ask a dozen or fifty
naturalists to name the species they would all guess
wrong, for the bird in question was the small, deli-
cate, gentle, moth-like sand-martin—the “ mountain
butterfly,” as it is prettily named in Spain.

Near Yeovil I found a breeding-place of these birds
in a vast old sand-pit. It was in May, and no doubt
they were incubating. There were about fifty holes
in the steepest side of the sand-bank, and when I
began watching them there were about fourteen or
fifteen birds flying round and round within the basin
of the pit, hawking after flies, and perhaps prolonging
their play-time after their morning feed. By-and-by
I noticed one bird acting in a singular manner; I
saw him come out of one hole and go quickly into
another, then another still, until he had visited several,
remaining about five or six seconds in each, or as long
as it would take him to run to the end of the burrow
and return. Finally, having finished inspecting the
holes, he began pursuing one of the birds flying
aimlessly about in the pit; the chase increased in
speed and violence until the hunted bird took refuge

in one of the burrows. He then started chasing
D

50 ADVENTURES AMONG BIRDS

another of the birds flying about, and in due time
this one was also driven into one of the holes. Then
a third chase began, then a fourth and so on until
every bird had been driven into a hole, always after
a good deal of rushing about, and he remained alone.
After flying up and down a few times he finally flew
off, probably to some water-course or moist meadow
abounding in flies at a distance from the pit, where
he would join the other males of the colony.

I remained for some time on the spot, keeping a
close watch on the little black burrows on the orange-
coloured sand-bank, but not a bird flew or even peeped
out; nor did any of the absent birds return to the pit.

Is it a habit of this swallow in the breeding-time
for one male to remain behind when the others go
away to feed, and the females, or some of them, are
still off their eggs, just as, in other species, when the
company settles down to feed or sleep one keeps
awake and on guard? The action of the swallow
in putting back the others on their eggs strikes one
as a development of some such habit or instinct as
that of the swift, and it is possible that in the sand-
martin the social habit is in a more advanced state
and the communities more close-knit than in most
species. But there is a good deal to learn yet about
the inner life of birds.

Observers of animals are familiar with the fact of a
bird of masterful temper making himself head and
tyrant of his fellows, albeit it is less common or less
noticeable among birds that have the social habit
than it is among mammals. It appears to me that

BIRDS IN AUTHORITY 51

the instances given above are not of this kind. The
spirit, the motive, is different. Here the bird is seen
to take the mastership for the general good, and
we can only suppose that, with or without greater
strength and intelligence than his fellows, he un-
doubtedly possesses a keener sense of danger, or
superior alertness, and a larger measure of that help-
ful spirit without which wild animals could not exist
in a social state. The action of the gander and of the
trumpeter in driving their fellows home in the evening
must be regarded as similar in its origin to that of the
male swift when he hunts his mate back to the nest
and of the sand-martin I observed chasing the
females of the colony to their burrows. In a lesser
way it may be seen in any flock of birds; they move
about in such an orderly manner, springing, as it
appears to us, simultaneously into the air, going
in a certain direction, settling here or there to feed,
presently going away to another distant feeding-
ground or alighting to rest or sing on trees and bushes,
as to produce the idea of a single mind. But the flock
is not a machine; the minds are many; one bird
gives the signal—the one who is a little better in his
keener senses and quicker intelligence than his com-
panions; his slightest sound, his least movement, is
heard and seen and understood and is instantly and
simultaneously acted upon. So well and quickly is
he understood and obeyed that the fact of his leader-
ship or promptership is difficult to detect. Another
manifestation of this same helpful spirit with which
observers of wild animals are familiar, is seen in the

52 ADVENTURES AMONG BIRDS

self-appointed guardian or sentinel of the feeding or
sleeping flock. In some mammals it appears in a
striking way, as in the guanaco on the Patagonian
plains, when one member of the herd ascends a hill
or other high spot to keep watch while his fellows are
browsing on the bushes or grazing on the plain below.
In some birds the watchful spirit is so powerful that
the sentinel and alarm-giver is not satisfied to see
only those of his own species obey his warning; he
would have every feathered creature within hearing
escape from danger. The curlew is an example and
has been observed by wild-fowlers swooping violently
upon and trying to drive up a duck that had remained
on the ground after all the other birds in the place
had taken flight.

Much more could be said on the subject if there
were not so many others to be dealt with in this
book: probably every wild-fowler, and in fact every
close observer of the actions of birds who reads this
chapter, will be able to recall some incident he has
witnessed which illustrates this helpful spirit. But I
cannot conclude before giving one remarkable example
of a bird or of birds making themselves masters of a
flock not with any important purpose as in the fore-
going instances, but purely in play, or for fun. I[
witnessed this incident many years ago, and told it
briefly in Argentine Ornithology, but that work is
little known and unobtainable, and I am rather
pleased at the opportunity of relating it again more
fully in this place.

The bird was a Vanellus, a lapwing in its shape,

BIRDS IN AUTHORITY 53

crest, and the colour of its plumage closely allied to
our familiar bird of the moors and pasture-lands, but
a third bigger, with pink beak, crimson eyes, scarlet
spurs on its wings, and bright red legs, and these
touches of colour, “‘angrie and brave,” give it a
strikingly bold appearance. Our green plover is like
a small weak copy of the Argentine bird. The voice
of the latter, too, is twice as loud, and its temper
more jealous and violent. In its habits it resembles
the pewit, but has a greater love of play, which it
practises, both when flying and on the ground. This
play on the ground, called by the natives the bird’s
“‘dance,” is performed by a set of three, and is in-
dulged in every day at intervals all the year round.
So fond of it are they that when the birds are dis-
tributed in pairs all over the plains, for some time
before and during the breeding season, one bird may
frequently be seen to leave his mate at home and
fly away to visit another pair in the neighbourhood.
These, instead of rising up with angry screams to
hunt him furiously away from their sacred ground
as they would any other bird, receive his visit with
manifest pleasure, and running to him where he
stands motionless, they place themselves behind him,
standing abreast, their plumage puffed out, and then
with loud, rhythmical, drumming notes uttered by
the pair, and loud single measured notes by the
leader, they begin a rapid march, stepping in time
to the music; then, when the march is ended the
leader as a rule lifts his wings and holds them erect,
still emitting loud notes, while the two behind, still

54 ADVENTURES AMONG BIRDS

standing abreast with slightly opened wings and
puffed-out feathers, lower their heads until the tips
of their beaks touch the ground, at the same time
sinking their voices until the drumming sound dies to a
whisper. The performanceis then over, and is repeated,
or if the visitor is in a hurry he takes his departure, to
rejoin his mate and receive a visitor himself by-and-by.

One dry summer, long after the breeding season
was over, while out riding I passed by a lagoon, or
lakelet, where the birds from all the plain for some
miles round were accustomed to come to drink, and
noticed a gathering of about a hundred lapwings
standing quietly near the water. It was evident
they had all had their drink and bath, and were dry-
ing and preening their feathers and resting before
going back to their several feeding-grounds. On
seeing them my attention was instantly arrested by
the singular behaviour of two birds, the only restless
noisy ones in that quiet, silent company. It was not
a close company; every bird had a good space to
himself, his nearest neighbour standing a foot or
more away, and right in among them the two restless
birds were trotting freely about, uttering loud com-
manding notes, and apparently greatly excited about
something. I had seen nothing like that before, and
it puzzled me to account for their action. By-and-by
there was a fresh arrival; a lapwing came to drink,
and instead of dropping down on the edge of the
water, he alighted about thirty feet away, at a dis-
tance of two or three yards from the others, and
remained there, standing erect and motionless as if

BIRDS IN AUTHORITY 55

waiting. The two busy birds, still crying aloud, now
made their way to him, and placing themselves behind
him and observing all the attitudes and gestures used
in their “dances” or marches and giving the signal,
the three set off at a trot to the sound of drums and
the thirsty bird was run down to the water. He at
once went in to the depth of his knees and drank,
then squatting down, bathed his feathers, the whole
process lasting about half a minute. He would, no
doubt, have taken much longer over his refreshment
but for the two birds who had run him down to the
water, and who continued standing on the margin
emitting their loud authoritative cries. Coming out,
he was again received as at first, and trotted briskly
away with drumming sounds to a place with the
others. No sooner was this done than the two,
smoothing their feathers and changing their notes,
resumed their marching about among their fellows,
until another lapwing arrived, whereupon the whole
ceremony was gone through again.

Without a doubt this performance had nothing
but play for a motive, the remarkable thing about it
was that it was made to fit so admirably into the
serious business which brought them together at that
spot. They came, one by one, from all over the
plain, at noon on a hot thirsty day, solely for re-
freshment, yet every bird on arrival instantly fell
into the humour of the moment and took his ap-
pointed part and place in the game. It struck me at
the time as a very strange thing, for well as I knew
the bird, I had never witnessed an act precisely like

56 ADVENTURES AMONG BIRDS

this before. Yet it does not stand alone, except in
form; any day and every day we may see acts in
other species of social disposition or habits, which are
undoubtedly inspired by a similar spirit. Little sham
quarrels and flights and chases; we see them squaring
up to one another with threatening gestures and
language; playing little practical jokes too, as when
one approaches another in a friendly way and subtly
watches him to snatch a morsel from his beak; or
when another pretends to have found something ex-
ceptionally good and makes a great fuss about it to
deceive a comrade, and when the other carries the
joke further by capturing and carrying off the bit of
dry stick or whatever it is, and pretending to feast
on it with great satisfaction. These and a hundred
other little playful acts of the kind are common
enough and mingle with and are like a part of the
food-getting or other business of the moment.

The strangeness of the plover’s performance was
due to the singular form which play in them almost
invariably takes—the military discipline in all their
movements, their drumming sounds and commanding
cries, the tremendous formality of it all! The two
birds were like little children pretending to be some
mighty personages who owned everything and lorded
it over the others. They were dispensers of the
water of the lake, and were graciously pleased to
allow any thirsty bird that came to drink and bathe,
but only after the proper ceremonies had been per-
formed; also the drinking and bathing had to be
cut rather short on this occasion.

CHAPTER VI

A WOOD BY THE SEA

The pine wood at Wells—An extraordinary echo—Crows dis-
turbed by a barn owl—Pheasant and blackbird feeding
together—Friendships between birds of different species—
Account of a pet pheasant.

NE of my favourite haunts at Wells, in
Norfolk, is the pine wood, a mile or two long,
growing on the slope of the sand-hills and
extending from the Wells embankment to Holkham
—a black strip with the yellow-grey dunes and the
sea on one side and the wide level green marsh on the
other. It is the roosting-place of all the crows that
winter on that part of the coast, and I time my visits
so as to be there in the evening. Rooks and daws also
resort to that spot, and altogether there is a vast
concourse of birds of the crow family. My habit is
to stroll on to the embankment at about three o’clock
to watch and listen to the geese on their way from
their feeding-crounds to the sea, always flying too
high for the poo; gunners lying in wait for them. So
poor, indeed, a‘e some of these men that they will
shoot at anything that flies by, even a hooded crow.

They do not fire at it for fun—they can’t afford to

throw away a cartridge: one of them assured me

that a crow, stewed with any other bird he might
57

58 ADVENTURES AMONG BIRDS

have in the larder— pewit, redshank, curlew, or
gull—goes down very well when you are hungry.
Later I go on to the sea, meeting the last of the
fishers, or toilers in the sands, returning before dark;
men and boys in big boots and heavy wet clothes,
burdened with spades and forks and baskets of bait
and shell-fish. With slow, heavy feet they trudge
past and leave the world to darkness and to me.
On one of these evenings as I stood on the ridge
of the dunes, looking seaward, when the tide was out
and the level sands stretched away to the darkening
horizon, an elderly woman made her appearance, and
had evidently come all that way down to give her dog
an evening run. Climbing over the ridge, she went
down to the beach, where the dog, a big rough-haired
terrier, was so delighted with the smooth sands that
he began careering round her in wide circles at his
utmost speed, barking the while with furious joy.
The sound produced an extraordinary effect; it was
repeated and redoubled a hundred-fold from all over
the flat sands. It was my first experience of an echo
of that sort heard from above—perhaps if I had been
below there would have been no echo—but I could
not understand how it was produced. It was not
like other echoes—exact repetitions of the sounds
emitted which come back to us from walls and woods
and cliffs—but was fainter and more diffused, the
sounds running into each other and all seeming to
run over the flat earth, now here, now there, and
fading into mysterious whisperings. It was as if the
vigorous barkings of the living dog had roused the

A WOOD BY THE SEA 59

ghosts of scores and hundreds of perished ones; that
they had come out of the earth and, unable to resist
the contagion of his example and the “memory of
an ancient joy,” were all madly barking their ghost
barks and scampering invisible over the sands.

The chief thing to see was the crows coming in to
roost from about four to six o’clock, arriving con-
tinually in small parties of from two or three to thirty
or forty birds, until it was quite dark. The roosting-
place has been shifted two or three times since I have
known the wood, and, by a lucky chance, on the last
occasion of their going to a fresh place I witnessed
the removal and discovered its cause. For two even-
ings I had noticed a good deal of unrest among the
roosting birds. This would begin at dusk, after they
were all quietly settled down, when all at once there
would be an outburst of loud angry cawings at one
point, as unmistakable in its meaning as that sudden
storm of indignation and protest frequently heard
in one part of our House of Commons when the
susceptibilities of the party or group of persons sitting
together at that spot have been wantonly hurt by
the honourable member addressing the House. It
would subside only to break out by-and-by at some
other spot, perhaps fifty yards away; and at some
points the birds would rise up and wheel and hover
overhead, cawing loudly for a minute or two before
settling down again.

I concluded that it was some creature dangerous
to birds, probably a fox, prowling about among
the trees and creating an alarm whenever they

60 ADVENTURES AMONG BIRDS

caught sight of him; but though I watched for an
hour I could detect nothing.

On the third evening the disturbance was more
widespread and persistent than usual, until the birds
could endure it no longer. The cawing storms had
been breaking out at various spots over an area of
many acres of wood, when at length the whole vast
concourse rose up and continued hovering and flying
about for fifteen or twenty minutes, then settled once
more on the topmost branches of the pines. Seen
from the ridge on a level with the top of the wood
the birds presented a strange sight, perched in hun-
dreds, sitting upright and motionless, looking in-
tensely black on the black tree-tops against the pale
evening sky. By-and-by, as I stood in a green drive
in the midst of the roosting-place, a fresh tempest
of alarm broke out at some distance and travelled
towards me, causing the birds to rise; and suddenly
the disturber appeared, gliding noiselessly near the
ground with many quick doublings among the boles
—a barn owl, looking strangely white among the black
trees! A little later there was a general rising of the
entire multitude with a great uproar; they were
unable to stand the appearance of that mysterious
bird-shaped white creature gliding about under their
roosting-trees any longer. For a minute or two they
hovered overhead, rising higher and higher in the
darkening sky, then began streaming away over the
wood to settle finally at another spot about half a
mile away; and to that new roosting-place they
returned on subsequent evenings.

A WOOD BY THE SEA 61

It was a curious thing to have witnessed, for one
does not think of this bird—“Hilarion’s servant, the
sage Crow”—as a nervous creature, subject to need-
less alarms; but a few evenings later I was so fortun-
ate as to witness something even more interesting.
In this instance a pheasant was the chief actor, a
species the field naturalist is apt to look askance at
because it is a coddled species and the coddling pro-
cess has incidentally produced a disastrous effect
on our native wild-bird life. Once we rid our minds
of these unfortunate associations we recognise that
this stranger in our woods is not only of a splendid
appearance, but has that which is infinitely more
than fine feathers—the intelligent spirit, the mind,
that is in a bird.

On a November evening I came out of the wood to
a nice sheltered spot by the side of a dyke fringed
with sedges and yellow reeds, and the wide green
marsh spread out before me. There are many phea-
sants in the wood, which are accustomed to feed by
day on the marsh or meadow lands; now I watched
them coming in, flying and running, filling the wood
with noise as they settled in their roosting-trees,
clucking and crowing. In a little while they grew
quiet, and I thought that all were at home and abed;
but presently, while sweeping the level green expanse
with my glasses, I spied a cock pheasant about two
hundred yards out, standing bunched up in a dejected
attitude at the side of a dyke and wire fence with a
few bramble bushes growing by it. He looked sick,
perhaps suffering from the effects of a stray pellet

62 ADVENTURES AMONG BIRDS

of lead in his body if not from some natural disease.
I watched him for twenty or twenty-five minutes,
during which he made not the slightest motion. Then
a blackbird shot out from the wood, passing over my
head, and flew straight out over the marsh, and,
following it with my glasses, I saw it pitch on the
bush near which the pheasant was standing. The
pheasant instantly put up his head; the blackbird
then flew down to him, and immediately both birds
began moving about in search of food, the pheasant
stepping quietly over the sward, pecking as he went;
the blackbird making his quick little runs, now to
this side, then to that, then on ahead and at intervals
running back to the other. Presently the sudden near
loud cry of a carrion-crow flying to the wood startled
the blackbird, and he rushed away to the bush, where
he remained perched for about a minute; the other
was not startled, but he at once left off feeding
and stood motionless, patiently waiting till his com-
panion returned to him, and they went on as before.
The pheasant now discovered something to his taste,
and for several minutes remained still, pecking rapidly
at the same spot, the other running about in quest of
worms until he found and succeeded in pulling one
out and spent some time over it; then came back
again to the pheasant.

During all this time I could not detect any other
birds from the wood, not even a thrush that feeds
latest, on all the marsh; they were all at roost, and
it was impossible not to believe that these two were
friends, accustomed to meet at that spot and feed

A WOOD BY THE SEA 63

together; that when I first spied the pheasant,
standing in that listless attitude after all his fellows
had gone, he was waiting for his little black comrade
and would not have his supper without him.

It was getting dark when the blackbird at length
flew off to the wood, and at once the pheasant, with
head up, began walking in the same direction; then
running and soon launching himself on the air he flew
straight into the pines.

My experience is that friendships between bird and
bird, if the preference of two individuals for each
other’s company can be described by that word, is
not at all uncommon, though I usually find that
gamekeepers “don’t quite seem to see it.” That is
only natural in their case; it is but a reflex effect
of the gun in the hand on the keeper’s mind. Yet one
of the keepers on the estate, to whom I related this
incident, although inclined to shake his head, told
me he had observed a ringed dotterel and a redshank
keeping company for a space of two or three months
last year. It was impossible not to see, he said, what
close friends they were, as they invariably went
together even when feeding with other shore birds.
It is a thing we notice sometimes when the companion-
ship is between two birds of different species, but it is
probable that it is far more common among those
of the same species, and that among the gregarious
and social kinds the unmated ones as a rule have
their chums in the flock.

The friendship I observed between the two birds
at Wells reminded me of the case of a pheasant who

64 ADVENTURES AMONG BIRDS

had human friends; it is the only instance I have met
with of a pheasant being kept as a household pet, and
was related to me by my old friend the late Dr.
Cunninghame Geikie, of Bournemouth, author of
religious books. The bird was a handsome cock,
owned by a lady of that place, who kept it for many
years—he said nineteen, but he may have been
mistaken about the time. The main thing was his
disposition, his affection for his people and the fine
courage he displayed in protecting them. His zeal
in looking after them was at times inconvenient. He
was particularly attached to his mistress, and liked
to attend her on her walks, and made himself her
guardian. But he was distrustful of strangers, and
when she was at home he would keep watch, and if
he saw a visitor approaching the house—some person
he did not know—he would boldly sally forth to
meet and order him off the premises with suitable
threatening gestures, which if not quickly obeyed
would be followed by a brisk attack, the blows, with
spurs, being aimed at the intruder’s legs.

CHAPTER VII

FRIENDSHIP IN ANIMALS

The title justified—Position of friendship in the scale of animal
qualities—Friendships between horses—A pet wolf—Peter
the fox—Friendships among birds—A jackdaw and a small
boy—Stories of teal—Birds caring for injured companions
—The helping instinct—Partridge and pony—Strange case
of a swan and a trout.

OME lordly-minded person has said that it is
a misuse or an abuse of the word to describe
as friendship the distinct preference for each
other’s company and habitual consorting together of
two individuals among the lower animals; because
—this wise man continues—being lower animals,
they cannot rise to the height of that union between
two minds, or souls, common among men. Where
then does the capacity for this union begin? for who
will venture to say that the two-legged upright or
man-shaped mammalian of Tierra del Fuego or the
Andaman Islands or of the Aruwimi forest is capable
of a feeling beyond the power of elephants, dogs,
seals, apes, and in fact of all other vertebrates—
beasts, birds, reptiles, and fishes? There is no broad
line of demarcation between our noble selves and
these our poor relations—even the wearers of feathers
and scales. We have had to learn, not without

reluctance and a secret bitterness, that even our
E 65

66 ADVENTURES AMONG BIRDS

best and highest qualities have their small beginnings
in these lowlier beings. That union or feeling of
preference and attachment of an individual towards
another of its own or of a different species, which I
first began to observe in horses during my boyhood,
is, like play, unconcerned with the satisfaction of
bodily wants and the business of self-preservation
and the continuance of the race. It is a manifestation
of something higher in the mind, which shows that
the lower animals are not wholly immersed in the
struggle for existence, that they are capable in a
small way, as we are in a large way, of escaping
from and rising above it. Friendship is in fact the
highest point to which the animal’s mind can rise.
For whereas play, which has its origin in the purely
physical state of well-being and in instinctive impulses
universal among sentient beings, does indirectly serve
a purpose in the animal’s life, friendship can serve no
useful purpose whatever and is the isolated act of an
individual which clearly shows a perception on his
part of differences in the character of other individuals,
also the will and power to choose from among them
the one with which he finds himself most in harmony.
Furthermore, such friendships do not come into
existence inevitably, or automatically, as the result
of a feeling on the part of an individual: the feeling
must be expressed or exhibited and approaches made.
These may or may not be accepted, since the animal
approached has a will of his own. The result is some-
times a very one-sided friendship, as in the case of
an individual who forms an attachment for another

FRIENDSHIP IN ANIMALS 67

which is like an infatuation, and who is happy if his
presence is tolerated and who will go on day after
day for weeks and months following the indifferent
one about. In other cases the advances are resented,
and if persisted in will develop a quite savage ani-
mosity in their object, resulting in bites and kicks
or blows with whatever weapon Nature may have
endowed the species.

All these actions may be easily observed in our
domestic animals and are common enough, although
probably not nearly so common in England as in the
pastoral countries where the animals are not housed
and fed, but are allowed to lead a semi-independent
life. I have said that I first observed friendship in
horses. We usually kept fifteen or twenty, and as
the country was all open then, our horses did some-
times take advantage of their liberty to clear out
altogether; as a rule they kept to their own grazing
ground within a mile or so of home, and when a fresh
horse or horses were wanted someone was sent to
drive the troop in. As a boy who wanted to spend at
least half of every day on horseback I went after the
troop very often and grew to be very familiar with
their little ways. There were always horses in the
troop that went in couples, and who were chums and
inseparable. After one of a couple had been in use
for some hours or for a day, on being liberated he
would gallop off in quest of the troop and on catching
sight of them neigh aloud to announce his coming.
Then his chum would neigh in response and start
off at a trot to meet him, and meeting him the two

68 ADVENTURES AMONG BIRDS

would stand for a few moments, touching noses,
which is the horse’s way of kissing or expressing
affection. They would then go quietly back together
to the others and begin grazing side by side.

This book has birds for its subject, and we shall
get to something about them by-and-by: just now
I want to emphasise the fact of a feeling and union
among animals generally, which is in its nature
identical with what we call friendship in human
beings. The fact is more readily accepted when we
treat of mammals, just because they suckle their
young and have hair instead of feathers to clothe
them. We, evolutionists think, were hairy too in
our far past, and some mammals, like ourselves, have
lost their hairy covering. That some animals are
capable of a strong affection for a human being
or master is a fact familiar to everyone; we think
instantly of the dog in this connection; the dog
is indeed commonly described as the “Friend of
Man,” but if the description implies a superiority in
this respect it is certainly unjust to other species.

An acquaintance of mine keeps a timber wolf as a
pet—the biggest, most powerful, probably the most
ferocious of all the numerous varieties of that terrible
beast. Yet his owner assures me that his wolf is as
much attached to him as any dog could be to a man,
that he would trust him as he would the most in-
telligent, affectionate, and gentlest- mannered dog.
Though so big, this wolf is privileged to lie on the
hearthrug at his feet, and if there are children about
they are permitted to sit on or roll over him, to pull

FRIENDSHIP IN ANIMALS 69

his ears and open his mighty mouth to look at his
fangs. It is true that the wolf is next door to the dog,
but the fox is not quite so near a neighbour although
he lives not far off; he is specialised in a different
direction, and on account of this specialisation, of
his nature, his genius, one would hardly suppose him
capable of a very close friendship with a human
master. Let me relate here the story of Peter the fox,
for the truth of which I vouch although I am not at
liberty to give the name and address of its owner.

Peter’s mistress is a lady living in a Shropshire
village, and the lady and fox are so much to one
another that they are not happy when apart. When
she goes for a walk or to make a call she takes the
fox, just as Mary took her little lamb, and she laughs
at those who say warningly that a fox makes a
dangerous pet; that his temper is uncertain and his
teeth sharp; also that he has an ineradicable weakness
for certain things—things with feathers, for example.
Peter, she affirms, never did and never will do any-
thing he ought not to do, and is moreover the sweetest-
tempered and most affectionate pet that any person
ever possessed.

After having had Peter for about a year he vanished
and his loss was a great grief to her, and it was no
consolation to be told by her friends that it was just
what they had thought would happen, that sooner or
later the call of the wild would come and prove
irresistible.

One afternoon, when Peter had been gone several
days, she remembered him and was heavy at heart,

70 ADVENTURES AMONG BIRDS

and it then first came into her mind to try an experi-
ment. If her fox still lived, she thought, where would
he be but in the wood a mile or so from the village?
There she would go and seek for him. It was near
sunset when she reached the wood, and after making
her way to its innermost part she stood still and
raising her voice to its highest pitch sent forth a
loud shrill call—Peter—Pee-ter—Peee-ter! and then
waited. By-and-by she heard a sound, and looking
in the direction it came from she spied Peter himself
coming towards her at his topmost speed, making
the dead leaves fly about him with the wind he
created; but when he got to her there was no touching
him, though she was eager to clasp her dear recovered
friend in her arms, for he was beside himself with
joy and could only rush round and round her in a
wide circle and then charging straight at her leaped
clear over her head, and then again, and then a third
time! This sounds incredible, but the lady sticks
to it that her fox did accomplish this feat, and says
that she was astonished at the sight of its trans-
ports of joy at finding her. Then, when he had thus
worked off his excitement, they went home together,
Peter trotting along at her side and breaking out from
time to time into fresh demonstrations of delight
and affection.

Friendship among birds is less remarked than it is
in mammals, simply, I believe, because their inner
life is less openly revealed to us; in other words,
because they have wings to fly with, and quicker,
brighter, more variable or volatile minds to match

FRIENDSHIP IN ANIMALS aia

the aerial life. Numbers of species pair for life,
including many that are gregarious; I take it that
in such cases the bond which unites male and female
throughout the year is essentially the same as that
between two horses, or goats, or cows, or llamas, or
any other species, wild or domestic, that become
attached to one another. The union is different in
origin, but once the sexual motive is over and done
with the life-partners are no more than friends or
chums. Again, birds being so free and light in their
motions do not keep so close together as mammals
do, hence a comradeship between two in a crowd is
not easily detected. We notice and are arrested by
it when a friendship exists between two widely-
different species, as in such cases as those given in
the last chapter of a pheasant and a blackbird, and
of a ringed dotterel and a redshank, and of another
I observed in South America of a lesser yellowshanks
and a pectoral sandpiper who were inseparable, even
when mixed in a flock of their own species.

Cases of birds becoming strongly attached to a
human being are quite common—so common indeed
that any industrious person could compile a volume
of them. One of a pheasant and a lady has been given
in the last chapter and I had set down several more to
relate in this one, but in view of the multiplicity of
subjects, or adventures, to be treated in the book
they must be left out. Or all but one given here for
a special reason. This is the case of a jackdaw which
was found last year, unable to fly, and taken home by
a boy in the village of Tilshead in the South Wiltshire

72 ADVENTURES AMONG BIRDS

downs. In a very few days the bird recovered from
his weakness and was perfectly well and able to fly
again, but he did not go away; and the reason of his
remaining appeared to be not that he had been well
treated, but because he had formed an extraordinary
attachment, not, as one would naturally suppose, to
the boy who had rescued and fed him but to another,
smaller boy, who lived in the next cottage! It was
quite unmistakable; the bird, free to go away if
he liked, began to spend his time hanging about the
cottage of his chosen little friend. He wanted to be
always with him, and when the children went to
school in the morning the daw would accompany
them, and flying into the schoolroom after them settle
himself on a perch where he would sit until the release
came. But the proceedings were always too long for
his patience, and from time to time he would emit
a loud caw of remonstrance, which would set the
children tittering, and eventually he was turned out
and the door shut against him. He then took to
sitting on the roof until school was over, whereupon
he would fly down to the shoulder of his little friend
and go home with him. In the same way he would
follow his friend to church on Sunday morning, but
even there he could not repress his loud startling
caw, which made the congregation smile and cast
up its eyes at the roof. My friend the vicar, who by-
the-by is a lover of birds, could not tolerate this, and
the result was that the daw had to be caught and
confined every day during school and church hours.

There are three or four more jackdaw anecdotes

FRIENDSHIP IN ANIMALS 73

among those I am compelled to leave out. No doubt
some species of birds are much more capable of these
attachments than others: thus the bullfinch, among
caged birds, is noted for his affectionate disposition
and many instances have been recorded of the bird’s
death from pure grief after losing its mistress. The
daw too is a bird of that character, in spite of his
wicked little grey eyes and love of mischief. Probably
he was first called ‘Fack on account of his human qual-
ities; we might also describe him as the Friendly Daw.

I have told this story just to show that it is not in
every case, as some imagine, mere cupboard love that
inspires an attachment of this kind.

An even more remarkable case than that of the
daw remains to be told. A friend of mine, an Anglo-
Argentine residing at Buenos Ayres, one day when out
duck-shooting winged a teal, one of a common species
—Querquedula flavirostris. The sight and feel of the
bird when he had it in his hand, its graceful shape
and beautiful plumage and the bright frightened
eyes and beating heart, softened him so that he could
not kill it, and putting it in his bag he took it home;
and after bandaging the broken wing the best way
he could, he placed the bird in the large courtyard and
supplied it with food and water. In a short time its
wound healed, but it did not recover its power of flight
and made no attempt to escape. It became perfectly
tame and would come at call to be fed or caressed.
The strange thing was that although all the people
of the house were interested in the teal and made it a
pet, its whole affection was given to the man who

74 ADVENTURES AMONG BIRDS

had shot it. To the others it was indifferent, although
they were always in the house taking notice of and
petting it, while this chosen friend was absent on
business in the city every day from morning to the
late afternoon. The teal would keep near him when
he had breakfast, then accompany him to the door
opening out of the courtyard to the street, and having
seen him off she would return to her place and pass
her day in a quiet contented manner as if she had
forgotten all about the absent one. But invariably
at about four o’clock in the afternoon she would go
to the open street door to wait for his return, and if
he was an hour or so late she would sit there the whole
time on the threshold, her beak turned city-wards,
to the astonishment of the passers-by. On his appear-
ance she was all joy and would run to his feet, nodding
her head and flirting her wings and emitting all the
quacking and other curious little sounds the bird
uses to express its happy emotions. Like most teals
it is a loquacious bird, and very excitable. After
that the great happiness of the teal was to have
permission to sit at his feet when he settled himself
in his chair to rest and read. She would actually
sit on his foot.

It happened that some years ago I told this story
of the teal in an article in a monthly magazine. My
belief was that it was a very strange story, that the
experience of my Buenos Ayres friend was absolutely
unique—for who would have imagined that any other
person in the world had found a loved and affectionate
pet in a teal, which he had himself shot with the

FRIENDSHIP IN ANIMALS 75

intention of eating it? But I soon received a letter
from a gentleman residing in South Kensington who
said he had read the incident of the teal with astonish-
ment, that it had appeared to him just as if I had
taken an incident which occurred in South Africa,
transferred it to South America, and slightly altering
the circumstances related the first half of the story.
My informant had been out to the Cape, and while
there went to stay with a friend on his estate. His
friend told him that one day when out shooting he
winged a teal, and on picking it up experienced so
strong a pang of compassion for it that he took it
home and set to work to bind up the wound, intending
if the bird recovered the use of its wings to restore
it to liberty. In a little while the teal became attached
to him, precisely as in the case I had described, and
would trot about after him all over the place just
like a little dog. Eventually, when pairing time came
round again the teal flew away to the marshes, for
it had recovered the full use of its wings, and he
never expected to see or at all events to recognise
his quacking little friend again. One day when out
shooting he had his eye on a bunch of teal flying
past at a considerable distance, when all at once one
of the birds detached itself from the flock and came
swiftly towards him and pitched at his very feet!
It was his lost pet, and the teal appeared as delighted
at the meeting as he was. After staying with him a
few minutes expressing its pleasure and receiving
caresses it flew away again in search of its com-
panions. Since that encounter there had been others

76 ADVENTURES AMONG BIRDS

at long intervals, the teal always recognising its old
master and friend at a distance and flying straight
to him, but it had never returned to the house.

One imagines that the two persons concerned in
these incidents, one in South Africa, the other in
South America, cannot now enjoy eating or even
shooting teal as much as they did formerly.

Friendships between bird and bird of the same
species, if we exclude the companionship of such as
pair for life, are exceedingly difficult, almost impos-
sible, to detect for reasons already given. If it were
not so we should probably find as many pairs of in-
separables in any flock of bachelor chaffinches in
winter as in a herd of horses or cattle existing in a
semi-feral state.

Another thing to be borne in mind is that it is
possible to mistake for friendship an action which, at
all events in its origin, is of a different nature. The
following cases will serve as illustrations.

One relates to an exotic species, the military
starling of the pampas—a bird of a social disposition,
like most of its family, the troupials. Breeding over,
the birds unite in large flocks and lead a gipsy life
on the great plains. They are always on the move, the
flock presenting an extended front, the beaks and
scarlet breasts all turned one way, the hindmost birds
continually flying forward and dropping down in or a
little in advance of the front line. It is a pretty
spectacle, one I was never tired of seeing. One day
I was sitting on my horse watching a flock feeding
and travelling in their leisurely manner, when I

FRIENDSHIP IN ANIMALS a

noticed a little distance behind the others a bird
sitting motionless on the ground and two others
keeping close to it, one on each side. These two had
finished examining the ground and prodding at the
roots of the grass at the spot, and were now anxious
to go forward and rejoin the company, but were
held back by the other one. On my going to them they
all flew up and on, and I then saw that the one that
had hung back had a broken leg. Perhaps it had not
long been broken and he had not yet accommodated
himself to the changed conditions in which he had
to get about on the ground and find his food. I
followed and found that, again and again, after the
entire scarlet-breasted army had moved on, the
lame bird remained behind, his two impatient but
faithful companions still keeping with him. They
would not fly until he flew, and when on the wing
still kept their places at his side, and on overtaking
the flock all three would drop down together.

The next case is from Penzance and was told to
me when I was staying there. A lady of that town, a
member of one of its oldest and most distinguished
families, is a great bird-lover and feeds the birds
during the winter on her lawn. She noticed that a
blackbird and thrush always came together to the
food, and then that the blackbird fed the other,
picking up the morsels and placing them in its open
mouth. In looking more closely it was discovered
that the thrush had lost its beak: this had been cut
off close to the head, probably by a steel or a sudden-
death spring trap, such as the children in Cornwall

78 ADVENTURES AMONG BIRDS

commonly use to catch or kill small birds. The bird
was incapable of feeding itself.

Another case of a beakless bird with a friend was
told to me by Mr. E. Selley of Sidmouth, a gardener
and local naturalist. His father kept a magpie in a
large hutch surrounded by wires through which small
birds would pass in to steal the food. Among these
was a robin that had lost its beak in a steel trap;
and this bird the magpie befriended, though he was
at enmity with the others and hunted them out of
his house. The robin with no beak to peck with could
only pick up small crumbs, and the magpie taking a
piece of bread on its perch would pick it into small
pieces to feed the robin. “It sounds like a fairy tale,”
said Mr. Selley; it is, however, a very credible kind
of fairy tale to those who know a bird.

Yet another case told to me recently by a friend
who was himself a witness to it. A lark was kept in
a cage hanging against the front wall of the house,
and it was noticed that some sparrows had formed
the habit of clinging to the wires and feeding from
the seed-box. To stop this plundering the box was
transferred from the front to the back of the cage,
where it was well out of their reach. Nevertheless
their visits continued and they appeared to be faring
as well as ever. With a little closer watching it was
discovered that the lark itself was feeding them, not
by putting the seed into their beaks but by conveying
it from the box to the other side of the cage-floor
where the sparrows could get at it.

I take it that in these instances the act does not

FRIENDSHIP IN ANIMALS 79

proceed from friendship but from the helping instinct
common in animals of social habits. We know it best
in the large mammals—cattle, swine, peccaries, deer,
elephants, and many more. Even the unsocial cat
will sometimes feed a fellow-cat. In birds it appears
to have its origin in the parental instinct of feeding
and protecting the young from danger. A young bird
that has lost its parents will sometimes find a response
to its hunger-call from a bird stranger, and in some
instances the stranger is of a different species. It
may be noted here that, in some species, the incu-
bating female when fed by the male reverts to the
hunger-cry and gestures of the young. The cry of
distress too in an old bird, when captured or injured,
which excites its fellows and brings them to its rescue,
is like the cry of distress and terror in the young.

Many other cases one meets with of a close com-
panionship between individuals result from the
impatience of solitude in a social species. So in-
tolerable is loneliness to some animals that they will
attach themselves to any creature they can scrape
acquaintance with, without regard to its kind or
habits or of disparity in size. I remember a case of
this kind which was recorded many years ago, of a
pony confined by itself in a field and a partridge—
a solitary bird who was perhaps the only one of its
species in that place. They were always to be seen
together, the partridge keeping with the pony where
he grazed, and when he rested from grazing sitting
contentedly at his feet. No doubt this companionship
made their lonely lives less irksome.

80 ADVENTURES AMONG BIRDS

Another even stranger case must be told in con-
clusion—the sad case of a lonely swan in search of a
friend, and as it is a story of the “incredible” sort
I am glad I have permission to give the names of the
persons who witnessed the affair. The place is Little
Chelmsford Hall, near Chelmsford, and the witnesses
are Lady Pennefather and her friend Miss Guinness
who resides with her. Near the house there is an
artificial lake of considerable length, fed by a stream
which flows into the grounds on one side and out at
the other. Lake and stream are stocked with trout.
A pair of swans are kept on the lake and three or four
years ago they reared a single young one, which after
some months when it was fully grown they began to
persecute. The young swan, however, could not en-
dure to be alone, and although driven furiously off
to a distance a hundred times a day he would still
return. Eventually he was punished so mercilessly
that he gave it up and went right away to the further
end of the lake and made that part his home. About
this time Miss Guinness started making a series of
water-colour sketches at that end of the lake, and
her presence was a happiness to the swan. Invariably
on her appearance he would start swimming rapidly
towards her, then leaving the water he would follow
her about until she sat down to do a sketch, where-
upon the swan would settle itself by her side to stay
contentedly with her until she finished. This went
on for five or six weeks till the sketching was done
and Miss Guinness went away on a visit. Again the
poor bird was alone and miserable until a man was

FRIENDSHIP IN ANIMALS 81

sent to work in the shrubbery by the lake, and at
once the swan made a companion of him; each
morning it would come from the lake to meet him,
to spend the whole day in his company. In due time
the work was finished and the man went away. Once
more the swan was miserable, and it made the lady
of the house unhappy to see it, so anxious appeared
the bird to be with her whenever she went near the
lake, so distressed when she left it. All at once there
was a change inits behaviour; it was no longer waiting
and watching for a visitor to the lake-side and ready
to leave the water on her appearance. It now appeared
quite contented to be alone and would rest on the
water at the same spot for an hour at a time, floating
motionless or else propelling itself with such a slow
and gentle movement of its oars as to make it appear
almost stationary. It was an astonishing change
but a welcome one, as the unhappiness of the swan
had begun to make everybody feel bad, and now it
looked as if the poor bird had become reconciled to a
solitary life. A little later the reason of this change
appeared when the extraordinary discovery was
made that the swan was not alone after all, that he
had a friend who was constantly with him—a big
trout! The fish had his place at the side of the bird,
just below the surface, and together they would rest
and together move like one being. Those who first saw
it could hardly credit the evidence of their own senses,
but in a short time they became convinced that this
amazing thing had come to pass, that these two ill-

assorted beings had actually become companions.
F

82 ADVENTURES AMONG BIRDS

How can we explain it? The swan, we have seen,
was in a state of misery at his isolation and doubtless
ready to attach himself to and find a solace in the
company of any living creature on land or in the
water, and a fish happened to be the only creature
there. But how about the trout? I can only suppose
that he got some profit out of the partnership, that
the swan when feeding by the margin accidentally
fed the trout by shaking small insects into the water,
and that in this way the swan became associated with
food in what we are pleased to call the trout’s mind.
The biologist denies that it—the poor fish—has a mind
at all, since it has no cortex to its brain, but we need
not trouble ourselves with this question just now.
I also think it possible that the swan may have
touched or stroked the back of his strange friend with
his beak, just as one swan would caress another swan,
and that this contact was grateful to the trout. Fish
have as much delight in being gently stroked as other
creatures that wear a skin or scales. I have picked
up many “wild worms in woods” and many a wild
toad, if wild toads there be, and have quickly over-
come their wildness and made them contented to be
in my hands by gently stroking them on the back.

The sequel remains to be told. There came to the
Hall a visitor from London, who being a keen angler
got up very early in the morning and went to the
lake to try and get a trout for breakfast. About eight
o’clock he returned and finding his hostess down
proudly exhibited to her a magnificent trout he had
caught. He had not looked for such a big one, and

FRIENDSHIP IN ANIMALS 83

he would never forget catching this particular trout
for another reason. A wonderful thing had happened
when he hooked it. One of the swans was there on
the water, and followed the fish up when it was
hooked, and when he drew it to land the swan came
out and dashed at and attacked him with the greatest
fury. He had a good deal of trouble to beat her off!
“Oh, what a pity!” cried the lady. “You have killed
the poor swan’s friend!”

From that time the swan was more unhappy than
ever; the sight of it became positively painful to my
compassionate friends, and by-and-by hearing of an
acquaintance in another part of the country who
wanted a swan they sent it to him.

CHAPRTERY Vita

THE SACRED BIRD

(Phasianus colchicus)

The pheasant in Romano-British times—The modern craze for
it—Destruction of bird life by keepers—A heronry de-
populated—An indiscriminate massacre—‘‘ Keeping an eye ”’
on the hawks—Beauty of the pheasant in autumn woods—
Absence of great soaring birds from English skies.

T was hardly necessary to add the scientific name

to any British species spoken of as “sacred.”

Certainly it is not the ibis and no mistake is
possible seeing that England is not ancient Egypt,
or Hindustan, or Samoa, or any remote barbarous
land, where certain of the creatures are regarded
with a kind of religious veneration. We call our
familiar pheasant the sacred bird to express con-
demnation of the persons who devote themselves
with excessive zeal to pheasant-preserving for the
sake of sport.

To shoot a pheasant is undoubtedly the best way
to kill it, and would still be the best way—certainly
better than wringing its neck—even if these semi-
domestic birds were wholly domestic, as 1 am per-
fectly sure they were in the time of the Romans who
first introduced them into these islands. I am sure

of it because this Asiatic ground-bird, which in two
84

THE SACRED BIRD 85

thousand years has not become wholly native, and,
as ornithologists say, is in no sense an English bird,
could not have existed and been abundant in the
conditions which prevailed in Roman times. The
fact that pheasant bones come next in quantity to
those of the domestic fowl in the ash and bone pits
examined by experts during the excavations at Sil-
chester shows that the bird was a common aarticle
of food. The country about Silchester was a vast
oak forest at that period, probably very sparsely
inhabited; a portion of the forest exists to this day,
and is in fact one of my favourite haunts. The fox,
stoat, and sparrow-hawk were not the only enemies
of the pheasant then: the wolf existed, the wild cat,
the marten, and the foumart; while the list of rapa-
cious birds included the eagle, goshawk, buzzard,
kite, hen-harrier, peregrine falcon, and hobby, as
well as all the species which still survive, only in very
much larger numbers. Then there were the crows:
judging from the number of bones of the raven found
at Silchester we can only suppose that this chief
and most destructive of the Corvide was a protected
species and existed in a semi-domestic state and was
extremely abundant in and round Calleva—probably
at all the Roman stations. It is probable that a few
tame pheasants escaped from time to time into the
woods, also some may have been turned out in the
hope that they would become acclimatised, and we
may suppose that a few of the most hardy birds sur-
vived and continued the species until later times;
but for hundreds of years succeeding the Romano-

86 ADVENTURES AMONG BIRDS

British period the pheasant must have been a rarity
in English woods. And a rarity it remains down to
this day in all places where it is left to itself, in spite
of the extermination of most of its natural enemies.
Unhappily for England the fashion or craze for this
bird became common among landowners in recent
times—the desire to make it artificially abundant
so that an estate which yielded a dozen or twenty
birds a year to the sportsman would be made to yield
a thousand. This necessitated the destruction of all
the wild life supposed in any way and in any degree
to be inimical to the protected species. Worse still,
men to police the woods, armed with guns, traps,
and poison, were required. Consider what this means
—men who are hired to provide a big head of game,
privileged to carry a gun day and night all the year
round, to shoot just what they please! For who is
to look after them on their own ground to see that
they do not destroy scheduled species? They must
be always shooting something; that is simply a reflex
effect of the liberty they have and of the gun in the
hand. Killing becomes a pleasure to them, and
with or without reason or excuse they are always
doing it—always adding to the list of creatures to
be extirpated, and when these fail adding others.
“T know perfectly well,” said a keeper to me, “that
the nightjar is harmless; I don’t believe a word about
its swallowing pheasants’ eggs, though many keepers
think they do. I shoot them, it is true, but only for
pleasure.” So it has come about that wherever
pheasants are strictly preserved, hawks—including

THE SACRED BIRD 87

those that prey on mice, moles, wasps, and small
birds; also the owls, and all the birds of the crow
family, saving the rook on account of the landowner’s
sentiment in its favour; and after them the nightjar
and the woodpeckers and most other species above
the size of a chaffinch, are treated as ‘* vermin.”
The case of the keeper who shot all the nightingales
because their singing kept the pheasants awake at
night sounds like a fable. But it is no fable; there
are several instances of this having been done, all
well authenticated.

Here is another case which came under my own eyes.
It is of an old heronry in a southern county, in the
park of a great estate about which there was some
litigation a few years back. On my last visit to this
heronry at the breeding season I found the nests
hanging empty and desolate in the trees near the
great house, and was told that the new head keeper
had persuaded the great nobleman who had recently
come into possession of the estate to allow him to
kill the herons because their cries frightened the
pheasants. They were shot on the nests after breed-
ing began; yet the great nobleman who allowed this
to be done is known to the world as a humane and
enlightened man, and, I hear, boasts that he has
never shot a bird in his life! He allowed it to be done
because he wanted pheasants for his sporting friends
to have their shoot in October, and he supposed that
his keeper knew best what should be done.

Another instance, also on a great estate of a great
nobleman in southern England. Throughout a long

88 ADVENTURES AMONG BIRDS

mid-June day I heard the sound of firing in the
woods, beginning at about eight o’clock in the morn-
ing and lasting until dark. The shooters ranged over
the whole woods; I had never, even in October,
heard so much firing on an estate in one day. I
inquired of several persons, some employed on the
estate, as to the meaning of all this firing, and was
told that the keeper was ridding the woods of some
of the vermin. More than that they refused to say;
but by-and-by I found a person to tell me just what
had happened. The head keeper had got twenty or
thirty persons, the men with guns and a number of
lads with long poles with hooks to pull nests down,
and had set himself to rid the woods of birds that
were not wanted. All the nests found, of whatever
species, were pulled down, and all doves, woodpeckers,
nuthatches, blackbirds, missel- and song-thrushes,
shot; also chaffinches and many other small birds.
The keeper said he was not going to have the place
swarming with birds that were no good for anything,
and were always eating the pheasants’ food. The odd
thing in this case was that the owner of the estate
and his son, a distinguished member of the House
of Commons, are both great bird-lovers, and at the
very time that this hideous massacre in mid-June
was going on they were telling their friends in London
that a pair of birds of a fine species, long extirpated
in southern England, had come to their woods to
breed. A little later the head keeper reported that
these same fine birds had mysteriously disappeared!

One more case, again from an estate in a southern

THE SACRED BIRD 89

county, the shooting of which was let to a gentleman
who is greatly interested in the preservation of rare
birds, especially the hawks. I knew the ground well,
having received permission from the owner to go
where I liked: I also knew the keepers and (like a
fool) believed they would carry out the instructions of
their master. I informed them that a pair of hobby-
hawks were breeding in a clump of trees on the edge
of the park, and asked them to be careful not to
mistake them for sparrow-hawks. At the same time
I told them that a pair of Montagu’s harriers were
constantly to be seen at a lonely marshy spot in the
woods, a mile from the park; I had been watching
them for three days at that spot and believed they
were nesting. I also told them where a pair of great
spotted woodpeckers were breeding in the woods.
They promised to “keep an eye” on the hawks, and
I daresay they did, seeing that both hobbies and
harriers had vanished in the course of the next few
days. But they would not promise to save the wood-
peckers: one of the under-keepers had been asked
by a lady to get her a few pretty birds to put in a
glass case, and the head keeper told him he could
have these woodpeckers.

Did I in these cases inform the owner and the
shooting-tenant of what had happened? No, and for
a very good reason. Nothing ever comes of such
telling except a burst of rage on the part of the
owner against all keepers and all interfering persons,
which lasts for an hour or so, and then all goes on as
before. I have never known a keeper to be discharged

go ADVENTURES AMONG BIRDS

except for the one offence of dealing in game and
eggs on his own account. In everything else he
has a free hand; if it is not given him he takes it,
and there is nothing he resents so much as being
interfered with or advised or instructed as to what
species he is to spare. Tell him to spare an owl or a
kestrel and he instantly resolves to kill it; and if
you are such a faddist as to want to preserve every-
thing he will go so far as to summon his little crowd
of humble followers and parasites and set them to
make a clean sweep of all the wild life in the woods,
as in the instance I have described. No, it is mere
waste of energy to inform individual owners of such
abuses. The craze exists for a big head of game, or
rather of this exotic bird of the woods, called in scorn
and disgust the “sacred bird” by one who was himself
a naturalist and sportsman; the owners are them-
selves responsible for the system and have created
the class of men necessary to enable them to follow
this degraded form of sport. I use the word advisedly:
Mr. A. Stuart-Wortley, the best authority I know
on the subject, an enthusiast himself, mournfully
acknowledges in his book on the pheasant that
pheasant shooting as now almost universally con-
ducted in England is not sport at all.

One odd result of this over-protection of an exotic
species and consequent degradation of the woodlands
is that the bird itself becomes a thing disliked by the
lover of nature. No doubt it is an irrational feeling,
but a very natural one nevertheless, seeing that what-
soever is prized and cherished by our enemy, or the

THE SACRED BIRD gt

being who injures us, must come in for something of
the feeling he inspires. There is always an overflow.
Personally I detest the sight of semi-domestic phea-
sants in the preserves; the bird itself is hateful, and
is the one species I devoutly wish to see exterminated
in the land.

But when I find this same bird where he exists
comparatively in a state of nature, and takes his
chance with the other wild creatures, the sight of
him affords me keen pleasure: especially in October
and November when the change in the colour of the
leaf all at once makes this familiar world seem like
an enchanted region. We look each year for the
change and know it is near, yet when it comes it
will be as though we now first witnessed that mar-
vellous transformation—the glory in the high beechen
woods on downs and hillsides, of innumerable oaks
on the wide level weald, and elms and maples and
birches and ancient gnarled thorns, with tangle of
vari-coloured brambles and ivy with leaves like dark
malachite, and light green and silvery grey of old-
man’s-beard. In that aspect of nature the pheasant
no longer seems an importation from some brighter
land, a stranger to our woods, startlingly unlike our
wild native ground-birds in their sober protective
colouring, and out of harmony with the surroundings.
The most brilliant plumage seen in the tropics would
not appear excessive then, when the thin dry leaves
on the trees, rendered translucent by the sunbeams,
shine like coloured glass, and when the bird is seen
in some glade or opening on a woodland floor strewn

92 ADVENTURES AMONG BIRDS

with yellow gold and burnished red, copper and
brightest russet leaves. He is one with it all, a part
of that splendour, and a beautifully decorative
figure as he moves slowly with deliberate jetting
gait, or stands at attention, the eared head and shin-
ing neck raised and one foot lifted. Many a writer has
tried to paint him in words; perhaps Ruskin alone
succeeds, in a passage which was intended to be des-
criptive of the colouring of the pheasants generally.

Their plumage [he said] is for the most part warm brown,
delicately and even beautifully spotty; and in the goodliest
species the spots become variegated, or inlaid as in a Byzantine
pavement, deepening into imperial purple and azure, and lighting
into lustre of innumerable eyes.

But alas! not infrequently when | have seen the
pheasant in that way in the coloured woods in
October, when after the annual moult his own
colouring is richest and he is seen at his best, my
delight has vanished when I have lifted my eyes to
look through the thinned foliage at the distant
prospect of earth and the blue overarching sky. For
who that has ever looked at nature in other regions,
where this perpetual hideous war of extermination
against all noble feathered life is not carried on, does
not miss the great soaring bird in the scene—eagle,
or vulture, or buzzard, or kite, or harrier—floating
at ease on broad vans, or rising heavenwards in vast
and ever vaster circles? That is the one object in
nature which has the effect of widening the prospect,
just as if the spectator had himself been miraculously
raised to a greater altitude, while at the same time

THE SACRED BIRD 93

the blue dome of the sky appears to be lifted to an
immeasurable height above him. The soaring figure
reveals to sight and mind the immensity and glory
of the visible world. Without it the blue sky can
never seem sublime.

But the great soaring bird is nowhere in our lonely
skies, and missing it we remember the reason of its
absence and realise what the modern craze for the
artificially reared pheasant has cost us.

CHAPTER IX

A TIRED TRAVELLER
(Turdus iliacus)

A November day on the east coast—A solitary redwing—Charm
of the redwing—Its evening concerts—The redwing solilo-
quises—Its beauty—A meditation on death.

T was fine weather on the morning of the first
[es of November on the east coast. Coming out,

I looked for grey clouds travelling before a biting
wind, a grey clammy mist brooding on the flat desolate
land, and found, instead, a clear day without a vapour,
the sun shining very brightly, the air almost still and
deliciously warm. It was, for November, the most
perfect day I could have had for a ramble on the
grey flat saltings between Wells-next-the-Sea and
Stiffkey: they are not as in summer at this time of
year, but have the compensating charm of solitari-
ness. I had them all to myself on that morning;
there was no sound of human life except the church
bells, the chimes coming faintly and musically over
the wide marshes. Even the birds were few. From
time to time a hooded or carrion crow flew by with
his sullen cra-cra, or a ringed dotterel started up
from a creek or pool before me and went away with
his wild melancholy cry. Only the larks were singing
everywhere about me; but it was their winter song

94

A TIRED TRAVELLER 95

—a medley of harsh and guttural sounds, without
the clear, piercing, insistent summer note; nor do
they rise high at this season, but after fluttering
upwards a distance of forty or fifty yards drop
again to earth.

Seawards I had for horizon the low ridge of the
sand-hills overgrown with coarse grey-green grass,
and when on the ridge itself I looked over a vast
stretch of yellowish-brown sand; for it was low tide,
with the sea visible as a white line of foam and the
gleam of water more than a mile away. Here on the
sandy ridge there is an old sea-ruined coastguard
station, and, coming to it, I sat down on a pile of
brushwood at the side of the half-fallen buildings,
and after I had been there two or three minutes a
bird fluttered up from the grass close to my feet and
perched on the wood three or four yards from me.
A redwing! A tired traveller from the north, he had
no doubt arrived at that spot during the night, and
was waiting to recover from his great fatigue before
continuing his journey inland. He must have been
very tired to remain by himself in such beautiful
weather at that spot, when, close by on the further
side of the salt grey marsh, the green wooded country,
blue in the haze, was so plainly visible. For the red-
wing is a most sociable bird, and so long as his wings
can bear him up he cannot endure to be left behind.
Furthermore, he is exceedingly shy of the human
form, especially when he first arrives on our shores;
yet here was this shy bird, alone and sitting very
quietly, within three or four yards of me! Still, it

96 ADVENTURES AMONG BIRDS

was evident that he was a little troubled at my pres-
ence, a little suspicious, from the way he eyed me,
flirting his tail and wings; and once or twice, opening
wide his beak, he uttered his alarm-note, a sound
closely resembling the harsh, prolonged cry of the
familiar missel-thrush. But these little signs of alarm
were soon over, and he grew quiet, only continuing
to emit his low musical chirp a dozen or more times
a minute.

To me the meeting was a peculiarly happy one,
since if I had been asked to choose a bird, one of our
common winter visitors, to be with me in this quiet,
lonely place, I think I should have said, “Let it be
a redwing.” He has a special attraction for me for
various reasons. He is, I think, the most charm-
ing of the thrushes, both in shape and colouring.
All of this family are dear to me, and I perhaps
admire the others more—the fieldfare, for instance,
the chattering winter “blue-bird”; and the missel-
thrush, the loud-voiced storm-cock that sings in wet
and blowy weather in February; and, above all, the
blackbird, the big, ebony-black thrush with a golden
bill and fluting voice; but I love the redwing more.
There is a wildness, a freshness, in the feeling he gives
me which may be partly due to the fact that he is not
a cage-bird, that, on this account, there are no degrad-
ing images and associations connected with this
species. It is true that he is a sweet singer, the
“Swedish nightingale” of Linnzus, but he only sings
his full song with the louder notes at home, in summer,
in the distant north; and on this account those

A TIRED TRAVELLER 97

dreariest Philistines, the bird-fanciers or ‘‘avicultur-
ists,” as they are beginning to call themselves, who
love a bird only when they hold it in the hateful
cage, the most iniquitous of man’s many inventions,
have so far neglected this thrush. All the images
called up by the redwing, the sight or sound or thought
of him, are of rural winter scenes, and are pleasing,
especially those of the evening gatherings of redwings
in copse or shrubbery; for, like the linnet and
starling, they love to hold a kind of concert, or grand
musical confabulation or corroboree, in which all
the birds chirp, twitter and scream together before
settling down to sleep in the evergreens, which look
black in the twilight against the luminous evening
sky. In my case there are still other associations, for
it happens that the soft musical chirp of the redwing
reminds me vividly of other birds which have a sound
resembling it, birds that were dear to me in my boy-
hood and youth; one a true thrush, another the
social military starling of the grassy pampas and
Patagonia. That dark bird with the scarlet breast
and beautiful voice was to me, in winter time in
that distant land, what the redwing is to many an
English boy.

Now as I rested there against the pile of brushwood
on which he sat so near me he continued to emit these
soft low chirping notes or little drops of musical
sound; and it seemed in part a questioning note, as
if he was asking me what I was? Why I regarded
him so attentively? What were my intentions to-

wards him? And in part it was a soliloquy, and this
G

98 ADVENTURES AMONG BIRDS

was how I interpreted what he appeared to be saying:
“What has come to me—what ails me that I cannot
continue my journey? The sun is now as high as it
will be: the green country is so near—a few minutes’
flight would carry me across this flat sea-marsh to
the woods and thickets where there are safety and
the moist green fields to feed in. Yet 1 dare not
venture. Hark! that is the hooded crow; he is
everywhere roaming about over the marshland in
quest of small crabs and carrion left by the tide in
the creeks. He would detect this weakness I find
in me which would cause me to travel near the surface
with a languid flight; and if he saw and gave chase,
knowing me to be a sick straggler, my heart would
fail and there would be no escape. Day and night
I have flown southwards from that distant place
where my home and nest was in the birches, where
with my mate and young and all my neighbours we
lived happily together, and finally set out together
on this journey. Yesterday when it grew dark we
were over the sea, flying very high; there was little
-wind, and it was against us, and even at a great
height the air seemed heavy. And it grew black with
clouds that were above us, and we were wetted with
heavy rain; it ceased and the blackness went by,
and we found that we had dropped far, far down and
were near the sea. It was a quiet sea, and the sky
had grown very clear, sprinkled with brilliant stars
as on a night of frost, and the stars were reflected
below us so that we seemed to be flying between two
starry skies, one above and one beneath. I was

A TIRED TRAVELLER 99

frightened at that moving, black, gleaming sky be-
neath me, and felt now that I was tired, and when
the flock rose higher and still higher I laboured to
rise with it. At intervals those who were leading
uttered cries to prevent the others from straggling,
and from far and near there were responsive cries;
but from the time that the dark, wetting cloud had
come over us I uttered no sound. Sometimes I opened
my beak and tried to cry, but no cry came; and
sometimes as we flew my eyes closed, then my wings,
and for a moment all sensation was lost, and I would
wake to find myself dropping, and would flutter
and struggle to rise and overtake the others. At last
a change came, a sudden warmth and sense of land,
a solid blackness instead of the moving, gleaming
sea beneath us, and immediately we dropped earth-
wards like falling stones, down into the long grass
by the shore. Oh, the relief it was to fold my wings
at last, to feel the ground under me, the close, shelter-
ing stems round and over me, to shut my tired eyes
and feel no more!

“When morning came, the cries of my fellows woke
me: they were calling us up and going away over the
marshes to the green country; but I could not follow
nor make any response to their calls. I closed my
eyes again, and knew no more until the sun was high
above the horizon. All were gone then—even my own
mate had left me; nor did they know I was hidden
here in the grass, seeing that I had not answered to
the call. They thought perhaps that I had fallen out
a long way back, when the rain oppressed and drove

1o0o0 ADVENTURES AMONG BIRDS

us down and when probably other members of the
flock dropped exhausted into the sea. They could
not remain here in this treeless exposed place, where
the water is salt and there is little food to find. I was
looking for something to eat at the roots of the
grasses when this man appeared and caused me to
flutter up to my perch. Had this strange weakness
not been in me I should have rushed away in the
greatest terror on seeing him so near; for we are
exceedingly shy of man, fearing him even more than
hawk or hooded crow. But my weakness would not
allow me to fly, and now I have lost my fear, for
though he continues to watch me it is plain that he
has no intention of harming me.”

Having finished this little rambling talk to himself,
a review of his late experiences and present condition,
he once more attempted to fly, but settled again on a
stick not twenty yards away, and there he appeared
disposed to stay, his head well drawn in, the beak
raised, his bright eyes commanding a view of the wide
sky above. He would be able to see a flock of passing
redwings and call to them, and if the feeble sound
reached them it would perhaps bring them down to
have speech with and cheer him in his loneliness.
He would also be able to catch sight of a prowling
crow coming his way; for he feared the crow, knowing
it for an enemy of the weak and ailing, and would
have time to hide himself in the long grass.

There I left him, going away along the shore, but
an hour or two later I returned to the same spot,
coming over the wide sands, and lo! where I had left

A TIRED TRAVELLER IOI

one redwing there were now two. One flew wildly
away at my approach to a distance of eighty or a
hundred yards before alighting again; the other
remained, and when I drew near it again moved on
its perch, a little alarmed as at first, flirting its wings
and tail and once uttering its call note; and then,
recovering from its fear, it began uttering little
chirps as before. Those tender little musical sounds,
reminiscent of vanished days in distant lands, were
somewhat sad, as if the bird complained at being
left alone. But his mate had not forsaken him after
all, or perhaps she had gone on with the others and
then returned to look for him at the last roosting-place.

Having found my bird, I determined to make the
most of our second meeting. I had never had an
opportunity of looking at a redwing so closely before
in such a favourable light, and, seeing it in that way,
I found it a more beautiful bird than I had thought
it. Perched at a height of above five feet, it was seen
against the pale sky in that soft sunlight, pale but
crystal clear, and its eyes and every delicate shade in
its colouring were distinctly visible. The upper parts
were olive-brown, as in the throstle, but the cream-
coloured band over the large dark eye made it very
unlike that bird; the dark spotted under-parts were
cream-white, tinged with buff, the flanks bright
chestnut-red. I could not have seen it better, nor so
well, if I had held it dead with glazed eyes in my hand;
but the dead bird, however brilliant in its colours it
may be, I cannot admire. It is beautiful nevertheless,
it may be said, because of the colour and the form.

102 ADVENTURES AMONG BIRDS

Ah yes, but it is dead, and what I see and hold is
but the case, the habit, of the living, intelligent
spirit which is no more. This gold-red hair, which
sparkles like gold in the sunlight when I hold it up,
which was exceedingly beautiful when it glorified
the head of one that has vanished—this hair is not
now beautiful to me but only ineffably sad. Yet I
would not grieve at the thought that the lovely
children of the air must cease to live, that their warm,
palpitating flesh so beautifully clothed with feathers
must be torn and devoured; or that they must
perish of hunger and cold when the frost has its iron
grip on the earth; or fall by the way or on the wide
sea, beaten down by adverse bitter winds and rain
and sleet and snow. Indeed, I would grieve at no
natural ending of life, however premature or painful
or tragical it might appear, nor think of death at
all; rather I would rejoice with every breath in all
this abounding wonderful earthly life in which I
have a share. It only grieves me and darkens my
mind to think that man should invent and practise
every conceivable form of persecution and cruelty
on these loveliest of our fellow-beings, these which
give greatest beauty and lustre to the world; and,
above all cruelties, that they should deprive them of
their liberty, that which sweetens life and without
which life is not life.

CHAPTER X

WHITE DUCK

Green grass in March—White ducks in a blue pool—Mental
associations connected with the duck—A legend of the

country of the dead—Beauty and rarity—Sobriquet of an
English queen.

HE green colour of earth is pale in this March

month to what it will be a few weeks hence;

nevertheless on this evening, a fortnight be-
fore the first day of spring, after a long day spent
sauntering in quiet places in this Norfolk land, I
seem to have been living in the greenest of worlds.
Grass and the colour of it is so grateful to me, and
even necessary to my well-being, that when removed
from the sight of it I am apt to fall into a languishing
state, a dim and despondent mind, like one in prison
or sick and fallen on the days

Which are at best but dull and hoary,
Mere glimmerings and decays.

How good for mind and body, then, to be abroad at
this time when the increasing power of the sun begins
to work a perceptible change in the colour of earth!
How natural that at such a season, just at the turn
of the year, I should take an entire day in the fields
solely to look at the grass, to rejoice in it again after

the long wintry months, nourishing my mind on it
103

104 ADVENTURES AMONG BIRDS

even as old King Nebuchadnezzar nourished his body!
The sight of it was all I went for, all I wanted, and
whatever I saw besides pleased me only because it
formed a suitable background, or made it seem brighter
by contrast or served in some way to set it off. Old
red-brick farmhouses, seen at a distance, nestling
among evergreen and large, leafless trees, in many
cases the deep, sloping roofs stained all over with
orange-coloured lichen; quiet little hamlets too,
half hidden beneath their great elms as under a
reddish-purple cloud; the endless grey winding road,
with low thorn hedges on either side winding with it,
leafless and a deep purple brown in colour except
where ivy had grown over and covered them with
dark green brown-veined leaves silvered with the
sunlight. A hundred things besides—red cows grazing
on a green field, a flock of starlings wheeling about
overhead and anon dropping to the earth; gulls,
too, resting in another field, white and pale grey,
their beaks turned to the wind: they were like little
bird-shaped drifts of snow lying on the green turf,
shining in the sun. For all day long the weather was
perfect—a day of soft wind and bright sunshine
following a spell of cold, rough weather with flooding
rains; a soft blue sky peopled with white and pale
grey clouds travelling before the wind.

And seeing these things—seeing and forgetting as
one sees whatever comes into the field of vision when
eyes and mind are occupied with some other thing—
the time went on until a little past noon, when I
suddenly came upon a new sight which gave me a

WHITE DUCK 105

thrill and held me, and after I had passed on would
not allow me to drop it out of my mind. All the
objects I had seen that day, the lichened farmhouses
and grey barns, trees and roads and purple hedges,
red and black cows in a green field, and gulls and
rooks and distant low hills and pine woods, with
many more, had appeared to me but as a fringe and
small parts of an irregular scattered pattern on the
green mantle of earth. This new sight was of a different
order, for it took me out of my spring-grass mood,
and the green mantle which had seemed the chief
thing was now but a suitable setting to this lovely
object.

This, then, is what I saw. In the middle of a green
pasture I came on a pool of rain-water, thirty or
forty feet long, collected in a depression in the ground,
of that blue colour sometimes seen in a shallow pool
in certain states of the atmosphere and sunlight—
an indescribable and very wonderful tint, unlike the
blue of a lake or of the deep sea, or of any blue flower
or mineral, but you perhaps think it more beautiful
than any of these; and if it must be compared with
something else it perhaps comes nearest to deep sap-
phire blues. When an artist in search of a subject
sees it he looks aside and, going on his way, tries to
forget it, as when he sees the hedges hung with
spiders’ lace sparkling with rainbow-coloured dew-
drops, knowing that these effects are beyond the
reach of his art. And on this fairy lake in the midst
of the pale green field, its blue surface ruffled by the
light wind, floated three or four white ducks; whiter

106 6©609©ADVENTURES AMONG BIRDS

than the sea-gulls, for they were all purest white,
with no colour except on their yellow beaks. The
light wind ruffled their feathers too, a little, as they
turned this way and that, disturbed at my approach;
and just then, when I stood to gaze, the sun shone
full out after the passing of a light cloud, and flushed
the blue pool and floating birds, silvering the ripples
and causing the plumage to shine as if with a light
of its own.

“YT have never seen a more beautiful thing!” I
exclaimed to myself; and now at the end of the long
day it remains in my mind, vividly as when I looked
at it at that moment when the sunbeams fell on it,
and is so persistent that I have no choice but to write
it down. The beauty I saw was undoubtedly due
to the peculiar conditions—to the blue colour of the
water, the ruffling wind, the whiteness of the plumage,
and the sudden magic of the sunlight; but the effect
would not have been so entrancing if the floating
birds had not also been beautiful in themselves—in
shape and in their surpassing whiteness.

Now I am quite sure the reader will smile and per-
haps emit the sound we usually write pish—a little
sibilant sound expressing contempt. For though he
will readily admit that the sun beautifies many things,
he draws the line at a duck—the common domestic
one. Like all of us, he has his prepossessions and can’t
get away from them. Every impression, we are told
by Professor James, no sooner enters the consciousness
than it is drafted off in some determinate direction,
making connection with the other materials there,

WHITE DUCK 107

and finally producing a reaction. In this instance the
impression is the story of a duck described as beau-
tiful, the reaction an incredulous smile. The parti-
cular connections it strikes into are determined by
our past experiences and the association of the pre-
sent impression with them. The impression arouses
its old associates; they go to meet it; it is received
by them, and rearranged by the mind. It is the fate
of every impression thus to fall into a mind pre-
occupied with memories, ideas, and interests. This
mental escort is drawn from the mind’s ready-made
stock. Our philosopher adds: “In all apperceptive
operations of the mind a certain general law makes
itself felt—the law of economy. In admitting a new
experience we instinctively seek to disturb as little
as possible the pre-existing stock of ideas.”

All this is illuminating and helpful, since it enables
me to see into my smiling reader’s mind and to indulge
in a smile on my part. For with what in this case
will the object described (a white duck) connect
itself? What are the memories, ideas, interests,
already in stock, which will be its associates and form
its escort and take it in? They are of the duck as he
has seen, eaten, and known it all his life—the familiar
duck of the farmyard, a heavy bird that waddles
in its walk and is seen dibbling in horse-ponds or in
any mud-puddle. It is the bird which the hen-wife
fattens for the market while her husband is fattening
the pigs. If any pleasing memories or associations
connect themselves with it they are not of an esthetic
character: they refer to the duck without its feathers,

108 ADVENTURES AMONG BIRDS

to its smell and taste when eaten with green peas
in their season.

If I am asked how I escaped from these incon-
venient, not to say degrading, associations, the only
answer would be that associations of another kind
were probably formed at some early period. Perhaps
when my infant eyes began to look at the world,
when I had no stock of ideas, no prepossessions at
all, except with regard to milk, I saw a white duck
and was delighted at it. In any case the feeling for
its beauty goes far back. I remember some years
ago when strolling by the Itchen I stood to admire
a white duck floating on the clear current where it is
broad and shallow and where the flowering wild
musk was abundant. The rich moist green of the
plant made the white plumage seem whiter, and the
flowers and the duck’s beak were both a very beau-
tiful yellow. “If,” thought I, “the white duck were
as rare in England as the white swallow, or even the
white blackbird, half the inhabitants of Winchester
would turn out and walk to this spot to see and
admire so lovely a thing.”

Many and many a time have I stopped in my walk
or ride to admire such a sight, but the white ducks
seen to-day, floating, sun-flushed, on a blue pool in
a green field, had a higher loveliness, a touch of the
extra-natural, and served to recall an old tradition
of a primitive people concerning the country of the
sky, where the dead inhabit, and all trees and flowers
abound as on earth, and all animals and birds, in-
cluding ducks, but more beautiful than here below.

WHITE DUCK 109

Everyone may know that the country is there because
of the blueness; for the air, the void, has no colour,
but all matter seen at a distance appears blue—
water and trees and mountains; only the sky country
is at so vast a distance that we see nothing but the
blue colour of it. But there are openings or win-
dows in the great plain, and these are the stars, and
through these windows the clear, brilliant light of
that country shines down on us when it is dark.
How do the dead get there—flying like soaring
birds, up, up, up, until they come to it? They can
certainly fly like birds, but no high-soaring bird and
no disembodied spirit can rise by flying to so immense
a height; yet when men die they have no thought
and desire but for that country, and have no rest or
pleasure here, but roam up and down the earth,
flying from the sight of human beings, even of their
nearest relations and friends, because they are now
invisible to mortal eyes, and to find themselves un-
recognised and unheard when they speak and no
longer remembered is intolerable to them. Therefore,
by day, when people are abroad, they fly to forests
and uninhabited places, where they lie, but at night
they come forth to range the earth in the form of
owls and nightjars and loons and rails and all other
wandering night-birds with wild and lamentable
voices. Night by night they wander, crying out their
misery and asking of those they meet to tell them of
some way of escape from earth so that they might
come at last to the country of the dead; but none
can tell them, for they are all in the same miserable

IIO ADVENTURES AMONG BIRDS

case, seeking a way out. But at last, after months
and perhaps years, they come in their wanderings
to the end of the earth and the stupendous walls
and pillars of stone which hold up the immense
plain of the sky; there they eventually discover some
way by which to ascend and reach that happy
country which is their home.

It was not always so; once the passage from earth
to heaven was comparatively an easy one; there was
a way then known to every one, dead or living, in
the world. It was a tree growing on the river-bank,
so high that its topmost branches reached up to
heaven. Imagine what a tree that was, its buttressed
trunk so big round that a hundred men with arms
outspread and hands touching could not have spanned
it! There was ample room under the shade of its
lower branches for the entire nation to gather and
sit at meat, everyone in his place. On higher branches
great birds had their nesting-places, and higher still
other great birds, eagles and vultures and storks,
might be seen soaring skywards, circling upwards
until they appeared like black specks in the blue,
but beyond these specks the tree rose still until it
faded from sight and mixed itself with the universal
blue of heaven. By this tree the dead ascended to
their future home, climbing like monkeys, and filit-
ting and flying like birds from branch to branch,
until they came to the topmost branches and to an
opening in the great plain, through which they
passed into that bright and beautiful place.

Unhappily this tree fell a long time ago—oh, a

WHITE DUCK Ah 2

very long time ago! If you were to range the whole
earth in search of the oldest man in it, and at last
discovered him sitting in his cabin, bent down like
a dead man, with his clawlike fingers clasped together
on his knees, his brown face covered with a hundred
wrinkles, his hair white, and his eyes turned white
too with blindness, and asked him of the tree, he
would say that it fell before his time, a long time
before, perhaps in his grandfather’s or great-grand-
father’s time, or even before then. And this is how
it fell—it is surely one of the saddest chapters in
the history of the world!

It came to pass that an old and evil-tempered
woman died, and, going to the tree, in due time
reached the sky, and was happy to find herself at
last in that bright and beautiful place. She was very
hungry after her long journey and climb, and, making
inquiry of those she met, they told her very pleasantly
that the readiest way to procure food was to catch
some fish in one of the lakes close by. They also gave
her a rod and line and directed her to the nearest
lake. Away she went, pleased with herself and every-
thing, her mouth watering at the thought of those
green-and-blue and red-and-yellow little fishes which
were easy to catch and delicious to eat. It was a
small round lake of clear water, about a mile in
circumference, to which she had been directed, and
on approaching it she saw that a good number of
persons were there standing, rod in hand, on the
margin. One of the anglers, happening to turn his
head, caught sight of the old woman hurrying down

112 ADVENTURES AMONG BIRDS

to them, and to have a little fun he cried out to those
near him: “Look! here comes an old woman, just
arrived, to fish; let’s close up and say there is no room
for another here and have a laugh at her expense.”

Here the reader must be told that the part of a
man which survives death is in appearance the exact
counterpart of the man when alive. To mortal eyes
he is invisible, being of so thin a substance; but the
dead and immortal see him as he was, young or old
and ugly, with his grey hair and wrinkles and every
sign of suffering and care and passion on his counten-
ance. And as with the face and the whole body so
it is with the mind: if it has been evil, full of spite
and malice, it is so still. But he must be told, too,
that this state is not permanent, for in that bright
and buoyant atmosphere it is impossible for the marks
of age and misery to endure; they fade out as the
easy, happy existence finds its effect; they grow
youthful in appearance once more; and the change
is also in the mind. The old woman had, alas! not
been long enough in that happy land for any change
to have taken place in either her appearance or her
spiteful temper.

That was how the people by the lake no sooner
beheld the newcomer than they knew her for what she
had been, and was still—a spiteful old woman; and
being of a merry disposition they were only too ready
to take part in the joke. As she drew near they closed
up and cried out: ‘No room for another fisher here;
go further on and find yourself a place.”

On she went; but those who were further up saw

WHITE DUCK T22

what the fun was, and they too in their turn cried:
“No room, no room here, old woman; go a little
further on.” And she went on, only to be sent further
still, until she had gone all the way round the lake
and was back at the spot where she had started, where
she was received with a shout of laughter and the cry
of “No room here, old woman.”

Then in a rage she flung the rod down, and, cursing
the people for making a fool of her, she fled from their
laughter; and, arrived back at that very opening
through which she had climbed into heaven, she cast
herself down on the upper branches of the great tree
and began her long descent to earth again. She alone
of all the dead who had reached that country turned
her back on it and returned to this world, to our ever-
lasting sorrow. Arrived at the earth, and mad with
rage and the desire of revenge, she turned herself into
a huge water-rat, a creature found by that river, a rat
as big as a retriever dog, with four great teeth, hard
and sharp as steel chisels, two in the upper and two
in the lower jaw. Making herself a den at the roots
of the mighty tree, she began gnawing the wood,
working day and night for many, many days, and
for months and years; and if ever she grew tired of
her huge task she thought of the indignity she had
suffered and of the mocking laughter of the people
by the lake, and was roused to fresh fury and con-
tinued exertions. In this way the great roots and lower
part of the trunk were riddled through and through
and hollowed out. Nor was it known to anyone

what the malignant old woman was doing, since
H

114 ADVENTURES AMONG BIRDS

the vast quantities of wood which she threw out
were carried away by floods and the current of the
great river. Thus even to the end did her evil spirit
sustain her, and the tree bent and swayed in the
mighty wind, and at last fell with a noise as of many
thunders, shaking the world with its fall, and filling
all its inhabitants with terror. Only when they saw
the tree which had stood like a vast green pillar
reaching to the sky lying prone across the world did
they know the dreadful thing which had been done.

So ended that great tree named Caligdawa; and
so ends my story, originally taken down from the lips
of wise old men who preserved the history and tradi-
tions of their race by a missionary priest and read by
me in my early youth in the volume in which he
relates it.

But I will venture to say that the story has not
been dragged in here; I had no thought of using it
when I sat down this evening to write about a white
duck. That vision of the sunlit, surprisingly white,
yellow-billed ducks floating on the wind-rippled blue
pool—for it was like a vision—had to be told; but
how, unless | said that it was like a glimpse into some
unearthly place where all things are as on earth, only
more beautiful in the brighter atmosphere? My blue
pool with white birds floating on it, in a spring-green
field, blown on by the wind and shone on and glorified
by the sun, was like a sudden vision, a transcript of
that far-up country.

And now, just at the finish, another chance thought
comes to help me. The thought has, in fact, been

WHITE DUCK 05

stated already when I said that half the inhabitants
of Winchester would turn out to gaze at and admire
the white duck seen by the Itchen if white ducks were
rare as white swallows in the land. How many things
which are beautiful seem not so because of their
commonness and of the uses to which they are put!
What comes now to help me is the memory of a matter
in old English history. Close upon a thousand years
ago there lived a very beautiful lady of whom little
is known except that she was an earl’s daughter, and
that the young king, who had a passion for beauty
exceeding that of all men, even in those wild and
violent times, loved and made her his queen. After
bearing him a son, who was king too in his time, she
died, to England’s lasting sorrow. And she was
known throughout the realm as the White Duck, on
account of her great beauty. We can only suppose
that at that distant period the white duck was a
rarity in England, therefore that those who saw it
looked with concentrated attention at it as we look at
any rare and lovely thing—a kingfisher, let us say—
and were able to appreciate its perfect loveliness.

CHAPTER XI

AN IMPRESSION OF AXE EDGE

Some lucky ornithologists—Compensations that go with limited
opportunities — Axe Edge — Mean farms — The people of
the Peak—Spring on Axe Edge.

HE ornithologists of to-day are a somewhat

numerous tribe, including persons of varied

tastes, habits, ambitions, and, above every-
thing, means. Among them are a few fortunate in-
dividuals whose object in life is to seek out the least
familiar species, the rarest in the land or the most
local in their distribution, or most difficult to get at
and observe closely. Many of us would like to do
our birding in that way, but few are free to take the
whole year for a holiday, to travel long distances,
to spend days, weeks, months in the quest—just to
see and study some bird in its haunts—a pine forest
in Rothiemurchus or some such “vast contiguity of
shade,” or a beetling cliff on the coast of Connemara,
or a boggy moor or marsh in the Shetlands or Orkneys,
or in “utmost Kilda’s lonely isle.” They must be
young, or, at all events, physically tough, and unless
they can make it pay by procuring specimens for
their numerous friends (dealers and collectors all)
they must have money enough to exist without work.

These being the conditions, it is not strange that this
116

AN IMPRESSION OF AXE EDGE =117

wide-wandering, perpetual-holiday band should, if we
exclude the suspects, be a small one and as enthusi-
astic in their pursuit as other open-air men are apt
to be about hunting the fox, golfing, fishing, cricket-
ing, shooting, motoring, and other forms of sport.

Call them sportsmen, ornithologists, or bird-lovers
pure and simple, I envy them their magnificent
freedom and could ask for no happier life than theirs.
It is like that of the person whose delight is in an-
thropology in passing from land to land, seeing
many and various races of men, visiting remote dis-
tricts whose inhabitants through long centuries of
isolation have preserved the features and mental
characteristics of their remote progenitors. To pursue
wild birds in that way—to follow knowledge like a
sinking star, to be and to know much until I became
a name for always wandering with a hungry heart
—that was my one desire; but alas! it was never
in my power. Compared with the disencumbered
ones I am like an ordinary man, walking on the
earth, to men of lighter bodies and nimbler minds
who have found out how to fly and are like birds
chasing birds.

Nevertheless there are compensations. The very
restraints which annoy us may not be without their
advantages. The rare experience of finding myself
at last in the presence of some long-wished-for bird,
comparing it with its imaginary mental portrait and
with the mental images of its nearest relations, and
finally of being able to add this one new portrait to
the gallery existing in the mind—my best possession

118 ADVENTURES AMONG BIRDS

and chief delight — perhaps affords me a keener
pleasure than can be experienced by the man of
unlimited opportunities. My humbler triumph is
like that of the lover of literature of small means,
who from time to time, by some lucky chance, be-
comes the possessor of some long-desired book. For
how much greater is his joy in fingering and in reading
it than the wealthy owner of a great library can
know? It is true the poor book-lover dreams of better
things: more leisure to hunt, more money to buy—
a legacy perhaps from some kindly being he knows
not of, which will enable him to grasp greater prizes
than have ever come in his way. So with me: year
by year I dream of longer journeys into remoter and
wilder places in search of other charming species
not yet seen in their native haunts. And that was
my dream last winter—it always is my dream—
which, when summer came round, found its usual
ending. The longer journey had to be postponed to
another year and a shorter one taken; so it came
about that I got no further than the Peak district,
just to spend a few weeks during the breeding season
with half a dozen birds, all familiar enough to most
ornithologists, but which are not found, at all events
not all together, nearer to London than the Derby-
shire hills.

Axe Edge, where I elected to stay, is not the
highest hill in that part, being about eighteen hundred
feet above the sea, whereas Kinder Scout rises to
quite two thousand; but I found it high enough for
one who modestly prefers walking and cycling on the

AN IMPRESSION OF AXE EDGE 11g

level ground. And here I found what I wanted—the
bird life peculiar to the district — grouse, curlew,
golden plover, snipe and summer snipe, water- and
ring-ouzel. The unlovely town of Buxton is close by,
set in a hollow in the midst of monstrously ugly lime
works. The little town is also much tortured with
motor-cars and is blown on with stinging, suffocating
white dust. Happily I was soon off the hated lime-
stone, settled in one of the poor little stony farm-
houses in a hollow or valley-head on the adjacent
hill, the whole central part of which forms a vast
moor or tableland, broken at the borders and cut
through with ravine-like valleys, or cloughs, with
steep rocky sides and rushing burns below, the be-
ginnings of the Wye, the Dove, the Dane, and the
Goyt rivers. From Axe Edge on one side you look
down on Buxton and the hilly limestone country
beyond—a naked ugly land with white patches show-
ing everywhere through the scanty grass covering.
From this prospect of scabby or leprous-looking hills
one turns with unspeakable relief to the immense
tableland of Axe Edge, where you are off the lime on
the gritstone formation, harsh and desolate in aspect,
but covered with a dense growth of heather, bilberry,
and coarse bog grasses—a habitation of birds.

Few persons live on this high moor; the farms are
not visible until you get to the edge of it and can look
down on the slopes below and the valleys, where the
small cottage-like stone farmhouses are seen sprinkled
over the earth, each with its few little green fields
walled round with stone. They are the meanest-

120 ADVENTURES AMONG BIRDS

looking, most unhomelike farms you will find in
England, for they have no gardens, few or no shade
trees, and there is no sign of cultivation anywhere.
From one side, looking towards Leek, I counted
twenty-six farms, and at not one of them did they
grow a potato or a cabbage or a flower; and if you
go all round the hill you could count two or three
hundred farms like these. Each one has its stone-
fenced fields, on which a few cows feed, and, if the
summer is not too cold, a little hay is made for the
winter. It is all the cattle get, as there are no roots.
The sheep, if any are kept, are up on the moor, a
long-woolled, horned animal with black:spotted face
and looking all black from its habit of lying in the
peat holes. They are not in flocks and are not folded,
but live on the moor in small parties of two or three
to half a dozen. The farmers depend mainly on their
lean ill-fed cows for a livelihood; they make butter
and feed a pig or two with the skim milk. They
live on bacon and buttermilk themselves, and bread
which they make or buy, but vegetables and fruit
are luxuries. To one from almost any other part of
the country it seems a miserable existence, yet the
farmers are not less attached to their rude homes and
little bleak holdings than others, and though they
abuse the landlord or his agent because they cannot
have the land for nothing, they appear to be fairly
well satisfied with their lot. I sometimes thought
they were even too well contented and wanted to
know why they did not try to grow a few cabbages
or potatoes in some sheltered nook for the house;

AN IMPRESSION OF AXE EDGE 1rar

some said it was useless to attempt it on account
of the May and June frosts, and others said that the
owners objected to the ground being broken up!
I also asked several farmers why they did not cut
bracken, which was plentiful enough, to serve as
bedding for the cows, since they could not get straw.
They answered that occasionally a farmer did so,
but it was not the custom and they thought the cows
did just as well without any bedding at all!

I pitied the cows; but perhaps they were right; it
may well be that the domestic animals, like their
masters, have become adapted during many genera-
tions to a starvation land, to lie in winter on a hard
cold stone floor and to keep alive on the smallest
amount of food of the poorest kind, and yet to flourish
in a way and yield milk.

But though they appear to be a contented, they are
not a happy-looking or a lively people. They have
colourless faces and for good looks or brightness or
intelligence compare badly with the inhabitants of
the adjoining districts and with the people of England
generally, north and south. The children are naturally
more attractive than the adults; they have the
brightness proper to their time of life, which makes
their dirty little faces shine; but it is rare to find a
pretty one. What has made this people of the Peak
what they are, so unlike their neighbours, so wholly
absorbed in their own affairs and oblivious of the
world outside; mentally isolated, like the inhabitants
of a lonely island? It was a depressing experience to
converse with youths and young men of an age when

122 ADVENTURES AMONG BIRDS

if any romance, any enthusiasm, exists it is bound
to show itself. They were too serious—they were
even solemn, and gave one the idea that they had
all been recently converted to Methodism and were
afraid to smile or to say a frivolous or unnecessary
word lest it should be set down against them by an
invisible recording clerk, standing, pen behind his
ear, at their elbow, intently listening. There was no
trace of that fiery spirit, that intensity of life, that
passion for music, sport, drinking and fighting, for
something good or bad which distinguishes their
very next-door neighbours, the Lancastrians. What
is it then—the soil, the altitude and bleak climate,
the hard conditions of life, or what? One knows of
other districts where life is just as hard, where the
people have yet some brightness of mind, some
energy, some passion in them. I gave it up; there
was no time for brooding over such problems; my
quest was birds, not men.

Moreover, now at the end of May the first unmis-
takable signs of spring were becoming visible on that
lofty moor of a hard and desolate aspect which I had
made my home. Frosts and fogs and cold winds were
not so persistent; there were better intervals; then
came a beautiful warm day —the first fine really
warm day, the natives proudly assured me, which
they had experienced since the previous August.
The little stone-enclosed fields had taken a livelier
green, and on wet spots and by the burns the shin-
ing yellow marsh-marigolds were in bloom. But the
chief change to spring on the high wintry moor was

AN IMPRESSION OF AXE EDGE 123

in the appearance of the bilberry bushes, growing
everywhere in dense patches among the heather.
They had now put on their first leaves and they were
like the young leaves of the oak in spring

Against the sun shene—
Some very red and some a glad light grene.

And this wild place was a habitation of birds, and
these were the people I had come to see and listen

to, who were, indeed, more to me than the human
inhabitants.

CHAPTER XII

BIRDS OF THE PEAK

Seeking information at Buxton— Cuckoo and meadow pipit on
Axe Edge—A one-sided partnership—Song of the whinchat
— Voice of the curlew—The red grouse — Prologue to
Chapter XIII.

UNCHING one day at Buxton, I hobnobbed
with a man whose classic features, fine physique
and magnificent beard filled me with a great
admiration. He was the vicar of a neighbouring
parish, a man of the open air, a cultivated mind, and
large sympathies—the very person I wanted to meet,
for doubtless he would know the birds and be able
to tell me all I wanted to learn. By-and-by the
subject was introduced, and he replied that he did
not know very much about birds, but he had noticed
a particularly big crow in his parish—big and black
—and he would like to know what it was. There
were always some of them about. Perhaps it was a
carrion crow or a rook, he couldn’t say for certain;
but it was exceptionally big—and very black.

One meets with many disappointments when asking
for information about the bird life of any locality;
one is apt to forget that such knowledge is not com-
mon, that it is easier to find a poet or a philosopher
in any village than a naturalist. Nevertheless I was

singularly fortunate at Buxton in meeting with that
g y g
124

BIRDS OF THE PEAK 125

same rarity in the person of a tradesman of the town,
a Mr. Micah Salt, who had studied the birds of the
district all his life. But not in books; he did not
read about birds, he observed them for his own
pleasure and it was a pleasure to him to talk about
them, but it went no further. He did not even make
a note; bird-watching was his play—a better outdoor
game than golf, as it really does get you a little
forrarder, and does not make you swear and tell
lies and degenerate from a pleasant companionable
being to an intolerable bore.

It was through his advice that I went to stay on
Axe Edge, where I would find all the birds I wanted
to watch, and where it seemed to me on first going
on to the moor that about five-sixths of the bird life
consisted of two species—cuckoo and meadow pipit.
At the low-roofed stone cabin where I lodged a few
wind-torn beeches had succeeded in growing, and
these were a great attraction to the moorland cuckoos
and their morning meeting-place. From half-past
three they would call so loudly and persistently and
so many together from trees and roof as to banish
sleep from that hour. And all day long, all over the
moor, cuckoos were cuckooing as they flew hither
and thither in their slow, aimless manner, with
rapidly beating wings, looking like spiritless hawks,
and when one flew by a pipit would rise and go after
him, just to accompany him, as it appeared, a little
distance on his way. Not in anger like some of the
small birds, even the diminutive furze-jack who
cherishes a spite against the cuckoo, but in pure

126 ADVENTURES AMONG BIRDS

affection. For the meadow pipit is like that person,
usually a woman, whom we call a “poor fool” because
of a too tender heart, who is perhaps the mother of
a great hulking brute of a son who gobbled up all
he could get out of her, caring nothing whether she
starved or not, and when it suited his pleasure went
off and took no more thought of her—of the poor
devoted fool waiting and pining for her darling’s
return. The pipit’s memory is just as faithful; she
remembers the big greedy son she fed and warmed
with her little breast a year or two ago, who went
away, goodness knows where, a long time back; and
in every cuckoo that flies by she thinks she sees him
again and flies after him to tell him of her undying
love and pride in his bigness and fine feathers and
loud voice.

Who that knows it intimately, who sees it creeping
about among the grass and heather on its pretty little
pink legs, and watches its large dark eyes full of shy
curiosity as it returns your look, and who listens to
its small delicate tinkling strain on the moor as it
flies up and up, then slowly descends singing to earth,
can fail to love the meadow pipit—the poor little
feathered fool?

Concerning the breeding habits, the friendship and
very one-sided partnership between these two species,
Mr. Salt informed me that all the cuckoos’ eggs he
had found in fifty-five years, during which he had
been observing the birds of the district, were in
meadow-pipits’ nests. Nor had he ever seen a young
cuckoo being tended by the numerous other species

BIRDS OF THE PEAK 127

supposed to be its foster parents—warblers, wagtails,
chats, the robin, redstart, dunnock and wren. Further-
more, he had discussed this subject with numbers
of persons living in the district, and their experience
agreed with his. His conclusion was that the meadow
pipit was the only dupe of the cuckoo, in spite of
what was said in the books. The conclusion was
wrong, but his facts may be right with regard to this
particular district. Doubtless, if this be so, there
must be eggs laid from time to time in the nests of
other species, but in the long run the instinct of
parasitism on dunnock or wagtail or some other
species would be swamped by that of the majority of
cuckoos, all parasites on the meadow pipit exclusively.

Of all the small musical sounds emitted by birds
on moors and other lonely places I think I love the
aerial tinkle of the pipit best, unless it be the warble
of the whinchat heard in the same situations. Few
persons appear to know the whinchat’s song, yet it
may be heard every day from April to July all over
the country wherever the bird has its haunts. The
main thing is to know a sound when you hear it.
This chat is a shy singer as well as an inconspicuous
bird, and as a rule becomes silent when approached.
One hears a delicious warble at a considerable dis-
tance and does not know whose voice it is; but if
on any silent heath or common or grassland, or any
furze-grown brambly waste, you should catch a very
delicate warbled song, a mere drop of sound, yet to
all other bird sounds about it like the drop of dew
or rain among many other crystal, colourless drops,

128 ADVENTURES AMONG BIRDS

which catches the light at the right angle and shines
with loveliest colour, you may safely say that it was
a whinchat. A fugitive sound heard at a distance,
of so exquisite a purity and sweetness, so tender an
expression, that you stand still and hold your breath
to listen and think, perhaps, if it is not repeated, that
it was only an imagined sound.

An even more characteristic sound of the high moor
than these small voices which are not listened to is
the curlew’s voice: not the beautiful wild pipe nor
the harsh scream, the whaup’s cry that frightens the
superstitious, but the gentler, lower, varied sounds
of the breeding season when the birds are talking
to one another and singing over their nests and eggs
and little ones. Best of all of these notes is the pro-
longed trill, which sounds low yet may be heard dis-
tinctly a quarter of a mile away or further, and
strongly reminds me of the trilling spring call of
the spotted tinamou, the common partridge of the
Argentine plains—a trill that is like a musical whisper
which grows and dwells on the air and fades into
silence. A mysterious sound which comes out of the
earth or is uttered by some filmy being, half spirit
and half bird, floating invisible above the heath.
I liked these invisible curlews, singing their low song,
better than the visible bird, mad with anxiety and
crying aloud when the nest was looked for. But the
curlew has one very fine aspect when, at your approach,
he rises up before you at a distance of three or four
hundred yards and comes straight at you, flying
rapidly, appearing almost silver-white in the brilliant

BIRDS OF THE PEAK 129

sunshine, the size so exaggerated by the light and
motion as to produce the illusion of a big bird, the
only one left alive by the Philistines and destroyers.
But it is a beautiful illusion which lasts only a few
moments. In all this Peak district you will not find
a larger bird than a curlew or mallard or crow, that
very big bird which my clergyman told me about.
Not a buzzard, not a harrier, not a raven, or any
other species which when soaring would seem an
appropriate object and part of the scenery in these
high wild places.

What a contrast between all these delicate voices
of the moorland, from the faint tinkle of the rising
and falling pipit to the curlew’s trill, and others I
have omitted, the golden plover and water-ouzel,
the aerial bleat of the snipe, the wail of the pewit
and thin sharp pipe of the sandpiper or “water-
squealer,” as the natives call it—between all these
and the red grouse. He has no music in him, but
great power. On these high moors his habit is to sit
or stand on a stone wall to sun himself and keep an
eye on his wives and rivals and the world generally.
He stands, head erect, motionless, statuesque, the
harsh-looking heap of dark gritstone forming an
appropriate pedestal. For he is like a figure cut in
some hard dark red stone himself—red gritstone, or
ironstone, or red granite, or, better still, deep-red
serpentine, veined and mottled with black, an ex-
ceedingly hard stone which takes a fine polish. And
in voice and character the bird is what he looks, hard

and brave, both as wooer and fighter. Even near the
I

130 ADVENTURES AMONG BIRDS

end of May when many hens are incubating—I
stumble on a dozen nests a day—he is wooing and
fighting all the time, and the fights are not mere
shows like those of the ruff, a pretty little feathered
French duellist, and other quarrelsome species that
fight often without hurting one another. The red
grouse that looks like a stone hurls himself like a
stone against his adversary, and whether he breaks
bones or not he makes the polished feathers fly in
clouds. Yet in his wooing this stone-like bird some-
times attains to grace of motion. That is when, carried
away by his passion, he mounts into the air, and if
there is any wind to help him rises easily to a good
height and performs in descending a love flight
resembling that of the cushat and turtle-dove. But
in his vocal performances there is no grace or beauty,
only power. You are astonished at the sounds he
emits when he bursts out very suddenly rattling and
drumming—rrrrrr-rub-a-dub-dub; or you may liken
it to a cachinnatory sound as if a gritstone rock
standing among the heather had suddenly burst out
laughing. Then he changes his tone to a more human
sound like a raven’s croak prolonged, which breaks
up into shorter sounds at the end—ah-ha! come here,
come back, go back, go back, quack, quack, or quick,
quick, which is probably what he really means.

From the grouse and his rude noises I must now go
back to the delicate songsters, to give an impression
of the ring-ouzel; for oddly enough I had hitherto
had no opportunity of really watching and listening
to it during the breeding season. Certain birds at

BIRDS OF THE PEAK 131

certain times, or on certain rare days, take possession
of and hold us to the exclusion of all others. A similar
experience is familiar to the lovers of the sublime and
beautiful in nature and art, in music and poetry.
So (to compare small things with great) we naturalists
have our buzzard or raven or wild-geese days, and,
better still, our days with this or that fascinating
melodist—blackcap or blackbird, or linnet, or wheat-
ear, or nightingale. And when the day is finished and
the mood over it is not wholly over even then; we
are like the poet who has listened to voices even more
unearthly than birds’:

I thenceforward and long after

Listen to their harp-like laughter,

And carry in my heart for days

Peace that hallows rudest ways.
Moreover I was here on a special visit to this species;
he was more in my mind than the golden plover or
any other. I came to be more intimate with him—to
have my ring-ouzel day and mood.

CHAPTER XIII

THE RING-OUZEL AS A SONGSTER

A species unknown to most—A blackbird that is not a blackbird
—First sight of the ring-ouzel—Its song—Blackbird and
ring-ouzel compared—Nesting ring-ouzels—Thrush-calls of
ring-ouzel—A suggested comparative study of thrush-
languages.

ROM the Peak northwards the ring-ouzel is
| an uncommon species in mountainous

districts, but in the greater part of England it
is unknown, or known only by name like the merlin,
crested tit, and phalarope. Indeed to most of us a
first sight of it comes as a surprise. The sight of a new
species will always produce a shock of pleasure in
those who are interested in birds: in the case of the
ring-ouzel there is another element in the feeling—
something of a mixture of incredulity and even
resentment. And all because we find in this until
now unknown species a veritable blackbird—black
of hue (and comely) with orange-tawny bill; also
possessing the chuckle and all the manners and
gestures of that familiar being; yet not the real
blackbird, not our blackbird, the old favourite of
wood and orchard and garden. For this real black-
bird, the “‘garden-ouzel,” as our ancients of the
seventeenth century called it, is to us so unlike all
other feathered beings in figure, colouring, flight,

gestures, voice; withal so distinguished among birds,
132

RING-OUZEL AS A SONGSTER 133

that we have come to look on it as the one and only
blackbird in existence. A thrush, it is true, but
modified and raised as far above those olive-coloured
spotty birds as the lovely and graceful grey wagtail
is above the modest little creeping pipits it springs
from. That we have been told of other blackbirds
in many lands does not matter, since what we hear
about such things does not impress us—we forget
and practically disbelieve it. The sight of a ring-ouzel
thus deprives us of an illusion.

I was not affected in that way at the Peak, having
met the bird a long time before in other parts of the
country, but its song had remained unknown and I
had come to hear it. Nor had I long to wait for that
pleasure. On my way to the small hovel of a farm-
house, on Axe Edge, where I had arranged to stay,
while walking in the old forsaken road, worn very
deep and thickly bestrewn with loose stones like the
bed of a dry mountain torrent, I caught the sound
of a bird voice unknown to me, and peeping over the
bank at the roadside, beheld the ring-ouzel within
twenty yards of me, sitting on a stone wall, emitting
his brief song at intervals of less than half a minute.

After listening for about fifteen minutes till he
flew off, I went on my way rejoicing at a new ex-
perience and marvelling that this simple little bird
melody, which one would imagine any child could
imitate or describe to you so that when heard after-
wards it could easily be identified, had yet never
been described in the ornithological books. Such
a statement may seem incredible considering the

134 ADVENTURES AMONG BIRDS

number of books on birds which we possess; but let
any reader take down one from his shelves and try
to form a definite idea as to what this song is like
from the author’s account. Some naturalists compare
it with the blackbird and missel-thrush. It is unlike
both, being a short set song, as in the chaffinch and
chiffchaff, without any variation and alike in every
individual; whereas the blackbird and missel-thrush
vary their phrases with every repetition of the song,
and no two individuals sing quite alike. In the quality
of the sound there is also some difference. Again, it
is frequently described as a warble, or warbled song,
which it is not. The word warble, as Mr. Warde
Fowler has said, is used of birds’ singing in a sense
which may be guessed from Milton’s lines:

Fountains, and ye that warble as ye flow
Melodious murmurs, warbling tune his praise.

“The word,” he adds, “seems to express a kind of
singing which is soft, continuous, and legato.” It is
precisely because they sing in this way that several
of our smaller songsters, including the blackcap
and willow-wren, have received the English generic
name of Warblers.

The song is also variously characterised as de-
sultory, wild, monotonous, sweet, plaintive, mellow,
fluty, which is all wrong, and if by chance one word
had been right it would have given us no definite
idea of the ring-ouzel’s song—its shape. It is a whistle,
repeated three and sometimes four times without
pause, uttered at short intervals twenty or thirty or
more times. Let the reader think of any such word

RING-OUZEL AS A SONGSTER 135

as spero, hero, wheero, then whistle, musically, as
he is able, a loud brisk imitation of the word three
or four times in quick succession, and he will reproduce
the song well enough to deceive any person within
hearing that it is a ring-ouzel singing. The difference
will be that the whistled imitation will never get
the expressive bell-like musical character of the bird.
The sound has intrinsic beauty, but its charm is
mainly due to the place you hear it in, the wildness
and solitude of the rocky glens or the mountain side.

By going all round the mountain, visiting every
clough, I succeeded in locating about forty or fifty
breeding pairs and failed to detect any individual
differences in their singing. As in other songsters,
the ring-ouzel lowers his voice when approached by
a man or when watched; when singing freely the
voice carries far, and may be heard distinctly from
the opposite side of a glen three or four hundred yards
wide, and refined by distance it has then a beautiful
bell-like quality.

In May the ring-ouzels were mostly laying their
eggs when the earlier-breeding blackbirds were bring-
ing their young off. One day, within a ten minutes’
walk of the house, I spied a young blackbird out
among the rocks on the glen side, and captured it
just to hold it a minute or so in my hand for the sake
of its beauty, also to see what its parents would do.
They came at me in a fury, to flutter about within
two or three yards of me, screaming and scolding
their loudest; and very soon their noise brought a
pair of ring-ouzels on the scene to help them. Here

136 ADVENTURES AMONG BIRDS

was a fine opportunity of comparing our two British
blackbirds—two pairs, male and female, all animated
by the same passion, and acting together like birds
of the same species, dashing close to my face, as I
sat on a stone holding the richly-coloured young bird
in my hand, showing it to them.

The ring-ouzel always looks like a lesser blackbird,
even when they are thus seen side by side, although
it is about the same size; but it is not so black as
his cousin, for black, being the most conspicuous
colour in nature, exaggerates the size of an object,
especially a living moving one, to the eye. In some
lights the ring-ouzel has a rusty appearance owing
to the pale tips of the feathers. The female is less
black than the male and varies in colour according
to the light, sometimes appearing olive-black or
brown, and in some lights a greenish-bronze colour.

On my liberating the young bird the four demon-
strators flew off. On the following day I found the
ring-ouzels’ nest in a tuft of bilberry growing on a
ledge of rock at the glen side. It contained four eggs.
The male continued to sing at intervals during the
day when the female was sitting, but his favourite
time was late in the evening, when perched on a stone
about a hundred yards from his mate he would repeat
his song about twice every minute until it was dark.
He was the latest of the songsters, and would sing
on the coldest evenings, even when it was raining.

My daily visits to this nest were greatly resented
by the birds. It was their misfortune that they had
builded their home so near me and had made it so

RING-OUZEL AS A SONGSTER 137

beautiful. I was also much interested in the various
cries and sounds they emitted when excited by my
presence. The male would flit and fly about at a
distance, uttering loud clacking or chacking cries
interspersed with a variety of little exclamatory
notes, while the female, more anxious, would dash
at me, chacking and screaming all the time. But the
instant I left the site their rage would vanish; the
male would begin his set ‘‘wheero-wheero” whistle,
while the female would break out in a sort of song of
her own which resembled the first attempts at singing
of a young throstle—a medley composed of a variety
of guttural and squeaking notes interspersed with
more or less musical chirps.

What struck me as most curious was that when
troubled with my presence at the nest they uttered
two distinct sounds which are not in the blackbird’s
language but are part of the language of the typical
thrushes (Turdus); one was the prolonged, tremulous,
harsh and guttural alarm cry of the missel-thrush,
the other the low, long-drawn, wailing note of the
throstle when anxious about its nest or young, a
note so high-pitched as to be inaudible to some
persons. It can only be supposed that these different
sounds, expressing apprehension or anger, have been
inherited by thrushes and the ring-ouzel, and have
been lost in the blackbird. I have been told that
the blackbird does occasionally emit the low robin-
like wailing note when its nest is approached, but
have never heard it myself.

One would like to listen to and compare the sounds

138 ADVENTURES AMONG BIRDS

emitted by all the thrushes of the world—the spotted
ground thrushes (Geocichla), supposed to be the
parental form; the typical thrushes (Turdus); and
the blackbirds (Merula). Ornithologists pay little
or no attention to the language of birds when con-
sidering the question of evolution, but here it might
help us to a right conclusion of the question whether
the blackbirds are an offshoot of the typical thrushes,
or sprang independently from the ground thrushes.
In studying the language of the blackbird alone one
might spend half a lifetime very pleasantly. In the
development of their vocal organs they stand highest
among birds, and they have a world-wide distribution,
numbering about seventy species. What more fas-
cinating object in life for a wandering Englishman
who desires to see all lands, who loves birds and above
all others the “garden-ouzel”’ of his home? A mission-
ary writes that there is no living thing in Samoa
which gives him so much the home feeling as this
bird—its blackbird, Merula samoensis. The English
spring is recalled to another in Ceylon by the ouzel
of that country. Yet another wanderer in Somali-
land is delightfully reminded of home by the native
blackbird. And doubtless others have had the same
feeling produced in them by other blackbirds in
other regions—in Siberia; in Cuba, in the Amazo-
nian forests; in the Andes and the Himalayas; and
in Burma, Japan, Formosa, the Philippines, New
Guinea, Borneo, Java, Fiji, New Hebrides, Norfolk
Island, the Louisiades, and other islands and countries
too many to name.

CHAPTER XIV

BIRD MUSIC

Modern indifference to delicate music—Charm due to past asso-
ciations—A willow-wren at Harrogate—Intrinsic charm of
some bird voices—Effect of special circumstances—A rain-
washed world—Exceptional songs of chaffinch and whinchat
—A wonderful blackbird.

O those who delight in bird music it appears

strange that there should be many persons

who are quite indifferent to it, who will hear
you speak of its charm or beauty with impatience
and perhaps incredulity. It is probable that in many
cases the indifference is the result of a town life and
the dulling effect on the sense of hearing of an atmo-
sphere of loud jarring noises, also of the loudness
of the instrumental music to which they are accus-
tomed. Our civilisation is a noisy one, and as it
increases in noisiness the smaller, more delicate
musical instruments which must be heard in a quiet
atmosphere lose their ancient charm and finally
become obsolete. The tendency is towards louder
instruments and masses of sound; the piano is a
universal favourite, and the more thunder you get
out of it the better it is liked.

In this as in other things our gain is our loss; if
in human music the sweetest, most delicate instru-
mental sounds cease to please, or even to be tolerable,

139

140 ADVENTURES AMONG BIRDS

on account of their small volume, how could the very
best of the natural music of birds delight us—the
small exquisite strains emitted by the wagtails and
pipits, the wheatear and whinchat, the willow-wren
and wood-wren, the linnet and reed-warbler? The
very most that can be said of such minute melodies
is that, like the little gurgling and lisping sounds of
a pebbly streamlet and of wind in leaves and the
patter of rain, it is soothing.

Another cause of indifference is that for some
persons the sounds are without expression.

We know that when the occasions of past happi-
ness, and the fact of the happiness itself, have been
forgotten, something yet remains to us—a vague,
pleasurable emotion which may be evoked by any
scene, or object, or melody, or phrase, or any sight
or sound in nature once associated with such happi-
ness. It is this halo, this borrowed colour of a thing,
which gives the expression. Those who say that they
find an indefinable charm or beauty in any sight or
sound do not as a rule know that it is not a quality
of the thing itself which moves them, that their
pleasure is almost wholly due to association, and that
in this case they “‘receive but what they give.”

An instance of this charm which any natural object
or sound may have for us is given by Gilbert White in
his description of an insect. ‘The shrilling of the
field cricket,” he says, “though sharp and stridulous,
yet marvellously delights some hearers, filling their
minds with a train of summer ideas of everything
that is rural, verdurous, and joyous.” There can

BIRD MUSIC 141

be no such “train of ideas” nor any vague sense
of happiness due to association caused by a bird’s
voice to one whose life or its early, most happy, and
impressible period has been spent apart from rural
scenes. The voice may be agreeable if the quality
is good, but it is expressionless.

To others, especially to those who have lived with
and have been lovers of nature from the cradle, even
a slight bird sound may produce a magical effect,
and I here recall an experience of the kind which I
had two or three summers ago at Harrogate.

I should say, judging from its fine appearance and
the numbers of fine people frequenting it, that Harro-
gate must be highly esteemed by town-loving folk;
it is a parasitic town nevertheless, and on that account
alone distasteful to me; and to make matters worse
I there found myself in a numerous company of the
sick—pilgrims from all parts of the land to that pool
in which they fondly hoped they would be cured of
their ills. Perhaps they did not all hope for a com-
plete cure, as there was a very large proportion of
well-nourished, middle-aged, and elderly gentlemen
with hard red or port-wine faces and watery eyes
who walked or hobbled painfully, some with the
aid of two sticks, others with crutches, while many
were seen in bath-chairs. I took it that these well-
to-do well-fed gentlemen were victims of gout and
rheumatism.

In this crowd of sufferers mixed with fashionables
I was alone, out of my element, depressed, and should
have been miserable but for a small bird, or rather of

142 ADVENTURES AMONG BIRDS

a small small bird voice. Every day when I went to
the well in the gardens to drink a tumbler of magnesia
water and sit there for an hour or so I heard the same
delicate wandering aerial sound, the thin plaintive
note of the same little bird, a willow-wren, which
had taken up its summer-end residence at that spot.
I do not mean a song; a little bird when moulting,
concealed in a thick shrubbery, has no heart to sing:
it was only his familiar faint little sorrowful call-note.

People came in numbers at certain hours of the
day to the spring and pavilion to drink water and
sit in groups chatting, flirting, laughing, or to pace
the walks, while the children ran and romped about
the green lawns or sailed their little boats on the
running water; and by-and-by the crowd would
begin to drift away as meal-time approached, until
the gardens would be silent and deserted. But the
small bird was always there, and though hidden
among the bushes where they grew thickest he was
not wholly invisible. At intervals his minute shadowy
flitting form could be discerned at some spot where
there was a slight opening among the dense clustered
leaves, seen for a moment or two, then gone. And
even when the place was fullest of people and the
sound of talk and laughter loudest, still at brief
intervals that faint, tenuous, sorrowful little sound
would be audible through it all. Listening for it and
hearing it, and sometimes catching a glimpse of the
small restless creature among the deep green foliage
near my seat, a curious mental change would come
over me. The sense of dissatisfaction, of disharmony,

BIRD MUSIC 143

would pass away; the pavilion, the kiosks, the
gravelled walks and offensive flower-beds, the well-
dressed invalids and idlers, the artificiality of the
scene, with big hotel buildings for background, would
be to me something illusory—a mental picture which
I could dismiss from my mind at any moment, or
an appearance which would vanish at a breath of
wind or on the coming of a cloud over the sun. The
people sitting and moving about me had no real
existence; I alone existed there, with a willow-wren
for companion, and was sitting not on an iron chair
painted green but on the root of an old oak or beech
tree, or on a bed of pine needles, with the smell of
pine and bracken in my nostrils, with only that
wandering aerial tender voice, that gossamer thread
of sound, floating on the silence.

This is doubtless an extreme example of the power
of expression, and could perhaps only be experienced
by one whose chief pleasure from childhood has been
in wild birds and who delights in bird voices above all
sounds. But expression is not everything: there is
a charm in some sounds so great that we love them
from the first time of hearing, when they are without
associations with a happy past; and in such cases
we can suppose that the emotional expression, if it
exists at all, is produced indirectly and forms but a
slight element in the esthetic effect.

There is, besides expression, another thing not
often taken into account which makes some bird
melodies impress us more than others—the state of
mind, or mood, we are in and the conditions in which

144 ADVENTURES AMONG BIRDS

it is heard. Yet it makes a world of difference even
in the songs of species which we love best for their
intrinsic beauty. The curious thing is that after
hearing a particular bird music in exceptionally
favourable circumstances the hearer should become
convinced that this musician is the best. It may
not be at its best on the next occasion of hearing
it, or ever again, but the image of the intense plea-
sure it once produced persists in his mind and the
delusion remains.

There are states of the atmosphere when dis-
tant objects seem near and all nature takes on
a rare loveliness which makes it like a new earth.
There are states, too, when bird sounds seem purer,
brighter, more resonant than at other times, in some
instances surprising us with new and mysteriously
beautiful qualities.

After copious rains in summer there is often a
tender silveriness in the sunlit air, the effect of abun-
dant moisture; and on such occasions we sometimes
note a difference in bird songs and cries, as if they,
too, like all else, had been washed and purified; and
just as we inhale the new delicious air into our lungs
we take the new melody into our souls. In this case
the exhilarating effect of the newly washed and
brightened air and sight of the blue sky after the
depressing cloud has passed undoubtedly count for
much; the responsive physical change in us acts
on the sense organs, and they, too, appear to have
been washed and made clean and able to render truer
and brighter images than before.

BIRD MUSIC 145

Then, too, we have the other cause, in which all
natural sounds, especially bird sounds, produce an
unusual effect owing to some special circumstances
or to a conjunction of favourable circumstances. It
is pure chance; the effect of to-day will never be
repeated; it has gone for ever, like the last beautiful
sunset we witnessed. But there will be many more
beautiful sunsets to gladden our sight.

On looking on a meadow yellow with buttercups
I have seen one flower, or a single petal, far out,
perhaps, in the middle of the field, which instantly
caught and kept my sight—one flower amongst a
thousand thousand flowers, all alike. It was because
it had caught and reflected the light at such an angle
that its yellow enamelled surface shone and sparkled
like a piece of burnished gold. By some such chance
a song, a note, may reach the sense with a strange
beauty, glorified beyond all other sounds.

One evening, walking in a park near Oxford, I
stopped to admire a hawthorn tree covered with its
fresh bloom. On a twig on the thorn a female chaffinch
was perched, silent and motionless, when presently
from the top of an elm tree close by its mate flew
down, describing a pretty wavering curve in its
descent, and arriving at the bush, and still flying,
circling round it, he emitted his song; not the usual
loud impetuous song he utters when perched; in
form or shape only it was the same, the notes issuing
in the same order, but lower, infinitely sweeter,
tender, etherealised. The song ended as the bird
dropped lightly by the side of its little mate.

K

146 ADVENTURES AMONG BIRDS

I could hardly credit my own senses, so beautiful
had seemed this subdued lyric from a songster we
regard as very inferior to some of the warblers in
delicacy and expressiveness.

On another occasion I was walking across a furze-
grown common after dark on a very cold windy even-
ing in early April, when at a distance of about forty
yards from me a whinchat warbled the fullest, sweet-
est song I ever listened to from that bird. After a
brief interval the song was repeated, then once again.
Whether it was the exceeding purity of the sound,
so clear, so wondrously sweet, so unexpected at that
hour, or the darkness and silence of that solitary
place which gave it an almost preternatural beauty
I cannot say, but the effect on me was so great that
I have never walked by night in spring in any furzy
place without pausing and listening from time to
time with the pleased expectation of hearing it again.

Probably in these two instances and in a dozen
others which I could cite the song was uttered by
chance at the precise moment when it would be most
impressive—when the conditions and the mood they
had induced were most favourable. But the sound
too may create the mood, as was the case in the
following instance.

I have heard many wonderful blackbirds, for like
all songsters, feathered as well as human, they vary
greatly in merit, and pace Dr. A. R. Wallace, there is
such a thing as genius in nature, but I think the one
which most impressed me was just an ordinary black-
bird. I was staying at a farmhouse in the New

BIRD MUSIC 147

Forest, and on the side of the house where I slept
there was a large arbor vite in which a blackbird
roosted every night on a level with my window. Now,
every morning at half-past three this bird would
begin to sing and go on repeating his song at short
intervals for about half an hour. It was very silent
at that time; I could hear no other bird; and the
sound coming in at the open window from a distance
of but five yards had such a marvellous beauty that
I could have wished for no more blessed existence
than to lie there, head on pillow, with the pale early
light and the perfume of night-flowers in the room,
listening to that divine sound.

CHAPTER XV

IN A GREEN COUNTRY IN QUEST OF RARE
SONGSTERS

Green England—An imagined journey to the stars—The silent

bicycle—Encounters with blind men—Rambles in Dorset

—Wareham—Story of a good little boy—A surprising

experience at Poole—The threshold of Hampshire.

CAN understand the feeling experienced by some

visitors from far-distant sunburnt lands — our

antipodean “dependencies,” for example — on
first coming to England, at a time of year when the
country is greenest. The unimagined brilliancy of
the hue and its universality affect them powerfully;
for though green was known to them in sea and sky
and earth and in a parrot’s plumage, it is not really
the colour of nature in their world as in ours. It is a
surprise to all and in some a pure delight, but to
others it appears unnatural, and it is degraded by
its association in the mind with fresh green paint.
But to those who live in England, especially in the
southern parts, this verdure is never more delightful
and refreshing to the soul than when we come to it
straight from some such hilly and moorland district
as, say, that of the Peak of Derbyshire, with its brown
harsh desolate aspect. All the qualities which go to
make our southern landscape what it is to us are then
intensified, or “illustrated by their contraries,” as

Defoe would have said.
148

IN A GREEN COUNTRY 149

Thus it was that, on coming south from the Peak
district at the end of May, it seemed to me that
never since I had known England, from that morning
in early May when I saw the sun rise behind the white
cliffs and green downs of Wight and the Hampshire
shore, had it seemed so surpassingly lovely—so like
a dream of some heavenly country. There have been
days of torment and weariness when the wish has
come to me that I might be transported from this
ball to the uttermost confines of the universe, to the
remotest of all the unnumbered stars, to some rock
or outpost beyond the furthest of them all, where I
might sit with all matter, all life, for ever behind and
with nothing but infinite empty space before me,
thinking, feeling, remembering nothing, through all
eternity. Now the wish or thought of a journey to the
stars came to me again, but with a different motive:
in the present instance it was purely for the sake
of the long and wholly delightful journey, not for
anything at the end. My wish was now to prolong
the delight of travelling in such scenes indefinitely.
Could anyone imagine a greater bliss than to sit or
recline at ease in a railway carriage with that immortal
green of earth ever before him, so varied in its shades,
so flowery, splashed everywhere with tender, brilliant
gold of buttercups, so bathed in sunlight and shaded
with great trees—green woods with their roots in
the divine blue of the wild hyacinth. Who would not
wish to go on for days, months, years even, to the
stars if we could travel to them in that way!

I don’t know much about the stars, nor am I

150 ADVENTURES AMONG BIRDS

anxious to visit them; it was only the thought of
the long green way that fascinated me. By-and-by it
came into my mind that someone had said, just to
enable us to grasp the idea of their distance from earth,
that it would take a non-stopping express train forty
million years to get to a star—which star, if any
particular one was meant, I don’t remember. The
thought of it began to oppress me, for by-and-by,
after a few centuries perhaps, I should begin to wish
for a break, a stop for half an hour, let us say, at some
small wayside station to enable me to lie down for
a few minutes on my back in the grass to gaze up
into the blue sky with its floating white clouds, and,
above all, to listen to the skylark and to every other
sweet singing bird. I began to think that seeing is
not everything, since we have other senses; I wanted
to hear and smell and taste and feel; to wrap myself
about with these sensations, to pierce and dwell in
them as some tiny insect penetrates to the hollow
chamber of a flower to feed at ease on its secret
sweetness. I recalled the complaint of the spiritual-
minded author of the Cynthiades to his Cynthia,
that he was not content even in their moments of
supremest bliss—-even when she was so close to
him that they knew each other’s thought without
a whisper:

Yet I desire
To come more close to thee and to be nigher;

still dissatisfied to find that their souls remained dis-
tinct and separate when he would have had them touch
like two neighbouring raindrops and become one.

IN A GREEN COUNTRY I51

There was no such bar in my case; being one we
could not asunder dwell. For my mistress is more to
me than any Cynthia to any poet; she is immortal
and has green hair and green eyes, and her body and
soul are green, and to those who live with and love
her she gives a green soul as a special favour.

With this feeling impelling me I quitted the train
and took to the wheel, which runs without a sound,
as a serpent glides or a swallow skims, and brings you
down to a closer intimacy with the earth.

How unspeakably grateful we should be for this
gift—we lovers of the road and of nature’s quietude
who have a meek and quiet spirit—to go on our way
like the owl by night on its downy silent wings! So
quiet is the wheel that on two separate occasions I
have passed a blind man on a quiet country road, so
closely as almost to touch him, without his knowing
it until I spoke. This seemed marvellous to me
when I considered the almost preternatural keenness
of the hearing sense in the blind, especially in blind
men who are accustomed to go freely about in country
places. In both instances the man, when spoken to,
started and wheeling partly round delivered his reply
in the direction from which the voice had come,
though the speaker was no longer there, having gone
twenty or thirty yards past the point.

My second encounter with a blind man was during
the ramble in a green country. I alighted, and
watched him go on feeling his way along the edge
of the road with his stick. He was a mile or more
from the village at a spot where the road went by

152 ADVENTURES AMONG BIRDS

a wood. A little further on by the roadside the
benevolent landlord — would that there were more
like him!—had placed a garden bench in the shade
for tired travellers to rest on. The man was making
his way to this seat, and after he had settled down
I went back and sat by him. He was a big healthy
fine-looking man, a native of the village, a son of a
farm labourer. He, more ambitious, left his home
as a youth to find other employment, but it was a
dangerous trade he took up and as a result of an
explosion of powder in his face his vision was des-
troyed for ever. He came back to his village which,
he said, he would never quit again. It was the one
place known to him and although it was now covered
with darkness he would still see it with his inner eye
—the streets and houses, the fields, roads, hedges,
woods, and streams-—all this area which had been
his playground in his early years was so well remem-
bered that he could still find his way about in it.
He told me he made his living by selling tea which
he procured in quantities direct from a London
merchant and retailed to the cottages in half- and
quarter-pound packets. They took their tea from him
because he served them at their own doors. On
certain days of the week he visited the neighbouring
villages, doing a circuit of twenty-five or thirty miles
in the day. On these occasions he had a little girl
of ten to guide him. Of course she had to attend school
on most days, but on Saturdays she was free and she
could generally get permission to absent herself from
school on another day. Failing her he had to take

IN A GREEN COUNTRY 153

a larger girl, out of school, who was not half so
intelligent as the other and not so well liked by
the cottage women.

I noticed that this man, like many other blind
persons I have met, though big and strong and in
the prime of life, was a very quiet still man who
spoke in a low voice and was subdued and gentle in
manner. I think it is the habit of always listening
that makes them so quiet, and I wondered what his
sensations were when a motor cyclist passed us, going
by like a whirlwind, a horrible object, shaking the
earth, and making it hateful until he was a mile
away with a torrent of noise.

In my quieter way on my wheel I rambled on from
county to county viewing many towns and villages,
conversing with persons of all ages and conditions;
yet all this left but slight and quickly fading im-
pressions, for in my flittings about a green land when
it was greenest I had an object ever present in my
mind—the desire to see and hear certain rare singing
birds, found chiefly in the south, whose rarity is in
most cases due to the collectors for the cabinet, bird-
catchers, and other Philistines, who occupy them-
selves in the destruction of all loveliest forms of life.
Thus, the clear whistle of a golden oriole, when I
listened to it in a strictly guarded wood, where it
breeds annually and where I was permitted to spend
a day, was more to me than the sight of towns,
villages, castles, ruins, and cathedrals, and more
than adventures among the people.

This, then, is but a hasty and careless itinerary.

154 ADVENTURES AMONG BIRDS

Going west I was at Blandford, then at Wimborne,
where I found nothing in the town to detain me except
the minster, and nothing in that but the whiteness of
the stones with which it is built, with here and there
one of a surprising red placed at random, giving the
structure a harlequin appearance, unlike that of any
other church known to me. At Wareham, a small
ancient village-like town in a beautiful unspoilt-
looking country, I was long in St. Mary’s Church,
absorbed in the contemplation of Edward the Martyr’s
stone coffin, when a great gloom came over the earth
and made the interior almost dark. Coming out I was
astonished to find that while I had been in there
with the coffin and the poor boy-king’s ghost, the
streets outside had been turned into muddy, rushing
torrents, and going to a group of men standing near,
I asked them where all that water came from. “From
above, I imagine,” replied one, smiling at my sim-
plicity, which reply brought back to my mind a
story of a good little boy read in my childhood. This
little boy had been religiously taught to say about
everything painful or unpleasant which befell him,
from the loss of a toy or a wetting or a birching, to
an attack of measles or mumps or scarlatina, that it
“came from above.” Now one day, during a very
high wind, he was knocked down senseless by a tile
falling on his head, and, recovering consciousness,
found himself surrounded by a number of persons
who had come to his assistance. Picking himself up
and pointing to the tile at his feet which had knocked
him down, he solemnly remarked, “It comes from

IN A GREEN COUNTRY 155

bP)

above.” At which the crowd laughed, for they were
a frivolous people in that town, and they asked him
where else it could come from.

That little town of ancient memories and a cloud-
burst, with the villages round it, is a good place to be
in, but it could not keep me since I could not find there
what I had gone out to seek; so very soon I turned
eastward again, going by way of Poole, which I had
not seen for some years. There I met with a sur-
prising experience. There is a fine public park at
Poole, with extensive green spaces and a lake for
boating — the largest lake in any public park in
England. At six o’clock in the evening it was thronged
with the townspeople who had gathered at that place
to recreate themselves after their day’s work, and
never have I seen a people enjoy themselves more
heartily, or one that seemed more like a naturally
joyous people. The greatest crowd was round the
bandstand, where hundreds of people were resting
on chairs or sitting and lying on the grass, whilst
others danced on the green or on the large open-air
dancing floors made for the purpose. Further away
youths and boys were running races and playing ball
on the lawns, whilst numbers of prettily dressed
girls flitted up and down the paths on bicycles. So
much liberty in a public park was very unusual. Now
just when I came on the scene at about six o’clock
a big cloud rose up from the south-east and grew
and grew until it covered half the entire heavens with
its blackness; and as it spread higher and nearer
the thunder heard at intervals increased in power

156 ADVENTURES AMONG BIRDS

and was more frequent, accompanied with vivid
flashes of forked lightning which, one would imagine,
would have sent the people in terror to their homes.
For a very little more and the storm would be directly
over us and the whole crowd deluged with rain.
But though it remained near us for about an hour
and a half, without losing that black, exceedingly
threatening aspect, with occasional little tempests
of rain, it did not quite reach us, and I then noticed,
when strolling about the ground, that there was not
the slightest appearance of apprehension or nervous-
ness in the people. The fun and frolic continued with-
out a break through it all until, at nine o’clock, the
people dispersed to their homes.

Now I can imagine that the people I had been
staying with on those cold, harsh moors in Derby-
shire would have stared and gasped with astonishment
at such a scene, and would perhaps have refused to
believe that it was an everyday scene in that place,
that this was how the people spent their summer
evening after each day’s work. I can imagine, too,
that some nonagenarian or centenarian, who had
from his youth dreamed of a freer, sweeter, more
joyous life for the people of his country, on coming
down from some such unchanged district as the one
just mentioned and looking upon the scene I have
described, would be able to say from his very heart,
“‘Now lettest Thou Thy servant depart in peace.”

Quitting Poole, I ran for ten miles along a con-
tinuous thoroughfare, through Bournemouth to Christ-
church, with the ugliness and infernal jar and clang

IN A GREEN COUNTRY 157

of the electric trams the whole way. Only when I
got to the shade of the grey old priory church did I
feel that I was safely out of Pandemonium and on
the threshold of that county richest of all in wild
life which continually calls me back from all others,
east, west, and north, to its heaths and forests
and rivers.

CHAPTER XVI

IN A HAMPSHIRE VILLAGE

Rare species and private collectors—An old soldier—Moorhen—
A family of working folk—A talk with my landlady—Her
love of bird music—The story of her lost child.

‘Gis further into Hampshire I was by-and-

by at a spot which cannot be named owing

to the fact that I was there in quest of a
rare and elusive little bird. For we who desire to
save our birds must keep the private collector in
mind; that injurious person who is ever anxious to
secure the very last British-killed specimens of any
rare species. And should a species be near its end—
in other words, should it be rare—then, says the
leader and lawgiver of all this rapacious gang, our
right and proper course is to finish it off as quickly
as may be, seeing that by so doing we furnish our
cabinets with a large number of specimens for the
benefits of science and of posterity. The law does not
protect our birds and country from these robbers;
they have too many respected representatives in
high places, on the benches of magistrates, in the
Houses of Parliament, and among important people
generally. For are they not robbers and of the very
worst description? Those who break into our houses

to steal our gold steal trash in comparison; while
158

IN A HAMPSHIRE VILLAGE 159

these, who are never sent to Portland or Dartmoor,
are depriving the country with its millions of in-
habitants of one of its best possessions—its lustrous
wild life.

Here I came to a village which happened to be one
of the very few, certainly not above half a dozen,
in all that county never previously visited by me;
and as it was within easy distance of the spot I had
come to explore I had some idea of settling in it for
a few days. I had long known it by name, and it had
furthermore been minutely and lovingly described to
me by an old soldier, decorated with many medals,
who is now a keeper in one of the royal parks. One
day last spring he showed me a blackbird’s nest in
which he took a somewhat anxious interest on account
of its unsafe position on a wart or projection on the
trunk of a Spanish chestnut tree, a few feet from the
ground and plainly visible to mischievous eyes. Our
talk about this careless blackbird and other birds
led to his telling me of his boyhood in a small out-of-
the-world Hampshire village, and I asked him how,
with such a feeling as he had revealed about his
native place, he had been able to spend his life away
from it, and why he did not go back there now.
That, he answered, was his desire and intention,
not only since he had begun to grow old, but he had
cherished the idea even when he was a ycung man
and in his prime, in India, Burma, Afghanistan,
Egypt. Now at last the time seemed near when his
desire would be fulfilled; two years more in the park
and he would retire with a small pension, which,

160 ADVENTURES AMONG BIRDS

added to his soldier’s pension, would enable him to
pass the remnant of his life in his native village.

I thought of him now, the tall straight old soldier,
with his fine stern face and grey moustache and hair,
who had spent his years in defending the empire in
many distant lands, and was now anxiously guarding
a blackbird’s nest in a park from the wild, lawless
little Afghans and Soudanese of the London slums.
It was nice to think of him here where he would
soon be back in his boyhood’s haunts, as I sat on the
trunk of a sloping tree by the stream, a stone’s-throw
from the churchyard. I was practically in the village,
yet not a sound could be heard but the faint whisper
of the wind in the trees near me and the ripple and
gurgling of the water at my feet. Then came another
sound —the sudden loud sharp note of alarm or
challenge of a moorhen a few yards away. There she
stood on the edge of the clear water, in a green flowery
bed of water-mint and forget-me-not, with a thicket
of tall grasses and comfrey behind her, the shapely
black head with its brilliant orange and scarlet
ornaments visible above the herbage. We watched
each other, and it was indeed peaceful at that spot
where nature and man lived in such a close companion-
ship, and very sweet to be there; nevertheless, it
did not suit me to stay in that village. Its charm
consisted mainly in its seclusion, in its being hidden
from the world in a hollow among woods and hills,
and I love open spaces best, wide prospects from doors
and windows, and the winds free to blow on me from
all quarters. Accordingly, I went to another village

IN A HAMPSHIRE VILLAGE 161

a mile and a half away, where it was more open, and
settled there in a cottage with working people—man
and wife and one child, a little boy of eleven.

My usual good luck attended me in this place, for
seldom have I stayed with people I liked better. The
wife was intelligent enough to let me live just as I
liked without any fuss, so that I could get up at four
o’clock in the morning when they were still sleeping
to make tea for myself in the kitchen before going out,
and come in when I liked and have what I liked in
the way of food. The man, too, was a perfect host;
his good qualities and cleverness in his work had
raised him to a better position than that of most
working men. He was actually earning about three
pounds a week, but prosperity had not spoiled him;
he might have been making no more than fifteen or
eighteen shillings like others of his class, in the village.
His manner was singularly engaging, and he was
quiet and gentle in the house. One might have thought
that he had been subdued by his wife—that she was
the ruling spirit; but it was not so: when they were
together, and when they sat at table, where I some-
times sat with them, she tuned herself to him and
talked with a gentle cheerfulness, watching his face
and hanging on his words. Their manner was so
unlike that of most persons in their state of life that
it was a puzzle to me, and I might have guessed the
secret of it from a peculiar pathos in his voice and
the inward-gazing dreamy expression in his eyes which
haunted me; but I guessed nothing, and only learnt

it just before quitting the village.
L

162 ADVENTURES AMONG BIRDS

Then there was the boy, who in the house was just
as still, gentle, and low-voiced as his father; a boy
who disliked his books and crawled reluctantly to
school and took no part in games, but who had an
intense love of the wild, a desire to be always out of
doors by himself, following and watching the birds.

I was like that myself at his age, but was more
happily placed, having no school to crawl to nor
miserable books to pore over.

One day, just before leaving, I came in to my six-
o’clock meal, after a long spell on the heath, to find
my landlady as usual ready and even eager to listen
to anything I had to tell her. For she, too, at home in
her cottage, had been alone all day, except for a few
minutes when her boy came in at noon to swallow
his dinner and run off to the nearest wood or heath
to get as much time as possible before the clanging
of the school bell called him in again. Now every-
thing I ever told her about my rambles on the heath
had appeared to interest her in an extraordinary way.
She would listen to an account of where I had been,
to which old ditch, or barrow, or holly clump, also
what birds I had found there, and to the most trivial
incidents, as if to some wonderful tale of adventure;
she would listen in silence until I ended, when she
would ask a dozen questions to take me all over the
ground again and keep up the talk about the heath.
On this occasion she said more, telling me that the
heath had been very much to her; then little by little
she let out the whole story concerning her feeling
for it. It was the story of her life from the time of

IN A HAMPSHIRE VILLAGE 163

her marriage up to little over a year ago, when her
two children were aged nine and six respectively.
For there were two children then, and they lived in
a cottage at the side of a pine and oak wood on the
border of the heath. Her husband was fond of birds
and of all wild animals; he knew them well, and in
time she, too, grew to like them just as much. She
loved best to hear their songs and calls; bird voices
were always to be heard, day and night, all the year
round. You couldn’t but hear them, even the faintest
note of the tiniest bird, it was so silent at that spot
where there was no road and no house near. Her
solace and one pleasure outside the house was in
their singing. She was very much alone there; she
read little and never heard any music—one would
have to go miles to hear a piano; so the songs of
birds came to be the sweetest sounds on earth for
her, especially the blackbird, which was more to her
than any other bird. When she first came to live in
the village she could hardly endure the noises — so
many cocks crowing, children shouting, people talking,
carts rattling by and all kinds of noises! It made her
head ache at first. Then at night, how they missed
the night birds’ sounds —the hooting of the wood
owls, especially in winter, and in summer the reeling
of nightjars, and the corncrake and the nightingale.

Thus for half an hour the poor woman talked and
talked about her old life on the heath, laughing a
little now and then at her own feelings—the absurdity
of her home-sickness when she was so near the old
spot—but always with a little break in her voice,

164 ADVENTURES AMONG BIRDS

avoiding all the time the one subject uppermost in
her mind—the very one I was waiting for her to come
to. And in the end she had to come to it, and after
putting her hand up to hide the tears that could not
be kept back, she was relieved, and began to speak
freely of the lost child. Violet was her name, and
everyone who knew her said that no fitter name could
have been given her, she was so beautiful, so like a
flower, with eyes that were like violets. And she had
the greatest love of flowers for a small child. Nobody
had seen anything like it. Dolls and toys she didn’t
care for—she was all for flowers. As for sense, she
had as much of it as any grown-up person when she
was no more than five. She was a most loving little
thing, but cared most for her father, and every
evening when he came home she would fly to meet
him, and would sit on his knee till bedtime. What
talks those two had! Now the most curious thing
remains to tell, and this was about both the children
—the way in which they would spend most of their
time. At that distance from the village the boy was
allowed, after a good deal of bother about it, to learn
his letters at home. If the weather was fine, those
two would be up and have breakfast very early,
then, taking their dinner in a little basket, would go
to the heath, and she would see no more of them till
about five o’clock in the afternoon. The boy was
always fondest of birds and animals, like his father,
and was happy following and watching them all day
long. The girl loved the flowers best, and whenever
she found a flower that was rare or wholly new to her

IN A HAMPSHIRE VILLAGE 165

she would cry out with joy and make as much fuss
as if she had found a splendid jewel on the heath.
She was a strong child, always the picture of health,
so that when she suddenly fell ill of a fever it sur-
prised and alarmed them greatly, and the doctor
was sent for. He didn’t think it a serious case, but
he seemed doubtful about its nature, and in the end
he made a fatal mistake—he himself said it was a
mistake. The crisis came, and the poor child got so
bad that he was sent for, but it was long to wait, and
in the meantime something had to be done, and what
she did was to give it a hot bath. Then the fit passed,
and with it the fever, and the child went off in a quiet
sleep with every sign of returning health. Then came
the doctor and said the child was getting well—the
tight thing had been done — but he must wake her
up and give her a draught. She begged him not to;
he insisted, and roused and made the child drink,
-and no sooner had the little thing swallowed the
medicine than she fell back white as ashes and was
dead in a few minutes.

It was going on for two years since their loss; they
had been long settled in the village and had grown
used to the village life: the boy was gradually be-
coming more reconciled to school; her husband had
a different employment, which suited him better
than the former one, and was highly regarded by
his master; then, too, they had pleasant relations
with their neighbours. But this improvement in
their condition brought them no happiness—they
could not get over the loss of their child. She, the

166 ADVENTURES AMONG BIRDS

wife, had her grief when she was alone during long
hours every day in the house; but when her man
came home in the evening she could, and did, throw
it off, and was always cheerful, her whole care being
to make him forget his sorrow. But it seemed useless;
he was a changed man; all his thoughts, all his
heart, were with his lost child. He had always been
good-tempered and kind, but he had been merry too,
full of fun and laughter; now he was what I had seen
—a very quiet, still man who smiled a little at times,
but who appeared to have forgotten how to laugh.

CHAPTER XVII

THE FURZE-WREN OR FURZE-FAIRY

A new locality for the Dartford warbler—A search for it on a
heath—A litter of feathers—First sight of the furze-wren—
First hearing of its song—lIts habits and song described—
Its originality as a songster.

CAME to that unnamed little village, as I have

said, in quest of one of our rarest songsters; then

the people of the cottage where I lodged came
between me and my subject with their human sweet-
ness and sorrows, and telling of them I forgot to say
whether or not I had found my bird or even to
mention its species.

It happened that about a year or fourteen months
before I started on this quest, a friend wrote to inform
me that by chance he had discovered a new locality
for the Dartford warbler, that delicate birdling of
the furze-bushes, our furze-wren, so persistently
sought after for many years past by our collectors.
He was cycling in the south country, and when going
by a side-road at the edge of a wide heath or moor
caught sight of a pair flitting among some furze-
bushes. He had never previously seen the bird, but
I was satisfied that he was right in his identification
—that he was about the last man to make a mistake
in such a matter. I may add that this same keen
observer is not known to me personally; we corre-

spond, and having the same feeling about birds are
167

168 ADVENTURES AMONG BIRDS

naturally friends. He is one of those strange but not
very uncommon persons who lead a double life. To
some of us he is known as an ornithologist; to the
theatre-going public he is a finished actor, and those
who know him only in his impersonations would,
I imagine, hear with surprise, perhaps incredulity,
that, off the boards, he is a haunter of silent, solitary
places where birds inhabit, that in these communings
he has a joy with which the playgoer intermeddleth not.
The heath was a very extensive one, covering an
area of several square miles, and it was not strange
that when I searched the spot he had described I
failed to find the birds. I then set patiently and
methodically to work to search the furzy places,
especially where the growth was thickest, in other
parts, and after two entire days spent in this quest
I began to fear I was not going to find them after all.
But I had spent so many days and weeks on former
occasions in searching for this same most elusive little
creature in eight or nine other spots where I have
found him in the south and west country, and knew
his hiding habits so well, that I still allowed myself
to hope. However, after yet another morning spent
in vain I resolved to give it up that same evening
and go back west. It had been labour in vain, I
thought sadly, then smiled and felt a little encouraged
to remember that “Labour in Vain” was the actual
name of a barren stony piece of ground with a little
furze growing on it, where many years ago I had
found my first furze-wren—a spot distant about thirty
miles from the nearest known locality for the bird.

FURZE-WREN OR FURZE-FAIRY 169

I then went to a high barrow on the heath and sat
down to meditate and cool myself in the wind; there
my attention was attracted to a litter of feathers
near my feet of some small bird on which a sparrow-
hawk had recently fed. The body feathers were red
or chestnut brown, the quills black or blackish brown.
I began to speculate as to the species, when it all at
once occurred to me that these were the two colours
of the furze-wren. The wind was blowing strong and
carrying the feathers, red and black, fast away—in
two or three minutes there would be few left to judge
from. I quickly gathered those that remained clinging
to the stunted heath on the barrow-top and began
examining them. No, the sparrow-hawk had not
struck down and devoured that most unlikely bird,
the furze-wren: there remained one little quill with
a white border and one small pure white feather. They
were linnet’s feathers—the dark wing feathers and
the chestnut-red body feathers from the back.

Now this trivial incident of the barrow-top, where
I went to meditate and did not do so, served as a
fillip to my flagging energies, and I immediately
went off across the heath in quest of my bird again,
making for a point about three-quarters of a mile
away which I had hunted over two or three days
before. I had not proceeded more than about three
hundred yards when, in the most unlikely spot in
the whole place, I caught sight of a minute, black-
looking bird flitting rapidly out of one low ragged
furze-bush and vanishing into another. Here was
my furze-wren!

170 ADVENTURES AMONG BIRDS

Nothing now remained to do but to snuggle down
in a cluster of heather and to sit there motionless and
watch, and in due time the bird reappeared with his
mate, and they came to and scolded me, then, seeing
me so still, went away about their business.

In one thing this pair disappointed me. My first
object in going to the heath was to make sure that
they were still there; I had another, which was not
to pull their nesting-bush to pieces, to let in the sun-
light, rearrange it, and then photograph the nest “in
its natural surroundings,” as our fictionists of the
camera have it, but to describe the song immediately
after listening to it, when the impression would be
fresh in the mind. This bird, from dawn to dark,
declined to sing or say anything except that he
objected to my presence. His girding note is like that
of a refined whitethroat—he chides you like a fairy.
The songlessness was no doubt due to the fact that
there was no other pair, or no cock bird, to provoke
him, in that part.

One evening, three days later, I was in another
part of the heath, about half a mile from the breeding-
place of the first pair, when a small bird flitted up
from the furze and perched for a few moments on the
topmost twig of a bush; another furze-wren, his
dainty figure silhouetted, black as jet, against the
pale evening sky, on the summit of his black and
gold furze-bush! It was a joyful moment, a discovery
wholly unexpected, as I had previously explored that
part and found nothing. It was in a spot where the
furze grew in a dense thicket, four to six or seven

FURZE-WREN OR FURZE-FAIRY 171

feet high, and covering three to four acres of ground.
As a rule the bird prefers a sparser growth with open
spaces among the bushes.

My bird soon vanished and refused to come out
again. Something better followed; fifty yards further
on a second bird appeared and perched on a bush
began to sing, allowing me to approach to within
twenty yards of him. He too then dived down into
the thicket and was seen no more. I went home with
that small song in me, but did not attempt to de-
scribe it, as I wished first to hear it again more
freely and fully uttered.

Next day I found no fewer than nine pairs, all
living and breeding near together, at that one point
in the vast dense thicket. Outside it was all empty
and barren; just there the little living gems sparkled
in profusion. But how melancholy to think that any
cunning scoundrel hired by a private collector, or
the keeper of a bird-stuffer’s shop who calls himself
“Naturalist,” might appear any moment with an
air-gun and extirpate the whole colony in the course
of a morning!

I found that my best time to observe these birds
was about five o’clock in the morning, when they
are most excitable and vocal. I would then some-
times have two, at times three, pairs about me, flit-
ting hither and thither, vanishing and reappearing,
scolding and by-and-by fighting; for any spot in
which I stationed myself to observe them would be
within the territory of a particular pair, and when
other pairs came in to assist in the demonstration

172 ADVENTURES AMONG BIRDS

against me, they were regarded as intruders. The
cock in possession of the ground would resent their
presence and sing defiantly, the other would reply,
but was never able to stand against the furious onset
which would follow; in every case he was chased
ignominiously back to his own ground. The victor
would then return to pour out his triumph and
challenge to all outsiders.

The song, albeit so passionate, does not carry far,
so that to hear it well the listener must be as near as
he can possibly get to the bird. It is short, lasting
only a few seconds at each repetition, but when in
the singing spirit the little vocalist will sometimes
continue the performance for several minutes at a
stretch. As to the character of the song, Montagu,
who was the first man in England to write about it,
said that it resembled the song of the stonechat.
That is true, since the little chat’s song is composed
of a few low and guttural notes interspersed with
others bright and clear; but Montagu omitted to
say that he spoke only of the chat’s song uttered from
a perch and not the song the same bird emits when he
rises high in the air and, falling and rising, pours out
his little rhythmical melody—his better song. But
the song, or rather songs, of the stonechat are known
to few persons, owing to the fact that this bird is
intolerant of the presence of a human being near him.
Heard at a considerable distance, the lower notes in
the song of the furze-wren are lost, and the sound
that reaches the ear might be taken for a stonechat,
or linnet, or dunnock, or even a pipit. The white-

FURZE-WREN OR FURZE-FAIRY 173

throat, heard in the same localities, has a louder,
coarser song, which is not much softened or ether-
ealised by distance. The whitethroat’s girding or
chiding note is familiar to everyone; the chiding
note of the furze-wren is like the same note subdued
and softened. It is this same chiding or scolding note
which is used in singing, only louder and more musical
and uttered with such extraordinary rapidity that
the note may be repeated eighteen or twenty times
in three seconds of time. The most hurried singing
of the sedge-warbler seems an almost languid per-
formance in comparison. This rapid utterance pro-
duces the effect of a continuous or sustained sound,
like the reeling of the grasshopper- warbler; the
character of the sound is, however, not the same;
it is rather like a buzzing or droning, as of a stag
beetle or cockchafer in flight, only with a slightly
metallic and musical quality added. This buzzing
stream of sound is interspersed with small, fine,
bright, clear notes, both shrill and mellow. Some of
these are very pure and beautiful.
Meredith says of the lark’s song that it is a

silver chain of sound
Of many links, without a break.

The same may be said of many other songsters all the
world over—all, in fact, that do not sing in a leisurely
manner, or, like the throstle and nightingale, with
frequent pauses. But chains differ in form; so with
these chains of sound of the rapid singers: in some
the links (otherwise, the notes) may be seen and
distinguished as separate parts of the piece. In the

174 ADVENTURES AMONG BIRDS

furze-wren it is not so; the excessive rapidity with
which the notes are emitted and repeated makes the
performance more like a close-woven cord than a
chain, and, to continue the metaphor, we may see
it as a black or grey cord, set and sparkling with loose
thread-ends of silver, gold and scarlet. The black
or sombre cord represents the low chiding or buzzing
sound, the brilliant threads the bright, shrill and
delicate sounds.

The furze-wren is one of our minor songsters, rank-
ing with the stonechat, dunnock, redstart, and lesser
whitethroat. Its chief interest is its originality—its
unlikeness to that of any other singer. This makes
it difficult to describe, since we cannot convey an
impression of a bird sound or song except by likening
it to other well-known sounds or songs. Our orni-
thologists, who have written about the bird for the
last century and a half, have not attempted to des-
cribe its song. I remember that I once asked the late
Howard Saunders why this was so, and his reply was
that the furze-wren has such a curious little jiggy
song that you couldn’t describe it. Of course one can
describe the song of any unhuman being, from a shrill
insect to an angel, but the sad truth of the matter is
that the impression cannot be properly conveyed by
words to another. Nevertheless the description may
be a help to the bird-seeker. It does not give him a
perfect image of the song—only the bird itself can
do that—but it helps him to identify the singer when
he first hears it.

CHAPTER XVIII

BACK TO THE WEST COUNTRY

A procession of white cows—Revisiting old friends—Montacute
House—Ham Hill stone—A nightingale and a commercial
traveller—A north-countryman at Salisbury—Poetic feeling
of northerners—The commercial traveller’s disappointment
—Between Yeovil and Glastonbury—The people of Somerset.

Y object gained, I quitted the little Hamp-

shire village the richer for three prized

memories: first and best was that of the
people I had been staying with in their cottage; next
in order of merit, the image of those little feathered
fairies in a vocal rage; and last, that of five white
or cream-coloured cows issuing from some small or
cottage farm at the side of the heath, driven or
followed by a young woman to their daily grazing-
place on some distant part of the moor. Every morn-
ing they appeared from among the green foliage of
trees and shrubs, behind which the homestead was
hidden, to take their slow way over the wide brown
heath in a scattered procession, always followed by
that young woman, tall and straight, her head un-
covered, her limp gown of a whity-grey colour almost
like the white of the cows. A beautiful strange spec-
tacle, seen from afar as they moved across the moor
in the dewy shimmering light of the early sun. They
had a misty appearance, and there was something,

275

176 ADVENTURES AMONG BIRDS

too, of mystery in it, due perhaps to association—
to some dim suggestion of ancient human happenings,
in a time when there were gods who heeded man and
white cows that were sacred to them.

I had seen and heard and made these precious
things mine; now I wanted to turn back to the west
again, to be in other green flowery places before the
bloom was gone. It was nearing mid-June and by
making haste now I might yet find some other
feathered rarity and listen to some new song before
the silent time. The golden oriole and furze-wren
were but two of half a dozen species | had come
out to find.

At Yeovil I delayed two or three days with a
double motive.

One of the most delightful experiences of a rambler
about the land is, when the day’s end has brought
him to some strange or long-unvisited place, to
remember all at once that this is the spot, the very
parish, to which old friends came to settle two or three
or more years ago. He missed their dear familiar
faces sadly in that part of the country where he had
known them, but he has never wholly forgotten or
ceased to love them, and now how delightful to find
and drop in by surprise on them, to take pot luck
as in the old days, to talk of those same dear old
days and the old home, of every person in it from the
squire to the village idiot.

It is hardly necessary to add that these lost friends
one goes about to recover are not persons of import-
ance who keep a motor-car, but simple people who

BACK TO THE WEST COUNTRY 177

live and for long generations have lived the simple
life, who are on the soil with some of the soil on them,
who see few visitors from a distance—from the great
world, and whose glad welcome is one of the sweetest
things in life.

This then was motive the first, and when I[ dis-
covered my lost friends not far from the town I found
them unchanged, still in the old mind, the feeling
that I was one of them, of their very kin, and though
rarely seen and perhaps regarded as the vagabond of
the family, not less well loved on that account.

My second object was to look at Montacute House
and park which had been missed on previous visits.
The park held me for several hours, for it is like a
wilderness or a place in a dispeopled land that was
once a park, but I found no feathered rarity there or
anywhere in the country round.

As to the famous Montacute House, it is built of
Ham Hill stone—the one building stone I cannot abide.
By others it is greatly admired, and it is perhaps
worth explaining why I, loving colour as I do, yellows
as much as any, have this feeling about our famous
yellow stone. It is, I take it, an associate feeling due
to the disagreeable effect which yellow as an interior
colour produces in me. Sherborne Abbey is without
a doubt one of our noblest ecclesiastical buildings,
more beautiful in the stone sculpture enriching its
roof than any cathedral or church in the land. Yet
I cannot appreciate it, since the effect of the colour
is a severe headache, a profound depression. After

an hour inside I feel that I am yellow all through,
M

178 ADVENTURES AMONG BIRDS

that my very bones are dyed yellow, that if 1 were to
drop down among the furze-bushes on some neigh-
bouring common and rest there undiscovered for
several years, those who found me would not believe
that my remains were human, but only a skeleton
cunningly carved out of Ham Hill stone. This sen-
sation, or its memory, or the feeling which remains
in the mind when the memory and images have
vanished, enters in and gives an expression to all
buildings of this same yellow material. This feeling
was in me when I spent a couple of hours in full sight
of Montacute House; otherwise I should probably
have thought, as no doubt most persons do, that the
colour of the stone added greatly to the beauty of
the building, that it harmonised with its surroundings,
the green spaces and ancient noble trees, bathed in
a brilliant sunlight, and the wide blue sky above.
On my first evening in the town I went out into
the neighbouring wood on the steep slope above the
little river Yeo, and listened to a nightingale for half
an hour, the only one I could find in the place. On
the following afternoon I had sitting opposite to me
at the table when taking tea at the hotel a commercial
traveller whose appearance and speech amused and
interested me. A tall bony uncouth-looking young
man with lantern jaws and sunburned skin, in a rough
suit of tweeds and thick boots; he was more like a
working farmer than a “commercial,” who as a rule
is a towny, dapper person. I ventured the remark
that he came from the north. Oh yes, he replied,
from a manufacturing town in Yorkshire; he had

BACK TO THE WEST COUNTRY 179

been visiting the West of England for the last two
or three years, and this was the first time he had
elected to spend the night at Yeovil. He had nothing
more to do in the place, having finished his business
early in the afternoon. He could have got to Bristol
or gone on to Exeter; he was staying only to hear
the nightingale. He had never heard it, and he didn’t
want to finish his rounds on this occasion and go back
north without that long-desired experience.

These rough fellows from the north, especially
from Yorkshire and Lancashire, are always sur-
prising us with their enthusiasm, their esthetic
feeling! One Sunday morning not long ago I was on
the cathedral green at Salisbury watching the pigeons
and daws on the vast pile, when I noticed a young
working man with his wife and child sitting on the
grass by the elm trees. They had a luncheon basket
with them, and were evidently out for the day.
By-and-by the young man got up and strolled over
to where I was standing, looking up at the birds
soaring round the spire, and, entering into conver-
sation with me, he told me that he was a zinc-worker
from Sheffield, that he had been sent south to work
at Tidworth in the erection of zinc and iron buildings
for the army. When he saw Salisbury Cathedral
and heard the choir he was so delighted that he
resolved to spend his Sundays and any day he had
off at the cathedral. He was musical himself, and
belonged to some musical society in his own town. He
talked of his love of music with sparkling eyes, and
while he talked he continued watching the birds, the

180 ADVENTURES AMONG BIRDS

daws sweeping round and round, mounting higher
and higher until they were above the cross; and
then from that vast height they would hurl themselves
suddenly downwards towards the great building
and the earth. All at once, as we watched a bird
coming down, he threw his arms up and cried ex-
citedly, ““Oh, to fly like that!”

And you, said I to myself, born in a hideous grimy
manufacturing town, breathing iron dust, a worker
in an ugly material engaged in making ugly things,
have yet more poetry and romance, more joy in all
that is beautiful, than one could find in any native
of this soft lovely green south country!

Does not this fact strike every observer of his
fellows who knows both north and south intimately?
How strange then to think that well-nigh all that is
best in our poetic literature has been produced by
southerners —by Englishmen in the southern half
of the country! Undoubtedly the poetic feeling is
stronger and more general in the north, and we can
only conclude that from this seemingly most favour-
able soil the divine flower of genius springeth not.

To return to my commercial traveller. I told him
where to go in search of the nightingale, and meeting
him later that evening asked him if he had succeeded.
Yes, he replied, he had found and listened for some
time to its song. It was a fine song, unlike that of
any other bird known to him, but it did not come up
to his expectations, and he had formed the idea that
this bird was probably not a very good specimen of
its kind. It consoled him to be told that he was

BACE 10 THE WEST COUNTRY 18:1

absolutely right, that Yeovil’s one nightingale was
a rather poor performer.

From Yeovil to Glastonbury is but a few miles,
some fifteen as the crow flies—no distance at all to
the person of importance in a motor-car and nothing
to detain him by the way. To me—to all whose desire
in travelling is not to arrive at their destination-—
it was as far as I liked to make it. It was in fact a
vast green country where I discovered several small
ancient towns and more villages than I can remember;
churches in the shadow of whose grey old towers
one would like to spend the slow last years of life;
inns too where bread and cheese and beer, if nothing
else, can be obtained for refreshment, and the cot-
tage homes of the people one loves best. They are
never wildly enthusiastic like the Lancastrians about
anything, but they are sweeter, more engaging in
temper and manner, whether on account of their
softer climate or the larger infusion of Celtic blood
in their Anglo-Saxon veins I know not. They are
perhaps a perfect amalgam, like their Welsh neigh-
bours on the other side of the Severn with the harsh
lines of the Welsh features subdued, and like their
Saxon neighbours on the east side without their
stolidity. Moreover, they are not without a spark of
that spirit which is in the northerner—the romance,
the inner bright life which is not wholly concerned
with material things.

CHAPTER XIX

AVALON AND A BLACKBIRD

Excavations and restorations at Glastonbury—Blackbird music
—Its relation to human music: C. A. Witchell’s theory—
A blackbird of genius—Intrinsic beauty of the blackbird’s
voice—Our favourite singer—The blackbird in early Irish
poetry.

T Glastonbury I spent some hours at the
Nas: somewhat disturbed at the huge

diggings and a little saddened at the sight of
the repairs and restorations; yet they were necessary
if this loveliest ruin in England is to be kept stand-
ing a few centuries longer. Unfortunately, however
skilfully the restoring work is done, the new portions
will insist on looking outrageously new. Time will
doubtless restore the lost harmony, the ancient
venerable appearance, but it will be long before these
staring fresh parts will cease to have the effect of
patches of a new cloth on the frayed and faded
garment. Fifty years of sun and rain will prepare
the fresh, hard surfaces for the vegetation that
makes a ruin beautiful—valerian, ivy-toadflax, wall-
flower, and grey and green lichens and mosses.
In the course of a conversation I had with some of
those engaged in these works at the abbey, during
which the subject of birds came up, Mr. Blythe Bond,

the gentleman who has charge of the excavations,
182

AVALON AND A BLACKBIRD 183

informed me that a blackbird in his garden whistled
a perfect musical phrase.

He took me to hear it at his house in the High
Street, which had a large garden at the back; there
we seated ourselves in the summer-house and in a
very few minutes the bird began fluting his little
human roundelay for our benefit. My host whistled
and hummed it after him, then took me to his drawing-
room and touched it off on his piano, and finally
when I told him that after all it would perhaps escape
my memory he noted it down for me, and here it is:

It is not a rare thing to hear phrases in the black-
bird’s singing which are like human music and speech
and may be taken down in our musical notation. I
will give a quotation here on this subject from one of
C. A. Johns’ pleasant but forgotten little books—
Home Walks and Holiday Rambles (1863).

A blackbird had stationed himself on the top of a tree hard
by, and seemed resolved to sing on until fine weather returned.
The burden of his song was the following passage, which was
repeated so often that if one could tire of natural music I should
have been tired then:

All the other strains were unmetrical, and there seemed to

184 ADVENTURES AMONG BIRDS

be in them no melodious arrangement of notes; so that the
general effect was nearly what could be produced by a person
talking in his natural tone of voice, and repeatedly introducing
a snatch of an old song by which his memory was haunted,
though he was unable to recall either the words or the melody
of the remainder.

This is interesting because it is so common—the
perfect musical phrase occurring in a song which is
for the rest of a quite different character.

The question arises, Are these phrases imitations
or natural to the bird? Human music in bird-song is
a subject an American naturalist, Mr. Henry Oldys,
has made peculiarly his own, and he will be welcomed
by all lovers of bird music when he carries out his
intention of coming over to us to make a study of the
British songsters. Meanwhile we have the late C. A.
Witchell’s Evolution of Bird-Song to go on with. He
has recorded in musical notation no fewer than seventy-
six blackbird strains in his book, and his views as to
the origin of this kind of singing, in which the phrases
of the bird are identical with our musical intervals,
are of very great interest, as he is the only person
in this country who has made a special study of the
subject. There is, he writes, nothing surprising in
these phrases when we consider the imitative powers
of the best singers, and the frequency of human music
in their haunts. The field-labourer whistles; from
villages issue louder, though not always sweeter,
musical sounds; throughout the year music is heard
in country towns. It appears also that our musical
scale is of remote origin, and that for thousands of
years the intervals which we now employ have been

AVALON AND A BLACKBIRD 185

wafted from musical instruments used by men to
the ears of listening birds.

This is far from convincing. Some of our song-
birds are imitative in a much higher degree than the
blackbird, yet never come near to human music in
their songs. The cuckoo with us and numerous other
species all the world over, many of them in wild
lands where human-made music is never wafted to
their ears, do yet observe the same intervals as in
our own scale in their calls and songs. My belief is
that the blackbird sings in this way naturally, that
he approaches nearer to us in his musical scale just
as the grasshopper-warbler, the red night-reeler, and
the furze-wren go further from us and are like insects
in their music, simply because it is his nature to.
Blackbirds, we have seen, are distributed pretty well
all over the globe and are of many species, ranging
in size from those no bigger than a throstle to others
large as or larger than jays, but all have beautiful
voices which remind English travellers in tropical
forests and distant temperate regions of the home
bird, and in some instances it is said to sing better
than our bird. I think that if these travellers had
been specially interested in this subject and had
listened attentively to the exotic species, they would
have found that these too have phrases that sound
like fragments and snatches of human melodies.

The blackbird often reminds me of the common
Patagonian mocking-bird, Mimus patachonicus, not
in the quality of the sounds emitted, nor in the shape
of the song, nor in any resemblance to human melody,

186 ADVENTURES AMONG BIRDS

but in the way the bird throws out his notes anyhow,
until in this haphazard way he hits on a sequence of
notes, or phrase, that pleases him, and practises it
with variations. Finally, he may get fond of it and
go on repeating it for days or weeks. Every individual
singer is, so to speak, his own composer.

In listening to a blackbird, even where there is no
resemblance to a man-made melody, it always appears
to me to come nearer to human music than any other
bird songs; that the bird is practising, or composing,
and by-and-by will rise to a melody in which the
musical intervals will be identical with those of our
scale. I recall the case of a blackbird of genius I once
heard near Fawley in the New Forest. This bird did
not repeat a strain with some slight variation as is
usually the case, but sang differently each time, or
varied the strain so greatly as to make it appear like
a new melody on each repetition, yet every one of
its strains could have been set down in musical nota-
tion. A musical shorthand-writer could in a few days
have filled a volume with records of its melodies,
and they would, I think, have been far more inter-
esting than the seventy odd recorded by Witchell.
No person who had listened for half an hour to this
bird could believe that these strains were borrowed.
They were too many and they came as spontaneously
as water gushing from a rock. The bird was in a thorn
hedge dividing two grass fields, and there I stood for
a long time, how long I do not know, in the fading
light, my astonishment and admiration growing all
the time, and I was like one in a trance, or like the

AVALON AND A BLACKBIRD 187

monk in the legend, only my wonderful bird was
black instead of white. By-and-by he flew away and
that was the last of him, for on other days I searched
and listened for him in vain. Perhaps on the very
morning after that evening he fell to the gun of some
person anxious about the safety of his reddening
strawberries—some farmer or cottager who did not
know that he was killing an angel. However, a worse
fate would have befallen him if one of those who
prefer to have their birds in cages had chanced to
hear his wonderful song and had proceeded to capture
him for exhibition about the country, winning great
glory from the “fancy” and perhaps making a
thousand pounds out of his prisoner for life.

This character of the blackbird’s music, which I
have been discussing —its resemblance to human-
made music—is not the whole nor the principal cause
of its charm. The charm is chiefly due to the intrinsic
beauty of the sound; it is a fluty sound and has that
quality of the flute suggestive of the human voice,
the voice in the case of the blackbird of an exquisitely
pure and beautiful contralto. The effect is greatly
increased by the manner in which the notes are
emitted—trolled out leisurely, as if by a being at
peace and supremely happy, and able to give the
feeling its most perfect expression.

It is this delicious song of the blackbird—a voice
of the loveliest quality, with an expression derived
from its resemblance to a melodious, brightened
human voice, uttered in a leisurely and careless
manner, as of a person talking sweetly and mingling

188 ADVENTURES AMONG BIRDS

talk with snatches of song—it is all this combined
which has served to make the blackbird a favourite
and more to most of us as a songster than any other,
not excepting the nightingale. If the editor of some
widely circulating newspaper would put the question
to the vote, the blackbird would probably come first,
in spite of the myths and traditions which have
endeared certain other species to us from childhood
—the cuckoo the messenger of spring, the dove that
mourns for its love, and Philomel leaning her breast
upon a thorn; the temple-building martlet, and
robin redbreast who in winter comes to us for crumbs
and has so great an affection for our kind that in
woods and desert places he will strew leaves over
the friendless bodies of unburied men.

But, it may be said, we have always had the black-
bird in Britain, a resident species, very common and
universally distributed—why does it not figure more
prominently in our old literature? If this can be
taken as a test undoubtedly the blackbird comes a
long way after the nightingale, though this species
is known only in a portion of England, actually
less than a fourth part of the British area over which
the black ouzel with orange-tawny bill is a familiar
songster. It is, however, not a good test. The fact
that our older poets, including those of Scotland and
Wales, make much of the nightingale merely serves
to show that they were following a convention of
the continental poets, ancient and modern.

Ireland is an exception, to judge from the transla-
tions of the very early Irish poetry made by Professor

AVALON AND A BLACKBIRD 189

Kuno Meyer. Here, one is glad to find, are no old
imported bird myths and conventions, but a native
bird life and a feeling for birds which amaze us in
those remote and barbarous times. Many species
are mentioned in these poems, from the largest—
eagle and raven and wild goose—down to the little
kitty wren, but the blackbird is first on account of
its lovely voice—“‘sweet and soft and peaceful is
his note,” one has it.

There is one blackbird poem in the collection which
might have been written by a poet of to-day. For we
are apt to think that to love birds as we love them,
not merely as feathered angels, beautiful to see and
hear, but with human tenderness and sympathy as
beings that are kin to us, is a feeling peculiar to our
own times. The poet laments the bird’s loss when it
has seen its nest and fledglings destroyed or taken
by ruthless cowboy lads. He can understand the
bird’s grief “for the ruin of its home,” because a like
calamity has been his: his wife and little ones are
dead, and though their taking off was bloodless it is
terrible to him as slaughter by the sword. He cries
out against the injustice of heaven, for even as that
one nest was singled out among many for destruction
so were his home and loved ones:

O Thou, the Shaper of the world!
Uneven hands Thou layest on us;

Our fellows at our side are spared,
Their wives and children are alive.

There is another remarkable poem conceived in
the spirit of that time of wild passions and the

190 ADVENTURES AMONG BIRDS

shedding of blood, in which the first early note of the
blackbird with its message to the “faithful” is intro-
duced in a wonderfully impressive way. This tells
how Fothad Canann carried off the wife of Alill with
her consent, and was hotly pursued by Alill, and how
they met and fought until both were slain. Now
Fothad had arranged with the woman to meet her
in the evening after the fight, and true to his word
he kept the tryst. As he comes to her she flies to meet
him, to clasp him with her arms and pour out all her
passion on his breast. But he will not have it, he
waves her back imperiously and will not allow her
to utter a word. He must do all the talking himself,
for he is overflowing with great matters, great news,
and the time for telling them is short. He tells her
how they fought, how well they were matched, what
a glorious battle it was! One can see it—the deadly
meeting of those two long-haired men, their blue-
grey eyes glinting with rage and the joy of battle;
the shouts of defiance and insult; the furious onset
and the swift movements of their lithe and powerful
frames, as of tigers; the ringing blows on shield and
steel, and the end when they are down, their shields
shattered and weapons broken, their bodies hacked
and pierced, their spilt blood spreading and mingling
in one pool!

To such a fighter, slain in such a fight, what else
was there in the world to talk about! She, and
her passion and everlasting grief for her slain lover
—it was not worth a thought! The fight was
the thing, and she must listen in silence to the

AVALON AND A BLACKBIRD IgI

story of it—she, the last human listener he would
ever have.

Suddenly the torrent of speech is arrested; the
voice of the blackbird, “sweet and soft and peaceful,”
comes to them out of the darkness. Hark! he cries
to her before vanishing for ever from her sight,

I hear the dusky ouzel send a joyous greeting to the faithful,

My speech, my shape, are spectral—hush, woman, do not speak
to me!

CHAPTER XX

THE LAKE VILLAGE

An enthusiastic excavator—Inhabiting two worlds at once—
The wind in the bulrushes—Drayton on bird life in the fens
—A visionary multitude of wild birds—Crossbills in the
Mendips—Among the bells in St. Cuthbert’s tower.

ROM the abbey to the prehistoric Lake Village

is but a step of two miles, and here I spent

agreeable hours with Dr. Bulleid, the dis-
coverer and excavator of this little centre of British
life of the dawn, turning over his finds dug out of the
black, peaty soil. Here is an enthusiast if you like
—there are some in the south!—a busy doctor who
works every day of the year in his practice, excepting
when he takes an annual summer holiday of a few
weeks and spends every day of it, from morn to dewy
eve, at the excavations, studying every spadeful of
earth thrown up by his dozen diggers. My chief
interest was in the bones of the large water-birds on
which the lake-dweller subsisted, and the weapons
with which he slew them—the round, hard clay balls
which were hurled from slings.

From the village I rambled on over the bed of the
ancient lake to its deeper part, which is still a wet
marsh, though partly drained and intersected with
hedges and dykes. Here there are large areas of boggy
ground so thickly grown over with cotton-grass that

at a little distance it looks like an earth covered with
192

THE LAKE VILLAGE 193

snow. Straying in this place, revelling in that wind-
waved feathery fairy whiteness all round me, | finally
sat down by the water-side to watch and listen.
Mallard, moorhen, and water-rail, the last heard
though not seen, and little grebe were there, but no
unfamiliar sound came to me from the songsters in
the sedges and bulrushes or from the osiers and alders.

I was perhaps inattentive; mine on this occasion
was a wandering mind; I was still suffering from the
effect of my interview with Dr. Bulleid; for even the
dullest person among us cannot very well spend an
hour with an enthusiast without catching something
from him—a slight rise in his tepid temperature,
a little rose-coloured rash on his skin, which will
presently vanish and leave him well again—as sane
and healthy a person as he ever was and ever will be
to the end of his comfortable, humdrum existence.
But just then, with the infection still in me, I was
inhabiting two worlds at one and the same time—
that dank green marshy world, whitened with cotton-
grass, once a great inland lake and before that an
estuary which was eventually cut off from the Severn
Sea through the silting up of the sand at its mouth.
And I was also in that same shallow inland sea or
lake, unmoved by tides, which had been growing
shallower year by year for centuries with a rank
aquatic vegetation spreading over it as far as the eye
could see—a green watery world. I could hear the
wind in the bulrushes—miles on miles of dark polished
stems, tufted with ruddy brown: that low, mysteri-

ous sound is to me the most fascinating of all the many
N

194 ADVENTURES AMONG BIRDS

voices of the wind. The feeling is partly due to early
associations, to boyhood, when I used to ride into
the vast marshes of the pampas in places where,
sitting on my horse, the tufted tops of the bulrushes
were on a level with my face. I sought for birds’
nests, above all for that of the strange little bittern.
It was a great prize, that small platform of yellow
sedge leaves, a foot or two above the water, with
three oval eggs no bigger than pigeon’s eggs resting
on it, of a green so soft, brilliant, indescribably lovely,
that the sight of them would thrill me like some
shining supernatural thing or some heavenly melody.

Or on a windy day when I would sit by the margin
to listen to the sound unlike any other made by the
wind in the green world. It was not continuous,
nor one, like the sea-like sound of the pines, but in
gusts from this part or that all round you, now
startlingly loud, then quickly falling to low mur-
murings, always with something human in it, but
wilder, sadder, more airy than a human voice, as
of ghost-like beings, invisible to me, haunting the
bulrushes, conversing together and calling to one
another in their unearthly tones.

And the birds! Ah, to be back in the Somerset of
that far time—the paradise of birds in its reedy
inland sea, its lake of Athelney!

I have often wished to be back in the old undrained
Lincolnshire for the sake of its multitudinous wild-
bird life in far more recent times, as described by
eye-witnesses — Michael Drayton, for example, no
longer ago than the time of Elizabeth. Does any

THE LAKE VILLAGE 195

bird-loving reader know the passage? I doubt it,
for is there anyone in England, including the stu-
dent of the poetry of that period, who can say with
his hand on his heart that he has read the whole
of Polyolbion—every twelve-foot line of its many
thousands, each line laboriously dragging its slow
length along? It is hard to read even the hundred
lines descriptive of the fens except for the picture
conjured up of those marvellous bird gatherings. It
was Lincolnshire’s boast, according to Drayton, that
no such abundance could be seen in any other part
of the kingdom. I imagine that there was an even
greater abundance and variety in the Somerset lake
of prehistoric times. It was a better climate, a more
sheltered district, and birds must have been far more
numerous in the ages before man found out how to
slay them at long distances with guns and to frighten
them with smoke and flame and a noise like thunder.

Now, with Drayton’s picture in my mind and many
old memories of immense congregations of wild fowl
in the lakes and marshes of a distant region, witnessed
in my early years but nevermore to be seen, I could
reconstruct the past. Indeed, for a little space, while
the infection lasted, I was there afloat on that endless
watery wilderness as it appeared to the lake dweller
of, say, twenty-five centuries ago. The lake dweller
himself was with me, poling and paddling his long
canoe by devious ways over the still waters, by miles
and leagues of grey rushes and sedges vivid green,
and cat’s-tail and flowering rush and vast dark bul-
rush beds and islets covered with thickets of willow

196 ADVENTURES AMONG BIRDS

and alder and trees of larger growth. It was early
morning in early spring: at all events the geese had
not gone yet, but were continually flying by over-
head, flock succeeding flock, filling the world with
their clangour. I watched the sky rather than the
earth, feasting my eyes on the long-unseen spectacle
of great soaring birds. Buzzard and kite and marsh
harrier soared in wide circles above me, raining down
their wild shrill cries. Other and greater birds were
there as well, and greatest of all the pelican, one of
the large birds on which the marsh-men lived, but
doomed to vanish and be forgotten as a British species
long ages before Drayton lived. But his familiar
osprey was here too, a king among the hawks, sweep-
ing round in wide circles, to pause by-and-by in mid
career and closing his wings fall like a stone upon the
water with a mighty splash. We floated in a world
of birds; herons everywhere standing motionless
in the water, and flocks of spoonbills busily at feed,
and in the shallower places and by the margins in-
numerable shore-birds—curlews, godwits, and loqua-
cious black and white avocets. Sheldrakes too in
flocks rose up before us, with deep honking goose-like
cries, their white wings glistening like silver in the
early morning sunlight. Other sounds came from a
great way off, faintly heard, a shrill confused buzzing
clangour as of a swarm of bees passing overhead, and
looking that way we saw a cloud rising out of the
reeds and water, then another and another still—
clouds of birds, each its own colour, white, black, and
brown, according to the species—gulls, black terns,

THE LAKE VILLAGE 197

and wild duck. Seen at that distance they appeared
like clouds of starlings in the evening at their winter
roosting haunts. Presently the clouds dispersed or
settled on the water again, and for a little space it
seemed a silent world. Then a new sound was heard
from some distant spot perhaps a mile away—a
great chorus of wild ringing jubilant cries, echoing
and re-echoing all over that illimitable watery ex-
panse; and I knew it was the crane—the giant crane
that hath a trumpet sound!

These birds were all very real to me, seen very
vividly, their voices so loud and clear that they
startled and thrilled me; but the long-haired brown-
skinned marsh-man who was my boatman was seen
less distinctly. The anthropological reader will be
disappointed to learn that no clear image was retained
of his height, build, features, and the colour of his
eyes and hair, and that the sense of all his wild jabber
and gestures has quite gone out of my memory.

From all this greatness of wild-bird life, seen in a
vision, I returned to reality and to very small things;
one of which came as a pleasant surprise. I went on
to the Cheddar valley and near Winscombe I dropped
in on an old friend, a writer and a lover of birds, who
had built himself a charming bungalow among the
Mendips. We had tea on the terrace, a nice cool rose-
and creeper-shaded place after my long hot ramble,
a green lawn beneath us, with a row of large pine
trees on its other side. My friend was telling me of
a flock of crossbills which to his delight had been
haunting the place for some days past, when lo!

198 ADVENTURES AMONG BIRDS

down came the very birds, and there for half an hour
we had them right before us while we drank tea and
ate strawberries, and watched them working at the
cones—our quaint pretty little parrots of the north,
so diversely coloured—one red like a red cardinal,
one or two yellow, others green or mixed.

On the following day I was at Wells; it was Sunday,
and in the morning, happening to see the bell-ringers
hurrying into St. Cuthbert’s Church, I was reminded
of an old wish of mine to be in a belfry during the
bell-ringing. This wish and intention was formed some
years ago on reading an article in the Saturday Review
by Walter Herries Pollock, describing his sensations
in a belfry. Here then was my opportunity—a better
could not have been found if I had sought for it. St.
Cuthbert’s is one of the greatest of the great Wells
church towers, with a peal of eight big bells. I
had often listened to them with pleasure from a
respectable distance, and now I felt a slight twinge
of apprehension at the prospect of a close acquaint-
ance. The bell-ringers were amused at my request:
nobody ever wanted to be among the bells when they
were being rung, they assured me; however, they
did not object, and so to the belfry I climbed, and
waited, a little nervously, as some musical enthusiast
might wait to hear a symphony from the days of
the giants, composed (when insane) by a giant
Tschaikovsky, to be performed on “instruments of
unknown form” and gigantic size. I was not dis-
appointed; the effect was too awful for words and
was less musical than I had thought it would be.

THE LAKE VILLAGE 199

In less than three minutes it became unendurable,
and I then slipped out on to the roof to save myself
from some tremendous disaster. In a minute I was
back again, and with intervals of escape to the roof
I remained till the ringing finished. I could not have
stood it otherwise, and as it was, I feared every
moment that it would deafen me permanently so
that I would no more hear birds sing. That, to me,
would be the end of all things. Pollock, in the article
mentioned above, has described the sensations I
experienced in a sentence or two. “It is not like the
voice of any single singer nor like the voices of a
trained choir,” he wrote. “It is more the speech,
resolved into musical sound, of a vast crowd half
perhaps rather than wholly human, whose accents
vary from the highest joyousness to the deepest
melancholy, from notes of solemn warning to cries of
terrifying denunciation and all that of course with an
infinity of half and quarter shades of expression.”
Probably the St. Cuthbert bells were larger than
those he heard, and perhaps I was closer to them—
I was in fact in the belfry with them—as I found no
joyous expression in the sound at all; it was all
terrible, and the worst thing in it, which he does not
mention, was a continuous note, a single loud metallic
sound, persisting through all the shrieking, crashing,
and roaring, like the hum of a threshing-machinesoloud
and sharp that it seemed to pierce the brain like a steel
weapon. It was this unbroken sound which was hardest
to endure and would, I imagined, send me out of my
senses altogether if I stayed too long in the belfry.

CHAPTER XXI

THE MARSH WARBLER’S MUSIC

Two remarkable trees at Chepstow—Birds at the abbey—A
colony of marsh warblers—Distribution of the marsh
warbler—Its high rank as a songster—lIts artistic borrow-
ings—Species whose notes are imitated—The delight of
bird-watching—Varying behaviour of birds under observation
—A lucky accident.

ROM Wells I went on to Bristol and thence to
Chepstow, where, a few miles out, I hoped to
find one of my rare birds, but on inquiry dis-
covered that it had long vanished from this haunt.

There was nothing for me but to extract what pleasure

I could from the castle, the valley of the Wye, and

Tintern Abbey. At Chepstow, a small parasitic town

much given to drink, I saw two wonderful things,

which the guide-book writers probably do not notice

—a walnut tree and an ivy tree, both growing in

the castle. The first must be one of the finest walnut

trees in the country: one of its enormous horizontal
branches measured eighteen yards from the trunk
to the end; the branch on the opposite side of the

trunk measured fifteen yards, giving the tree a

breadth of ninety-nine feet! The other, the ivy, was

a tree in the ordinary sense of the word, that is to

say, a plant above the size of a bush which is not a

parasite supported by another tree but wholly self-

sustained. It grows near but not touching the wall,
200

THE MARSH WARBLER’S MUSIC 201

with a round straight bole three feet in circumference
and fifteen feet in height, with a rough elm-tree-like
bark, crowned with a dense round mass of branches
and leaves. Doubtless it once grew on a tree and had
a strong straight bole of its own when the tree died,
and during the slow dying and gradual decay of the
support it added to its wood and grew harder to meet
the changing situation, until when the old trunk it
grew against had crumbled to dust it was able to
stand erect, a perfect independent tree.

At the too famous abbey the chief interest was in
the birds. Starlings, sparrows, and daws were there
in numbers, and many blue and ox-eye tits, fly-
catchers, and redstarts, all feeding their young or
bringing them off. The starlings were most abundant,
and the young were being spilt from the walls all
over the place. I talked with a slow old labourer
who was lazily sweeping the dead leaves and straws
from the smooth turf which forms the floor of the
roofless ruin, when one of the young birds, more
stupid than the others, began following us about,
clamouring to be fed. The old sweeper, using his
broom, gently pushed the poor fool away. “There,
there, go away, or you'll be getting hurt,” he said,
and the bird went.

“No more rare birds this season!” I said and
turned homewards; but in Gloucestershire I found
a man who told me of a colony of the marsh warbler,
a rarity I had not counted on meeting; better still,
he took me to it, although he wished me to under-
stand that it was Ais colony, his own discovery, also

202 ADVENTURES AMONG BIRDS

that he had been making a good thing out of it. He
left me on the spot to experience that rarest delight
of the bird-seeker, the making the acquaintance of,
and growing hourly and daily more intimate with,
a new species. In this instance it was nothing but a
plain little brown bird, plainer than the nightingale
and hardly to be distinguished, even in the hand,
from the familiar reed warbler, but in virtue of its
melody of a lustre surpassing our blue kingfisher or
indeed any shining bird of the tropics.

The colony was in a withy bed of a year’s growth,
the plants being three or four feet high, the whole
ground being covered with a dense growth of tall
grasses and sedges, meadow-sweet, comfrey, and
nettles. It was moist and boggy in places but without
water, except in one small pool which served as a
drinking and bathing place to all the small birds
in the vicinity.

Sitting on a mound a few feet above the surface I
could survey the whole field of seven to eight acres
enclosed by high hedges and old hedgerow elm and
oak trees on three sides, with a row of pollarded
willows on the other, and I was able to make out
about nine pairs of marsh warblers in the colony.
It was easy to count them, as each couple had its
own territory, and the males were conspicuous as
they were constantly flying about in pursuit of the
females or chasing away rival cocks, then singing
from the topmost twigs of the withy-bushes. This,
I found, was but one of a group of colonies, the birds
in all of which numbered about seventy pairs. Yet

THE MARSH WARBLER’S MUSIC 203

it only became known in quite recent years that the
marsh warbler is a British breeding species! It had
been regarded previously as a chance or occasional
visitor from the Continent, until Mr. Warde Fowler
discovered that it was a regular summer visitant to
Oxfordshire, also that it was the latest of our migrants
to arrive and a later breeder by several weeks. It
is curious that in a small country so infested with
ornithologists as ours this species should have been
overlooked. They, the ornithologists and collectors,
say that it is not so, that a bird with so beautiful a
song, so unlike that of his nearest relations the reed
and sedge warblers, could not have been overlooked.
Undoubtedly it was overlooked, and this colony, or
group of colonies, numbering seventy or more pairs,
must be quite an ancient one. There are others too
in Somerset, and no doubt many besides in the west
country and Midlands. The species has not diffused
itself more in the country, I imagine, on account of
its habit of nesting almost exclusively in the withy
beds, where their nests are as much exposed to de-
struction as those of the skylark and landrail in the
corn. The moist grounds where the willows are
planted are covered annually with a luxuriant growth
of grasses and herbage which must be cut down to
give air and life to the willows. The cutting usually
takes place about mid-June when the eggs are being
laid and incubation is already in progress in many
nests. The nests, whether attached to the withies or
to the tall stems of the meadow-sweet and other
plants, are mostly destroyed.

204 ADVENTURES AMONG BIRDS

I have gone into these details just to show that it
would be easy to give this bird a better chance of
increasing its numbers by inducing the owners of
withy beds where they are known to breed to do
the mowing at the end of May instead of in the
middle of June or later. This could be best done
by local bird-protecting societies in Gloucestershire
and Somerset and in other counties where colonies
may be found.

Certainly no sweet songster in Britain is better
worth preserving than the marsh warbler. I should
class it as one of our four greatest—blackbird, night-
ingale, skylark, marsh warbler. The blackbird is
first because of the beautiful quality of its voice and
its expression, due to its human associations. The
marsh warbler compared with lark and nightingale
has a small voice, which does not carry far, but in
sweetness he is the equal of any and in variety excels
them all. It could not be otherwise, since he is able
to borrow the songs of the others, even of the best.
He is

That cheerful one who knoweth all

The songs of all the winged choristers,

And in one sequence of melodious sound

Pours all their music.
Thus wrote Southey of the American bird in one of
the very few quotable passages in the vast volume of
his numerous epics: his three or four happy lines are
worth more, as giving the bird its characteristic
expression, than all the verses of the transatlantic
poets on the subject.

The mocking-bird, I may say here, is a powerful

THE MARSH WARBLER’S MUSIC 205

singer, and I noticed that in listening to the white-
winged mocking-bird of Patagonia, which I believe
to be the greatest of the genus, he subdued or smalled
his voice when imitating the small or weak-voiced
songsters, but in spite of the subduing, the song,
coming from his larger organ, had gained in power
and penetration. With the marsh warbler it is just
the reverse: the low songs are reproduced with
fidelity, the loud strains while retaining their exact
form are emitted in a lower tone. Thus, he can copy
the phrases of the thrush, but the notes do not carry
much further than his imitation of the willow-wren.
One is reminded of Sir John Davies’ lines:
All things received do such proportions take
As those things have wherein they are received;

So little glasses little faces make,
And narrow webs on narrow frames be weaved.

On the other hand he makes many of the songs he
copies sweeter and more beautiful than their originals.
We may say that he is a perfect artist in his borrow-
ings, and brings the songs of all the others into
harmony with his own native notes and with one
another. This was observed by Warde Fowler, who was
the first in England to describe the song. He wrote: “In
spite of many imitations in which the bird indulges
there is always a very sweet silvery individuality
about the song, which makes it quite unmistakable.
In that native quality of the voice, its silvery sweet-
ness, it comes nearest, I think, to the reed warbler’s
song. Its silvery-sweet quality is indeed the principal
merit of this warbler’s strains, which can only be

206 ADVENTURES AMONG BIRDS

properly appreciated when the listener stands or sits
on a level with the reeds within a very few yards
of the singer.

Listening to the marsh warbler at some distance
it seemed to me at first that he sang his own song
interspersed with imitations, that the borrowed songs
and phrases were selections which accorded best with
his own notes, so that the whole performance was like
one ever-varying melody. On a closer acquaintance |
found that the performance was mainly or nearly all
imitations in which the loud, harsh, and guttural
sounds were subdued and softened—that the mocker’s
native silvery sweetness had in some degree been
imparted to all of them. The species whose songs,
detached phrases, and calls I recognised were the
swallow, sparrow, goldfinch, greenfinch, chaffinch,
redpoll, linnet, reed-bunting, blackbird (its chuckle
only), throstle, missel-thrush (its alarm or anger cry),
blackcap, willow-wren, robin, redstart, whinchat,
yellow wagtail, tree-pipit, skylark, and partridge—
its unmistakable call, but subdued and made musical.
There were also some notes and phrases that seemed
perfect copies from the nightingale, but I would not
say that they were imitations as there were no night-
ingales at that spot, and I came to the listening in a
sceptical spirit, quite resolved not to believe that
any note or phrase or song could be an imitation
unless the bird supposed to be imitated could be
found in the vicinity. Another bird I could not find
in the place was the grasshopper-warbler, yet one
day one of the birds I listened to produced what

THE MARSH WARBLER’S MUSIC 207

seemed to me a most perfect imitation of its reeling
performance.

But how, the reader will ask, could the marsh
warbler have acquired the redpoll’s song seeing that
the redpoll would be far away in its breeding haunts
in the pine forests of the north when the warbler
was in the west country? Strange to say, there was a
small colony of half a dozen redpoll pairs breeding in
the hedgerow elms at the side of the withy bed. My
guide to the spot had told me of these birds, and it
was a rare pleasure to listen in southern England to
their slight pretty song in the elm tops, with its
curious little breezy trill like a dry leaf rapidly
fluttered by the wind against another leaf.

I did not hear an imitation of the blackbird’s song,
although its chuckling notes were sometimes given,
and it struck me that the marsh warbler, good artist
that he is, does not attempt, like the bungling starling,
to reproduce sounds that are outside of his register.
Other listeners, however, have said that he does mimic
the blackbird’s song. Then, as to the whinchat, in
two days’ listening I heard no imitation of its song,
although the bird was present and building in the
withy bed. I thought that that little delicious tender
song too was beyond the warbler’s power; but I was
mistaken, and by-and-by I heard it reproduced so
perfectly that I could hardly believe my ears. The
wren’s song I did not hear and concluded that the
warbler refused to copy it on account of its peculiar
distinctive sharp quality which some persons associate
in their minds with an acid flavour.

208 ADVENTURES AMONG BIRDS

I think the imitation which pleased and surprised
me most was that of the willow-wren’s exquisite
joyous yet tender melody. Until I heard it I could
not have believed that any feathered mocker could
reproduce that falling strain so perfectly.

One of the greatest pleasures in life—my life I mean
—is to be present, in a sense invisible, in the midst of
the domestic circle of beings of a different order,
another world, than ours. Yet it is one which may be
had by any person who desires it. Some of the smaller
birds lend themselves easily to this innocent prying.
And one is more in sympathy with them than with
the smaller, more easily observed insects. The
absolute indifference of these to our presence only
accentuates the fact of their unlikeness to us in their
senses and faculties. There is a perpetual fascination
in some social insects, ants especially, but it disquiets
as well as delights us to mark their ways. They baffle
our curiosity, and if we be of animistic mind we
become when watching them uncomfortably conscious
of a spirit, an entity, in or behind nature that watches
us and our watching with an unfathomable look in its
eyes anda challenging and mocking smile on its lips.

One of our most distinguished biologists, who has
written books on some lower forms of life which are
classics, has never included insects in his studies just
because he has never been able to free himself from a
sense of uncanniness they give him. In me, too, they
produce this feeling at times:—these myriads of
creatures that float like motes in the sunbeam;

THE MARSH WARBLER’S MUSIC 209

minute, gem-like, winged bodies of strange shapes
and gem-like minds to match, they come upon us
like a living glittering dust shaken from the tail of
some comet in our summer skies—a dust that will
settle down by-and-by and vanish when the air
grows cool at the approach of winter.

But little birds—dear little birds or darlings as we
may call them without rebuke—are vertebrates and
relations, with knowing, emotional, thinking brains
like ours in their heads, and with senses like ours, only
brighter. Their beauty and grace, so much beyond
ours, and their faculty of flight which enables them
to return to us each year from such remote outlandish
places, their winged swift souls in winged bodies, do
not make them uncanny but only fairy-like. Thus we
love and know them, and our more highly developed
minds are capable of bridging the gulf which divides
us from them, and divides bird from mammal.
Small as they are bodily, in some cases no bigger than
one of a man’s ten toes, we know they are on the
same tree of life as ourselves, grown from the same
root, with the same warm red blood in their veins,
and red blood is thicker than water—certainly it is
thicker than the colourless fluid which is the life
of the insect.

To come back to particulars, and the subject ot
this chapter, there are very great differences in the
temper and behaviour of even the smallest birds of
different species in the presence of their human
fellow-beings. Some are strangely, unaccountably

shy, and so suspicious that they will not comport
0

210 ADVENTURES AMONG BIRDS

themselves as they do immediately we are out of
sight and mind. What a contrast in this respect is
there between such species as the stonechat and
goldcrest! One is always watching us, always anxious,
and refuses not only to go on with his love-making
or nest-building but even refuses to sing if we are
there; while to the other our presence is no more
than that of a rock or tree. I was delighted to find
that the marsh warbler was more like the last than
the first, that he went on with his feeding, wooing,
nest-building, his feud with his rivals, or with the
neighbouring cock who from time to time ventured
to intrude on his little dominion, and above all with
his beautiful singing, just as though I had not been
there at all. My greatest pleasure was to mark a
spot which a pair of the birds had selected as their
own and to go and settle myself down in the very
middle of the sacred ground. There the cock would
quickly come to me, evidently recognising in me a
living creature of some kind—a big animal with the
faculty of locomotion—and at first he would appear
to be a little anxious about the safety of his nest,
but after a few minutes the trouble would vanish
from his little volatile mind and he would be all
freedom and gladness and melody, with transitory
fits of rage and other emotions, as before. On these
occasions I sometimes had one singing almost con-
tinuously for several minutes to half an hour within
a dozen yards of where I sat. At such times his
strains sounded louder but no less sweet than when
heard at a distance of forty or fifty yards. On one

THE MARSH WARBLER’S MUSIC art

occasion | had him even nearer, owing to a mishap.
I was walking along the dry bottom of a wide old
ditch under a hedge at the side of the withy bed,
when I came to a deep pool or hole full of mud and
slimy water, and to save myself the trouble of going
round it I took hold of an overhanging willow branch
and swung myself across to the other side, but failed
to get quite clear and was plunged deep into the
slime. After scraping off the fetid mud and slime
which covered me I went back to the deep pool of
clear water in the withy bed and taking off my tweed
suit and boots spent an hour in washing them, then
spread them out in the sun. The drying I thought
would take five or six hours, and as I could not roam
about in my stockings and underclothing, which had
not got wet, or return to the town and civilised life
to get a meal or tea, I thought my best plan was to
spend the rest of the day lying down close to one of
the marsh warbler’s favourite singing-bushes. There
I made myself a nice bed of dry sedges in a sunny
spot within two yards of the singing-bush, and pre-
sently the cock bird came and flew round and perched
here and there on the stems, scolding and singing.
He went and came a good many times, but at last
gave up being troubled at my presence and even-
tually began coming to his own withy-plant and to
sing there fully and freely for long intervals at that
short distance of two yards from my head.

I thought I had never listened to sweeter music
than this bird’s, and that my fall into the mud-hole
had proved an exceedingly happy accident.

CHAPTER XXII

GOLDFINCHES AT RYME INTRINSECA

Yetminster—Ryme Intrinseca—Mobbed by goldfinches—Recent
increase of goldfinches in Dorset—Effect of bird-protection
orders—Abundance of the goldfinch in Cobbett’s days—
Goldfinches and thistles: a misleading statement — Re-
collections of the Argentine goldfinch— Caged birds—A
Spanish poem about a goldfinch—The translator’s difficulties
—A prose rendering of E/ Colorin de Filis.

HERE is much in a name, and when [I left

Yeovil to run to Dorchester by that lonely

beautiful road which takes you by the clear
swift Cerne and past the ancient figure of a giant
with a club on the down side over against Cerne
Abbas, I went a little distance out of my way to look
at a small village solely on account of its singular
and pretty name. Or rather two villages—Yet-
minster and Ryme Intrinseca. Who would not go a
dozen miles out of his road for the pleasure of seeing
places with such names! At the first I was unlucky,
since the only inhabitant I made acquaintance with
was an unprepossessing voluble old woman with
greedy eyes who, though not too poor, at once set
herself to conjure a shilling out of my pocket. In the
end we quarrelled and I went away regretting I had
met her, seeing that her unpleasing image would be
associated in my mind with the picture of Yetminster

—its noble, ancient church standing in its wide green
212

GOLDFINCHES 213

space, surrounded by old stone-built thatched houses
with valerian and ivy-leaved toad-flax and wallflower
growing on the crumbling walls.

At Ryme Intrinseca I was more fortunate. It was
a charming village with stone cottages, as is usual in
that stone country, and a pretty little church standing
in the middle of a green and flowery churchyard.
Here there were several small yew trees, and no
sooner had I got inside the gate than out fluttered a
goldfinch in brilliant feather, emitting his sharpest
alarm note. Then from trees and bushes all round
where they had been concealed, more goldfinches
fluttered forth, until there were twelve, all loudly
protesting against my presence at that spot, flitting
from tree to tree and perching on the terminal twigs
within three or four yards of my head. Never had I
seen goldfinches so excited, so bold in mobbing a
man: I could only suppose that very few visitors
came into that secluded churchyard, where they
were breeding, and doubtless a stranger in the place
was a much more alarming figure to them than the
parson or any of the native villagers would have
been. But it was a new and delightful experience
to find so many pairs breeding together, making
their nests within reach of a man’s hand.

Now as I stood there watching the birds I by
chance noticed that a man and his wife and little
girl standing at their cottage door hard by were
intently and suspiciously watching me. On coming
out I went over to them and asked the man how long
they had had goldfinches breeding so abundantly

214 ADVENTURES AMONG BIRDS

in their churchyard. A very few years ago I had been
told that the goldfinch had almost ceased to exist
in Dorset. He replied that it was true, that gold-
finches had begun to increase only during the last
three or four years since they had been protected
by law all the year round.

He could not have given me more agreeable news.
I remembered with a keen sense of satisfaction that
the late Mr. Mansel Pleydell-Bouverie, of What-
combe in Dorset, had written to me asking my advice
in drawing up a new bird-protection order for the
county, and that in replying I had strongly urged
him to secure the fullest protection the law can afford
to this most charming and most persecuted of all
small birds.

Two or three years before that date I spent several
weeks in Somerset, walking a good deal, without
once seeing or hearing a goldfinch, yet if I had come
within fifty yards of a copse or orchard inhabited
by a pair, their sharp, unmistakable whit-whit would
have advertised their presence. At Wells I made the
acquaintance of a man past middle age who had taken
to bird-catching as a boy and still followed that
fascinating vocation. ‘Have you never had gold-
finches in these parts?” I asked him; to which he
replied that he remembered the time when they were
abundant, but for the last thirty years or longer
they had been steadily decreasing and were now
practically gone. They had gone because they were
too much sought after; then he added: “I daresay
they would come again if there was a law made to

GOLDFINCHES 215

stop us from catching them.” I expressed the hope
that such a law would come in time, at which he
shook his head and grunted. Now Somerset has such
a law and [I hear that goldfinches are again to be seen
in the Wells district. In fact, county after county
has taken up the cause of this pretty and useful little
bird, and in a small map of the country lying before
me, in which the counties where the goldfinch receives
protection throughout the year are coloured red, I
find that on more than three-fourths of the entire
area of England and Wales the bird is now safe-
guarded. As a result it is increasing all over the
country, but it will be many years before we have it
in its former numbers. How abundant it was about
eighty years ago, before its long decline began, may
be gathered from the following passage in Cobbett’s
Rural Rides describing his journey from Highworth
to Malmesbury in Wiltshire:

Between Somerford and Ocksey, I saw, on the side of the road,
more goldfinches than I had ever seen together; I think fifty
times as many as I had ever seen at one time in my life. The
favourite food of the goldfinch is the seed of the thistle. The seed
is just now dead ripe. The thistles all cut and carried away from
the fields by the harvest; but they grow alongside the roads,
and in this place in great quantities. So that the goldfinches
were got here in flocks, and, as they continued to fly before me
for nearly half a mile and still sticking to the roads and brakes,
I do believe I had, at last, a flock of 10,000 flying before me.

Cobbett rightly says that the seed of the thistle is
the favourite food of the bird; and once upon a time
an ornithologist made the statement that the im-
proved methods of agriculture in England had killed
the thistle, thus depriving the goldfinch of its natural

216 ADVENTURES AMONG BIRDS

food, the result being that the bird had declined in
numbers to the verge of extinction. The statement
has been copied into pretty well every book on British
birds since it was made. O wise ornithologists, what
does the goldfinch live on during nine months of the
year? How does he exist without his natural food?
How does he live even in the unnatural conditions
of a cage without thistle-seed? I know of one case
in which the poor prisoner lived shut up in his little
wire box for eighteen years. Besides, the museum
or closet naturalist is very much out of it when he
talks about the extirpation of the thistle. The good
old plant is doing very well. Long before the Act
of 1894-5 which empowers the local authorities to
protect their birds, I had been a frequent visitor
to, and a haunter of, many extensive thistle-grown
places in southern England-—chalk downs that were
once wheatfields, gone out of cultivation for half a
century or longer, ruined sheep-walks, where in July
and August I could look over hundreds of acres of
tust-brown thistles, covered with their glistening
down, the seed “dead ripe,” and never a goldfinch
in sight!

And now I must go back to Ryme Intrinseca—the
pretty name of that village makes me reluctant to
leave it—and to its goldfinches, the little company
of twelve fluttering with anxious cries about my head,
a very charming spectacle, and to an even more
brilliant picture or vision of the past which was all
at once restored to my mental eye. We are familiar
with the powerful emotional effect of certain odours,

GOLDFINCHES ALT

associated with our early life, in this connection;
occasionally effects equally strong are produced by
sights and sounds, and this was one. As I stood in
the churchyard watching the small flutterers in their
black and gold and crimson liveries, listening to their
excited cries, a vision of my boyhood was brought
before me, so vivid as to seem like reality. After
many years I was a boy once more, in my own distant
home, and the time was October, when the brilliant
spring merges into hot summer. I was among the
wind-rustled tall Lombardy poplars, inhaling their
delicious smell, at that spot where a colony of. a
couple of dozen black-headed siskins were breeding.
They are without the crimson on their faces; their
plumage is black and gold, but to all English-speaking
people in that far country they are known as gold-
finches, and in flight and habits and love of thistle-
seed and in melody and in their anxious piping notes
they are like our English bird. They are now fluttering
about me, like these of Ryme Intrinseca, displaying
their golden feathers in the brilliant sunshine, uttering
their agitated cries, while I climb tree after tree to
find two or three or four nests in each—dainty little
mossy down-lined cups placed between the slender
branches and trunk, each with its complement of
shining pearly eggs—a beautiful sight to a boy!

Then another picture follows. We are now in the
burning days of November and December, the vast
open treeless plains as far as one can see parched to
a rust-brown, and cattle and horses and sheep in
thousands to be watered at the great well. I see the

218 ADVENTURES AMONG BIRDS

native boy on his big horse drawing up the canvas
bucket; the man by the well catching the hoop as
it comes to the surface and directing the stream of
clear cold water into the long wooden troughs. But
the thing to see is the crowd of beasts, the flocks and
herds gathering before noon at the accustomed spot,
first seen coming in troops and lines, walking, trotting,
galloping from all that shadeless illimitable expanse
where the last liquid mud in the dried pools has been
sucked up. What a violent crowd! What a struggling
and what an uproar of bellowings, whinnyings and
multitudinous bleatings! And what dreadful blows
of horns and hoofs rained on each other’s tough
hides! For they are all mad at the sight and smell
of water, and only a few at a time have room to
drink at the trough.

But the crowding and fighting and drinking are
now ended; even the sheep, the last to get to the
water, have had their fill and streamed away over
the plain once more, and the spilt water lying in
pools at the side of the long wooden troughs is visited
by crowds on crowds of little birds—small crested
song-sparrows, glossy purple cow-birds, with other-
coloured troupials, the “starlings” of the New
World; and tyrant-birds of divers colours—olive-
green, yellow, chestnut, black and white and grey
and many more; doves, too, and finches in great
variety. The best of these were the goldfinches, in
close little flocks and in families, the young birds
clamouring for food and drink with incessant shrill
tremulous reedy cries.

GOLDFINCHES 219

What a contrast between this dainty bright-
coloured crowd of feathered drinkers and that of the
pushing, fighting, bellowing beasts! And what a sight
for a boy’s eyes! There I would stay in the hot sun
to watch them when all the others, the work of
watering over, would hurry away to the shade of the
house and trees, and my desire to see them more
closely, to look at them as one can look at a flower,
was so insistent and so intense as to be almost a pain.
But I had no binocular and didn’t even know that
such an instrument existed; and at last to satisfy
the craving I took it into my head to catch them—
to fill my hands with goldfinches and have them in
numbers. It was easily done. I put an old deal box
or packing-case over a pool of water, one side propped
up with a stick, to which a long string was attached.
With the end of the string in my hand I sat and
waited, while birds of many kinds came and took
their half-dozen sips and flew away, but when a
flock of goldfinches appeared and gathered to drink
under the box, I pulled the string and made them
prisoners. Then I transferred them to a big cage,
nd, placing it on a stand under the trees, sat down
to feast my eyes on the sight—to look at a goldfinch
as I would look at a flower. And I had my reward
and was supremely happy, but it was a short-lived
happiness, for very soon the terror and distress of
my little captives, and their senseless frantic efforts
to get out of their prison, began to annoy and make
me miserable. I say “senseless” because I had no
intention of keeping them in captivity, and to my

220 ADVENTURES AMONG BIRDS

small boy brain it seemed that they might have
restrained themselves a little and allowed me to enjoy
seeing them for an hour or two. But as their flutter-
ings and strainings and distressing cries continued
I opened the cage and allowed them to fly away.

Looking back on that incident now, it strikes me
as rather an inhuman thing to have done; but to the
boy, whose imagination has not yet dawned, who
does not know what he is doing, much has to be
forgiven. He has a monkey-like, prying curiosity
about things, especially about living things, but little
love for them. A bird in a cage is more to him as a
tule than many birds in a bush, and some grow up
without ever getting beyond this lower stage. Love
or fondness of or kindness to animals, with other
expressions of the kind, are too common in our
mouths, especially in the mouths of those who keep
larks, linnets, siskins, and goldfinches in cages. But
what a strange “love” and “kindness” which deprive
its object of liberty and its wonderful faculty of
flight! It is very like that of the London east-end
fancier who sears the eye-balls of his chaffiinch with
a red-hot needle to cherish it ever after and grieve
bitterly when its little darkened life is finished.
“You'll think me a soft-hearted chap, but ’pon my
soul when I got up and went to say good-morning
to my bird, and give him a bit of something to peck
at, and found poor Chaffie lying there dead and cold
at the bottom of his cage, it made the tears come
into my eyes.”

It is love of a kind, no doubt.

GOLDFINCHES 221

The east-ender is “‘devoted” to his chaffinch, but
for the generality the first favourite is undoubtedly
the goldfinch, and if few are seen in cages compared
with larks and linnets it is because they are much
rarer and cost more. Our ‘“‘devotion” to it, as we
have seen, nearly caused its extermination in Britain,
and we now import large numbers from Spain to
supply the demand. One doubts that the bird will
stand this drain very long, as the Spanish are just
as fond of it (in a cage) as we are.

Here I am reminded of a very charming little poem
about a caged goldfinch by one of my favourite
authors—E/ Colorin de Filis, by Melendez, an eigh-
teenth-century poet. I do not think that anyone who
reads this poem and others of equal merit to be found
in the literature of Spain, would deny that the
sentiment of admiration and tenderness for birds
is sometimes better and more beautifully expressed
in Spanish poetry than in ours. Not only in the old,
which is best, but occasionally in reading modern
verse I have been surprised into the exclamation,
Would that we could have this poem, or this passage,
suitably translated! This may seem strange, since
we cannot allow that the Spanish generally, wedded
as they are to their ancient barbarous pastimes, and
killers of all small birds for the pot as they are now
becoming in imitation of their French neighbours,
can surpass or even equal us in sympathy for the
inferior creatures. It is the language which makes
the difference: the Spanish is better suited to the
expression of tender sentiments of that kind. The

222 ADVENTURES AMONG BIRDS

verse flows more freely, with a more natural music
than ours; it is less mechanical and monotonous in
sound, and as it is less distinct from prose and speech
in form we are never so conscious of the artistry. The
feeling appears more genuine, more from the heart,
because of the seeming artlessness. We see it all in
this little goldfinch poem and say at once that it is
untranslatable, or that it would be impossible to
render its spirit, because in English verse the tender
feeling, even if it could be expressed so delicately
and beautifully, would not convey the same air of
sincerity. Swinburne could not do it, which may
seem a bold thing to say, seeing that he has given a
music to our language it never knew before. It is a
music which in certain supreme passages makes one
wonder, as if it did not consist in the mere cunning
collocation of words but in a magic power to alter
their very sound, producing something of a strange,
exotic effect, incomparably beautiful and altogether
new in our poetry. But great as it is, it never allows
us to escape from the sense of the art in it, and is
unlike the natural music of Melendez as the finest
operatic singing is unlike the spontaneous speech,
intermingled with rippling laughter, of a young girl
with a beautiful fresh sparkling voice.

From Swinburne to Adelaide Anne Procter is a
long drop, but in this lady’s works there is a
little poem entitled The Child and the Bird, which,
if not precisely a translation, strikes me as a very
close imitation of the Phyllis and her Goldfinch
of Melendez, or of some other continental poet,

GOLDFINCHES 223

probably Spanish, who has treated the same subject.
At all events, the incident related is the same, except
that a little girl has been substituted for the girl wife
of the original. Here is the first stanza:

Wherefore pinest thou, my bird ?

Thy sweet song is never heard.

All the bird’s best joys surround thee,
Ever since the day I found thee.
Once thy voice was free and glad,
Tell me why thou art so sad ?

If this coarse thread cause thee pain,
Thou shalt have a silken chain.

What poor, artificial stuff it is! How it bumps you,
each line ending with the dull, hard, wooden thud of
the rhyme! Doubtless if a better poet had written
it the result would not have been so bad; my sole
reason for quoting it is that I can find no other transla-
tion or version in our literature. We abound in bird
poems, some of them among the most beautiful lyrics
in the language; but I confess that, for the reasons
already given, even the best, such as those of Words-
worth, Hogg, Shelley, Meredith, and Swinburne
himself, particularly in his splendid ode to the
seamew, fail to give me entire satisfaction.

I am bad at translating, or paraphrasing, anything,
and the subject of the Spanish poem is one peculiarly
suited to verse; if taken out of that sublimated
emotional language, I fear it must seem flat, if not
ridiculous. Nevertheless, I will venture to give here
a simple prose translation of the anecdote, and will
ask the reader to retranslate it in imagination into
swift-flowing verse, in a language perhaps unknown

224 ADVENTURES AMONG BIRDS

to him which reproduces to the eye and ear of the
mind the sights and sounds described—the disordered
motions, the flutterings and piercing cries of the
agitated bird, and the responsive emotions of its
tender-hearted mistress, which come, too, in gusts,
like those of her captive, and have, too, their own
natural rhythm.

The poem tells that one day Phyllis finds her pet
goldfinch in a strangely excited state, in revolt against
its destiny, at war with the wires of its cage.

Phyllis of the tender heart, the simple tastes, the
lover of little birds from a child, who, though now a
wife, finds in them still her dearest, most intimate
happiness.

What ails her bird? He strikes his little beak on
the wires, then strikes again; he clings to the side of
his cage; he flits, above, below, to this side and to
that, then grasping a wire with his small mandibles,
tugs and tugs as if he hoped by putting forth all his
little strength to break it. He cannot break nor bend
it, nor can he rest, but tired of tugging he thrusts his
head through the close bars and strives and strains
to force his way out, beating on them with his wings.
Then, after a brief pause, renews and redoubles his
puny efforts; and at last, taken out of himself,
dashes from side to side, until the suspended cage
is shaken with his passion.

Ah, my birdling, cries lovely Phyllis, astonished
and grieved at the spectacle, what a poor return you
are making me! How badly this temper fits you!—

GOLDFINCHES 225

how unlike your gentle twittering this new sharpness
in your voice which wounds me! But I know the
cause too well! Fear not, dear bird, to alienate my
love—that I shall forget in this your rebellious
moment the charm that made you precious, and
charge you with ingratitude and in anger and disdain
thrust you from my sight. For what avails my
solicitude and affection—what does it matter that
with my own hands I supply you with food and drink
and a hundred delicate morsels besides; that with
my fingers I tenderly caress you; that I kiss you with
my lips? It is nothing that you are dear to me, that
ny chief delight is in listening to your sweet lively
trills and twitterings, since I am but your gaoler who
holds you from that free air which is your home and
the sweet mate you would be with! No, you cannot
be glad; nor is it possible you should not fear the
hand that ministers to your wants, since it is the same
hand that has cruelly hurt you and may hurt you again
with a yet closer, more barbarous confinement.

Alas, I know your pain, for I too am a captive and
lament my destiny, and though the bonds that hold
me are woven with flowers I feel their weight and
they wound me none the less. Left an orphan early
in life, it was my fate to leave my home before
completing my seventeenth year, at the will of
others, to be a wife. He who took me was amiable
and more than kind to me. Like a brother, a friend,
a passionate lover, he protects, he honours, he worships
me, and in his house my will is law. But I have no

pleasure in it. His devotion, his gifts, are like mine
ls

226 ADVENTURES AMONG BIRDS

to you, when I am carried away by the charm of
your beauty and melody, when I call you my sweet
little one, and you come to my call to bite me caress-
ingly with your little beak and flutter your black and
yellow wings as if to embrace me; when in my ardour
I take you tenderly in my hands to hold you to my
heaving breast and wish and wish that in kissing you
I could breathe into you my very life!

Even so does my owner with me: when in the
delirium of passion he strains me to him, when he
showers gold and gems and all beautiful gifts on me,
and seeks after every imaginable pleasure for my
delight, and would give his very life for me—his
mistress, bride and queen, who is more than all the
world to him. In vain—in vain! Here in my heart
there is a voice which asks me: Does it delight you?
Does it sweeten your captivity? Oh, no, no, his
benefits do but increase this secret eternal bitterness!

Even so do you, oh, my little bird, reward me for
all my love and tenderness and blame me with those
painfully sharp notes for this tasteless life to which
you are doomed; even so do you cry for your lost
liberty, and open and flutter your wings with the
desire to fly.

You shall not open them in vain—your pleadings
have pierced my heart. You shall go, my beloved
bird—you shall go in peace. My love can no longer
deny you the boon desired so ardently—so easily
bestowed! Go, and know the happiness which free-
dom gives, which is now yours, but can nevermore,
alas! be mine.

GOLDFINCHES 227

So saying, Phyllis opens the cage and sets it free.
Away it flies; tears burst forth at the sight; with
misty eyes she watches it winging its way through
the air till its little form is lost in the distance; and
gazing still, for one sweet moment has the illusion
that she, too, has flown, following it, that she too has
recovered her lost liberty.

CHAPTER XXIII

THE IMMORTAL NIGHTINGALE

The barren days of early March—On the track of the absent
nightingale—The mystery of its return—The immortal
bird of the poets—Its puzzling distribution—The parish
nightingale—A rector’s story of a nightingale—Birds striking
against window-panes — The nightingale a home-keeping
bird—Its human enemies—The fight to save our wild birds
—Educating the country children.

EVER is earth more empty of life than during

the early days of March before the first of

the migrants have returned to us. The
brighter sun serves only to show the nakedness of
nature and make us conscious of its silence. For since
the autumn, through all the cold, hungry winter
months, the destroyer has been busy among the
creatures that stayed behind when half the bird
population forsook the land; the survivors now seem
but a remnant. To-day, with a bleak wind blowing
from the north-east, the sun shining from a hard
pale grey sky, the wide grass and ploughed fields
seem emptier and more desolate than ever, and tired
of my vain search for living things I am glad to get
to the shelter of a small isolated copse, by a tiny
stream, at the lower end of a long sloping field. It
can hardly be called a copse since it is composed of

no more than about a dozen or twenty old wide-
228

THE IMMORTAL NIGHTINGALE 229

branching oak trees growing in a thicket of thorn,
hazel, holly, and bramble bushes. It is the best place
on such a day, and finding a nice spot to stand in,
well sheltered from the wind, I set myself to watch
the open space before me. It is shut in by huge
disordered brambles, and might very well tempt any
living creature with spring in its blood, moving un-
easily among the roots, to come forth to sun itself.
The ground is scantily clothed with pale dead grass
mixed with old fallen leaves and here and there a
few tufts of dead ragwort and thistle. But in a long
hour’s watching I see nothing;—not a rabbit, nor
even a wood mouse, or a field or bank vole, where at
other seasons I have seen them come out, two or three
at a time, and scamper over the rustling leaves in
pursuit of each other. Nor do I hear anything; not
a bird nor an insect, and no sound but the whish
and murmur of the wind in the stiff holly leaves and
the naked grey and brown and purple branches. I
remember that on my very last visit this same small
thicket teemed with life, visible and audible; it was
in its spring foliage, exquisitely fresh and green,
sparkling with dewdrops and bright with flowers
about the roots— ground ivy, anemone, primrose,
and violet. I listened to the birds until the nightingale
burst into song and I could thereafter attend to no
other. For he was newly arrived, and although we
have him with us every year, invariably on the first
occasion of hearing him in spring, the strain affects
us as something wholly new in our experience, a fresh
revelation of nature’s infinite richness and beauty.

230 ADVENTURES AMONG BIRDS

I know that in a few weeks’ time he will be back at
the same spot; in this case we do not say “barring
accidents”; they are not impossible, but are too rare
to be taken into consideration. Yet it is a strange
thing! He ceased singing about June 20, nearly
nine months ago; he vanished about the end of
September; yet we may confidently look and listen
for him in about six weeks from to-day! When he
left us, so far as we know, he travelled, by day or
night, but in any case unseen by even the sharpest
human eyes, south to the Channel and France; then
on through the whole length of that dangerous
country where men are killers and eaters of little
birds; then across Spain to another sea; then across
Algeria and Tripoli to the Sahara and Egypt, and,
whether by the Nile or along the shores of the Red
Sea, on to more southern countries still. He travels
his four thousand miles or more, not by a direct
route, but now west and now south, with many
changes of direction until he finds his winter home.
We cannot say just where our bird is; for it is prob-
able that in that distant region where his six months’
absence is spent the area occupied by the nightingales
of British race may be larger than this island. The
nightingale that was singing in this thicket eleven
months ago may now be in Abyssinia, or in British
East Africa, or in the Congo State.

And even now at that distance from his true home
—this very clump where the sap is beginning to move
in the grey naked oaks and brambles and thorns—
something stirs in him too: not memory nor passion

THE IMMORTAL NIGHTINGALE 231

perhaps, yet there may be something of both in it
—an inherited memory and the unrest and passion
of migration, the imperishable and overmastering
ache and desire which will in due time bring him
safely back through innumerable dangers over that
immense distance of barren deserts and of forests, of
mountain and seas, and savage and civilised lands.

It is not strange to find that down to the age of
science, when the human mind had grown accustomed
to look for the explanation of all phenomena in
matter itself, an exception was made of the annual
migration of birds, and the belief remained (even in
Sir Isaac Newton’s mind) that the impelling and
guiding force was a supernatural one. The ancients
did not know what became of their nightingale when
he left them, for in Greece, too, he is a strict migrant,
but his reappearance year after year, at the identical
spot, was itself a marvel and mystery, as it still is,
and they came inevitably to think it was the same
bird which they listened to. We have it in the epitaph
of Callimachus, in Cory’s translation:

They told me, Heraclitus, they told me you were dead;

They brought me bitter news to hear and bitter tears to shed ;
I wept when I remembered how often you and I

Had tired the sun with talking and sent him down the sky.
And now that you are lying, my dear old Carian guest,

A handful of grey ashes, long, long ago at rest,

Still are thy pleasant voices, thy nightingales, awake,

For Death he taketh all away, but these he cannot take.

It is possible to read the thought in the original
differently, that immortality is given to the song, not
the bird. As one of my friends who have made literal

232 ADVENTURES AMONG BIRDS

translations for me has it: “Yet thy nightingale’s
notes live, whereon Hades, ravisher of all things,
shall not lay a hand,” or “But thy nightingales (or
nightingales’ songs) live; over these Hades, the all-
destroyer, throws not a hand.”

Keats, too, plays with the thought in his famous
ode:

Thou wast not born for death, immortal Bird!
No hungry generations tread thee down;
The voice I hear this passing night was heard
In ancient days by emperor and clown:
Perhaps the self-same song that found a path
Through the sad heart of Ruth, when sick for home
She stood in tears amid the alien corn;
The same that oft-times hath
Charmed magic casements, opening on the foam
Of perilous seas, in faery lands forlorn.

His imagination carries him too far, since the “self-
same song,” or the song by the same bird, could never
be heard in more than one spot—at Hampstead, let
us say; for though he may travel far and spend six
months of every year in Abyssinia or some other
remote region, he sings at home only. Of all the
British poets who have attempted it, George Meredith
is greatest in describing the song which has so strong
an effect on us; but how much greater is Keats who
makes no such attempt, but in impassioned stanza
after stanza of the supremest beauty, renders its
effect on the soul. And so with prose descriptions;
we turn wearily from all such vain efforts to find an
ever-fresh pleasure in the familiar passage in Izaak
Walton, his simple expressions of delight in the singer
‘breathing such sweet loud music out of her little

THE IMMORTAL NIGHTINGALE 233

instrumental throat, that it might make mankind
to think that miracles are not ceased.”

The subject of the nightingale’s superiority as a
singer does not, however, now concern us so much
as its distribution in England, and its return each
year to the same spot. To this small isolated thicket,
let us say, the very bird known here in past years,
now away perhaps in Abyssinia, will be here again
about April 8—alone, for he will not brook the
presence of another of one of his species in his
small dominion, and the female with which he will
mate will not appear until about a week or ten
days later.

How natural, then, for the listener to its song to
imagine it the same bird he has heard at the same
place in previous years! Even the oldest rustic, whose
life has been passed in the neighbourhood, who as a
small boy robbed the five olive-coloured eggs every
season to make a “necklace” of them with other
coloured eggs as an ornament for the cottage parlour;
whose sons took them in their childhood for the same
purpose, and whose grandchildren perhaps rob them
now—even he will think the bird he will listen to
by-and-by the same nightingale of all these years.
But this notion is, no doubt, strongest in those parts
of the country where the bird is more thinly dis-
tributed. Here, on the borders of Surrey and Hamp-
shire, we are in the very heart of the nightingale
country, and in these localities where two birds are
frequently heard singing against each other and are
sometimes seen fighting, it might be supposed tha

234 ADVENTURES AMONG BIRDS

when the bird inhabiting a particular copse or thicket
comes to an end, another will quickly take the vacant
place. The three counties of Hampshire, Surrey, and
Kent abound most in nightingales; they are a little
less numerous in Sussex and Berkshire; but these
five counties (or six if we add Buckinghamshire)
undoubtedly contain more nightingales than all the
rest of England together. The bird, coming to us
by way of France, travels north, each to his ancestral
place, the majority finding their homes in the south
of England, on its south-eastern side; the others
going north and west are distributed more thinly.
On a map coloured red to show the distribution, the
counties named above would show the deepest colour
over a greater part of the entire area; while north
and west there would be a progressive decrease in
the depth over the south-western counties, the home
counties north of the Thames, the Midlands, East
Anglia, and north to Shropshire and South Yorkshire,
where it would disappear. And on the west side
of England it would finish on the Welsh border
and in East Devon. In all of Devonshire west of
the valley of the Exe, with Cornwall; in practi-
cally all Wales and Scotland and Ireland, there are
no nightingales.

It is a singular distribution, a puzzling one; for
why is it that the blackcap, garden warbler, wood-
wren, and other delicate migrants who come to us
by the same route, extend their range so much further
north and west? We can only say that the nightin-
gale’s range is more restricted, but not by climatic

THE IMMORTAL NIGHTINGALE 235

conditions, and that he is more Jocal; in other words,
that we don’t know. Some have imagined that he
is a delicate feeder and goes only where he can find
the food that pleases him; others, that he inhabits
where cowslips grow kindly; still others, that he
seeks a spot where there is an echo. These are but a
few of many fancies and fables about the nightingale.

Not only is it a singular distribution, but in a way
unfortunate, since everyone would like to hear the
nightingale—the summer voice which has, over and
above the pleasing associations of the swallow and
cuckoo and turtle-dove, an intrinsic beauty surpassing
that of all other bird voices. As it is, a large majority
of the population of these islands never hear it. In
districts where it is thinly distributed, as in Somerset
and East Devon, there will be perhaps only one
nightingale in an entire parish, and the villagers will
be proud of it and perhaps boast that they are better
off than their neighbours for miles around.

I was staying late in April at a village near the
Severn when one Sunday morning the working man
I was lodging with informed me that he had heard of
the arrival of their nightingale (there was but one),
and together we set out to find it. He led me through
a wood and over a hill, then down to a small thicket
by a running stream, about two miles from home.
This was, he said, the exact spot where he had heard
it in previous years; and before we had stood there
five minutes, silently listening, we were rewarded by
the sound we had come for issuing from a thorny
tangle not more than a dozen yards away—a prelusive

236 ADVENTURES AMONG BIRDS

sound almost startling in its suddenness and power,
as of vigorous, rapidly repeated strokes on a great
golden wire.

And as in this one, so it is in hundreds of parishes
all over the country where the nightingale is thinly
scattered. Each home of the bird is known to every
man in the parish; he can find it easily as, when
thirsty, he can find the spring of clear water hidden
away somewhere among the rocks and trees of his
native place; and the song, too, is a fountain of
beautiful sound, crystal pure and sparkling, as it
gushes from the mysterious inexhaustible reservoir,
tefreshing to the soul and a joy for ever.

The loss of one of these nightingales where there
is but one is a sorrow to the villagers, especially to
the young lovers, who are great admirers of the bird
and take a peculiar delight in listening to its evening
performance. For it does sometimes happen that
the nightingale whose “‘solitary song” is the delight
of a village, disappears from his place and returns
no more. The only explanation is that the faithful
bird has at length met with his end, after a dozen
or twenty years, or as many years as any old man
can remember. The most singular case of the loss
of a bird I have come across was in East Anglia, in
a place where there were very few nightingales. In
my rambles I came to a little rustic village, remote
from railroads and towns, which has a small, ancient,
curious-looking church standing by itself in a green
meadow half a mile away. I was told that the rector
kept the key himself, and that he was something of

THE IMMORTAL NIGHTINGALE 237

a recluse, a studious learned man, Doctor of Divinity,
and so on.

Accordingly I went to the rectory, a charming
house standing in its own extensive grounds with
lawns, shrubbery, large garden and shade trees, and
a wood or grove of ancient oaks separating it from
the village. I found the rector digging in his garden
and could not help seeing that he was not too well
pleased at my request; but when I begged him not
to leave his task and promised to bring back the key,
if he would let me have it, he threw down his spade
and said that he must accompany me to the church
himself, as there were points about it which would
require to be explained.

There were no monuments, and when we had
looked at the interior and he had pointed out the
most interesting features, he came out and sat down
in the porch.

“Are you an archeologist or what?” he said.

I replied that I was nothing so important, that I
merely took an ordinary interest in old churches. I was
mainly interested in living things—a sort of naturalist.

Then he got up and we walked back. ‘‘In birds?”
he asked presently.

“Yes, especially in birds.”

“And what do you think about omens—do you
believe in them?”

The question made me curious, and I replied with
caution that I would tell him if he would first tell
me the particular case he had in his mind just then.

He was silent; then when we had got back to the

238 ADVENTURES AMONG BIRDS

rectory he took me round the house to where a large
French window opened on the lawn and a shrubbery
beyond. “This,” he said, “is the drawing-room, and
my wife, who was very delicate, used always to sit
there behind the window on account of the aspect.
We had a nightingale then; we had always had him
since I came to this parish many years ago. He was
a most beautiful singer, and every morning, as long
as the singing time lasted, he would perch on that
small tree on the edge of the lawn, directly before
the window, and sing for an hour or two at a stretch.
We were very proud of our bird and thought him
better than any nightingale we had ever heard. And
he was the only one in the neighbourhood; you
would have had to go a mile to find another.

“One morning about eleven o’clock I was writing
in my study at the other side of the house, when my
wife came in to me looking pale and distressed, and
said a strange thing had happened. She was sitting
at her work behind the closed window when a little
bird had dashed violently against the glass; then it
had flown a little distance away and, turning, dashed
back against the glass as at first; and again it flew
off, only to turn and strike the glass even more
violently than before; then she saw it fall fluttering
down and feared it had injured itself badly. I went
quickly out to look, and found the bird, our night-
ingale, lying gasping and shivering on the stone step
beneath the window. I picked it up and held it to
the air in my open hand; but in two or three seconds
it was dead.

THE IMMORTAL NIGHTINGALE 239

“T lost my wife shortly afterwards. That was
five years ago, and from that time we have had no
nightingale here.”

It was not strange that the tragedy of the little
bird had made a very deep impression on him; that
the death of his wife coming shortly afterwards had
actually caused him to think there was something
out of the natural in it. But I could not say that I
was of his opinion, though I could believe that the
acute distress she had suffered at witnessing such a
thing, and possibly the effect of thinking too much
about it, had aggravated her malady and perhaps
even hastened her end.

For the rest, the accident to the nightingale, which
deprived the rectory and the village of its singer,
is not an uncommon one among birds; our windows
as well as our overhead wires are a danger to them.
I have seen a small bird on a good many occasions
dash itself against a window-pane; and, in one
instance, at a country house in Ireland, the bird,
a chiffchaff, came violently against my bedroom
window twice when I stood in the room watching it.
The attraction was a fly crawling up the pane inside.
But this explanation does not fit the case of the
nightingale with other cases I have observed; he is
not like the warblers and the pied wagtail (a frequent
striker against window-glass) a pursuer of flies. No
doubt birds are sometimes dazzled and confused or
hypnotised by the glitter of the glass with the sun
on it, and in this case the singing-bush of the bird
was directly before the window, at a distance of

240 ADVENTURES AMONG BIRDS

twenty-five to thirty feet. The singer, motionless
on his perch, had looked too long on it, and the effect
was such that even after two hurting blows on the
glass his little brain had not recovered from its twist.
Then came its third and fatal blow.

To return to the subject of the nightingale’s curious
distribution in England. The facts appear to show
that practically the species is stationary with us;
that it remains strictly within the old limits and
in about the same numbers. Bird-catchers, birds’-
nesting boys, and cats extirpate them round the
towns; but, taking the whole country, we do not
observe any great changes such as we note in some
other migrants—the swallow and martin, for example,
and among warblers, to name only one, the lesser
whitethroat. The conclusion would seem to be that
each season’s increase is just sufficient to make good
the annual losses from all natural causes and from
man’s persecution; that every bird returns to the
exact spot where it was hatched, and that no new
colonies are formed or the range extended.

The practical question arises: Would it not make
a difference if the annual destruction through human
agency could be done away with? I believe it would.
Each cock nightingale, we find, takes possession of
his own little domain on arrival, and, like his relation,
the robin, will not allow another to share it with
him; so that if two or more males of a brood, or
family, survive to return to the same spot, one
presently makes himself master, and the other or
others, driven away, settle where they can, as near

THE IMMORTAL NIGHTINGALE a41

by as possible. It is probably harder for the nightin-
gale to go a mile away from his true home, the very
spot where he was hatched and reared, than to fly
away thousands of miles to his wintering-place in the
autumn. The bird is exceedingly reluctant to leave
his home, but if the annual increase was greater, a
third greater let us say, more and more birds would
be compelled to go further afield. They would go
slowly, clinging to unsuitable places near their cradle-
home rather than go far, but the continual pressure
would tell in the end; the best places within the
nightingale country, the ten thousand oak and hazel
copses and thickets which are now untenanted, would
be gradually occupied, and eventually the limits
would be enlarged. That they cannot be extended
artificially we know from the experiments in Scotland
of Sir John Sinclair and of others in the north of
England, who procured nightingales’ eggs and had
them placed in robins’ nests. The young were hatched
and safely reared, and, as was expected, disappeared
in the autumn, but they never returned. We can
only assume that the “inherited memory” of its
true home, which was not Scotland nor Yorkshire,
but where the egg was laid, was in every bird’s brain
from the shell, that if it ever survived to return from
its far journey it came faithfully back to the very
spot where the egg had been taken.

That man’s persecution tells seriously on the
species may be seen from what has happened on
the Continent, even in countries where the hateful
custom of eating nightingales with all small birds is

Q

242 ADVENTURES AMONG BIRDS

unknown, but where it is greatly sought after as a
cage bird. Thus, in southern Germany the nightin-
gales have been decreasing for very many years and
are now generally rare and have been wholly extir-
pated in many parts. With us, too, the drain on the
species has been too heavy; it is, or has been, a
double drain—that of birds’-nesting boys and of
the bird-catchers.

With regard to the first, there is unfortunately
no sentiment of superstition concerning the night-
ingale as in the case of his cousin, the redbreast—
“yellow autumn’s nightingale,” as it was beautifully
called by one of the Elizabethan poets. How effective
such a sentiment can be I have witnessed scores of
times when I have found that even the most thorough-
paced nest-takers among the village children are
accustomed to spare the robin, because as they say
something bad will happen to them, or their hand
will wither up, if they harry its nest. The nightingale’s
eggs, like those of the throstle and shuffle-wing and
Peggie whitethroat, are taken without a qualm;
they are, indeed, more sought after than others on
account of their beauty and unusual colouring and
because they are less common.

I believe that the increase of the birds each summer
would be about a third more than it is but for the
loss from this cause alone.

The destruction caused by the bird-catcher is not
nearly so serious now as it has been, even down to
the sixties of the last century, when a single London
bird-catcher would trap his hundred or two hundred

THE IMMORTAL NIGHTINGALE 243

cock nightingales on the birds’ arrival. And this
drain had gone on for centuries; at all events we
find that as far back as Elizabethan times the night-
ingale was eagerly sought after as a cage bird.
Willughby, the “Father of British Ornithology,” in
his account of the bird, gives eight times as much space
to the subject of its treatment in a cage as to its
habits in a state of nature.

The cost to a species of caging is probably greater
in the case of the nightingale than of any other song-
ster. It is well known that if the bird is taken after
it has paired—that is, immediately after the appear-
ance of the females, a week or ten days later than the
males—it will quickly die of grief in captivity. Those
taken before the females appear on the scene may live
on to the moulting time, which almost always proves
fatal. Scarcely one in ten survives the first year
of captivity.

We may congratulate ourselves that it is no longer
possible for nightingales to be taken in numbers in
this country, thanks to the legislation of the last
fifteen years, chiefly to Sir Herbert Maxwell’s wise
Act empowering the local authorities to give addi-
tional protection to wild birds and their eggs in
counties and boroughs. It has been a long fight to
save our wild birds, and is far from finished yet,
seeing that the law is broken every day; that bird-
dealers and their supporters the bird-fanciers, and
their servants the bird-catchers, who take the chief
risk, are in league to defeat the law. Also that very
many country magistrates deal tenderly with offenders

244 ADVENTURES AMONG BIRDS

so long as they respect “game.” A partridge, and
probably a rabbit, is of more consequence to the
sportsman on the bench than a small, plain brown
bird, or than many linnets and goldfinches. The law,
we know, is effectual when it has a strong public
feeling on its side; the feeling is not yet universal
and nowhere strong enough, or as strong as bird-
lovers would wish it to be, but it exists and has been
growing during the last half a century, and that
feeling, supported by the improved laws which it has
called into being, is having its effect. This we know
from the increase during recent years in several of
the greatly persecuted species. The goldfinch is a
striking example. The excessive drain on this species,
one of the favourites of the lover of birds in cages,
had made it exceedingly rare throughout the country
twenty years ago, and in many counties it was, if
not extinct, on the verge of extinction. Then a turn
came and a steady increase until it had ceased to be
an uncommon bird, and if the increase continues at
the same rate for another decade it will again be as
common as it was fifty years ago. This change has
come about as a direct result of the Orders giving
it all-the-year-round protection, obtained by the
county and borough councils throughout the country.

The nightingale has not so increased, nor has it
increased at all; it is not so hardy a species, and
albeit an ‘immortal bird,” and a “creature of
ebullient heart,” it probably does not live nearly as
long as our brilliant little finch. Nor is it so prolific;
moreover it nests upon or near the ground at the same

THE IMMORTAL NIGHTINGALE 245

spot year after year, so that its breeding-place is
known to every human being in the neighbourhood,
and on this account it is more exposed to the depreda-
tions of the nest-robber than most small birds. The
increase of such a species, which must in any case
be exceedingly slow, can only come about by the
fullest protection during the breeding time. That is
to say, protection from human destroyers; from
wild animals and other destructive agencies we
cannot safeguard it.

This infers a considerable change in the nature or
habits of the country boy, or the growth of a new
sentiment with regard to this species which would be
as great a protection to it as the sentiment about our
tame, familiar, universal robin has been to that bird.
But it is not a dream. I believe this change is being
wrought now in our “‘young barbarians” of the
country-side; that it is being brought about in many
ways by means of various agencies—by an increased
and increasing number of lovers of animals and of
nature, who in towns and villages form centres of
personal influence; by associations of men and
women, such as the Bird Protection, the Selborne,
and kindred societies; by nature study in the schools
throughout the rural districts, and by an abundant
supply of cheap nature literature for children. So
cheaply are these books now produced that the very
poorest children may have them, and though so cheap
they are exceedingly good of their kind—well written,
well printed, well and often very beautifully illus-
trated. I turn over a heap of these publications every

246 ADVENTURES AMONG BIRDS

year and sigh to recall the time when I was a young
barbarian myself and had no such books to instruct
and delight me.

But I have another and better reason than the
fact of the existence of all these activities for my
belief that a change is taking place in the country
boy’s mind, that his interest and pleasure in the wild
bird is growing, and that as it grows he becomes less
destructive. A good deal of my time is passed in the
villages in different parts of the country; I make the
acquaintance of the children and get into the con-
fidence of many small boys and find out what they
do and think and feel about the birds, and it is my
experience that in recent years something new has
come into their minds—a sweeter, humaner feeling
about their feathered fellow-creatures. I also take
into account the spirit which is revealed in the
village school children’s essays written for the Bird
and Tree competitions established by the Royal
Society for the Protection of Birds. During the last
four or five years I have had to read many hundreds
of these essays, each dealing with one species from the
child’s own personal observation, and it has proved
a very pleasing task to me because so many of the
young essayists had put their whole heart in theirs.
Their enthusiasm shines even in the weakest of these
compositions, considered merely as essays, and we
may imagine that the country boy or girl of ten or
twelve or thirteen finds the task assigned him not a
very simple one, to be placed at a table with sheets
of foolscap paper before him and given an hour in

THE IMMORTAL NIGHTINGALE 247

which to compose an essay on the bird, selected—
the gist of his observations; to be reminded at the
same time that he is one of the team of nine chosen
for the work, that the eyes of the village are on him,
that he must do his best to win the county shield for
the school. The conditions are not too favourable;
nevertheless, the children are doing remarkably
well, because, as I have said, their heart is in it, and
one is delighted to find that this study of a bird has
not only quickened the child’s interest in nature but
has taught him to think of the bird in a new way,
with the feeling which seeks to protect. We may
safely say that these children will not forget this new
lesson they are being taught, whatever else may drop
out of their memories when they leave school; that
in coming time, when they are fathers and mothers
themselves, they will instil the same feeling into
their own children.

This then of all the various efforts we have made
and are making to save the wild-bird life of our
country is to my mind the most promising for the
future, and makes it possible to believe that the bird
of greatest lustre we possess, our nightingale, will
not only maintain its own ground in undiminished
numbers, but in due time will increase and extend
its range.

CHAPTER XXIV

THE CLERK AND THE LAST RAVENS

The parish clerk at Itchen Abbas—William Neave’s epitaph—
The parish clerk’s reminiscences—A ghost story—Fascina-
tion of the raven—The last ravens at Avington—Tree-
climbing feats—Persecution of tame young ravens by the
old birds.

HE old parish clerk is almost as obsolete as
the village church band or orchestra, but
you do come upen him occasionally “still
lingering here” in remote districts, and until a few
years ago there existed one at Itchen Abbas, a pretty
little village on the Itchen, a few miles above Win-
chester. Let me hasten to say, lest anyone’s sus-
ceptibilities should be hurt, that this same village
in everything except its parish clerk appeared to
be quite up to date. At the Sunday morning ser-
vice he sat near me where I could see and hear him
very well. His quaint appearance and manner first
attracted my attention: it was out of date, out of
keeping, or, shall we say, harmony; yet the harmony
being what it was in that spiritless mechanical service,
the little discord came as a rather pleasing relief.
He was a small thin old man with black alert
hawk-like eyes, white beard, and a black skull-cap
on his grey head. His high-pitched voice and speech

were those of a Hampshire peasant, and it happened
248

CLERK AND THE LAST RAVENS 249

to be the one clear articulate voice amidst the con-
fused gabble of the others, all apparently anxious
to get on and finish the tedious business of public
worship as quickly as possible. When the Psalms
were read I tried, as an experiment, by beginning the
instant the minister ceased and rattling off the words
as fast as I could to keep up with the others, but
invariably I finished some words behind. They had
practised the trick too long for an outsider accustomed
to a different method. But he, the old parish clerk,
had never allowed himself to be carried away by the
torrent: his father had taught him to go slowly, and
slowly he would go to the end of the chapter, in the
old ancient way: in a clear high but quavering voice,
he distinctly enunciated each word, each syllable, in
a measured way, finishing solemnly a good many
words after the congregation. The congregation had,
so to speak, thrown him off, or run away from him,
but he would not give in and gabble or slur anything;
he plodded religiously on, unregarded but doing his
own part of the service decently and in order, under
great difficulties.

For me, a stranger and hater of gabblers, his
presence had made the service endurable, and I was
glad to make his acquaintance. It was easily made
on a week day: dressed in his frayed and discoloured
old clothes that hung like sacks about him and rusty
shapeless hat, he was the most familiar figure in the
village, in appearance an animated scarecrow. He
was also the busiest man there. He kept fowls and
grew fruit and vegetables in his cottage garden and

250 ADVENTURES AMONG BIRDS

an allotment a little distance away. Twice a week,
on market day, he loaded his little cart with his
produce and went off to sell it at the neighbouring
town. His spare time was filled up with odd jobs
—hedge-trimming, lawn-mowing, gardening generally,
repairing thatched roofs, and forty things besides.
I never found him sitting down, nor could get him to
sit down for more than five minutes at a stretch;
but he would rest on his spade sometimes and give
me scraps of his ancient history. Yet he was a small
weak-looking man, aged seventy-four! He had been
parish clerk over forty-five years, and his father
before him had held the office for upwards of fifty.

I was reminded of his case afterwards on two
occasions in Hampshire churchyards by epitaphs on
parish clerks. One was at Heckfield, near Eversley.
The inscription reads:

Beneath this stone lies William Neave, who on the roth
January, 1821, ended a blameless and inoffensive life of 79 years
during 45 of which he was Clerk of the Parish. His father, Thomas
Neave, and his grandfather, William Neave, had previously
filled this office, which (dedicated as it is to uphold in its degree
the order and decency of the Established Church) was here
uninterruptedly held by three generations of the Neaves through
a series of 136 years. In this period how many for whom they
had prepared the Font and whose giddy childhood they had
effectually chastised were by them finally conducted to the
spots around, where now they rest in humble hope of resurrection
to life eternal.

Let us return to the old clerk of Itchen Abbas,
whose life had been spent in the village and whose
bright memory retained the story of its life during
the whole of that long period. Squire, parsons,
farmers, labourers, he remembered them all — the

CLERK AND THE LAST RAVENS 251

old-style farmers who sat at meat with their men
before the division of classes, and before the piano
came in and the church organ to kill the villagers’
music. Also the fairies and ghosts. The tricksy little
people were not seen but were known to be about in
a field close by; “‘Fairy Field” it was called because
when it was being ploughed the horses invariably
stopped short at a certain spot and refused to go
on. Eventually, during the late owner Sir Charles
Shelley’s time a well-preserved Roman pavement
was discovered by chance at a depth of three to
four feet, just on the spot over which the horses
had always refused to draw the plough! The other
supernatural story relates to an old house adjoining
the village and overlooking the quiet valley of the
Itchen. Here, tradition says, a crime was committed
by a former owner, and from the time of his death
the place was haunted, but in a singular way; at
all events I have never heard any ghost story quite
like it. At night when the air was perfectly still, a
sound as of a sudden high wind could be heard among
the trees, travelling like a whirlwind in the direction
of the house, but invariably on coming to the house
it would die away into silence.

The old clerk introduced me to one of his life-long
pals and asked him to tell me his story of the ghost.
The story was that when he was a young man about
fifty years ago, he went to the house one still dark
night about midnight to get some apples. There was
a large apple orchard between the woods and the
gardens and lawns surrounding the house and divided

252 ADVENTURES AMONG BIRDS

from them by a high stone wall. It was in October
and the trees were laden with tempting ripe apples.
Getting over the wall he began hastily plucking the
fruit and stowing them in his smock-frock after
fastening it round his waist with his belt. When he
had got as many apples as he could carry and began
to reflect that with such a burden it would be difficult
to climb the wall, a sudden rushing sound of wind
rose in the wood outside the orchard and appeared
to be coming swiftly towards him and the house.
He knew from all he had heard from others that it
was the ghost-wind. In a moment it rose to the sound
of a furious tempest though not a leaf trembled, and
in terror he fled before it and in spite of the huge
burden was on the top of the wall in a moment. A
cat, he said, couldn’t have got up quicker and he
wondered how he had done it! But on the top of the
wall he slipped and came down on the other side;
his belt parted at the same time and the apples were
sent rolling all over the smooth lawn. He didn’t
stay to pick them up; he made a dash for the gate
and cleared it with a flying leap which landed him
in the road, and never stayed till he was back in his
cottage. These and other tales of the past were good
to hear, but I was more interested to know the story
of the last ravens of Avington, and the old clerk
was better able to tell it than any other person in
the village.

The raven, whether we love it or no, is the most
fascinating of feathered beings. Its powerful char-
acter impresses the imagination. Certainly it has an

CLERK AND THE LAST RAVENS 253

intelligence almost uncanny in a bird; a savage spirit
too, and power; a deep human-like voice; and a
very long life. These qualities affect the mind and
have been the cause of the raven’s strange reputation
in former ages—the idea that he was something more -
than a bird, a messenger of doom, an evil spirit, or
the spirit of some great dead man revisiting the
scenes of his earthly career.

Common all over the country down to the early
years of the nineteenth century, he has now been
pretty well exterminated as an inland bird. On the
iron-bound coasts in a few spots where his eggs are
comparatively safe, and in a few wild mountainous
districts in the interior, he still exists. But it does
not seem long since he was lost, for his memory still
lives: “raven trees” are common all over the country
—trees in which the vanished birds built their big
nests and reared their young each year. Tales of
“last ravens” are also told in numberless places all
over the country. Everyone who knows his Sel-
borne will remember the pathetic history of the last
ravens in his neighbourhood told by Gilbert White.
That is a long time back, and it is known that ravens
continued to breed in Hampshire for over a cen-
tury after White’s death. I am here speaking of
the inland-breeding birds; for up till now one pair of
ravens still breed on the Isle of Wight cliffs. The last
pair of birds that bred inland, on trees, were the
Avington ravens. How long they inhabited that
ancient noble domain I do not know, but it is certain
that they continued to breed annually in the park

254 ADVENTURES AMONG BIRDS

until about the year 1885. The “ravens’ clump”
where the birds had their nest still flourishes, but
the more famous, immeasurably older Gospel Oak,
which was an ancient tree when the cathedral at
Winchester was built and is believed to be the tree
under which St. Augustine stood when he preached
to the heathen in these parts, is, alas! dead for ever,
and its hollow ruinous trunk is slowly crumbling
to dust.

These Avington ravens were a good deal persecuted,
but invariably when one lost its life the other would
disappear for a few days to find and bring home a
new mate. At last some scoundrel got both birds,
and that was the end, for of course no others came to
fill their place. The old clerk related that when he
was a young man he worked for some years as under-
woodman on the estate, and he had many exciting
stories to tell of his tree-climbing feats. In those
distant days—about 1850—climbing contests were
common among the men who worked in the woods
and parks, and he was the champion tree-climber
in the place. One day, when coming from work with
the other men, a squirrel was seen to run up an
exceedingly tall isolated fir tree, and he, in a moment
of madness, undertook to catch and bring it down.
Up after the squirrel he went until he could go no
further, and the little thing was still above him, afraid
to jump down and give him a chance to capture it,
clinging to a slender branch directly over his head
and out of reach. He then thought to knock it down
into his hands, and having selected a small branch

CLERK AND THE LAST RAVENS 255

for the purpose was engaged in wrenching it off when
the squirrel made its jump, and as it came flying
down past his head he attempted to capture it, using
both hands, but missed it, and at the same time his
legs lost their grip on the branch he was on; and
down after the squirrel he came, crashing through
the higher branches and coming at last with a thud
to the earth. He had fallen on his back, and was
taken up senseless and terribly injured and sent away
to the hospital at Winchester. For twelve long months
he was kept there, on his back, and when sent home
was told that he would never be fit to do any outdoor
work, although he might perhaps live for some years.
They were wrong; he did get perfectly well, and when
I knew him, half a century or more after this terrible
accident, he was still hard at work mowing, digging,
and wood-cutting.

Two or three years before this terrible fall put
an end to his tree-climbing exploits, a member of
the ducal family who were then the owners of Aving-
ton thought it would be interesting to have some
tame ravens as pets, and the young champion climber
was instructed to take the fledglings from the nest
in the park.

When he got up to the nest he was surprised to
find six birds, half fledged; and he took them all,
and all were safely reared at the house. These birds
when grown remained perfectly tame although they
were never pinioned; they spent most of their time
flying about the park and outside of it, but invariably
came to the house to be fed and to roost.

256 ADVENTURES AMONG BIRDS

As time went on it was observed that the old birds
became more and more jealous of their presence in
their territory and from day to day they persecuted
them with increasing fury. The young accustomed
to be fed at the house refused to leave the place, as
the young reared annually in the nest are invariably
compelled to do; and the result was that one by one
they were killed by their savage parents. My inform-
ant actually witnessed the killing of one of them:
the young bird tried to escape by flying to the house,
but was buffeted with such fury that in the end it
was borne down to the earth in the park and was
then quickly done to death by the savage blows of
the two powerful beaks.

There are other birds just as intolerant of the
presence of their full-grown young as the raven. This
is the case with our robin redbreast, but in the case
of this species it is the cock bird only that fights, and
the fight is thus a more equal one. The young bird
sometimes conquers the old one. In the raven, the
mother bird hates her children as much as the father
does, and as they fight in company, playing into each
other’s hands, and take their young one by one, they
are invariably the victors.

CHAPTER XXV

THE TEMPLES OF THE HILLS

History of the chalk hills—Hill-top groves—Their best aspect—
Abundance of wild life in them—Carrion-crows—Nesting
sparrow-hawks—The fascinating spectacle of the chase—
Long-eared owls—The owl as a practical joker—A keeper’s
gibbet—The great woods of Wiltshire—What is lacking
in them.

ce

HE groves were God’s first temples,” says
the poet; and viewed from the outside no
groves are so like the temples made with
hands, Christian or pagan, as the “clumps,” as they
are commonly called, growing on the chalk hills in
Sussex, Hampshire, Wilts, and Dorset. Nature’s
way is to grow her larger trees on the lower levels,
and it is doubtful that the downs have ever had a
forest growth other than the kind which we find on
them now, composed mainly of the lesser native trees
—hawthorn, blackthorn, holly, juniper, and yews of
no great size, mixed with furze, bramble, and wild
clematis. All these plants are perpetually springing
into existence everywhere on the downs, and are
persistently fed down and killed by the sheep; take
the sheep away from any down, and in a few years,
as I have seen, it becomes an almost continuous
thicket, and that, one imagines, must have been its
original condition. We must suppose that man in
early times, or during the Neolithic period when he
R 257

258 ADVENTURES AMONG BIRDS

had domestic animals and agriculture, found the
chalk hills a better place than the lowlands, covered
as they must then have been with a dense forest
growth, the habitation of wolves and other rapacious
beasts. On the hills where the thin soil produced
only a dwarfish tree vegetation, it was easier to make
a clearing and pasture for his cattle. No doubt it
was also easier for him to defend himself and his
possessions against wild beasts and savage human
enemies in such situations. The hills were without
water, but the discovery and invention of the dew-
pond, probably by some genius of the later Stone
Age, made the hill-people independent of natural
springs and rivers. In later times, when the country
was everywhere colonised and more settled, the hill-
people probably emigrated to the lower lands, where
the ground was better suited for cattle-grazing and
for growing crops. The hills were abandoned to the
shepherd and the hunter; and doubtless as the ages
went on they became more and more a sheep-walk;
for it must have been observed from early times that
the effect of the sheep on the land was to change its
character and to make it more and more suited to
the animal’s requirements. Thus, the very aspect of
the downs, as we know them, was first imparted and
is maintained in them by the sheep—the thousands
on thousands of busy close-nibbling mouths keeping
the grass and herbage close down to the ground, and
killing year by year every forest seedling. And how
wonderful they are-—that great sea of vast pale green
billowy hills, extending bare against the wide sky

THE TEMPLES OF THE HILLS 259

to the horizon, clothed with that elastic fragrant
turf which it is a joy to walk on, and has nothing
like it in the world!

It must have been in quite recent times, probably
during the last half of the eighteenth century, that
the idea first came into the mind of a landowner here
and there that a grove on the top of a high bare chalk
down would have a noble appearance, and form a
striking landmark for all the country round. The
result is our hill-top clumps: and one would have
imagined that the effect would be altogether bad;
for how could a tall dark grove on a hill in a country
of such an aspect, of smooth rounded pale-green
downs, be anything but inharmonious? Either it is
not so, or long custom has reconciled us to this orna-
ment invented by man, and has even made it pleasing
to the eye. Association comes in, too: I notice that
the clumps which please me best are those which
are most temple-like in their forms. Thus, a grove
of trees of various kinds growing in a dense mass,
as in the case of the famous Chanctonbury Ring on
the South Downs, gives me no pleasure at all: while
a grove of Scotch firs, the trunks sufficiently far apart
as to appear like pillars upholding the dark dense
foliage, has a singular attraction. In some instances
the effect on the hill itself of its crown of trees is to
give it the appearance of a vast mound artificially
raised by man on which to build or plant his temple.
This is most striking when, as at Badbury Rings, in
Dorset, the hill is round and low, with a grove of old,
very large trees. In this case the effect is heightened

260 ADVENTURES AMONG BIRDS

by the huge prehistoric earthworks, ring within
ring, enclosing the grove on the space inside. Indeed,
the sublimest of these temple-groves are not those
which stand on the highest hills; in many cases they
stand but a little above the surrounding level, as in
the case of Badbury Rings and of Hollywater Clump
in Wolmer Forest, where the soil is sand.

To my mind the best appearance presented by the
higher hill-top groves is on a hot, windless summer
day, during the phenomenon of “visible air,” or
“heat,” when the atmosphere near the surface appears
as a silvery mist, or as thinnest white and crystalline
flames, ascending, wavering, dancing, and producing
an illusion of motion in all distant solid objects,
such as houses, fences, trees, and cattle. If the sun
had greater power, this silvery flame-like appearance
would become more visible still and take the appear-
ance of water of a marvellous brilliancy, as of molten
silver, flowing over the earth, with cattle standing
knee-deep in it, and distant buildings and groves
rising like islands out of it. This effect of mirage is
occasionally visible in England in hot, dry summers,
but is very rare. It is on these burning silvery days,
when air and sunlight have a new magic, that I like
best to see the hill-top grove; when at a distance of
a mile or two the tall columnar trunks of the pines,
showing the light between, seem to have a wavering
motion, and, with the high dense roof of branches,
look absolutely black against the brilliant whiteness
of the air and the pale hot sky beyond.

The downland groves are, however, less to me in

THE TEMPLES OF THE HILLS 26:1

their esthetic aspect, and as features in the landscape,
than as haunts of wild life. It is indeed as small
islands of animal life that I view them, scattered over
the sea-like smooth green waste, vacant as the sea.
To others it may not be so—to the artist, for example,
in search of something to draw. We have each our
distinct interests, aims, trades, or what you like:
that which I seek adds nothing to, and takes nothing
from his picture, and is consequently negligible. We
cannot escape the reflex effect of our own little
vocations — our pre-occupations with one side of
things, one aspect of nature. Their life is to me their
beauty, or the chief element in it, without which
they would indeed be melancholy places. It refreshes
me more than the shade of the great leafy roof on a
burning day. On this account, because of the life
in them, I prefer the clumps on the lower hills. They
grow more luxuriantly, often with much undergrowth,
sometimes surrounded with dense thickets of thorn,
furze, and bramble. These are attractive spots to
wild birds, and when not guarded by a gamekeeper
form little refuges where even the shy persecuted
species may breed in comparative security. It is
with a sense of positive relief that I often turn my
back on some great wood or forest where one naturally
goes in quest of woodland species, even after many
disappointments, to spend a day, or many days,
with the feathered inhabitants of one of these
isolated groves.

The birds, too, may be better observed in these
places; they are less terrified at the appearance of

262 ADVENTURES AMONG BIRDS

the human form than in woods and forests where
the pheasant is preserved, and man, means (to the
bird’s mind) a gamekeeper with a gun in his hand.
For, in many cases, especially in Wiltshire, the
hill-groves are on land owned by the farmers them-
selves, who keep their own shootings and do not
employ a gamekeeper.

One day I was standing under a low oak tree at
the highest point in an immense wood, where the
sight could range for a long distance over the tree-
tops, when I was astonished at the sight of a carrion
crow flying low over the trees and coming straight
towards me. It was a wonderful thing to see in that
place where I had spent several days, and had seen
no crow and no bird of any kind banned by the
keepers. Yet this was one of the largest woods in
Wiltshire, in appearance an absolutely wild forest,
covering many miles without a village or house within
a mile of its borders on any side, and with no human
occupants except the four or five keepers who ranged
it to look after its millionaire owner’s pheasants.
The crow did not catch sight of me until within about
forty yards from the tree under which I stood, where-
upon, with a loud croak of terror, he turned instantly,
and dashed away at right-angles to his original course
at his utmost speed.

Leaving the great wood, I went a few miles away
to visit one of the large unprotected clumps, and
found there a family of four carrion crows — two
adults and two young; at my approach they flapped
heavily from the tree in which they were resting, and

THE TEMPLES OF THE HILLS 263

flew slowly to another about fifty yards away, and
sat there peering at me and uttering loud caws as if
protesting against the intrusion.

At another unprotected clump on a low down I
discovered a varied colony of birds—some breeding,
others with young out of the nest. It was a large
grove of old pine trees, almost shut in with a thick
growth of thorn and holly, mixed with bramble and
masses of wild clematis. It was full of the crooning
sound of turtle-doves, and in the high firs several
wood-pigeons had their nests. There were several
magpies and invariably on my coming to the spot
they would put in an appearance—quaint black-and-
white birds, sitting on the top boughs of the thorns,
always with their decorative tails behind them. A
pair of carrion crows were there too, but appeared
to have no nest or young. Better still it was to find
a family of long-eared owls—two adults and three
young, beginning to fend for themselves. Best of all
was a pair of sparrow-hawks with young in their
nest; for the sparrow-hawk is one of my prime
favourites, and the presence of these birds delighted
me even more than that of the owls.

It was evident that these hawks did not associate
my appearance with the quick sharp report of a gun
and the rattle of shot about them, with perhaps the
fiery sting of a pellet of lead in their flesh, for they
were exceedingly bold and vociferous whenever I ap-
proached the nesting-tree. I visited them on several
days for the pleasure of seeing and hearing them.
The female was very bold and handsome to look at.

264 ADVENTURES AMONG BIRDS

Sometimes she would perch above me in such a
position as to appear silhouetted against the blue,
intensely bright sky, looking inky-black on her black
branch. Then, flying to another branch where the
light would be on her and a mass of dark pine-needles
for a background, one could see the colouring of her
plumage. Seen through a powerful binocular, she
would appear as big as a goshawk, and as beautiful
as that noblest of our lost hawks in her pigeon-blue
wings and upper plumage, the white breast barred
with brown, thin yellow shanks and long black claws,
and the shining yellow eyes, exceedingly wild and
fierce. Presently her little mate would appear, carry-
ing a small bird in his claws, and begin darting wildly
about among the trees, screaming his loudest, but
would refuse to visit the nest. In the end my per-
sistence would tire them out; gradually the piercing
reiterated cries would grow less and less frequent,
and finally cease altogether. The female would fly
from tree to tree, coming nearer and still nearer to
the nest, until at last she would perch directly over
it and look down upon her young, and finally drop
upon them and disappear from sight. And by-and-by
the male, approaching in the same cautious way,
would at length fly to the nest and, without alighting,
just hovering a moment, drop his bird upon it, then
dash away and quit the grove. She would then refuse
to come off, even when I would strike loudly on
the tree with a stick; yet on my return on the
following day the whole performance would be
gone through again.

THE TEMPLES OF THE HILLS 265

Watching these birds from day to day with an
endless delight in their beauty and vigour, their
dashing flight, and shrill passionate cries of anger
and apprehension, I could not help thinking of all
the pleasure that hawks in general are to the lover
of wild life in countries where these birds are per-
mitted to exist, and, in a minor degree, even in this
tame England—this land of glorified poultry-farms.
There is no more fascinating spectacle in wild life
than the chase of its quarry by a swift-winged hawk;
and on this account I should be inclined to put
hawking above all other sports but for the feeling
which some of us can never wholly get away from,
that it is unworthy of us as rational and humane
beings, possessing unlimited power over all other ani-
mals, to take and train any wild rapacious creature
to hunt others to the death solely for the pleasure
of witnessing its prowess. No such disturbing feeling
can affect us in witnessing the contests of bird with
bird in a state of nature. Here pursuer and pursued
are but following their instincts and fulfilling their
lives, and we as neutrals are but spectators of their
magnificent aerial displays. Such sights are now
unhappily rare with us. At one period of my life
in a distant country they were common enough, and
sometimes witnessed every day for weeks at a stretch.
Here the noblest of our hawks are all but gone. The
peregrine, the most perfect of the falcons—perhaps,
as some naturalists think, the most perfect of the
entire feathered race—maintains a precarious exist-
ence on the boldest sea-cliffs, and as to the hobby,

266 ADVENTURES AMONG BIRDS

it is now nearly extinct. The courageous little merlin
does not range in southern England, and is very rare
even in its northernmost counties. The kestrel is
with us still, and it is beautiful to see him suspended
motionless in mid-air with swiftly vibrating wings
like a gigantic hover-fly; but he is nothing more than
a mouser and an insect-eater, a falcon that has lost
the noble courage of his tribe. The splendid powerful
goshawk, a veritable king among hawks, has long
been extinct; only his little cousin, the sparrow-
hawk, lives on in ever-diminishing numbers. But
although small and, as his name implies, a preyer
chiefly on little birds, he has the qualities of his noble
relation. In wooded places I am always on the look-
out for him in hopes of witnessing one of his dashing
raids on the feathered population. As a rule there is
little to see, for the sparrow-hawk usually takes his
quarry by surprise, rushing along the hedgerow, or
masked by trees, then bounding like a small hunting
leopard of the air on his victim and, if the stroke
has been missed, speeding on his way. Even if I do
not see this much—if I just catch a glimpse of the
blue figure speeding by, seen for a moment, then
vanishing among the trees—it is a pleasure to me, a
satisfaction to know that he still exists, this little
living link with the better vanished past, and my
day has not been wasted.

Here, on the open downs where the small birds
when feeding have no close refuge into which they
can quickly vanish at the sight of danger, he may
occasionally be watched chasing them as a dog on

THE TEMPLES OF THE HILLS 267

the ground chases a rabbit; but the best display is
when he goes after a flock of starlings. At no other
time does a company of these birds appear so like
a single organism composed of many separate bodies
governed by one will. Only when he is in the midst
of the crowd, if, in spite of their quick doublings, he
succeeds in getting there, do they instantly all fly
apart and are like the flying fragments of a violently
shattered mass; then, if he has not already made his
capture, he singles out one bird to pursue.

A still better spectacle is afforded by the fiery-
hearted little bird-hunter when, after the harvest,
he ranges over the fields; when the village sparrows,
mixed with finches of several species, are out on the
stubble, often in immense congregations covering
half a large field from end to end. On such occasions
they like to feed near a hedge and are thickest on the
ground at a distance of three or four seconds’ flight
from the thorny shelter. Suddenly the dreaded
enemy appears, topping the hedges at its far end, and
at the same instant the whole vast gathering, ex-
tending the entire length of the field, is up in the
air, their innumerable, swiftly fluttering, translucent
wings, which produce a loud humming sound, giving
them the appearance of a dense silvery-brown mist
springing up from the earth. In another instant
they are safe in the hedge and not a bird is visible.
In some instances the hawk is too intent on his
prey to hurry on to other fields hoping for better luck
next time. No, there are thousands here; he will
drive them out and have one! Then, heedless of

268 ADVENTURES AMONG BIRDS

your presence, he ranges up and down the hedge,
rising at intervals to a height of thirty or forty feet
and, pausing to hover a few moments like a kestrel,
dashes down as if to descend into the hedge to wrest
a sparrow from its perch, and when just touching
the surface of the thorny tangle the flight is arrested
and he skims on a few yards, to mount again and
repeat his feint. And at every downward dash a
simultaneous cry of terror is uttered by the small
birds—a strange sound, that cry of thousands extend-
ing the whole length of the hedge, yet like one cry!
If you then walk by the hedge-side and peer into it,
you will see the small birds crowded together on
branchlets and twigs as near the middle of the hedge
as they can get, each particular bird perched erect,
stiff and motionless, like a little wooden dummy bird,
refusing to stir even when you stand within arm’s
reach of him. For though they fear and fly from
the human form, the feeling is overmastered and
almost vanishes in their extreme terror of the sharp-
winged figure of the little feathered tyrant hovering
above them.

Undoubtedly it is a fine spectacle—one that lives
in the memory though less beautiful than that of
the peregrine or other high-flying hawk in its chase
and conquest of its quarry at a great height in the
air; but in this matter of hawks and their fascin-
ating exhibitions we have long come to the day
of small things.

Something remains to be said of the owls —or
rather of the long-eared owl, this being the only

THE TEMPLES OF THE HILLS = 269

species I have met with in the temples of the hills.
Strange as it may seem to readers who are not in-
timately acquainted with this bird, I was able to see
it even more clearly than the sparrow-hawk in the
full blaze of noonday. The binocular was not required.
There were five of them—two old and three young
birds—and it was their habit to spend the daylight
hours sitting in a bush just outside the grove. After
discovering their haunt I was able to find them on
most days, and one day had a rare spectacle when I
came upon the whole family, two in one bush and
three sitting close together in another. I stood for
some time, less than a dozen yards from these three,
as they sat side by side on a dead branch in the
hollow of a furze-bush, its spiny roof above them,
but the cavity on my side. I gazed at them, three
feathered wild cats, very richly coloured with the
sun shining full on them, their long black narrow
ears erect in astonishment, while they stared back
at me out of three pairs of round luminous orange-
yellow eyes. By-and-by, getting nervous at my
presence, they flung themselves out, and, flying to
a distance of twenty or thirty yards, settled down
in another bush.

I had another delightful experience with long-eared
owls at another of the downland groves about fifteen
miles distant from the last. Here, too, it was a family
——the parents and two young birds. I could not find
them in the day-time; but they were always out at
sunset, the young crying to be fed, the parents gliding
to and fro, but not yet leaving the shadow of the

270 ADVENTURES AMONG BIRDS

trees. I went at the same hour on several evenings
to watch them and experience pleasing little thrills.
I would station myself in the middle of the grove and
stand motionless against one of the tall pines, while
the two young birds would fly backwards and for-
wards from end to end of the grove, perching at
intervals to call in their catty voices, and then
resume their exercises. By-and-by a sudden puff
of air would fan my cheek or it would be slightly
brushed with feather-ends, and an owl would sweep
by. This trick they would repeat again and again,
always flying at my head from behind; and so
noiseless was the flight that I could never tell that
the bird was coming until it actually touched or
almost touched me in passing. These were indeed
the most ghost-like owls I had ever encountered;
and they had no fear of the human form, though it
evidently excited their curiosity and suspicion, and
no knowledge of man’s deadly power: for this grove,
too, stood on land owned by the person who farmed
it, and he was his own gamekeeper.

Thinking on my experience with these owls in an
unprotected clump in Wiltshire, it occurred to me
that owls of different species, where these birds are
not persecuted, are apt to indulge in this same
habit or trick, almost of the nature of a practical
joke, of flying at you from behind and dashing close
to your face to startle you. I remembered that in
my early years, in a distant land where that world-
ranging species, the short-eared owl, was common,

I had often been made to jump by this bird.

THE TEMPLES OF THE HILLS 471

It is sad to reflect that the few clumps which form
bird refuges such as the one described—small oases
of wild life in the midst of a district where all the
most interesting species are ruthlessly extirpated—
are never safe from the destroyer. A few years of
indifference or kindly toleration or love of birds on
the owner’s or tenant’s part may serve to people the
grove, but the shooting may be let any day to the
landlord or shooting-tenant of the adjoining property,
whereupon his gamekeeper will step in to make a
clean sweep of what he calls vermin.

Last summer I visited a hill-grove which was new
to me, about thirteen miles distant from the one
where I met with owls and sparrow-hawks and other
persecuted species; and as it was an exceptionally
large grove, surrounded by a growth of furze and
black and white thorn, and at a good distance from
any house, I hoped to find it a habitation of inter-
esting bird life. But there was nothing to see or hear
excepting a pair of yellowhammers, a few greenfinches
and tits, with two or three other feathered mites. It
was a strictly protected grove, as I eventually dis-
covered when I came on a keeper’s gibbet where the
pines were thickest. Here were many stoats, weasels,
and moles suspended to a low branch: crows and
rooks, a magpie, and two jays and eleven small hawks;
three of these were sparrow-hawks—one in full, the
others in immature, plumage—and eight kestrels.

This, judging from the condition of the corpses—
one or two newly killed, while the oldest were dried
up to bones and feathers—was probably the harvest

272 ADVENTURES AMONG BIRDS

of a year or more. The zealous keeper had no doubt
exhibited these trophies to the noble sportsman, his
master, who probably rejoiced at the sight, though
knowing that the kestrel is a protected species. This
grove, its central tree decorated after the manner
of a modern woman with wings and carcasses of birds
and heads and tails of little beasts, was like a small
transcript of any one of those vast woods and forests
in which I had spent so many days in this same
downland district. The curse and degradation were
on it, and from that time the sight of it was unpleasant,
even when so far removed as to appear nothing but
a blue cloud-like mound, no bigger than a man’s
hand, on the horizon.

There is something wanting in all these same great
woods I have spoken of which spoils them for me
and in some measure, perhaps, for those who have
any feeling for Nature’s wildness in them. It has
been to me like an oppression during my rambles,
year after year, in such woods as Savernake, Colling-
bourne, Longleat, Cranborne Chase, Fonthill, Great
Ridge Wood, Bentley and Groveley Woods — all
within or on the borders of the Wiltshire down country.
This feeling or sense of something wanting is stronger
still in districts where there are higher and rougher
hills, a larger landscape, and a wilder nature, as in
the Quantocks — in the great wooded slopes and
summits above Over Stowey, for example; the loss,
in fact, is everywhere in all woodland and incult
places, but I need not go away from these Wiltshire
woods already named. They are great enough, one

THE.TEMPLES OF THE HILLS 273

would imagine, to satisfy any person’s love of wildness
and solitude. Here you will find places in appearance
like a primitive forest, where the trees have grown
as they would for generations untouched by man’s
hand, and are interspersed with thorny thickets and
wide sunny spaces, stony and barren or bright with
flowers. Here, too, are groves of the most ancient
oaks in the land, grey giants that might have been
growing in the time of the Conquest, their immense
horizontal branches rough with growth of fern and
lichen; in the religious twilight of their shade you
might spend a long summer day without meeting a
human being or hearing any faintest sound of human
life. A boundless contiguity of shade such as the
sensitive poet desired, where he might spend his
solitary life and nevermore have his ears pained, his
soul made sick, with daily reports of oppression and
deceit and wrong and outrage.

To the natural man they have another call. Like
the ocean and the desert they revive a sense and
feeling of which we had been unconscious, but which
is always in us, in our very marrow; the sense which,
as Herbert Spencer has said, comes down to us from
our remote progenitors at a time when the principal
activities of the race were in woods and deserts.
Given the right conditions and it springs to renewed
life; and we know it is this which gives to life its
best savour, and not the thousand pleasures or dis-
tractions which civilised dwellers in towns have
invented as substitutes. Here we are away from them

—out of doors, and able to shake the dust of such
s

274 ADVENTURES AMONG BIRDS

artificialities from our souls. In such moods, in these
green shades, we are ready to echo every grateful
word ever spoken of those who for a thousand years
in a populous and industrial country, the workshop
of the world, have preserved for us so much of
Nature’s freshness. Doubtless they did it for their
own advantage and pleasure, but incidentally the
good was for all.

A young American naturalist, writing to me some
time ago, contrasted the state of things with regard
to the preservation of wild life in his and this country.
There, he said, the universal rage for destroying all
the noblest and most interesting species, and the
liberty possessed by every man and boy to go where
he likes and do what he likes in utter disregard of
penal laws, was everywhere producing a most de-
plorable effect. Whereas in this happier land, the
great entailed estates of our old county families and
aristocracy were like bulwarks to arrest the de-
vastating and vulgarising forces, and had served
to preserve our native fauna.

He spoke without sufficient knowledge, describing
a condition of things which existed formerly, even
down to about the thirties or forties of the nineteenth
century. Then a change came over the spirit of the
landowner’s dreams; a new fashion in sport had
arisen, and from that time onwards those who had
been, indirectly, the preservers of our country’s wild
life became its systematic destroyers. For the sake
of a big head of game, a big shoot in November, the
birds being mainly hand-reared semi-domestic phea-

THE TEMPLES OF THE HILLS 275

sants driven to the guns, they decreed the complete
extirpation of our noblest native species:

The birds, great Nature’s happy commoners,
That haunt in woods:

raven and buzzard, goshawk, kite, harrier-hawks,
and peregrine. Besides these, a score of species of
less size were also considered detrimental to the
interests of the noble poultry-killer. Nor is this all.
Incidentally the keepers, the men with guns in their
hands who patrol the woods, have become the sup-
pliers to the dealer and private collectors of every
rare and beautiful bird they can find and kill.

But I wish now to write only of the large species
named above. They are not very large—they might
almost be described as small compared with many
species in other lands—but they were the largest
known throughout the greatest portion of England;
they were birds that haunt in woods, and, above
all, they were soaring birds. Seen on high in placid
flight, circling and ascending, with the sunlight fall-
ing through the translucent feathers of their broad
wings and tail, they looked large indeed—large as
eagles and cranes. They were a feature in the land-
scape which made it seem vaster and the clouds
higher and the sky immeasurably further away.
They were something more: the sight of them and
the sound of their shrill reiterated cries completed
and intensified the effect of Nature’s wildness
and majesty.

It is the loss of these soaring species which spoils

276 ADVENTURES AMONG BIRDS

these great woods for me, for I am always sadly
conscious of it: miles on miles of wood, millions of
ancient noble trees, a haunt of little dicky-birds and
tame pheasants bred and fed for the autumn shoot.
Also the keeper laying his traps for little mousing
weasels, or patiently waiting in hiding among the
undergrowth to send a charge of shot through a rare
kestrel’s nest when the mother-bird comes back to
feed and warm her young.

CHAPTER XXVI

AUTUMN, IQI2

Wells-next-the-Sea—A great man’s reason for residing there—
The enviable chameleon—Black redstart—Antics of a
squirrel—The dreariness of desk-work—Observations on a
pair of late-nesting martins—Conflicting instincts—Swallows
observed in mid-winter—A curious story of nesting martins
and sparrows.

ELLS-NEXT-THE-SEA, as I have already

\) \ said in a chapter a long way back in this
volume, is one of the spots I love best to

frequent in the autumn, chiefly to see and hear the
wild geese that winter there in larger numbers than
at any other point on the coast. This season of 1912
I had another object in going thither; there remained
two or three weeks’ work to be done in order to
complete this book; and where, flying from London,
could one find a place more admirably suited for such
a purpose? A small, ancient, village-like town, set
in a low flat land next the sea, or separated from the
sea by a mile-wide marsh, grey in summer, but now
rust-brown in its autumnal colour. The fisher-folk
are poor, and their harvest consists mainly of shell-
fish, mussels, whelks, clams, and they also dig at
low water for sand-worms to be sold for bait. They
are, as I think I remarked before, like their feathered
fellow-creatures, the hooded crows; and indeed they

277

278 ADVENTURES AMONG BIRDS

resemble crows when seen, small and black, scattered
far out on the wide waste of sand. When the men
are away at sea and those noisy little animals, the
children, are shut up in school, you can imagine that
there is no longer any life in Wells; you would not
be in a quieter place on the wide brown marsh itself,
nor on the low grassy sand-hills faintly seen in the
distance, nor on the wide stretch of sand beyond,
where the men, crow-like, are seeking their subsistence.

To Wells I accordingly went on October 17, yet
was no sooner in this ideal spot than I began to think
it was the last place where I could do any work, since
even the noises and distractions of London would
have a less disturbing effect than that low murmur,
that familiar yet ever strange sound of the old old
sea, that came to me by day and night, and the
wild cries and calls of passing birds, especially the
cries of the geese.

It is related of a man who has a great reputation
in his day which is now ended, that he was once
taken to task by a friend for having settled himself
at Wells. You, his friend said, with your love of
mankind, your noble ideals, your many talents, and
especially your eloquence in addressing your fellow-
men—how can you endure to waste your years in
this dead-alive little town in a marsh?

The other answered that it was because Wells
was the only town in England where, sitting at ease
in his study, he could listen to the cries of wild geese.

To me, just a naturalist, these same cries were
even more than to that famous man: to sit still and

AUTUMN, 1912 279

do any work where I heard them was the difficulty.
This was I pulled two ways, and my state was that
of hing in, or between, “two minds.” My wish was
that these same two minds could have two bodies
with sets of senses complete, so that each might be
able to follow its own line. I envied the chameleon
just then—a strange creature which is said to change
its colour according to its surroundings. That,
however, is merely a physical condition, one which
it shares with certain other creatures without any
mind at all, or in which the mind is dormant, as, for
example, in some chrysalids. It is a minor mystery;
the big mystery of the chameleon, the pretty problem
for the students of animal psychology, is the divisi-
bility of its mind, the faculty of being two persons
in one body, each thinking and acting independently
of the other. Observe him in a domestic state, sitting
on a branch in a room, in appearance a deformed
lizard, or the skeleton of one, encased in a discoloured,
granulated skin, long dried to a parchment. The
most remarkable feature is the head, which reminds
one of a grotesque medizval carving in or on some
old church, of a toad-like or fish-like human creature,
with a countenance expressive of some ancient, for-
gotten kind of wisdom. He is absolutely motion-
less, dead or asleep one might imagine; but on a
closer scrutiny you discover that he is not only awake
and alive, but that he has two lives in him—in
other words, that the two hemispheres of his brain
are working separately, each occupied with its own
problem. It may be seen in his eyes—minute round

280 ADVENTURES AMONG BIRDS

lenses mounted on swivels, or small fleshy or rubber
processes, capable of being elevated or depressed and
pointed in this or that direction at will. They are
like the freely moving ears of a horse, but they do
not point one way, since each one, together with the
half-brain which governs it, is occupied with looking
at a different thing. You see, for instance, that one
of the pair is now aimed like a spy-glass at some
remote object, also that it is continually moving,
and you will presently discover that it is following
the erratic movements of a bluebottle wandering
about the room. This is not an idle amusement nor
mere mental curiosity on the chameleon’s part; he
knows that the fly is an indefatigable traveller and
investigator; that by-and-by, when he has finished
quartering the ceiling, running up and down the
walls and looking at the pictures, he will turn his
attention to the furniture, piece by piece, and eventu-
ally arrive at that very spot, that stand or table with
its counterfeit presentment of a branch, and upon
the branch the strange image of a monster, perhaps
a god, of stone or metal, dug up by some Flinders
Petrie in some desert city, where it has been lying
buried in sand these several thousand years. Truly
a curious and interesting object for an inquisitive
fly to look at! And just as a little tourist will place
himself in front of the Sphinx to survey its counten-
ance at a proper distance of forty or fifty yards, so
does the fly settle himself before the face of the
chameleon, at a distance of six or eight or ten inches.
That is not too far for the tongue, which is as long as

AUTUMN, trg12 281

the body: the eye on a swivel has never lost sight
of the blue wanderer; it is fixed on him even now;
the tongue follows like lightning, and lo, the fly has
vanished, and will buzz and look blue no more!

Meanwhile, the same chameleon, on the other side
of him, has fallen into a doze, or reverie, or is per-
chance philosophising, the eye on that side being
sunk into the skull. One could say that he is lying
comfortably muffled up at home, lapped in rosy
dreams, while his fellow-chameleon, the other half
of him, is abroad hunting, practising all his subtle
strategy to capture a shy volatile quarry. Yet at
any moment these two, so divided in mind and
indifferent to each other’s doings and thinkings, can
merge into one: they literally pull themselves to-
gether, and a single will takes command of the entire
body, from the gargoyle head to the prehensile tail.

I can laugh now at the plight I was in just through
not being made like a chameleon; but it wasn’t a
laughing matter when Conscience pointed sternly
to the writing-table and at the same time a persuasive
voice called to me from the door to come out, other-
wise I should miss something never again to be seen.
No hint as to what the wonderful thing was to
be, nor when nor where it was to be seen: all I
had to do was to be out all day, patiently waiting
and watching!

The wonder is that when, in spite of conscience, I
got away, I did witness some things which were
actually worth recording. Thus, one day while sitting
by the old sea-ruined coastguard station on the

282 ADVENTURES AMONG BIRDS

dunes, between the sea and the marsh, I noticed a
small, unfamiliar bird, robin-like in appearance, but
darker and without the red waistcoat, flitting in a
sprightly manner about the old crumbling walls.
By-and-by his flittings and little dashes after passing
flies brought him to a perch within five yards of me;
and sitting there, curiously eyeing me, drooping his
wings and flirting a broad tail, he stood revealed—
a black redstart! A happy experience: in all that
empty desolate place I could not have met with a
more engaging stranger, nor one more friendly. For
he is first cousin to our pretty firetail with a sweet
little summer song, only our redstart is a shy bird,
whereas this black redstart was tamer than any
robin. I took it that he was resting a day on the
dunes after his perilous flight over the North Sea,
and that he came from Holland, where he is common
and breeds fearlessly in and on the houses. That is
why he was so confident, also why he eyed me so
curiously, for he knew by the look of me that I was
not a Dutchman. More than that he did not know,
and he had no letter tied to his wing; nevertheless,
he had a greeting and a message for me from that
country and that people, who, among the nations
of the Continent, are most like the English in kind-
ness to animals as well as in some other things, but
are better than we are in their treatment of birds.
On another day I stole into the pine wood growing
on the sand-hills by the sea, and in the heart of the
wood came to a deep basin-like depression in the
sand, and there I seated myself on the rim or margin

AUTUMN, 1g12 283

among the long grey marram grass, with the dark
red pillars of the pines standing all about me. It was
marvellously still in that hidden place in the wood;
after sitting there for half an hour, listening and
watching, the thought came to me that I might stay
there half a day without seeing any living creature
or hearing any faintest sound of life. Yet before
another minute had passed something living flashed
into sight, the woodland creature that is most alive
—a beautiful red squirrel with an exceptionally big
bushy tail. He slided swiftly down a bole, and
straightway began leaping, pirouetting, and dashing
hither and thither about the floor of the basin, not
twenty yards from my feet. As I sat motionless he
did not see or did not heed me: he was alone in the
wood, and was like the solitary nightingale that asks
for no witness to his song, and played his glad, mad
game with his whole soul. Now with feet together
he arched his body like a stoat, then flung himself
out full length and dashed round in a circle, and as
he moved there was an undulating motion, as of
wave following wave along his back and tail, which
gave him a serpentine appearance. On coming to
a thick bed of pine needles, he all at once became
motionless and spread himself out on the ground and
looked like the flattened skin of a squirrel, with the
four paws visible at the corners. When he had
sufficiently enjoyed the sensation of pressing on the
pine needles with the under surface of his body, he
started up to continue his game, until he suddenly
caught sight of a large, yellowish-white agaric growing

284 ADVENTURES AMONG BIRDS

some yards away, and, dashing at it, he tore it
violently from the stalk with his two paws and began
devouring it as if mad with hunger, taking huge bites
and working his jaws like a chaff-cutter.

Sitting upright devouring his mushroom, he looked
like a quaint little red man eating a round piece of
bread-and-butter twice as broad as himself. Then
suddenly, after a few more bites, he dashed the
mushroom to the ground as if he hated the taste of
it, and scampering off out of the hollow, vanished
from sight among the trees.

With such things as these to be seen, the very
thought of work gave me a sensation of weariness and
disgust: to sit down to a pile of old note-books,
some of them more than a year old, patiently and
laboriously to sift out two or three observations
worth recording out of every hundred, seemed an
intolerable burden, and not worth the candle. Even
the sight of a black redstart (with greetings from
Holland) and the romps of a fantastic squirrel seemed
more to me a hundred times than the sights of a
year ago. To go back to such stuff was to leave living,
breathing, palpitating nature to finger bundles of
old faded photographs and muse on dusty memories.
Why then go back? Why indeed! Ah! how easy
to ask that question; how often we ask it and there
is no answer but the old one; because of the eternal
desire in us, which must have fretted even the hearts
of the men who dwelt in caves; to reveal, to testify,
to point out the path to a new enchanted realm
which we have discovered; to endeavour to convey

AUTUMN, 1912 285

to others some faint sense or suggestion of the wonder
and delight which may be found in nature.

We say—and I am here speaking of my own peculiar
people, the naturalists—that birds too, like ourselves,
may be pulled two ways, and that two conflicting
impulses may be the cause of one of the most pathetic
of Nature’s innumerable little annual tragedies.
This is when a pair of swallows are rearing a late
brood, and before the time comes for the young to
fly are themselves overtaken and borne away to the
south by the irresistible migratory instinct.

It happened that on the very day of my arrival at
Wells, October 17, I noticed a pair of martins still
feeding their young in a nest under the eaves above a
sweetstuff shop, within two or three doors of the
Wells post-office. Now I shall see for myself, I said,
resolving to keep an eye on them. There were no
other martins or swallows of any kind in Wells at that
date: a fortnight earlier I had witnessed the end of
the swallow migration, as I thought, on the South
Devon sea-coast. I saw them morning after morning
in numbers, travelling along the coast towards the
Isle of Wight, which is one of their great crossing-
places, until they had all gone.

I kept an eye on the martins, visiting them very
early every morning and two or three times later
during each day. The young, it could be seen when
they thrust their heads and almost half their bodies
out to receive the food their parents brought, were
fully grown and very clamorous.

“They will be out in a day or two,” I said

286 ADVENTURES AMONG BIRDS

confidently. The people of the house informed me that
this same nest had been occupied, off and on, through-
out the summer; and if we take it that eggs were
laid at the beginning of May, it must be assumed
that this pair of martins had been occupied almost
continuously with the breeding business for six
months, and were now rearing their third, or possibly
their fourth, brood. A long period when we consider
that they could not have had a worse season: bad
everywhere in England, it was exceptionally so on
the Norfolk coast, where the winds and cold were most
felt and the flooding rains in August were greatest.

As the young birds did not come out during the
two following days, I began to look for their abandon-
ment, whereupon the women of the house com-
passionately offered to take them in and feed them,
in the hope of keeping them alive until the return
of warm weather, when they would be liberated.
From that time onwards they and others in the town
who had begun to take an interest in the birds helped
me to keep a watch on the nest. Assuredly the young
would be abandoned and that very shortly; the
weather was rough and cold, food becoming scarcer
each day; and for a month or six weeks the impulse
to fly south, the “‘mighty breath, which in a powerful
language, felt not heard, instructs the fowls of heaven,”
must have been worrying the brains of those two
overworked little martins.

But again the expected did not happen; the parents
did not forsake their young, and on two occasions,
one on October 25, the other five days later, they

AUTUMN, 1912 287

tried their best to get the young out. They came to
the nest with flies a dozen times a minute, and instead
of delivering the food into the open mouths, they
would flutter a moment with beaks just out of reach,
then drop off to circle round and repeat the action.
All these enticing arts were of no avail; the young
had not the strength or spirit to launch themselves on
the air, otherwise they would have been saved.

On the following day, October 31, the weather was
exceptionally bad; it was cold, with a strong wind,
and rained heavily all day: the call of the young now
sounded feebler from the nest, and the eager little
black, flat heads and white throats were no longer
thrust out. Yet the old birds still laboured faithfully
to find them food, only on this last day they did not
go far in search of provender. They were too anxious,
or in some way conscious of the failing strength of
the young; they hawked after scarce flies up and
down the street, always near the nest, constantly
giving themselves that quick little shake by means
of which the swallow throws the rain off his feathers.
There was another noticeable change in them: at
intervals of about a quarter of an hour one or both
of the birds would fly into the nest and remain there
for a space of three or four minutes, doubtless to
warm the young. At all events, I don’t think it was
merely to rest themselves, as on previous days |
noticed that when they wanted to rest they would
fly into one of the empty martins’ nests close to
their own.

That last day came to an early end, as it began to

288 ADVENTURES AMONG BIRDS

get dark at four o’clock, and the old birds settled
down with their young for the night.

The following morning, although somewhat chilly,
was more like April than November, with a light
wind, a crystal clear sky, and a sunshine with a magic
in it to enliven the world and give renewed life even
to the perishing. The old birds had vanished and no
faintest sound came from the nest. I waited some
hours, then procured a ladder and took the nest down,
and found two full-grown dead young martins in it.
One had died that morning, probably at two or three
o’clock, before the turning of the tide of life; the
other looked as if it had died about two days before.

This is but one case and it happens to be the only
one of an exceptionally late brood which I have had
an opportunity of observing closely, yet to me it does
suggest the idea that we may be mistaken after all in
our belief that the migratory impulse or passion will
cause the swallow to forsake its late-hatched offspring,
leaving them to perish of starvation in the nest. More
observation is wanted, but the case described inclines
me to think that so long as the young continue alive
and able to emit their hunger cry, the parental
instinct in the old birds remains dominant and holds
the migratory impulse in check or in abeyance; that
only when the insistent cry ceases and the young
birds grow cold the release comes and the “mighty
breath” blows upon and bears them away south-
ward irresisting as a ball of thistledown carried
by the air.

I see that Dixon, in his Migration of Birds (1897),

AUTUMN, 1912 289

page 112, says that he knew of a case in which a pair
of barn swallows abandoned their young in the early
days of November when they were almost able to take
care of themselves, whether in or out of the nest he
does not say. Nor does he state that the case came
directly under his own observation; if the young were
in the nest it may be they were dead before the
parent birds set out on their journey. It is possible
that such cases do occur from time to time and have
been observed, yet they may be exceptional cases.
We know that a few swallows do linger on with us
into the depth of winter each year; that they become
torpid with cold, and that occasionally one does
survive until the following spring. These rare in-
stances gave rise to the belief that swallows hibernate
regularly, which was held by serious naturalists down
to the early nineteenth century: but we now know
that these cases of torpid birds are rare exceptions
to the rule that the swallow migrates each autumn
to Africa.

While I was keeping watch on the martins when
the fate of the young was still hanging in the balance,
there was a good deal of talk on the case among my
old fishermen and wild-fowling friends, and about
swallows generally. One man told me that last winter
(1911) he was at the neighbouring village of Warham,
one bright sunny day about the middle of December,
and saw five or six swallows at a pond there flying
about in a slow feeble manner over the water. They
perched frequently on a small bramble bush growing

by the pond and were so tame or stupefied by the
T

290 ADVENTURES AMONG BIRDS

cold that he actually attempted to take one in his
hand. He thought it was an extraordinary thing,
but there is no doubt that a few swallows are seen
every year up to mid-winter somewhere in England
although their appearance is not recorded; also that
these birds have been lying up in a torpid con-
dition until a bright warm day revived and brought
them out. Few of these stay-at-home swallows can
survive to the spring.

Another curious incident was related by another
man, a very old wild-fowler of the place. He said
that when he was a young man living in his home,
a small hamlet near Wroxham Broad, a number of
martins bred every year on his cottage. They thought
a great deal of their martins and were proud to have
them there, and every spring he used to put up a board
over the door to prevent the entrance from being
messed by the birds. One spring a pair of martins
made their nest just above the door and had no sooner
completed it than a pair of sparrows stepped in and
took possession and at once began to lay eggs. The
martins made no fight at all, but did not go away;
they started making a fresh nest as close up as they
could against the old one. The entrance to the new
nest was made to look the same way as in the first,
so that the back part was built up against the front
of the other. It was quickly made and when com-
pleted quite blocked up the entrance of the old nest.
The sparrows had disappeared; he wondered why
after taking a nest that didn’t belong to them they
had allowed themselves to be pushed out in this way.

AUTUMN, 1912 291

At the end of the season, after the departure of the
martins, he got up to remove the board, and the double
nest looked so curious he thought he would take this
down too and examine it. On breaking the closed
nest open he was astonished to find the hen sparrow
in it, a feathered skeleton still sitting on four eggs!

CHAPTER XXVII

WILD WINGS: A FAREWELL

An abundance of wild geese—Hooded crows—Their evening
amusements—A sociable mixed gathering—Herons at play
—A ringed dotterel’s fun—Gull and pewit—Kestrel harried
by starlings—Starlings flying in company with wild geese—
Behaviour of starling flocks—Wounded goose and redshanks
—An inquisitive crow—Evening return of the geese—
Migrant crows and fieldfares—Last sight of the wild geese.

Y anxious interest in the swallows did not

keep me from seeing and hearing the geese.

They had arrived as usual “in their thou-
sands”; the wild-fowlers said they had never seen
them in greater numbers than this autumn. One
reason for this was supposed to be the unusual
abundance of food on the farm-lands, where a great
deal of the corn had remained on the ground on
account of the floods in August and September. The
farmer’s loss was pure gain to the wild geese. The
birds shot during my stay were fat and their crops
full of corn; certainly they appeared happy; and
when they passed over the town with resounding
cackle and scream one could imagine they were
laughing in the sky: Ha! ha! ha! it is a jolly life
in spite of you wingless, wicked wild-fowlers, so
long as we remember when flying to and from the sea

to keep out of range of your hateful old guns! They
292

WILD WINGS: A FAREWELL 293

didn’t always remember, and a goose was a great
prize when one fell to the gun of one of these very
poor men; but when they sent me round a bird just
to see what a fine bird old So-and-so had got, and
“would I give him half a crown for it?” I could
only reply that it was indeed a fine bird, and I con-
gratulated my old friend on his luck, but I wasn’t
buying a goose. I can eat sheep and pig and some
other beasts, always excepting cow; also fowl, phea-
sant, and various other birds, wild and tame; but
I draw the line at wild geese. I would as soon eat
a lark, or a quail, or a nice plump young individual
of my own species as this wise and noble bird.

The cries of the geese going inland to their happy
feeding-grounds would come to me in my room before
I was up in the morning, and again the same exhil-
arating sound was heard in the evening just after
sunset, causing the women and children to run out
of their cottages to see and listen to the passing birds.
At that hour I was usually a mile or so out on the
marsh or by the sea to have a good view of the geese
as they came over. On some evenings they dis-
appointed me, but there were always other birds to
look at and enjoy, the chief among these being the
hooded crow. He was a few days later than usual
this year, but during the last ten or twelve days of
October came in steadily, arriving, as a rule, in the
morning, until he was as numerous as ever all along
the coast. The best time to see these birds is in the
evening, when they have been feeding all day on the
marshes, and are as full of small crabs and carrion

294 ADVENTURES AMONG BIRDS

cast up by the sea as the geese are of corn, and when
they have an hour before going to roost to spend
in play.

One evening I was greatly entertained by their
performance, when the tide was out, leaving a wide
stretch of mud at the mouth of the river or small
estuary which serves Wells as harbour; and here
some sixty or seventy birds had gathered to amuse
themselves before going to roost. Here would be a
bird looking for something to eat, and when he found
a small crab or other morsel he would make a great
to-do about it, and hold it up as a challenge to others;
then his next neighbour would set upon him and
there would be a sham fight, and the crab would be
captured and carried triumphantly away, only to
be used as a challenge to others. This was but one
of a dozen different forms of play they were indulging
in, and while this play on the ground went on, at
intervals of a few seconds a bird would shoot straight
up into the air to a height of eighteen or twenty feet,
then, turning over, tumble straight down to the ground
again. To drop vertically down seemed to be the aim
of every bird, but with a wind blowing they found
it a somewhat difficult feat, and would wriggle and
flutter and twist their wings about in various ways
to save themselves from being blown to one side.
At longer intervals a bird would shoot up to a height
of forty to sixty feet, going up in a much easier way
than the others, with a stronger flight and falling
more skilfully, almost like a stone. So great was the
difference between this display and that of the gener-

WILD WINGS: A FAREWELL 295

ality that these birds were like old practised hands
or professionals at the game, and the others mere
amateurs or beginners.

On describing what I had witnessed to an old
fisherman and fowler, he said, “I’ve watched them
playing like that many and many a time, and have
thought to myself, they’re just like a lot o’ children.”

I doubt if anyone who has observed birds in com-
pany closely, especially when they have come to-
gether, as in the case of the hooded crows, just for
recreation, has not occasionally had this same thought
—just like a lot of little children!

It is, as I remarked in the chapter on the marsh
warbler, a delightful experience to a field naturalist
to sit at ease, binocular in hand, at a proper distance
from a company of birds and watch them at their
little games. The right distance varies according to
the species and the nature of the ground; it should
always be outside the danger limit, so that if they
see the spectator they do not heed him and are
practically unconscious of his presence. Whatever
that distance may be, a nine to twelve prismatic glass
will bring them within a dozen yards of his vision.

This delight was mine almost every day at the
spots where the birds were accustomed to congregate
on the meadows and by the sea. I could watch them
by the hour and was never disappointed, even when
there was nothing particular to see, or at all events
nothing worth noting down. The more the species in
a gathering the greater the interest one takes in watch-
ing them, on account of the marked difference in

296 ADVENTURES AMONG BIRDS

disposition they exhibit; but, speaking of the bird-
life of the meadows and shore, they have this in
common, that they all appear to take a certain pleasure
in each other’s company. I notice, for instance, that
if a pair of pewits are in a meadow and a flock of
starlings appear, after wheeling about as if undecided
for a few moments, they almost invariably drop down
where the pewits are and feed in their company.
If rooks or fieldfares come they too join the others.
Even where there are only large birds on the spot,
geese or sheldrakes, for example, any small birds that
come to the place—starlings, thrushes, larks—will
alight among or alongside of them. They will appear
to know each other, and if no relations they are friends
and intimates— geese, ducks, rooks, daws, crows,
pewits, thrushes of all kinds, larks, pipits, and
wagtails; also curlews, redshanks and other small
shore birds during the intervals when they leave the
sea. On these meadows herons and gulls are also
included in the company. You cannot watch one of
these gatherings for long without witnessing many
little incidents that have nothing to do with the
business in hand—the search for small seeds hidden
on the surface and for grubs beneath it lying among
the fibrous roots of grass. It is an important matter,
and it takes a long time to get a satisfactory meal
when each morsel or half-mouthful has to be searched
for in a separate place; but it does not take up their
whole attention; there is always some sort of byplay
going on, encounters friendly or hostile between two
birds, mischievous pranks and ebullitions of fun.

WILD WINGS: A FAREWELL 297

The playful spirit is universal among them; even
the solemn gaunt heron, that stick of a bird, is capable
of it; I was delighted one day to witness three of
these birds that formed part of a big promiscuous
gathering all at once break out in a wild game
of romps. A heron at play differs from all
other birds in its awkward ungraceful motions, and
when running about appears hardly able to keep
its balance.

The heron’s moments of abandonment are rare and
he is rusty in consequence: the small shore birds
on the contrary relax often and are as easy and
graceful at play as any bird. One day when sitting
on Wells bank I had only two birds in sight, two
ringed dotterels, one quietly feeding on the mud-flat
directly beneath me, the second bird running along
the margin of the water forty or fifty yards away.
By-and-by this one rose and came flying to his com-
panion, but instead of alighting near him as I expected
him to do, he paused in the air and hovered for three
‘ or four seconds directly over him, at a height of a
couple of feet, then dropped plump down upon his
back, almost throwing him to the ground with the
impact, after which he folded his wings and stood
quietly as if nothing had happened. The other bird,
recovering from the sudden shock, threw himself into
a belligerent attitude, lowering his beak and aiming
it like a fighting ruff at his comrade, his whole plumage
raised and his wings and tail feathers open; but he
did not attempt to inflict any punishment; after all
that show of resentment at the insult he contented

298 ADVENTURES AMONG BIRDS

himself by pouring out a series of prolonged sharp
scolding notes. These ended, the two birds started
quietly feeding together.

In the promiscuous gatherings one cannot but
observe that although they all meet and mix in an
easy friendly manner there is yet a great difference in
their dispositions and in their ideas about fun, if it
be permissible to put it in that way. In some of the
most social species, small shore birds, starlings and
rooks, for instance, their games are mostly among
themselves and are quite harmless although there
is often a pretence of anger. That is part of the game,
Just as it is with kittens and with children. The gulls
mix but do not affiliate with the others and play no
tricks on their neighbours, like the crow, just for
mischief’s sake. They want something more sub-
stantial. They must have it out of someone, and it is®
usually the pewit. He, the gull, flies about in a
somewhat aimless way, then drops down among
them to rest on the turf or walks about curiously
inspecting the grass, perhaps wondering what the
mysterious sense or faculty of the rook and starling
is by means of which they know just which individual
grass among a hundred grasses contains a grub in its
roots—a fat morsel which may be unearthed by a
thrust of the beak. The grass tells him nothing and |
in the end he finds it more profitable to watch the
other probers at work. He sidles up in a casual manner
to the pewit, pretending all the time to be honestly
seeking for something himself, but watching the
other’s motions very keenly, to be ready at the

WILD WINGS: A FAREWELL 299

prime moment when a grub is being pulled out to
make a dash for it.

There was another bird who took no part at all
in the work and play of the others—a kestrel who
made the meadows his daily hunting-ground. What
he was finding I could not discover as I never saw
him lift a vole and it was too late for insects. Anyhow,
he was often there and the other birds took not the
slightest notice of him; even the smallest in the
company, the larks, pipits, and wagtails, knew him
for a harmless person. But one day while he was
flying about, hovering at intervals and dropping to
the earth, a flock of about fifty starlings came flying
to the meadow and after circling round as if just
going to alight they all at once appeared to change
their minds—or mind—and mounting up again until
they were about twenty yards above the kestrel,
began following his movements, and when he hovered
six or seven birds detached themselves from the flock
and dropped like stones upon his back. He struck
them angrily off and flying a little distance away
began searching again; but they followed and no
sooner did he hover than down again came half a
dozen starlings on to his back.

After this annoyance had been repeated five or
six times he flew away to another part of the meadow
and resumed his hunting there. Again the starlings
followed and repeated the former action each time he
hovered, until in anger and disgust he flew away out
of sight, while the starlings, their object gained,
dropped down to the meadow and started feeding.

300 ADVENTURES AMONG BIRDS

The action may have been inspired by a love of fun
or a spirit of mischief complicated with a sense of
irritation at the sight of a bird who was not of their
society, whose ways were not their ways-—a feeling
akin to that which occasionally prompts a person of
a primitive order of mind to heave half a brick at a
stranger. The feeling is quite common among birds,
only the heaving process is performed with such a
precision and so gracefully that it is a pleasure
to witness it.

In marked contrast with this spiteful behaviour
was another act of a flock of starlings I witnessed
at the same spot, showing the different feelings enter-
tained towards a stranger like the kestrel and a
comrade of the feeding-ground—a wild goose. A
small gaggle or company of a dozen or fourteen geese
came flying from the sea across the meadows on their
way inland to the feeding-ground, and at the same
time a flock of about a hundred starlings, travelling
at a much greater height than the geese, came flying
by, their course crossing that of the geese at right
angles. Just as the flocks crossed about thirty starlings
detached themselves from the flock and dropping
straight down joined the geese. They did not merely
place themselves alongside of the big birds; they
mixed and went away among them, accommodat-
ing their flight to that of the geese. Yet they must
have been uncomfortably placed among such big and
powerful birds, fanned by their wings and in some
peril of being struck with the long hard flight feathers.
With my binocular on the flock I watched them until

WILD WINGS: A FAREWELL 301

they gradually faded from sight in the sky, the
starlings still keeping with them.

What could have moved these thirty birds out of a
flock of a hundred to act in this way? Perhaps they
were “‘just like little children” and had said to each
other, “Come, let’s play at being geese and march
solemnly to the sound of screaming and cackling to
the distant farm-lands, where we’ll stuff our crops
with clover and spilt wheat; and while some of us
are feeding others will keep watch, so that no crafty
gunner, hiding his approach behind an old grazing
plough-horse, shall get within shot of us.”

One becomes so imbued with the notion of unity
of mind in a flock of starlings—the idea that the whole
crowd must act with and follow the leader, if leader
there be—that one always wants to know why there
is any divergence at all, as when a flock divides and
goes off in different directions. Thus, from a flock
proceeding steadily in a certain direction some of the
birds, half the flock it may be, will suddenly drop
down to settle on a tree-top, leaving the others to
go on; or in passing over a field where sheep are
grazing a certain number of the birds will come down
to feed among them. In the first case, the sight of
the tree-top below has probably suggested the need
for rest to a single bird; the impulse is instantly
acted on and a certain number of the birds are carried
away by the example and follow, while in the others
the original motive or impulse which sent them off
to travel to some more distant place remains un-

affected and they keep steadily on their way. In like

302 ADVENTURES AMONG BIRDS

manner, in the other case, the scene below tells
sharply on some one bird in the flock; hunger is
created by suggestion; the sight of feeding sheep
scattered about in the moist green earth is associated
in his starling mind with the act of satisfying his
want, and down to the sheep he accordingly goes
and carries some of the others with him.

The action of the starlings going off with the geese
may perhaps be accounted for in the same way. An
impulse due to an associate feeling caused those thirty
birds to break away from the flock. These starlings
were probably migrants from the north of Europe
and were intimate with geese: they had perhaps even
travelled with the geese over lands already whitened
with snow and over the sea; they had also probably
fed with the geese in green meadows and fields where
both birds find their food in abundance. The sight
of the flying geese became associated in their minds
with some such past experience and they were in-
stantly carried away by an impulse to join and fly
with them, but only some thirty of the flock, the
other seventy remaining unaffected or uninfected

by the example.

My best evening was on October 29, for at the
close of that day the sky cleared and the geese re-
turned, not in detachments, but all together a little
earlier than usual. I was out on the marsh towards
Blakeney, a mile and a half or so from Wells, when,
about half an hour before sunset, a solitary goose
came flying by me towards the sea, keeping only a

WILD WINGS: A FAREWELL 303

foot or two above the ground. It was a wounded bird,
shot somewhere on its feeding-ground, and, being
unable to keep with the flock, was travelling slowly
and painfully to the roosting-place on the sands.
When it had got about a couple of hundred yards
past me a few redshanks rose from the edge of the
creek and, after wheeling round once or twice, dropped
down again in the same place, and no sooner had they
alighted than the goose turned aside from his course
and, flying straight to them, pitched on the ground
at their side. That is just how a bird of social dis-
position will always act when forsaken by his fellows
and in distress: it will try to get with others, however
unlike its own species they may be—even a goose
with redshanks; and this, too, in a most dangerous
place for a goose to delay in, where gunners are
accustomed to hide in the creeks. It was evident
that he was ill at ease and troubled at my presence,
as after alighting he continued standing erect with
head towards me. There he remained with the red-
shanks for full fifteen minutes, but he had not been
more than two minutes on the spot before a passing
hooded crow dropped down close to and began walking
round him. The crow will not attack a wounded
goose, even when badly wounded, but he knows when
a bird is in trouble and he must satisfy his inquisitive
nature by looking closely at him to find out how bad
he really is. The goose, too, knows exactly what the
crow’s life and mind is, and no doubt despises him.
I watched them intently, and every time the crow
came within a couple of feet of him the goose bent

304 ADVENTURES AMONG BIRDS

down and shot out his snake-like head and neck at
him. If my binocular had been able to catch the
sound as well as the sight, it would have conveyed to
me, too, the angry snake-like hiss which accompanied
the threatening gesture. And each time this gesture
was made the crow hopped away a little space, only
to begin walking and hopping round the goose again
until he had satisfied his impudent curiosity, where-
upon he flew off towards his roosting-place.

Then, after a few minutes, from a great way off in
the sky came the sounds of approaching geese, and
the wounded bird turned his breast towards the land
and stood with head held high to listen to and see
his fellows returning uninjured with crops full of
corn, boisterous in their happiness, to the roosting-
place. The sound grew louder, and presently the
birds appeared, not in a compact body, but in three
single lines or skeins of immense length, while be-
tween these widely separated lines were many groups
or gaggles of a dozen to forty or fifty birds arranged
in phalanx form.

I had been witnessing this evening return of the
geese for a fortnight, but never, as now, united in one
vast flock, numbering at the least four thousand birds,
the skeins extending over the sky for a length of
about a third of a mile. Nor had the conditions ever
been so favourable; the evenings had been clouded
and it was often growing dark when they appeared.
On this occasion the heavens were without a cloud
or stain and the sun still above the horizon. I could
see it from the flat marsh like a great crimson globe

WILD WINGS: A FAREWELL 305

hanging just above the low, black roofs of Wells,
with the square church tower in the middle. The
whole vast aerial army streamed by directly over
me and over their wounded fellow below, still stand-
ing statuesque and conspicuous on the brown, level
marsh. In two or three minutes more the leading
birds were directly above the roosting-place on the
flat sands, and at this point they paused and remained
stationary in mid-air, or slowly circled round, still
keeping at the same height; and as others and still
others joined them, the whole formation was gradu-
ally broken up, skeins and phalanxes becoming merged
in one vast cloud of geese, circling round like a cloud
of gulls. Then the descent began, a few at a time
detaching themselves from the throng and sweeping
obliquely downwards, while others, singly or in small
parties, with half-closed wings appeared to hurl
themselves towards earth with extraordinary violence.
This marvellous wild-wing display continued for four
or five minutes before the entire multitude had come
to the ground. Altogether it had been the most
magnificent spectacle in wild-bird life I had ever
witnessed in England.

It was not until all were down and invisible, and
the tumult of the multitudinous cries had sunk to
silence, that the wounded bird, after some moments
of indecision, first taking a few steps onwards, then
returning to the side of the redshanks, as if reluc-
tant to part from those little unhelpful friends lest
he should find no others, finally set off walking

towards the sea.
U

306 ADVENTURES AMONG BIRDS

There were no gunners out on the shore at this
point just then and he would be able to reach the
flock in a little while, although he would not perhaps
be able to follow them to the farm-lands on the
morrow or ever again.

Rough and rainy days succeeded that rare evening
of a wild-wing display on a magnificent scale; then
followed yet another perfect November morning like
that on which the martins had abandoned their
stricken nest. A clear sky, a light that glorified that
brown marshy world, and a clear sharp air which
almost made one think that “miracles are not
ceased,’ since in breathing it in the shackles that
hold and weigh us down appear to drop off. On such
a morning it is only necessary for a man to mimic the
actions of a crane or stork by lifting his arms and
taking a couple of strides and a hop forward, to find
himself launched in space, rising to a vast height, on
a voyage of exploration to “heavens not his own and
worlds unknown before.” It is the nearest we can
get to the state of being a bird.

On that side where the large sun was coming up
the sky was all a pale amber-coloured flame, and on
it, seemingly at a great distance, appeared minute
black floating spots, which rapidly increased in size
and presently resolved themselves into a company of
hooded crows just arrived from their journey over
the North Sea. And no sooner were they gone journey-
ing inland in their slow-flapping laborious manner,
than other crows and yet more crows succeeded, in
twos and threes and half-dozens, and in scores and

WILD WINGS: A FAREWELL 307

more, an endless straggling procession of hoary
Scandinavian or “Danish” crows coming to winter
in England. And from time to time fieldfares, too,
appeared, travelling a little faster with an undulatory
flight, but keeping strictly to the crow-line; and
these too appeared to be fatigued and journeyed
silently, and there was no sound but the low swish
of their wings.

A morning and a bird life to rejoice the heart of
a field naturalist; yet this happiness was scarcely
mine before a contrary feeling supervened—the same
old ineffable sadness experienced on former occasions
on quitting some spot which had all unknown been
growing too dear to me. For no sooner am I conscious
of such an attachment—of this queer trick of the
vegetative nerves in throwing out countless invisible
filaments to fasten themselves like tendrils to every
object and “every grass,” or to root themselves in
the soil, than I am alarmed and make haste to sever
these inconvenient threads before they get too strong
for me, and take my final departure from that place.
For why should these fields, these houses and trees,
these cattle and sheep and birds, these men and
women and children, be more to me than others
anywhere in the land?

However, I made no desperate vow on this occa-
sion: the recollection of the wild geese prevented
me from saying a word which could never be unsaid.
I had planned to go that morning and bade a simple
good-bye: nevertheless my heart was heavy in me,

and it was perhaps a prophetic heart.
U2

308 ADVENTURES AMONG BIRDS

The black straggling procession of crows, with
occasional flocks of fieldfares, had not finished pass-
ing when the train carried me away towards Lynn,
skirting the green marshes or meadows sacred to the
wild geese. And here, before we came to the little
Holkham station, I had my last sight of them.
Looking out I spied a party of about a dozen Egyptian
geese, on a visit to their wild relations, from Holkham
Park close by, and as the train approached they
became alarmed and finally rose up with much
screaming and cackling and flew from us, showing
their strongly contrasted colours, black and red and
glistening white, to the best advantage. Now a very
little further on a flock of about eight hundred wild
geese were stationed. They were all standing with
heads raised to see the train pass within easy pistol
shot; yet in spite of all the noise and steam and
rushing motion, and of the outcry the semi-domestic
Egyptians had raised, and their flight, these wild
geese, the most persecuted and wariest birds in the
world, uttered no sound of alarm and made no
movement !

A better example of this bird’s intelligence could
not have been witnessed; nor—from the point of
view of those who dream of a more varied and nobler
wild-bird life than we have now been reduced to in
England—could there have been a more perfect
object lesson.

INDEX

ANATID# (the duck family), in-
stances of intelligence in the,
32

Argentine Ornithology, 53

Athelney, lake of, 194

Avalon, 182

Aviculture, 97

Avington in Hampshire, last
ravens at, 253

Axe Edge, source of rivers Wye,
Goyt, Dane, and Dove, 119;
dreary farms, 119; bird life,
IIg, 125-131; sheep and cows
on, 120-121; character of in-
habitants, 121 ; signs of spring,
122

Badbury Rings, pine grove and
earthworks, 259

Bicycle, soundlessness of, 151

Birds, books on, 2, 5; dis-
coverers of, 3; delight in,
6-10; great gatherings of,
31; destruction of, 36; help-
ing instinct in, 51-52, 76-79;
friendly spirit in, 62-64, 66,
70-76; social disposition in,
80; absence of large, in
Peak district, 129; in great
woods and forests in Eng-
land generally, 272-276; music
of, 139; pleasures of watching,
208-209, 295; charm of, 209;
omens, 237; window-panes
struck by, 238; beauty of
soaring, 275

Bittern, little, beauty of eggs,
194

Blackbird, a pheasant’s friend,
61-63; the one and only, 132;
capturing a young, 135; a
widely distributed type, 138;
early morning singing of,
147; nest oi, in a London
park, 159; human-like music,
183; C. A. Johns on song of,
183;.'-C. A; Witchell’s -re-
cords of songs, 184; genius
in a, 186; character of song,
187; in poetic literature, 188;
in early Irish poetry, 188

Blandford, 154

Blind man, meeting a, 151

Bulleid, Dr., lake village dis-
covered by, 192

Bullfinch, affectionate temper
of, 73

Bulrushes, sound of wind in, 193

Buxton, an impression of, 119

Cardinal, a caged, 12

Cerne and Cerne Abbas, 212

Chaffinch, singing of a, 145

Chameleon, problem of the,
279-281

Chanctonbury Ring, 259

Cheddar valley, 197

Chepstow, an impression of, 200

Cloud-burst, a, at Wareham 154

Clumps. See Hill-top groves

Cobbett, William, goldfinches
seen by, 215

399

310

Colorin de Filis, El, 221; trans-
lation of, 224-227

Cory, epitaph from Callimachus,
231

Cotton-grass, 192

Crested screamer, great gather-
ings of the, 34

Crossbills, flock of, 197

Crow, carrion, on hill-top grove
and in forest of a millionaire,
262

hooded, 27, 29; as food, 57;
scared by an owl, 60-61; a
killer of sick birds, 98; even-
ing pastimes of, 293-295; teas-
ing a wounded goose, 303;
immigration of, at Wells,
306

Cuckoo, abundance and habits
of, in Peak district, 125

Curlew, helping instinct in, 52;
love language and an aspect
of, 128

Dartford warbler. See Furze-
wren

Davies, Sir John, quoted, 205

Daw, a friendly, 72; at Salis-
bury Cathedral, 180

Dew-pond, invention of the, 258

Dixon, on swallows forsaking
their young, 288

Dogs, 69

Dotterel, ringed, playful spirit
of, 297

Downs, the, effect of pasturing
sheep on, 258

Drayton, Michael,
olbion of, 195

Duck, white, beauty of the,
105-108; an English queen’s
sobriquet, 115

Dutchman, love of birds of the,
282

the Poly-

ADVENTURES AMONG BIRDS

Echo, a curious, 58

England, beauty of spring in,
148; first sight of, 149

Evolution of Bird-Song, 184

Fawley, New Forest, a black-
bird at, 186-187

Fieldfares, immigration of, 307

Forbes, Stanhope, on portrait-
ure, 5

Fowler, W. Warde, on warbling
in birds, 134; marsh warbler’s
song described by, 205

Fox, a pet, 69

Friendship in birds, 70

Furze-wren, 167; elusiveness of,
168; girding note of, 170; a
colony, 171; song of, 172-174

Gamekeepers, destructiveness of,
86-90, 271

Garibaldi, death-bed incident,
10

Geese, wild, at Wells in Norfolk,
27-32; intelligent birds, 28;
great gatherings, 40; cries,
278; arrival of, 292; star-
lings associating with, 300;
evening return of the, 302;
tameness of, at Holkham, 308

Geikie, Dr. Cunninghame, 64

Geocichla, 138

Glastonbury, excavations and
restorations, 182

Goldcrest in a soldiers’ hospital,

Golden oriole, a breeding haunt
of the, 153

Golden plover, 129

Goldfinches in Dorset and Som-
erset, 214; numbers of, seen
by Cobbett, 215; increase of,
due to protective laws, 244

Goose, wild, a wounded, 302-304

INDEX

Goshawk, 266

Gospel Oak at Avington, 254

Grass, mental effect of, 103-105

Green colour of England, 148

Guanaco, a habit of the, 52

Guarani legends, 108

Gulls, black-headed, breeding
of, with terns, 33; lapwings
robbed by, 298

Ham Hill stone, 177

Hampshire village, 159

Harrogate, 141

Hawking, a fascinating sport,
2605

Hawks, pleasure of seeing, 265

Heckfield, epitaph at, 250

Helping instinct in a troupial,
76; in a blackbird, 77; ina
magpie, 78; in a lark, 78

Heron, playful spirit in, 297

Heronry, 87

Hill-top groves or “clumps,”
257; aspect of, on hot days,
260; wild life, 261

Hobby-hawk, 89

Holkham, 26; refuge of wild
geese at, 28, 32

Hollywater Clump, 260

Horses, friendships of, 67-68

Itchen Abbas, village of, 248
Ivy tree at Chepstow, 200

Jackdaw. See Daw
James, Prof. William, on im-
pressions, 106

Keats, ode to nightingale, 232

Kestrel, appearance of, 266;
destroyed by gamekeepers,
271, 276; teased by starlings,
299-300

311

Lake village at Glastonbury, 192

Lapwing, 30; robbed by gull,
298

spur-wing, singular action
of, 52-56

Leicester, Lord, birds protected
by, 32

Lincolnshire, Drayton’s account
of fens of, 194

Lydekker, Mr. Richard, 34

Martin, house, late breeding of
a pair, 285-288; ousted by
sparrows, 290

—w— sand, singular action of a,
49-50

Maxwell, Sir Herbert, bird-pro-
tection Act of, 243

Melendez, goldfinch poem by,
221

Meredith, George, on the lark’s
song, 173; nightingale’s song
described by, 232

Merula (blackbird), wide dis-
tribution of genus, 138

Meyer, Prof. Kuno, translations
of ancient Irish poetry, 188

Migration of Birds, Dixon’s, 288

Military starling, helping in-
stinct in, 76; chirping note,

D7,
Mirage in England, 260
Mocking-bird, Southey’s lines

on, 204; singing of the Pata-

gonian white-winged, 185, 205
Montacute House, 177-178
Montagu on the furze-wren, 172
Montagu’s harrier, 89
Moorhen, 160

Naturalist in La Plata, 34, 36,
40

Newton, Sir Isaac, belief con-
cerning migration, 231

312

Nightingale, a Yeovil, 178-181;
migration and distribution,
230-236, 240; myths and
poetry, 231-233; song, 232;
anecdote, 236-239; extermi-
nation in Germany, 242

Oldys, Mr. Henry, studies of
bird music by, 184

Owl, long-eared, in_ hill-top
grove, 268-270; habit of the,
270

Paget, Miss Rosalind, 7, 8

Parish clerk, 248

Partridge, friendship with horse
of, 79

Passenger pigeon, extirpation of
the, 39

Patagonian mocking-bird, song
of, 185, 205

Peak of Derbyshire, 118

Peregrine falcon, 265

Pewit. See Lapwing

Pheasant, and blackbird, 61;
a tame, 63-64; a sacred bird,
84-93

Phyllis and her goldfinch, prose
translation of Spanish poem
of, 224-227

Pipit, meadow, and cuckoo, 125

Pleydell-Bouverie, Mansel, 214

Plover, golden, 129

Poetic feeling in north and south
Britain, 180

Poetry, Spanish, freedom of, 222

Pollock, W. H., sensations in a
belfry described by, 199

Polyolbion, Drayton’s, 195

Poole, recreations of the people
at, 155-156

Procter, A. A., Child and the
Bird, 222-223

ADVENTURES AMONG BIRDS

Protection of Birds,
Society for the, 246
Psophia leucoptera. See Trum-

peter

Royal

Querquedula flavirostris, 73

Rail, water-, 193

Ravens, last of the Hampshire,
252

Redbreast, injured, fed by mag-
pie, 78; wailing note of, 137;
favoured by sentiment, 242;
young persecuted by, 256

Redshanks and wounded goose,
393

Redstart, a black, 282

Redwing, 95; song of the, 96;
not a cage bird, 97; beauty of,
IOI

Ring-ouzel, 130, 132-7

Robin. See Redbreast

Roman pavement at Itchen
Abbas, 251

Rural Rides, 215

Rusby, Dr., on the trumpeter,

47

Ruskin on the colouring of
pheasants, 92

Ryme Intrinseca, village of, 212,
216

Salisbury Cathedral, birds on,
179

Salt, Mr. Micah, a ‘Buxton
naturalist, 125, 126

Sandpiper, 129

Saunders, Howard, on the furze-
wren, 174

Sea birds, destruction of, 37-38

Sheep, in the Peak district, 120;
on the downs, 257, 258

Sherborne Abbey, the colour of,

177

INDEX

Silchester, birds’ bones in ash
pits at, 85

Sinclair, Sir John, nightingales
bred by, 241

Siskin, black-headed, a memory
of, 217-220

Southey, mocking - bird des-
cribed by, 204

Sparrow-hawk, small bird killed
by, 169; nesting in hill-top
grove, 263-264; hunting me-
thod of, 266-268

Sparrows driving out martins,
290

Spencer, Herbert, on love of
wildness in man, 273

Squirrel, hunting a, 254; eccen-
tric behaviour of a, 283

Starling mimicry, 207

Starlings teasing a kestrel, 299;
accompanying wild geese, 300;
unity in flock of, 301

Stuart-Wortley, A., on pheasant
shooting, 90

Swallow, habits of, 50; for-
saking their young, 285;
wintering in England, 289

Swan, friendship of, with a
trout, 80-81

Swift, a habit of the, 49

Swinburne, poetry of, 222

Teal anecdotes, 73-76

Terns, breeding-place, 33

Tilshead, village of, 71

Tinamou, spotted, love call of,
128

Tintern Abbey, birds breeding
on, 201

Tree-climbing contests, 254

Troupials (Icteridz), 9, 16, 76

313

Trumpeter, friendly disposition
of, 47

Vizcacha, a South American
rodent, 20

Wallace, Dr. A. R., 146

Walnut tree, a noble, 200

Walton, Izaak, on nightingale’s
song, 232

Warbler,marsh, colony, 201-203;
song and imitations, 204-208;
listening to the, 210-211

Wareham, St. Mary’s, 154

Water-squealer, 129

Wells-next-the-Sea, character
of, 25; a wood at, 57; on
the saltings at, 94; return
tO277

Whinchat, song of, 127; night-
singing, 146; marsh warbler’s
imitation of song of, 206

White, Gilbert, on the music of
field crickets, 140; on last
ravens, 253

Wild bird protection legislation,
37

Willow-wren, at Harrogate, 142;
song of, mimicked by marsh
warbler, 205, 206

Willughby on the nightingale,
243

Wimborne, church at, 154

Winscombe, village of, 197

Witchell, C. A., on bird music,
184

Wolf, a pet, 68

Yeovil, sand-martins at, 49;
nightingale at, 178
Yetminster, village of, 212

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