COLOURED FIGURES

OF THE

BIRDS OF THE BRITISH ISLANDS.

ISSUED BY

Penn LILFORD, F.Z.S, ETC.

PRESIDENT OF THE BRITISH ORNITHOLOGISTS’ UNION.
PREFACE.

LONDON:
R. H. PORTER, 7 PRINCES STREET, CAVENDISH SQUARE, W.

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Pa ERAGE.

Berne honoured by a request, from a quarter which
made compliance a duty as irresistible as it was
gratifying, that I should write a Preface to this work,
I feel I cannot do better than give some account of its
originator, who was for nearly forty-five years—though
with occasional breaks—one of my most constant, and,
I may add, most valued correspondents. Born in
Stanhope Street, Mayfair, on the 18th of March, 1833,
Tuomas Lirrteton Powys was the eldest son of
Thomas Atherton Powys, third Lord Lilford, and Mary
Elizabeth, only surviving daughter of Henry Richard
Fox, third Lord Holland, and Elizabeth Vassall his
wife—a couple sufficiently well known to all readers of
social or political history. On his father’s side I need
not trace his ancient ancestry further back than to Sir
Thomas Powys, who in 1686 was Solicitor-General to
James IJ., and in 1713 under Anne a Judge of the
Queen's Bench, an office from which he was removed
on the accession of the House of Hanover. He then
retired to Lilford in Northamptonshire, an estate which,
with its fine Hall (one of the best examples of Jacobean
a2

iV PREFACE.

architecture that this country can shew), he had bought
a few years before, and there ended his days in 1719.
At a very early age Mr. Powys manifested that
affection for animals which intensified as time went on,
and this shewed itself in the way usual among school-
boys, so that at Harrow, whither he was sent, he was
not only a keen collector of zoological ‘specimens, but
even kept a small menagerie, which (as he himself
told me) brought him more than once into trouble with
his masters. From Harrow was written his earliest
published note (Zoologist, page 2775), and there he
stayed until 1850, in which year he was placed with a
tutor at Geneva, with the result that he was the first
Englishman to give any information (op. c7t. page 2968)
as to the breeding of the Rose-coloured Starling, though,
from what we now know, the instances of which he was
told by the Curator of the Museum at that place were
certainly abnormal. Early in May 1851 he left
Switzerland, and was entered at Christchurch, where he
speedily established a larger menagerie, which a few
months later comprised examples of nearly a dozen
species of Birds of Prey, beside. other animals. He
continued contributing notes to ‘The Zoologist,’ and it
was one of these that, in 1852, led to our correspond-
ence, which, though slackening at times, was kept up
until his death. As became his youth, he was sanguine,
and, as became his nature, unsuspicious; it must there-
fore not be imputed as a fault to him, that then, and
even later, he accepted without hesitation much that

PREFACE. Vv

was told him as true but afterwards proved to be ficti-
tious. Indeed he, for many years, stoutly defended,
against my declared incredulity, the statement of a friend
who professed, with some circumstance, to have taken a
Shore-Lark on its nest near Exmouth *, and it was not
until toward the close of his life that he mournfully
owned that he had been deceived by his informant. I
record this incident not only because it was the be-
ginning of our intercourse, but because it was an early
instance of his characteristic fidelity to his friends.
During 1853 I had nearly a score of letters from him,
but though each shews his devotion to the field-study of
Bird and Beast, I am bound to say that not one contains
matter of general interest, for he usually wrote in haste,
and did not stay to describe his doings in Scilly, Wales,
or Ireland, all of which he visited for the purpose of
making personal acquaintance with their animals. In
the same year too he first met the late Edward Clough
Newcome, the best falconer of his day, whose example
was not lost upon Mr. Powys, for he subsequently
became a staunch member of the Old Hawking Club,
beside keeping a falconer and many Hawks of his own.
In 1854 he again passed some time in Ireland, but
soon after, on the outbreak of war with Russia, the
Militia was embodied, and he joined that of his county.
However a barrack-life, whether in Dublin or at

* So certain was he about it, that in 1853 my late brother
Edward went specially to the spot, where, it is needless to say, he
did not find any Shore-Larks ; but there were Rock-Pipits.

VI PREFACE.

Devonport, in which places he was chiefly quartered,
was hateful to him; and as leave of absence could be
often obtained, he availed himself of every opportunity
thereby afforded of visiting the wilder parts, and espe-
cially the coasts, of England, Wales, and Ireland. To
his regret circumstances hindered him from accom-
panying his regiment to the Mediterranean, whither it
was sent in 1855, and toward the end of that year he
gave up his commission.

In February 1856 I first met Mr. Powys, to the
equal gratification, I think I may say, of each of us, as
well as of our friend Mr. Newcome, then living at
Hockwold Hall, where we were guests together; and
in the summer of that year Mr. Powys was able to put
into execution the idea he had long cherished of an
extended yacht-voyage to Southern Europe. Embark-
ing with a friend * on the ‘ Claymore,’ they touched at
various ports on the coast of Spain, making some stay
in the Balearic Islands, and visited Corsica and Sardinia.
He wrote to me in October of that year from Cagliari,
giving a long list of the birds he had seen alive or dead
during the cruise. ‘They thence sailed for Sicily, but
encountering a violent gale of wind, in which the yacht
received some damage, they had to put into Malta for
repairs. As the execution of these needed some time,
Mr. Powys betook himself to Tunis, where he passed |
two months, enchanted with the zoological wealth of
the country and enjoying very fair sport. Thence he

* The Honourable Hercules Rowley.

PREFACE. Vil

proceeded to the Ionian Islands, reaching Corfu on
Christmas Day 1856, and there he stayed “off and on”
until July 1858, making frequent excursions for sport
or natural history to the opposite coast of Epirus or
ABitolia, going even so far to the northward as Monte-
negro. ‘The results of this prolonged residence in those
parts were communicated by him to ‘The Ibis’ for
1860—the establishment of which journal he cordially
approved, joining the British Ornithologists’ Union so
soon as he heard of its intended formation—and while
they shew with what earnestness he entered into his
pursuits, undeterred by bad weather, fatigue, or sickness,
the same series of papers reveals in many a passage that
delicate and admirable humour which so markedly
distinguished him.

Leaving the Ionian Islands he proceeded to the
Sardinian dominions, being very desirous of shooting
an Ibex; but herein his hopes were mortified, for on
reaching Savoy he found that but a short time before
the chase of that animal had been forbidden to all but
the King (Victor Emmanuel), and leave even to look at
one was not to be obtained. He consequently had to
content himself with Chamois, whose acquaintance he
had already made in Thessaly, and subsequently with
the Moufflon in Sardinia. However he was not mean-
while without compensation ; for, by the beginning of
1859, he had become engaged to marry Emma Elizabeth,
the very beautiful daughter of Mr. Robert William
Brandling, of Low Gosforth in Northumberland, to

Vili PREFACE.

whom he had long been attached, and returning to
England shortly after, their wedding was celebrated in
the following June.

The next twelve menths were passed quietly, if not
at home at least not in foreign travel; but in little
more than a year his hereditary enemy, the gout—
which had shewn itself even while he was a schoolboy
at Harrow—laid hold upon him, and confining him to
the house for a time incapacitated him from the enjoy-
ment of field-sports. Meanwhile the aviary at Lilford
continued to grow, and at the end of October, 1860, he
was able to write to me :—

“T have taken to hawking, not yet with any striking
result except allowing a fine Goshawk to escape.
The Zoologist will prcbably present its readers with—
‘On the keeper of Esq. of
Northamptonshire, shot a fine specimen of that rare
bird the Golden Eagle. Its tail is long, its eyes are
yellow. Mr. the well-known taxidermist of
pronounces it to be an adult male, efc. e¢e. etc.’—and
this will be my female Goshawk.”

Again at intervals he suffered from the same disease,
which was destined to mar the remainder of his life:
and a very severe attack supervening in the autumn of
1861, scon after the death of his father, when he suc-
ceeded to the family honours and estates, temporarily
disabled him from walking. Yet he was able to attend
the General Meeting of the British Ornithologists’
Union in London on the 11th of December, as well as
that of 1862, which was held at Cambridge on the 7th

PREFACE. 1X

of October, during the Annual Meeting of the British
Association for the Advancement of Science. The
few survivors of those who were present can hardly
forget the spirit with which he entered into the pro-
ceedings of the ‘Thorough’ dinner at the Red Lion
Hotel in this town, under the presidency of Professor
Huxley, with Professor Kingsley as Vice-Chairman. It
would be out of place here to enter into details; but
the dinner was to celebrate the victory won, after a
hard-fought struggle, by the adherents of the principle
of Evolution over their opponents, who had manfully
disputed what now proved to be an _ untenable
position.

At the meeting of the British Ornithologists’ Union
held in London on the 20th of May, 1864, Lord
Litrorp not only proposed that a New Series of
‘The Ibis’ should be begun in the following year, but
undertook, on its being continued in its existing form,
to defray the cost of a plate in each number—a promise
that was more than literally fulfilled for the rest of his
life; and to that journal for 1865 he contributed an
excellent sketch of the ornithology of Spain, as observed
by himself in two visits, the first (as before mentioned)
in 1856, and the second in the early spring in 1864,
which confirmed the favourable impression he had
already formed as to the country and all that belonged
to it. ‘To Englishmen Spanish Ornithology was a field
almost untrodden, and its fertility came to many as a
surprise ; yet on the former of these visits only a few

x PREFACE.

ports had been touched, and his notes on the latter refer
to little more than Andalusia and the neighbourhood of
Valencia, though these districts are among the richest
in the peninsula. Spain, as he subsequently wrote, had
been the subject of his youthful dreams by day and
night, and, after his previous agreeable experience, it
was only natural that he should renew his attempt to
become better acquainted with it—indeed it may be
truly said that, to the end of his days, his interest in
cosas de Espana, and especially its ornithology, never
slackened. Accordingly in the spring of 1865 he
returned thither, accompanied by Lady Lilford, and this
time obtained leave to carry on his observations in the
grounds of the Casa del Campo and of El Pardo—royal
domains near Madrid,—as well as subsequently at
Aranjuez and Sotomayor. Thence he proceeded to
San Ildefonso and Segovia; but his hereditary enemy
pursued him, and for a great part of the time he was
unable to walk. The admirable narrative of his doings
may be read, and always with delight, in ‘The Ibis’
for 1865 and 1866, and not a little contributed to
his election—by acclamation it may be said—to the
Presidency of the British Ornithologists’ Union, when,
on the 27th of March, 1867, it was resigned by Colonel
Drummond-Hay. |

It has seemed advisable to dwell on these earlier days
of Lord LitForp’s career, since they must be little
known to the ornithologists of the present time, and
in his efforts and example he was second to none in
obtaining for ‘The Ibis’ that high reputation which it

PREFACE. xl

so speedily acquired and has so long sustained. His
enthusiasm never flagged, as his frequent communications
in later years testify; but his subsequent cruises in the
Mediterranean Sea (including three more visits to his
beloved Spain between 1866 and 1875), which made
him familiar with almost all the parts of its coast and
islands that were interesting to the ornithologist, and
extended to the shores if not the interior of Cyprus,
produced fewer novelties—the discovery in April 1879
of the most westerly breeding-place of Audouin’s Gull
being perhaps the chief of them.

These cruises did not, however, occupy the whole of
his time. Each recurring shooting-season found him
in this country, exercising hospitality either in his
Northamptonshire home or in Scotland, where he for
several years hired one of the finest deer-forests ; and,
though often incapacitated by gout from taking to the
hills, he would listen with pleasure to his guests as they
recounted the varied events of the day’s work with gun,
rifle, or rod; while, whenever his own condition per-
mitted, he proved himself as “game” a stalker, and as
successful, as if he had been in possession of the full use
of his limbs.

With all this devotion to sport he never allowed it to
interfere with the duties to which he was called by his
position, and of those duties he had an exalted idea.
Though he had little taste for politics, he did not neglect
duly to appear in his place in Parliament, and it was
with satisfaction that he used to recall his successful
addition of “Owl” to the Schedule of Birds to be

Xil PREFACE.

_ protected by law in the Bill of 1880, which subsequently
passed into an Act, especially as he was put to no little
personal inconvenience by attending the House of Lords
at that particular time. With him the protection then
first accorded to Owls, a fact overlooked by many recent
writers or speakers on the subject, was no question of
sentiment only. He knew, and no one better, how
beneficial Owls are to the farmer and the gane-
preserver—though the latter will hardly ever admit it.
The course of life hitherto led had been only inter-
rupted occasionally by the malady to which he was
subject, but it was rudely broken in the autumn of 1882,
by the death, after a short illness, of his eldest son, who
had but recently attained his majority. This loss was
greatly taken to heart, and was followed within little
more than a year by a still heavier blow in the death of
Lady Lilford—a loss more felt now that he himself was
becoming a permanent invalid, some three or four acute
attacks of his insidious disease having begun to cripple
his hands and feet. In all this time and under all these
afflictions neither his kindliness nor his cheerfulness
forsook him. Both his letters and his conversation,
tinged as they were with grief, evinced his natural wit
and humour, brought perhaps into greater prominence
than before by their contrast with words, occasionally
let drop, that shewed how deeply his feelings had been
stirred. Yet there was no forced pleasantry, for a
man more free from affectation can scarcely have lived.
The real consolation was found when some time after

PREFACE. xili

he married a dear and intimate friend of his deceased
wife, Clementina, daughter of the late Mr. Baillie-
Hamilton, whose intense devotion to her husband for
the rest of his life can be only reverently recorded and
not recounted.

In his own county was organized a Natural History
Society, of which he was not only the President, but the
mainstay, and to its ‘Journal’ he began, in 1880, to
contribute a series of papers on the Birds of North-
amptonshire, which were finally republished, with many
additions, in two volumes under that title only a short
time before his death. The generosity with which he
supported almost every scheme that made for the pro-
gress of Zoology might have been called lavish had it
not been tempered by discretion. Enough to say that
on a good case being made out his pecuniary help was
always forthcoming, and never stinted in amount. But
often he did not wait for a case to be brought to his
notice, and of himself would find opportunity and the
man for it. A notable instance of this subsequently
happened in regard to the zoology of Cyprus, which he
commissioned Dr. Henry Guillemard to investigate, with
results well known to readers of ‘The Ibis.’

As before said, Lord Litrorp’s interest in all that
concerned Spain never relaxed, and next to his own
country his sympathies lay with that whose language he
loved to study and speak. He hailed with pleasure the
appearance in 1887 of the ‘Aves de Hspafia’ by Don
José Arévalo, published in the Memoirs of the Royal

X1V PREFACE.

Academy of Sciences of Madrid. Indeed he himself
had at one time planned a work on the subject, and
went so far as to have some plates executed for its
illustration, which (on finding that he was never likely
to carry out the idea) he gave to Colonel Irby, his
old friend and companion in many an expedition, that
they might embellish the second and revised edition of
his useful ‘Ornithology of the Straits of Gibraltar,’ in
which they were published in 1895.

Long before this time, however, the scheme of the
present work occurred to Lord Litrorp. He had,
hanging on his walls or stored in portfolios, a number
of pictures of Birds by various artists, the contemplation
of which always afforded him pleasure, and even relief
when racked by pain. ‘That pleasure he thought should
not be confined to himself, and he was willing to put it
into the power of other lovers of Birds to possess, at a
comparatively moderate cost to themselves, whatever
might be the expense to him, portraits of their favourites.
The help of Mr. Wolf, whose works he justly held
in the highest admiration, was unhappily no longer
available, but with the services of Mr. Keulemans he
thought that most people might be content. Accordingly
arrangements were made with that artist for a series
of drawings, and the first part of the work appeared
towards the end of the year 1885—the plates being
chromolithographed in Berlin. As the distance of that

city caused a good deal of inconvenience, trial was made

PREFACKH. XV

in several quarters to have them executed nearer home;
but the result was not on the whole satisfactory, so that
eventually recourse was again had for the most part to
- the Prussian capital, and certainly there is little fault to
be found with the work latterly turned out from Herr
Greve’s establishment. Gradually the artistic assist-
ance of Mr. Lodge, Mr. Neale, and Mr. Thorburn was
invoked, and the later portion of the work has been
illustrated wholly by a faithful reproduction of beautifully
finished pictures—hardly one of which is not a joy to
gaze on—by the accomplished gentleman last named.
As the plates were intended to be the main feature of
the work, the accompanying letterpress was at first of
the briefest. By degrees, however, the natural impulse
to dwell upon the interesting subjects depicted grew
irresistible, and in some instances particulars of the
several species figured were given at considerable length,
and generally from the writer’s own experience.

Ever since Lilford came into his possession, its
owner’s love of live animals kept on developing itself.
The stable-yard and adjoining courts and outhouses of
the old Hall were, one after another, brought into
requisition, and made to accommodate a vast assemblage
of beasts, birds, and reptiles, especial care being taken
to adapt their several quarters to the comfort of the
inhabitants. This consideration, too often neglected by
those who have the control of vévaria, was constantly
borne in mind by Richard Cosgrave, a faithful and assi-
duous attendant, whose morning report on the condition

Xvl1 PREFACE.

of his charges was daily expected by his master. Place
was found, though at some distance from the house,
for the erection of large and commodious aviaries, the
tenants of which frequently testified to the suitability
of their lodging by matrimonial alliances, and possibly
there have been few establishments of the kind in which
the captives have to such an extent been tempted to
solace their imprisonment by indulging in the tender
passion. After a time, too, a large piece of water in
the park, with a wide border of shrubbery and turf, was
securely fenced in, and in this enclosure was maintained,
safe from the depredations of the well-known foxes of
Northamptonshire, one of the finest collections of living
Water-fowl—and especially of the Crane-family—that
has ever been formed. But this was not all: round
the house might be seen no small number of Birds
enjoying almost absolute freedom, from the mighty
Lammergeyer to the Little Owl, dear to Pallas Athena,
of which last several pairs nested in the hollow trees of
the gardens and park. Indoors were a few especial
favourites, of constitution too delicate to be exposed to
the weather, and among them the Zorz/o, whose deep
note in the silent hours of the night would surprise the
unwary visitor, who had not thought the somewhat
meek-looking “ Button-Quail ” capable of uttermg such
a terrible sound. Of late years the aviaries at Lilford,
with its beautiful gardens, became an object of great
public attraction, and access to them being readily
given, on at least one day in the week, the population of

PREFACE. XVil

the neighbouring towns and villages availed itself largely
of this privilege—a privilege that year by year, through
the increase of his bodily infirmities, the owner of all
became less and less capable of enjoying. Yet when-
ever, and as often as, he could, he would be drawn in
his wheeled chair to one after the other of the cages or
pens, taking the closest interest in the individual
history of each denizen, and shewing that personal
knowledge of each that only belongs to those who have
a natural love of living animals.

In the earlier years of his presiding over the British
Ornithologists’ Union, and when that body was com-
paratively small in number, net only was Lord Litrorp
the friend of almost each member, but all were welcome
at. “The Den,” as he termed some rooms he occupied
in London, and especially on the evenings of the Scientific
Meetings of the Zoological Society, when most of the
ornithologists present would adjourn to No. 6 Tenterden
Street, and there talk over their achievements and
their prospects, and generally cultivate one another’s
friendship. That these gatherings greatly promoted
the harmonious feeling which then prevailed among
British ornithologists is unquestionable, and their dis-
continuance, owing chiefly to his inability to be present,
was much to be regretted. For several years he was
compelled to pass the winter at Bournemouth, and after
that he was never able to leave Lilford; but wherever
he was he exhibited the same patience under his afflic-
tion and the same kindly consideration for his friends

b

TAT

XVIll PREFACE.

and all about him. In 1894 the marriage of his elder .
surviving son, John, the present Lord Lilford, gave him
great pleasure, which was increased in due time by the
birth of a grandson. During the spring of 1896 he
had several repeated attacks of his old malady, though
none of uncommon severity; but on the 17th of June,
in that year, an unexpected collapse closed the useful
and blameless life of which this is a very imperfect
sketch. |

Though so long suffering from a painful hereditary
disease, he had the compensation of a genial hereditary
disposition. On the one side he was endowed with
social charms like those which won for his mother’s
great-uncle, Charles James Fox, the love of so many
friends; while on the other side to him clearly de-
scended the characteristic, expressed by the pen of
Matthew Prior, and still to be read on the monument
of his paternal ancestor (the first Sir Thomas Powys
of Lilford) in the transept of Thorpe Achurch, of being
‘possessed by a natural happiness.”

Cambridge, A.N.
Christmas 1897.