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BIRD LIFE THROUGHOUT THE YEAR.

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KINGFISHERS AND NEST IN RIVER BANK.
From case in British Museum, South Kensington.

F

BIRD LIFE.

THROUGHOUT THE YEAR

BY

JOHN H. SALTER, D.Sc.

ILLUSTRATIONS BY OLIVER G. PIKE,
W. BICKERTON, J. T. NEWMAN, HERBERT LAZENBY
ALSO

COLOUR PLATES OF NESTING PLACES AT THE
BRITISH MUSEUM, SOUTH KENSINGTON

LONDON :
HEADLEY BROTHERS
BISHOPSGATE, E.C.

HEADLEY BROTHERS,

PRINTERS,

BISHOPSGATE, E.C.; AND ASHFORD, KENT

Contents.

PREFACE - - - - - - - - - - 9
BIRD LIFE IN JANUARY - - - - 17
HARD TIMES - - - - - - - 26
CALENDAR - - - - - - 35
BIRD LIFE IN FEBRUARY - - - 39
MERE AND FEN - - - - - 48
CALENDAR - - - - 56
BIRD LIFE IN MARCH - - - - 59
THE MONTH OF AWAKENING) - - - - 68
CALENDAR - - - - - - - 74
BIRD LIFE IN APRIL - - - - - - 77
THE SUMMER MIGRANTS - - - - - 85
CALENDAR |
BIRD LIFE IN MAY - - - - - - - 97
MAY ON THE MOORS - - - - 106
CALENDAR - - - - - - TI2
BIRD LIFE IN JUNE ote - - 117
THE LEAFY MONTH - - - - 126
CALENDAR - - - - - - - 133
BIRD LIFE IN JULY - - - - 1397
SEA-FOWL HAUNTS - - - - - - 145

CALENDAR = ss = - - = 152

6 CONTENTS.

PAGE

BIRD LIFE IN AUGUST - - - - - - 57
MOUNTAIN AND MOOR - - - - - 166
CALENDAR - - - = - “ = - 173

BIRD LIFE IN SEPTEMBER - - ‘-- 197
THE SACRIFICE TO GAME - - - - - 185
CALENDAR - - - - - - 192

BIRD LIFE IN OCTOBER~ - - 197
SEED-TIME AND HARVEST - - 206
CALENDAR - - - - 213

BIRD LIFE IN NOVEMBER - - 217
THE HOME OF A NATURALIST 226
CALENDAR - - - - 233

BIRD LIFE IN DECEMBER 237
WILD FOWL ON THE COAST - - - - 246
CALENDAR - - - S 253

INDEX - - - : - = 284

List of Illustrations.

PAGE

KINGFISHERS AND THEIR NEST IN RIVER Banx (from case in

British Museum, South Kensington) Frontispiece
BIRDS ATTRACTED BY COCO-NUTS 32
LITTLE GREBE ON NEST - - 48
Rosin’s Nest IN KETTLE . 64
PEEWIT AND HER NEST 68
KENTISH PLOVERS AND THEIR NESTING-PLACE (from case in

British Museum, South Kensington) - 77
LONG-TAILED Tits aND Nests (from case in British Museum,

South Kensington) 80
BULLFINCH ON NEST 97

NEsT oF CHAFFINCH - - - 100

PEREGRINE FaLcoN AND YounG (from case in British Museum,

South Kensington) - 108
NEsT OF GRASSHOPPER WARBLER 112
Linnet’s Nest in RosE Busy 120
REED WARBLER FEEDING YOUNG CUCKOO - - 128
Two yvounGc Barn OwLs - - 132

Youne NiGHTJAaRs

8 LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS.

Srock Doves anp Nest (from case in British Museum, South
Kensington) - - - - *

Purrins FEEDING THEIR YounNG (from case in British Museum,
South Kensington) - -

Pizp WacrTaits (from casein British Museum, South Kensington)

BLACK-THROATED DIVER -

A Broop oF vouNG KESTRELS -

GrouP OF BLACK-HEADED GULLS

A SittInc WoopcocKk

HERONS AND WILD Ducks

PAGE

144

148
160
180

188
208
224

240

Preface.

TuHIs work originated in the idea that, amongst the
thousand-and-one books upon British birds, there
might be room for yet another which should treat of
their habits and mode of life as influenced by the
varying seasons of the year. For each change—of
strengthening light, increasing temperature and
lengthening days, or the converse in the second half
of the year—marks the epoch of some accompanying
event in the bird-world so closely associated with it
in the mind of the naturalist “‘ who loves to lie i’ the
sun” that he cannot imagine the one without the other.
What would the first genial day in February be without
the first soaring skylark, or October’s roaring gale with-
out the fieldfares and redwings which drift overhead
with the flying leaves ?

In Southern France, where an earlier spring than
ours treads on the heels of a winter which has passed
with scarcely a hint of damp and chill, we are conscious
of something wanting. The shower is past, and we
listen, for what ? On reflection we know what the ear
expects—the song of the thrush. Alas, the French-
man knows him better and appreciates him more
in the form of grive réti than as the full-throated
chorister who pipes the onward march of spring. For,
spite of bird-catchers, idle hedge-poppers and larks
netted by the thousand for the table, birds meet on the
whole with a fairer and more sympathetic treatment
in this country than they do across the Channel. A

9

Io PREFACE

large amount of amateur interest in natural history is
afloat, as may be gleaned from casual notes in every
newspaper. The early arrival of the cuckoo is noted
by some more eagerly than the latest. news from the
East. Smith, who has found a robins’ nest, with eggs,
in his summer arbour, as he goes up by the early train
triumphs openly over Jones, who can only report a
blackbird building in his garden-hedge. Nor is our
resentment over-deep when a smoky chimney is
accounted for by the jackdaw’s playful habit of filling
it with sticks, or when the flooding of an attic is
traced to a sparrow’s penchant for nesting in the
receiver of the rain-water pipe. For our familiar
birds we have the feeling which springs from the
inherited association of many generations. To take
an instance—for how many centuries has the beauty
of the hedge-sparrow’s eggs appealed to the careless
heart of boyhood ? Happily in Britain none of our
favourites are in the least danger of extinction; a
state of equilibrium has been reached or nearly so,
whereas in newly-settled countries many species
disappear or retreat before the spread of cultivation.
There is no corner of England in which one need be
wholly out of touch with the birds, for, if food and
shelter are to be found, they have not the least objection
to the close neighbourhood of bricks and mortar. We
do not refer to such notable bird sanctuaries as college
lawns and “backs,” numerous and varied as are the
feathered tenants of these haunts of ancient peace.
But close to the din and tumult of cities, the hum and
clang of machinery, Nature still has her outposts and
birds find a home. With what tenacity they cling to
their time-honoured haunts the case of the Gray’s Inn
rooks serves to show. From the dusty and smoke-
grimed trees of the city square, the Chaffinch rattles out

PREFACE II

his challenge and the Great-tit whets his saw, or with
his brisk “ vitz-ski, vitz-ski,” calls to an acquaintance,
apparently of Polish nationality. The brook is trans-
formed into an inky drain, foul with the smell of
bleach-works, but Whitethroat and Sedge-Warbler still
nest amongst the briars and brambles which overhang it.
The quiet field-pond in the hollow becomes the rubbish-
tip of neighbouring back-yards, but, as long as it has
its fringe of willow and a few tufts of sedge and rushes,
the Reed Bunting still makes it his home. Upon the
first occasion when we listened to the note of the Quail,
its voice came from a patch of rye-grass not two miles
distant from Manchester City Hall. No farther from
the same centre, but in another direction, the Cuckoo
paid visits to surburban villadom and, sitting with open
window on quiet nights, one might even hear a distant
Corncrake. Migrants, such as the Willow Wren,
Spotted Flycatcher, and even a pair of Lesser White-
throats, returned each spring, undeterred by smoke-
darkened skies and an atmosphere which soon robbed
the young foliage of its freshness. In the suburbs
birds are in fact less subject to the attacks of their
natural enemies, such as hawks and weasels, than
is the case in the country, though it is doubtful whether
the advantage is not more than atoned for by the risk
which they run from the all-pervading cat. The artful
feline has been seen to stroll down the garden daily
to inspect the progress of a nestful of young black-
birds, postponing attack until they had reached a
reasonable size, while another brought the callow
fledglings from a thrushes’ nest and deposited them
unharmed upon the drawing-room carpet. To the
fact that most city parks possess a sheet of ornamental
water we have owed more than. once the delighted
recognition of a vanishing streak of azure-blue as a

I2 PREFACE

Kingfisher, who, more venturesome than his fellows,
has‘ followed up the stream by which the lake finds
outlet. Few would suspect into what close proximity
to industrial centres the Heron's fishing excursions
will sometimes lead him in the grey of early morning.
Meadow Pipits, Skylarks, and Yellow Wagtails delight
in the short grass of suburban football-fields and the
well-kept sward of cricket-grounds. The invariable
occurrence of the Magpie and Carrion Crow in the
immediate vicinity of large towns is no doubt accounted
for by the absence of theiy natural enemy, the game-
keeper. A Birmingham naturalist stated some time
since, that crow, kestrel, and green-woodpecker all
nest within the borough boundaries, while in some
well-wooded private grounds within two miles of the
heart of the midland metropolis we are told that
eighty-six species of birds have been noted, and that
thirty-six have bred. This is a truly wonderful record,
only to be accounted for by the fact that there is here
direct communication with open country, and that for
years a family of naturalists has devoted to it the
keenest observation. To this bird-sanctuary come
from time to time the three woodpeckers, the king-
fisher, the common-sandpiper, the barn and tawny
owl, even the woodcock and partridge, while the list
of those which have nested includes the jay, haw-
finch, stock and turtle doves, and quite a number of
the summer migrants. The reed-warbler, in default
of reeds, has been known to place its nest in a clump of
fern or at the top of a tall arbor-vite, and the chiff-
chaff, perhaps with a view to cats, has nested fully
five feet from the ground.

The Londoner is no less well situated, for he has the
parks, where Wood Pigeons, in conscious enjoyment
of the pax britannica, have so far forgotten their

PREFACE 13

inherent shyness as to take food from the hand, and the
lakes, where Moorhens and Dabchicks are as much at
home as the pinioned waterfowl with which they
fraternise. The northern suburbs may have changed
for the worse, but it is not so long since we could hear
half-a-dozen Nightingales in full song and as many
Blackcaps any spring morning at Highgate, and could
there meet with birds so little likely to court obser-
vation as the Bullfinch and Hawfinch, while the
notes of Nuthatch and Woodpecker came from private
grounds which had retained some well-grown timber,
and at dusk the Nightjar droned from the Bishop’s
Wood. The same neighbourhood recalls our first
acquaintance with the quiet, seldom-heard song of
the Butcher-bird, and a stroll over Hampstead Heath,
of blessed memory, furnished a list of birds which would
have done credit to a country ramble. Does the moor-
hen still haunt the Hampstead ponds,—scene of Mr.
Pickwick’s researches into the theory of tittlebats,—and
does the sand-martin still burrow near by? With
what joy we fled to those oases from the vast desert of
bricks and mortar.

To such length have we been led by the desire to
show that nowhere in our favoured land need the
naturalist find his occupation gone. Hopeful, too, is
the growing enlightenment of the youthful mind due
to the inclusion of nature-study in the school-curricu-
lum, so that no longer need we fear such errors of
identification as that vouched for by a friend of ours,
who, passing two small boys, who were leaning over a
gate watching the excited evolutions of a pair of lap-
wings in the field beyond, heard one of them asseverate,
“T tell you they ave tom-tits.” Closer knowledge and
awakened interest will even prompt the village urchin
to a better treatment of birds than has been the case in

14 PREFACE

the past though, while human nature remains un-
changed, it will never entirely cure him of the desire to
make prize of their eggs.

The idea of a Nature Calendar dates from the days of
good old Gilbert White and, as a helpful aid to memory,
it can scarcely be omitted. Many such have been
published, but are often misleading, inasmuch as they
give the earliest date for each occurrence. The writer,
from his own notes of the past thirty-five years, aims
at giving an average date. It is evident that as
regards nesting and the appearance of the migrants,
there must be a considerable difference between
Sussex or Hampshire and Northumberland, so that the
lists should be approximately correct for a Midland
district. The date given when a bird “nests” is
that of the laying of the first egg. .

Bird Life in January.

Bird Life in January.

THE first day of the year has come, looming large upon
the horizon of all lovers of the outdoor life. As we
sally forth, with the year some eight or nine hours
old, breathing a fresh atmosphere born of hope and
expectancy, yesterday seems far away. For the turn
of the tide has come at last and matters in the great
world of nature arenow upon the up-grade. Lengthen-
ing days may bring strengthening cold, for winter has
yet to show his hand, but the hazel-catkins, soon to
dangle loosely, shaking out dusty pollen, give promise
that though he press matters with a rough hand, he
shall finally be routed all along the line. The few
short months when it is indeed good to be alive are all
-before us. Hardly is that January to be esteemed
which brings too many foretastes, gives too evident
hints of the glad time, for experience tells that the
balance is apt to be adjusted later with untimely cold ;
far better for it to produce those frosts, not too severe,
which act favourably upon the condition of the land
as upon the public health. The month is never
altogether without its signs and portents in the shape
of pushful green shoots and swelling buds, but, when
7 2

18 BIRD LIFE THROUGHOUT THE YEAR

a low barometer and the moist breath of south-westerly
airs prevail, the old earth, not content with turning
in her sleep, gives further signs of a premature
awakening.

In such soft and kindly Januarys, bird-songs voice
the general opinion that winter has this year dropped
out of the calendar, and that, for those with a hopeful
turn of mind, spring has fairly begun. So easy are the
times that berries and hedge-row fruits hang long
untouched, and few applicants make their appearance
at the bird-table for the customary largesse of crumbs
and kitchen-scraps. Day by day the thrushes pipe
their matins and evensong, and some clear evening at
sunset one catches a few mellow notes of accompani-
ment from the blackbird in the elm-top, though it is
not till February that he takes his full part in the choir
and in a chilly season may be voiceless until that
month has half run its course. Muchthesame may be
said of the chaffinch ; a chance hour when the January
sun, breaking through the clouds, sheds unwonted
warmth, may set it singing, just as it may draw a
burst of song from the first soaring skylark of the year.
But these are early days; if colder weather ensues
such impulses are no longer felt, and in any case the
time of fuller and more constant song is yet to
come.

Day by day the spring notes of the various tits are
increasingly in evidence. Unless discouraged by snow

z

JANUARY 19

or by more than a degree or two of frost, the Robin’s
quiet contribution of song and the Hedge-Sparrow’s
modest refrain will not fail us, while it takes a sharp
snap of cold to still the Wren’s loud but momentary
outburst of minstrelsy, so often heard when the orange
sunset sky tells of a coming night frost. In an open
season Ring-Doves—not the migratory flocks upon the
fields, but those familiar stay-at-home birds which
spend the whole year about the shrubberies, lawn or
paddock,—begin to coo. In mild districts, as in the
south of Ireland, Herons resort to their nests and may
even be building by the end of the month.

Other signs of the approach of the breeding season
are not wanting. Some sunny morning towards the
close of January there is unwonted stir amongst the
Partridges, excited crowing, scuffling of rival suitors,
racing and chasing over the fallows The packs or
coveys have broken up ; henceforth we see pairs only.
Meanwhile the Rooks resort to their nests, and in the
meadows we may watch the bowings and shufflings
characteristic of rook courtship, and may see the
cock-bird, glossy in burnished blues and purples, step
up to present a choicegrub to the object of his affections,
who receives it with gaping bill and quivering wings.
Such are some of the characteristics of the month
when the vane veers steadily between south and west,
and no treacherous anti-cyclone invites the Continental
cold to invade our islands.

20 BIRD LIFE THROUGHOUT THE YEAR

But few Januarys fail to interrupt these early
romances by sudden recurrence to weather of a
more seasonable type. The wind shifts to the north,
and the evening sky is thick with coming snow.
But the fall ceases by day-break and a bright sun
lights up the untrodden whiteness, while all the bare-
ness of winter is hidden by glorious frost-work. As
we wander abroad, we are at once aware that birds
in unusual numbers are everywhere upon the move.
The first feeling inspired by the new conditions in the
breasts of ground-feeding birds—larks, starlings,
thrushes—is evidently one of consternation. They
hurry to-and-fro, unable at first to make any plans,
intent only on finding some spot where the white mantle
is thinner than elsewhere, or where the first indications
of an early thaw are already apparent. Thus the
Song Thrushes seek a southern slope where the kindly
face of mother-earth is already visible in places.
Others are searching the hedge-bottoms, from which,
in weather such as this, they turn out great numbers of
banded-snails ; hammering the shells into fragments
upon favourite stones which serve as “altars.” Mean-
while the Mistle Thrushes, Fieldfares and Redwings
make a sudden descent upon the berries, of which,
this being the first snowfall of the winter, the main
reserve is as yet untouched. In these hungry times
haws, holly or yew-berries none come amiss ; all-comers
are tugging eagerly, for beggars cannot be choosers.

+

JANUARY , 2r

The snow is crossed in every direction by tracks,
many of them made by mice. Larger spoor of the
same type shows how unsuspectedly numerous rats
are in the banks. Here a squirrel has paid his daily
visit to a store of beech-nuts in the side of a heap of
leaf-mould in the shrubbery. His prints show slender
toes and long nails.

Yet another series of tracks puzzles us until we disturb
various rabbits which are “lying out’ amongst the
brambles, showing that a stoat has driven them from
their burrows. How is it, we wonder, that in the mildest
winter some stoats change colour, becoming piebald
or even veritable ermines, while the coats of others
even in the most severe frosts show no trace of such a
modification of tint. Age, sex or individual constitu-
tion may perhaps furnish the clue. A moving shadow
passing swiftly up the slope calls attention to a kestrel
which is quartering over the hill-side. Presently he
passes in hot chase of a skylark. Kestrels undoubt-
edly kill many small birds in snow-time when other
supplies are cut off. We have surprised them red-
handed upon fresh-killed thrush and _starling.
Scattering the snow from the thistle-heads, a party of
goldfinches takes flight with musical twitter. The
robins have discovered that in the garden a manure-
heap is being moved—no small stroke of fortune in
times such as these; nearly a dozen of them have
congregated at the spot. The gardener finds that

22 BIRD LIFE THROUGHOUT THE YEAR

foraging parties of skylarks are attacking his young
spring cabbages, and that wood-pigeons in the early
morning have damaged the broccoli and Brussels
sprouts.

One may make a long round while the snow lasts,
finding at every turn something of interest, in noting
the shifts to which birds are driven to make a living
and their aptitude for making the best of trying
circumstances. Lapwings are everywhere upon the
move and a plaintive whistle tells that there are Golden
Plover with them. The Snipe, driven from the bogs,
have sought the warm drains and sides of running
ditches. Woodcock, too, are snowed-out of their
usual haunts, and one stumbles across them in all sorts
of unexpected places—one near the lodge-gate, another
close to the stable-yard. But nowhere is there such
a gathering of the clans as in the stack-yards, which
rise like kindly islands from the sea of white, offering
both food and shelter. Finches and buntings in their
varied tribes are here in force. Nowhere else can one
so well compare their varied traits and mannerisms, and
never does a bright sun bring out their details of
plumage better than with the snow as background.
Some merely hop and peck ; others fly up to the sides
of the ricks to pull out straws in the hope of obtaining
the ears of corn. In addition to chaffinches and
greenfinches, there are to-day Bramblings in every
stackyard. Reed-buntings fraternise with the yellow-

JANUARY 23

hammers, and one picks out by their red crowns and
white cheeks a little party of Tree Sparrows amongst
the vulgar crowd. Nor must we omit, if within reach
of the coast, to visit the piles of seaweed carted by the
farmers to the top of the foreshore after the autumn
gales and left there until sufficiently decayed to furnish
a top-dressing for their fields. These seaweed-heaps,
full of small flies and their larve, attract all the insecti-
vorous birds of the neighbourhood. Jackdaws and
starlings have trodden them free of snow and broken
up the surface, laying them open to the inspection of
Meadow and Rock Pipits which trip nimbly about,
picking up grubs and pupz. Here, too, will be found
the few Pied Wagtails which have remained to winter
with us, now probably wishing that they had gone with
the rest, for in cold weather they seem to lose all their
sprightly, light-hearted activity. Near them a cock
Stonechat, with his black head now very rusty, flips
his tail with all the spirit that he can muster.

By early afternoon full thaw prevails. Starlings
race along a sunny bank from which the snow has gone,
quarrelling noisily. Next day the last long streak of
snow fades under the persuasive influence of drizzling
rain. Birds betake themselves again to their usual
haunts and resume their ordinary avocations. But the
case is different when the snow, reinforced by fresh
falls or hardened by night frosts, lasts for more than _
three days. The Redwings, smallest and most delicate

24 BIRD LIFE THROUGHOUT THE YEAR

of the thrushes, are the first to lose heart. They may
be seen hopping about, tame and disconsolate, on the
frozen grass-fields, or turning over the dead leaves in the
woods. Soon there is downright want, and the weakest
begin to go to the wall. An outcry from under the
hedge-side calls attention to two magpies who are
bullying a distressed starling which has fallen into their
evil clutches. Another note of feebler protest comes
from a thrush in reduced circumstances which is being
attacked by one of its stronger brethren. How little
reck the merry hares of the weather, as they play
about the frosty grass by a cover-side.

Now is the time for those charitably disposed towards
the feathered folk to come to their assistance, to open
a soup-kitchen, or its equivalent, for the starving and
unemployed. Restrict not the dole to crumbs—all too
Spartan fare—but with kitchen-scraps of every kind,
shreds of meat, potatoes, suet—even if a few raisins
and kernels of nuts chopped fine be considered too
lavish an addition—we may prepare a banquet worthy
of the attention of an avian Lucullus. There is no
need to spread the invitation ; a crowd will be waiting
every day at the wonted hour. Nor must we forget a
pan of tepid water, for in times of frost birds often
suffer as much from thirst as from hunger. And
right well are we repaid for our trouble by the amuse-
ment which the bird-table affords, and by the traits and
eccentricities of the various guests. The robin at these

JANUARY 25

gatherings appears in no amiable light, but as a
pugnacious stickler for first place. The sparrows,
though greedy, are caution itself, anxious to make the
best of the good things, though wholly mistrusting the
motives of the purveyor. Now and then there is a
scattering and rush of wings as a jackdaw drops down
from the roof, grabs the largest available morsel and
hastily carries it off. If Nuthatches can be induced to
come they are always an addition, their odd, jerky
movements giving them a character which is all their
own. Nuts will often prove an attraction ; they will
toss away those which are without a kernel, not troubling
toopenthem. For tits there is the suspended coco-nut
sawn in half, or the denuded framework of goose or
turkey, forming a sort of magic cave in which they will
sit and peck their fill. Watch the fussy indignation of
a little blue-tit, as, a regular spitfire, he relieves his
mind when a great-tit has driven him from his favourite
lump of suet. These two species are regular comers ;
the coal-tit is so to a much less extent, while the marsh-
tit appears more rarely still. If walnut shells, filled
with fat or chopped nut-kernels, are threaded on a
stretched string, the tits will perform on the tight-rope
for our benefit.

When there is a pond in the neighbourhood, a Moorhen
will sometimes join the pensioners at feeding-time,
jerking his tail and showing his white undertail-
coverts as he leaves the shelter of the sedges. At the

26 BIRD LIFE THROUGHOUT THE YEAR

abbey, now the seat of a titled family, where at all
hours of the day moorhens may be seen stalking about
the well-kept lawns, we are told that as many as sixty
come to be fed in winter. They are pugnacious birds,
for as we watch them we note that every now and then
one rushes at another to offer battle. The second
party, however, always declines the combat, so that
only a violent chase results. In this respect they
resemble their neighbours the Coots, upon the lake,
which spend much of their time in quarrelling, splashing
through the water, half flying, half swimming. Such
are some of the small comedies of these January days,
with tragedies enough not far in the background, for
winter has not seldom a sterner side of which it remains
to tell.

HARD TIMES

At wholly uncertain intervals come these unwonted
frosts, bringing what we cheerfully term “a good old-
fashioned winter,” but causing to the birds wide-spread
disaster, so that, had they their annals, the years
when such occur would rank with those of the Black
Death and of the retreat from Moscow. For memories
of ice-bound ponds which “bore” for ten weeks at a
stretch and of mornings when the screened thermometer
showed thirty-one degrees of frost, we must go back to
the late seventies or early eighties, but the frost of the
early part of 1895, though it did not tighten its grip

JANUARY a4

until a later period of the winter, was almost equally
long and severe. With real cold of this sort, with the
temperature in the neighbourhood of zero, a white
hazy stillness pervades the air; there is not a breath
stirring to shake the powdered frostwork from twig and
bough. For once, in place of our usual winter of mild
Atlantic type, we have a specimen of the ordinary
January weather of north-eastern Europe. Continuous
and pitiless cold, ringing the earth’s surface with a
crust of iron, would try the birds severely, but they
are in still worse case when all familiar landmarks are
wiped out by deep and lasting snow. There is then a
general move in search of more favourable conditions,
and this not seldom becomes a wild sauve qui peut, in
which millions of birds take part. As the snow,
sometimes on the wings of a roaring blizzard, comes
from the north-east, the movement is naturally towards
the south-west, though, be it noted, birds object to
fly directly before the wind, which in that case upsets
their equilibrium and chills them by blowing between
their feathers. They prefer the wind sideways or abeam.
Perhaps instinct may also guide them towards the
sole part of the kingdom where they may hope to find
less arctic conditions. Great numbers appear at times
to cross from the Welsh headlands to the south of
Ireland. But too often disappointment awaits them
even in the most favoured districts of the west country,
and in the spring we find the dried remains of thrushes

28 BIRD LIFE THROUGHOUT THE YEAR

and redwings in the crevices into which they crept for
shelter when the frost was cruel and the thaw delayed.

One of these great movements down the coast,
following a sudden onset of wintry weather, is a sight
to be remembered. We sally out, to find everything
deep in snow and more falling. The sea, having that
peculiar dirty, angry look which it only wears when
in contrast with its white setting, is dimly seen through
the whirling flurries. A glance shows that the rush of
migrants is at its height. Larks and starlings are
passing almost without intermission, the two together
constituting at least nine-tenths of the moving hosts,
while the various thrushes would take the third place.
As we plough our way through the untrodden drifts,
‘wondering at the daintily chiselled architecture of
wreath and cornice, there comes momentarily the rush of
passing wingsand the murky obscurity is pierced as with
a hundred needles by the shrill call-note of the larks.
A moment later they pass overhead, but, before they
are out of sight, another party announces its advent.
It may safely be said that never, from dawn to dark of
this short winter’s day, is there a moment when passing
larks are not in sight. One hesitates to makea guess
at the numbers of the migrating host, but it must run
into hundreds of thousands. But in addition to those on
the wing many have settled in the fields. The snow is
crossed and recrossed in every direction by their tracks,
easily to be known by the mark left by the long hind

JANUARY : 29

claw. Little parties of them—dquite a picture of hard
times—with their feathers puffed out on account of the .
cold, crowd every spot where the wind has swept away
the snow, or search disconsolately for traces of turnip-
tops here and there breaking its surface. A note, soft
as the twitter of a goldfinch, calls attention to a
Woodlark amongst them—no mistaking its short,
stumpy figure and conspicuous eye-streak. Fieldfares
are snatching greedily at the few remaining haws.
Every stackyard has its hungry host of finches and
yellow-hammers. Only the Snow Buntings seem to be
in their element, as if fancying themselves back in their
far northern home. The glass shows that some, no
doubt the old birds, are whiter than others, and that,
on the ground, they take short, quick runs, more after
the fashion of mice than birds. With clatter of wings
a great flock of Wood Pigeons takes flight, already
so hungry that they will return to fill their crops
with turnip-tops although repeatedly fired at. A
striking figure is that of an old hare as he sits
bolt upright just on the sky-line in the middle of
a perfectly white snow-field. Bad times are these
for game of all sorts, as the partridges experience,
for the snow renders them plainly visible to their
enemies.

Next day the tide of migration has slackened ;
by the third day it has spent itself. Yet, doubtful as
is the fate of those birds which have fled, the compara-

30 BIRD LIFE THROUGHOUT THE YEAR

tively few which remain are still more to be pitied
as day by day passes and the frost still holds.
True the snow vanishes from southern slopes in
slowly trickling streams which are turned to ice
again each night. It is sad to see the Lapwings,
miserably tame, on the frozen meadows, listening
in vain for upward movement of earthworm responsive
to their tread. In the woods, where evergreens
have kept off much of the snow, the Redwings,
weak and dejected, hop about under shelter of the
thick holly clumps, feebly searching for food amongst
the dead leaves. On the lake Coots and other wild
fowl by constant movement manage to keep open a
hole in the ice. The gamekeeper almost tires of
shooting the Jays which come to the pheasants’ corn.
But the turnips are now the last resort of the destitute ;
rooks, jackdaws and wood-pigeons peck holes in the
bulbs ;_ fieldfares, thrushes and blackbirds follow
or betake themselves to the folds where the sheep are
hand-fed and where, consequently, fragments of turnip
may be picked up. Upon the coast many thrushes
frequent the rocks which are uncovered at low tide
and feed upon shell-fish, breaking their hard shells
with difficulty. Soon want does its woeful work and
we begin to pick up dead birds—redwings are likely
to be the first. Birds have however, such a habit of
getting away into holes and crevices to die, that the
real rate of mortality is never known.

JANUARY 31

Amongst the crowd of weak, crippled, or half-starved
birds which throng wherever food is provided for them,
skylarks, even rooks and lapwings, find a place.
Many suffer from frost-bitten feet ; several starlings
still come although unable to stand, and a great-tit
afflicted with club-foot is a never failing pensioner. The
hardy finches and buntings, which burrow into the
sides of the stacks to find shelter from the bitter
weather, suffer comparatively little, but insect-eating
birds, such as the few pipits and wagtails which remain,
are reduced to sore straits. The plucky little Stone-
chats, snowed out of the cliff-slopes, flit tame and
robin-like about the sands. The Grey Wagtail seeks
factory-pools or spring heads, which remain unfrozen,
and Wrens come indoors seeking shelter. As inland
waters become completely ice-bound, the wild-fowl
desert them entirely and make their way to the
coast. In great frosts they do not linger there, but go
much farther south, perhaps to the marismas of
Andalusia, or the wide, shallow lakes on the northern
borders of the Sahara. Thus it was noticed that in
the great frost of 1895 there were few brent-geese
or other wild-fowl on the Essex coast.

But, on the other hand, many seabirds which
ordinarily winter in the Spitzbergen seas, such as the
Iceland and Ivory Gulls, the Little Auk, and the
Northern or Briinnich’s Guillemot, are recorded upon
the East coast, showing how wide is the area affected

32 BIRD LIFE THROUGHOUT THE YEAR

by the exceptional cold. Thus February, 1895, brought
an unprecedented visitation of Little Auks, small
diving birds closely related to our razor-bill. The
newspapers begin to take note of the effects of the long-
continued frost upon animal life, and record how rooks
and gulls are so reduced as to seek food in the streets,
and how red-grouse, driven from the moors by the
weather, have appeared in many lowland localities.
Of special interest to Londoners are the gulls which in
large numbers frequent the Thames between Black-
friars Bridge and Waterloo.

The hardened powdery snow no longer shows the
foot-prints of passing bird and beast ‘as in its earlier
days. So the great frost runs its course, sometimes to
break up and give way before a sudden invasion of
westerly airs, but often to wear out slowly, yielding
almost imperceptibly before the increasing power of the
sun, unaided by moisture-laden winds—a hardly-won
victory, so nearly is the ground gained each day lost
during the succeeding night. But at last the land
lies bare once more, faded and colourless as after a
long spell of east winds. A few thrushes and other
birds straggle back to their usual haunts, and we are
able to take stock of our losses. A memento of the
past long remains in the whitened stems of trees, from
which the rabbits gnawed the bark when the snow cut
off other food supplies, leaving the wood bare as high
up as they could reach. The willow-branches which

ROBIN, GREAT TIT.
BIRDS ATTRACTED BY COCOA-NUT.
Photo O. G. Pixr.

JANUARY 33

overhang the pool have been treated in the same way
by the water-voles.

This year of disaster has left its mark upon the
numbers of almost all resident birds ; all in fact have
paid more or less heavy toll, excepting the grain-feeders,
such as greenfinches and yellow-hammers, which have
tided over the evil times by hanging round the barn-
doors and rick-yards. How few the thrushes and
blackbirds are the coming spring will show when one
scarcely finds a nest in their favourite hedges. But
few stonechats remain. Goldfinches have become
scarcer. Some of our well-known robins are absent
from their wonted haunts. The smallest birds—long-
tailed tits, tree-creepers, wrens, goldcrests—though
relatively to their size they appear to stand the cold so
well—are fewer than formerly: Some species are
practically wiped out for the time being. After the
frost of 1895, nine months elapsed before we saw a single
mistle-thrush. A succession of open winters was
needed to bring their numbers once more to the normal.
The bird-stuffer reports thirty-five kingfishers, mostly
frozen, brought to him within three days. While the
cold kept the small rodents from stirring abroad, the
owls suffered badly. No large bags of partridges will
be made in the autumn; some are picked up all skin
and bone. The farmers remark that few hares are left.
Woodpeckers are decimated ; herons much thinned in
numbers. Even the buzzards suffer, the frost driving

3

34 BIRD LIFE THROUGHOUT THE YEAR

them from the hill country to the lowlands, where they
fall victims to the gamekeeper. So widespread are
the effects of a few weeks of weather of a type for the
like of which our ordinary winters leave the birds
unprepared, encouraging them to linger till the un-
expected occurs, bringing disaster in its train. But
fortunately these spells of relentless cold are few, and
it is rare for two such to occur in successive winters,
while so soon are the gaps refilled when times of plenty
return that the numbers of our resident birds are in
no case permanently affected.

January

”

JANUARY

CALENDAR FOR JANUARY.

ist.—Mistle Thrush sings.
3rd.—Robin sings.

4th.—Hedge Sparrow and Wren sing.
8th.—Cirl Bunting sings.
1z2th.—Blackbird begins to sing.
14th.—Ring Dove coos.

Song Thrushes in full song.
18th.—Great Tit’s spring note heard.
20th.—Tree Creeper sings.

Blue Tit’s spring note heard.

z2nd.—Common or Corn Bunting sings.

25th.—Rooks coquetting.
26th.—Partridges pair.
27th.—Woodlark sings.

30th.—Stock Dove coos.

31st.—Ring Dove feeds on ivy-berries.

35

Bird Life in February.

Bird Life in February.

DIFFICULT as it is to find any constant traits to
characterize January, not less of an uncertain quantity
is the second month in the year’s chaplet. On the one
hand, its days, so evidently lengthening, may be full of
hopeful tokens, in the shape of budding shrubs and
thickening tree-tops, that the sap is on the rise, while
in a less genial season its sullen skies, with a cold,
damper and more penetrating than that of frosty
January, may bring the worst of the winter. Not
only is there no advance, but it seems at times as if
spring had recalled its pickets and ceased even to
threaten winter’s reign. How sere and colourless are
the landscapes under drear February skies before the
grass shows any new growth and when one must
search the most sheltered hollow for half a dozen stray
primroses. Look on this picture and then on that of a
February such as that of 1891, sunny throughout, and
practically rainless in the London district. Yet, apart
from extremes, the month has a character of its own.

Its place is between the frost and the east winds. The
sun which tempers its humid airs draws a daily in-
increasing volume of song from the thrushes and

39

40 BIRD LIFE THROUGHOUT THE YEAR

brings the first bees to the crocuses. A change of
colour and of consistency passes over the tree-tops as
they begin to show the purples and browns of swelling
buds. The month of general awakening is to come, but
is anticipated by the first sporadic revivals. Blind-
worms and newts still sleep in heaps of loose stones
and piles of rubbish, but the toad is once more abroad
at dusk and the surface of the pond is rippled by
spawning frogs, which puff out their lily-white throats
and croon a resonant double bass. The running
spiders which race over bank sides are always the first
to respond by their re-appearance to the revivifying
warmth of the sun. Down at the brook we welcome
the “skaters”? (Hydrometra), which run upon the
surface of the water, and the whirligig-beetles, which
again weave their mazy dance, foretokens of the great
stirring and quickening which is now at hand. Snugly
stowed away in winter-quarters insects have nothing
to fear from the frost. Split open this dry and hollow
stem of hemlock or cow-parsnip, and we shall be
surprised at the variety of its tenants—lanky, trans-
parent-looking spiders, delicate gauze-winged gnats,
and a fat caterpillar which has spun a white web for his
greater comfort. So little ground is there for the
supposition, so generally held, that a hard winter is
fatal to noxious insects. As a matter of fact they
suffer much more when unseasonable warmth tempts
them out before their time.

FEBRUARY 41

Almost all the happenings in the bird world of
February are linked together by their connection with
the nesting-season, which, in the case of the Heron and
Raven, may be in full swing by the end of the month,
while with a number of others the earlier stages of
courtship or nest-building are reached. Anyone who
has a rookery under observation will know the various
stages by which its occupants settle down to this, the
most serious business of the year. Thus they visit
their winter-worn tenements with increasing frequency,
spend more time daily in considering the needful
repairs, and finally take full possession, henceforth
roosting at the rookery and only going as far afield to
forage as may be necessary. A knowing ear may at
once judge by the increased and altered clamour when
this climax has been reached. A February of open
weather is tuneful with Thrushes piping to good Saint
Valentine and challenging each other from tree to
tree. Mistle Thrushes scold harshly and sing in more
boisterous stanzas. Robins interrupt their flirting
with bouts of fighting. At the very end of the month
both they and the thrushes sometimes commence
nest-building with ill-considered precipitancy, for few
of these early nests come to any good. A late snow-
fall causes them to be deserted, or, too evident in the
absence of leafy cover, they are laid waste by magpies
or jays. It is noticeable that the birds responsible for
these early efforts are those which are domiciled in

42 BIRD LIFE THROUGHOUT THE YEAR

private grounds, where the lawns afford constant food
and the shrubberies ample shelter. No thrush would
think of building in the bare hedge-rows for a month to
come. Watching the flocks of Peewits on moor or
fallow, we may notice that many a wanton lapwing
who now “gets himself another crest’? has also
selected a mate. A pair of Water Ouzels, earlier than
the rest, may already be carrying moss to the nest
which they repair each spring. They work only in the
early morning and are not seen in its vicinity during
the day. Song Thrushes, Fieldfares and Skylarks
have come straggling back since the frost took its
departure, only to shift their quarters if a February
snowfall occurs, bringing the Golden Plover again to
the coast. Linnets, which we so seldom saw in mid-
winter, are again in evidence, and in the fields are the
first returning parties of Meadow Pipits and Pied
Wagtails.

Ifthe winter has been a severe one, food supplies are
now at alow ebb. All the more welcome are the ivy-
berries, which ripen in late February or early March.
Blackbirds eat them, scattering their undigested seeds
broadcast, and from the ivied elm in the lane Wood
Pigeons, which have been thinning the blue-black
clusters, crash out as we pass. The back of a hovering
Kestrel, seen from above, shows as a bright chestnut
spot against the hill-side. Magpies pass from orchard
to orchard by easy stages, halting now in a hedge-row

FEBRUARY 43

and now alighting in a field. Sometimes we meet with
large and excited gatherings of from eight to a dozen,
the subject under discussion being evidently connected
with matters matrimonial. Two jack-hares chase
madly over the springing corn, scuffling and boxing, so
blind in their rivalry that they will run right up to the
feet of an onlooker. A squirrel in his winter coat of
brownish-grey, not red as in summer, hunts with quick
jerky movements amongst the leaves for a chance
acorn, carrying his brush curled up over his back as
if to keep it clean and dry. Here by the lake side we
come upon a heap of loose, peaty soil nearly a yard
across, so much bigger than the mole’s ordinary hillocks
that it evidently marks the site of his fortress. Opening
it up, we find the whole of the mound crossed and re-
crossed by a connected system of galleries or tunnels,
which, however, exhibit none of the beautifully sym-
metrical arrangement so often figured. At a depth
of ten or twelve inches is the central chamber which
contains the nest, a double handful of oak-leaves and
pieces of sedge, beautifully dry inside, but untenanted.

On the coast the air is full of the cries of the Curlews
after dark, this unusual stir always marking the time
of the year when they leave for their breeding-haunts
in the hills. The Black-headed Gulls begin to acquire
their black hoods, and the Herring Gulls circle slowly
round at a great height, uttering their jubilant spring
cackle.

44 BIRD LIFE THROUGHOUT THE YEAR

It is not want but rather the taste fora dainty spring
salad, which brings the Bullfinches every February to
the kitchen-garden and orchard, where they nip off
the buds of the fruit-trees. Year after year we have
to lament this exasperating habit of a favourite bird.
Carefully they go over the lilacs, cutting off all hope of
a good show of blossom; the cherry-plum and the
pyrus japonica fare no better. It is useless to plead
that they are in quest of insects concealed in the buds ;
their crops contain a purée of greenstuff, without a
trace of grub or larva. Equally vain is it to urge that
they only take the leaf-buds and leave the fruit-buds ;
the reverse appears rather to be the case. Our own
fondness for the bullfinch would lead us to try anything
possible in the way of preventive measures, such as
scaring him away or netting the trees, before sending
a charge of shot after him, but others no doubt will be
disinclined to carry toleration so far. Sometimes a
little male Sparrow-hawk with slaty-blue back, sweeping
silently through the orchard, spies the offender and
gives him short shrift. In town-gardens the House
Sparrow now adds to his misdeeds by attacking the
crocuses and pecking them to shreds. Is this pure
mischief, or does it arise from a desire to sample any
early vegetable produce which comes to hand?
Some would have us observe that it is only the yellow
crocuses which are thus treated, while the white and
purple ones are spared, whence they infer in the sparrow

FEBRUARY 45

the early dawnings of an aesthetic appreciation of
colour. But the snowdrops are sometimes ill-used
in the same fashion, so that further data seem to be
needed before we can reach a conclusion.

Bird-song gathers strength and volume as the month
proceeds. The Blackbird, Chaffinch, and Skylark,
whose voices were only occasionally heard in January,
now come into full song. The blackbird’s notes,
quiet, leisurely and mellow, have none of the quick,
eager change of phrase characteristic of the thrush,
but we have known one individual to be constant to a
curious variation, much like the piping of the ring
ouzel. Many a dripping February morning is enlivened
by the skylarks, which sing madly as the sun gets
through the fog. The Yellow-hammers now begin to
join in from the hedge-tops, and the Corn Bunting
grinds out his monotonous refrain, like the jingling of
a bunch of keys. Starlings collect in the tops of the
elms and warble in concert. On sunny days the short,
shrill song of the Tree Creeper is heard everywhere
amongst the old timber, whence also comes the Nut-
hatch’s loud spring whistle.

Meanwhile the Stonechat sings as he flits, all anima-
tion, about the tops of the furze, sometimes hovering
for a moment like a whitethroat, then perching again
as he scolds, with quick, nervous movement of wings
and tail. In parts of the country where it occurs, the
Woodlark flutes a soft, musical accompaniment to the

46 BIRD LIFE THROUGHOUT THE YEAR

skylark’s rapturous trill, usually as it flies to and fro
overhead, but sometimes from the ground or from the
branch of a tree. Other songs which are less familiar
attract our notice from time to time. Sometimes from
the tops of the ash-poles in the copse by the low water-
meadows, comes a monotonous piping, “trui, trui,
trui,” like a poor imitation of the thrush’s notes. It
is the Redwing’s song, little heard or noticed in England
but said to be a tuneful and much appreciated accom-
paniment of the Northern summer. And one bright
February day, genial as April, we heard proceeding
from the alders by the brook, a merry, rippling string
of notes ending with a long drawn out “ tze-e-e.” The
glass showed the gold-banded wing and green back of
a cock Siskin. There was quite a party of them, some
hanging from the twigs extracting the seed from the
alder-cones. From one, then from another, sometimes
from three at once, would come the brisk linnet-like
song with, as finish, the squeal which attested its
authorship. It was the only occasion upon which
we have heard the siskin singing in a state of freedom ;
as a cage-bird its song is familiar enough.

In February, the spring notes of the various tits
resound through the woods, most persistent of bird
voices. Heard at intervals in the late autumn, then
silenced by the frost, they now break out into a
hundred variations of the same refrain, with all the
spirit and energy inspired by the milder weather and

FEBRUARY 47

the lengthening days. On all hands they are tinkering
at kettles, and tiny anvils ring under their sounding
strokes. The loudest performer is naturally the Great
Tit, whose note is said to resemble the sound produced
by sharpening a saw with a file, an operation to which,
it must be confessed, chance has never given us the
opportunity of listening. The Coal Tit reiterates his
“ sista-wéet, sista-wéet’’; a like spring-fever seizes
the Blue Tit, and amongst the pollard willows by the
weir the Marsh Tit is taking his turn as a variety artiste.
For an individual tit of any one of these four species
will invent some fresh variation and practise it all day
long, to forget it completely next morning and hark
back to its more familiar note. So much is this the
case that anything novel in call-notes incessantly
repeated, and especially if having about it the resonance
of hammered metal, seldom puzzles us, being at once
attributed to the versatile genius of a tit, either large
or small. It is true that we have been deceived once
or twice into imagining that the chiff-chaff, or the tree
pipit had arrived before its time, till a sight of the
author proved that it was merely a tit favouring his
woodland audience with the latest addition to his
repertoire. Thus, many as are the tunes and impossible
as it is to remember them in detail, they may usually
be recognized by their family likeness and taken together
they form a tinkling accompaniment to the minstrelsy
of the still leafless woods.

48 BIRD LIFE THROUGHOUT THE YEAR

MERE AND FEN.

The epithet of “ fill-dyke,”’ applied to the month of
February, carries us back toa time when the undrained
land lay sodden after the winter rains and every water-
course was filled to overflowing by the melting of the
snow. A chilly, damp, cheerless England of agues and
marsh-fevers it was, but not without its picturesque
features, of which the march of improvement has spared
us but scant trace in the fen-levels of Cambridgeshire
and in the Broad District of Norfolk. It is a land of
wide-stretching horizons, compared with which the
skies of hilly and mountainous districts seem strangely
circumscribed, and your true fenman would not
exchange his quiet waters, in their gay setting of yellow
flags, arrowhead and flowering-rush, for the livelier
humours of North Country trout-stream or Highland
torrent. To drink in the spirit of the land, its wide
spaciousness and peaceful stillness, we must traverse
the vast marsh-pastures, fed over by numberless horses
and cattle, amongst which glide the brown sails of
boats which move on unseen waterways, or stand in the
midst of the one stretch of untamed fen still left to us,
whence the towers of Ely cathedral are seen vast and
dim to the northward. Elsewhere, only the pumping-
station—engine-house or wind-mill—with the straight
silver line of the “lode” or “level” into which it
pours its contribution of surface waters, shows how
much of the black land, now so firm and dry,and bearing

LITTLE GREBE ON NEST.
Photo O. G. Prez.

FEBRUARY 49

such heavy crops of corn and potatoes, was once part
and parcel of the deep fen. Its very level has sunk
many feet since the epoch when it was a spongy morass.
But picture it as it was, when for league upon league
the frozen meres gleamed cold in their setting of hoary
reeds all tagged with ice, or later when the green
feathered spears rustled and bent before the summer
breeze which transformed the dreary waste into a
jungle of lush and tall-growing herbage, where, side
by side with the loosestrifes purple and yellow, the
hemp-agrimony and the meadow-rue, grew rare marsh
plants, which drainage has almost banished from our
flora. Still, at the end of June, the bulrushes give off
their clouds of golden pollen, but, with the disappear-
ance of their food plants, some of the insects character-
istic of our English Low Countries have become scarce
or extinct, a notable example of the latter being the
great copper butterfly, formerly the glory of the
Whittlesea fens. Happily, we may still, in one locality
at least, see the strong-winged swallow-tail dash
across the levels or find its larva, in its brilliant livery
of clear green with jet-black stripes spotted with orange
red, feeding upon the marsh-parsley or fennel.

But it is in the matter of their bird population that
the by-gone glories of the fens contrast most strongly
with present-day conditions. Every stage in the
reclamation of the drowned levels has still further
unfitted them to be the haunt of the great hosts of

4

50 BIRD LIFE THROUGHOUT THE YEAR

wild-fowl which formerly made them their home.
True, the tide of disaster has sometimes turned when
the dykes have burst and the waters have for a time
reclaimed their own, but otherwise the remnants of
the marsh land have, in the opinion of the birds,
become year by year more unsuited to their require-
ments, and they have been driven to seek in Holland
or Jutland the congenial solitudes which our own land
now fails to provide. The times are indeed changed
since Sir Thomas Browne could sally out of Norwich
and return in a few hours with his pockets filled with
eggs of the crane and great-bustard ; when Fulham,
on the Thames was, as its name implies, the fowls’-home
where, amongst other wild-fowl, the spoonbills bred,
and when the fenman could count upon a bittern for
his Sunday’s dinner. The booming of the Bittern—
one of the most weird sounds in nature—is no longer
heard, though with every spell of keen frost bitterns
from the Continent revisit the Welsh bogs, and show
such a tendency to linger till spring in favourite spots
in other parts of the country that it seems probable that,
if unmolested, an occasional pair would breed with us
even at the present day. But a century has elapsed
since the Grey Geese ceased to linger to nest in the
Lincolnshire fens, and nearly as long since the last
colony of noisy Avocets gave way before persecution,
though a stray specimen still crosses, not unfrequently,
from Holland, to scoop its food with flexible, upturned

FEBRUARY 51

bill from the surface of East Anglian mud-flats. And
it is not so long since a naturalist watched fourteen
Spoonbills running about restlessly on a sandy spit,
shovelling up the mud with theirspoons. They spent
most of the day there, and were actually not molested.
Gone, too, as a breeding species, is the Black-tailed
Godwit ; gone more recently the Black Terns, “ blue
darrs ” of the fenmen, which used to hawk dragonflies
above the lily-grown shallows, and breed in colonies
about the meres, as the Black-headed Gull continues
to do at the present day. Old fenmen remember when
the Marsh Harrier or Bald Buzzard used to quarter
the wet meadows regularly like a pointer, and describe
having seen the ducks make for the river when
pursued by it, and dive as it stooped at them. Gone
are the Ruffs which used to meet in tourney, trampling
bare their favourite “hills,” as with heads down and
shields erected they sparred at each other like angry
bantam-cocks, each taking as his share as many of the
plainer Reeves as his prowess might win. A few
harassed birds may still linger, for eggs were taken in
1884, and perhaps later.

So much for our losses, and now for the brighter side
of the picture. The exquisite little Bearded Tits, once
brought to a low ebb, seem to be no longer in danger of
extinction. Their chief peril lies in the fact that every
marshman knows that collectors will pay well for their
eggs. Savi’s Warbler, which used to reel from some

52 BIRD LIFE THROUGHOUT THE YEAR

tall reed even more loudly and persistently than the
grasshopper-warbler, visits us no more, but the Reed
Warbler still slings its cradle between the upright
spears in every ditch, and from similar shelter comes
the grunting squeal of the Water Rail, whose narrowly
compressed body seems made to slip between the
tussocks of sedge from which only a good water-dog
will dislodge it. The silvery-breasted Grebes still
hold their own ; we hear of twenty-three in sight at
once upon a single broad. Owing to protection
afforded by one or two landed proprietors, ducks
such as the Gadwall, Pochard and Tufted Duck, breed
in Norfolk in much larger numbers and greater variety
at the present day than was the case fifty years ago.
In one district it is stated that the Garganey nests
even more commonly than the Teal. There is still the
buzzing of multitudinous Snipe and the piping of
unnumbered Redshanks. The blue-grey Montagu’s
Harrier, with his darker “ring-tail’’ mate, still at
least attempts to nest annually. The Short-eared
Owl lays its eggs upon a heap of cut reeds, and the
Kestrel, in the absence of trees, has been known to
nest upon the ground in the middle of the fen. Thus
there is still left no small residue of the wild life of the
waterside.

Let us leave the broad reach of Bure or Yare, where
the wherrymen “quant” toilsomely, and push our
punt up this narrow side-stream between the tall and

FEBRUARY 53

thick-set reeds, giving place here and there to tumps of
sedge between which are unknown depths of mire. A
black-capped Reed Bunting chirps from a bending
osier twig. A pike goes out from the shallows with a
swirl, and here floats a dead roach with a wound in its
shoulder, where it has been stabbed by the Heron’s
bayonet. Our boatman tells how the bill of a fine old
male heron turned orange and crimson with sudden
flushes of rage as it fought with a dog when wounded.
On either hand one hears Coots, quarrelsome as always,
scuffing inthe reeds. A Water Rail, surprised amongst
the sedge, takes wing, showing its red bill as it flies.
As our lane of water opens out upon a quiet expanse,
coots scatter hastily for cover, dabchicks bob beneath
the surface and moorhens splash away, leaving silvery
tracks, or oar their way more quietly to the shelter of
the reeds. They show some sagacity in the choice of
sites for their nests, sometimes building them up to a
height of eighteen inches to be prepared for a sudden
rise of the water, or even, after repeated losses on
account of floods, nesting in the bushes overhanging
the stream. After dark the air is full of quackings
and of the calls of various wading birds then upon
the move.

The ‘‘broad”’ in question is rapidly becoming filled up
by atangled mass of the stiff-leaved floating plant known
as the water-soldier- Its further end, where it branches
into three or four secluded arms, is the site of a duck

54 BIRD LIFE THROUGHOUT THE YEAR

decoy. Here, enclosing and following the course of
one of these branches, is a decoy pipe, a long, curving
framework of light arches, covered in with strong
wide-meshed netting, and becoming lower and narrower
the further we go from its mouth, though, as we stand
by its wide-arched entrance, some ten feet high and
fifteen across, the far extremity is unseen by us as by
the hapless duck which swims in, unwotting of sudden
and violent death awaiting it not a hundred yards
away. One side of the pipe is merely sheltered by a
straight reed-fence, the other, upon which it is intended
to be worked, by the well-known arrangement of reed-
screens placed obliquely, the open ends being about
a yard apart. Between each pair of these open ends
is a low connecting piece of boarding, the ‘‘ dog-jump ”
over which the decoy-man’s canine assistant leaps to
arouse the curiosity of the ducks. Viewed from the
mouth of the pipe, these screens give the impression of
a continuous reed-wall, the openings, of course, fronting
the other way. The pipe is fifty or sixty yards long,
and at its far end not more than two feet wide. Further
round the margin of the lake are three similar pipes,
each following the course of a shallow reedy inlet.
A decoy must consist of several, as the ducks will only
swim to windward. Beside a small hut near at hand
are hanging up four of five of the tunnel-nets which
are fixed on at the narrow end of the pipe when a haul
is made. These are ordinary bow-nets, eight or ten

FEBRUARY 55

feet in length. The hut is intended for the temporary
disposal of the fowl after a successful working. The
decoy-man tells of fourteen hundred ducks having once
been taken in a week.

Apart from the special features of the Fen Country
as a limited area, much of the old waterside life of bird
and insect and plant is still to be found, but we must
search for it more widely—by rippling brooks of the
southern shires, about the quiet upper reaches of the
Thames, or on the banks ofslow midlandstreams, whose
sluggish surface is only disturbed by the plunging of a
water-vole or the rising of a fish. We shall find it
where the mill-water forms a still lakelet, water-lily
grown, or beside the moats which encircle the old
timbered houses of the western shires. Even com-
mercial activity and increase of population have had
the unforeseen result of providing new haunts for
aquatic birds. There is scarcely a sea-bird—gull,
tern or wader—which does not visit at one time or
another the great canal reservoirs near the watershed
of Trent and Severn. The Crested Grebes have in
fact made themselves as much at home there as in the
Broad district itself. Moreover, the vast water-
schemes of Liverpool, Birmingham and other great
cities have furnished a series of noble lakes which hold
out fresh and increasing attractions to water-fowl.
Sewage farms, too, are much frequented by gulls and
by wading birds, such as redshanks, ringed plover,

56 BIRD LIFE THROUGHOUT THE YEAR

and dunlin, especially in time of frost, when they do
not readily freeze. So that the prospect of our
retaining as British birds all the more interesting
elements of the Fenland avifauna still left to us may be
said to have distinctly improved within the past few
years.

CALENDAR FOR FEBRUARY.

February 5th.—Blackbird begins to sing more regularly.

ie 6th.—Chaffinch sings.

a 7th.—Pied Wagtails begin to return.

7 8th.—Woodlark sings.

. roth.—Skylark sings more frequently.

5 12th.—Grey Wagtail returns to its nesting haunts

in the hills.

+ 15th.—Coal Tit’s spring note heard.

ws 16th.—Some Long-tailed Tits paired.

e 20th.—Yellow-hammer sings.

us 20th.—Water Ouzels begin to build.
Nuthatch’s spring whistle heard.

4 2ist.—Some Lapwings paired.

Pe 25th.—Goldcrest sings.

‘5 27th.—Curlew leave the coast for the hills.
Meadow Pipits begin to return.

= 28th.—Golden Plover returns to the moors.
Rooks build.

Early pairs of Ravens have eggs.

Bird Life in March.

Bird Life in March.

WitTH March the naturalist’s year opens. February
may fail to bring a single genial sun-warmed hour, but
there always comes a day in March when on the south
side of the spinney, with thenorth-easter unfelt, though
heard amongst the oak boughs aloft, it is spring in
more than name. In the minds of those who are much
in the open, the bluff month still holds its proud
position and leads off the calendar. For the dead
days of winter are over and the time of stir and move-
ment has begun. There will still at times be leaden
skies, days when the land lies dry and bare, scorched
by the breath of the east wind, and when only the
“palm,” which flecks with yellow the side of the still
leafless cover, tells of coming spring. But there are
also days when the kindly gleam of sun strikes across
the new-turned furrows, when the shadows of the white
cloud-piles race over the downs and a thousand
soaring skylarks burst into song. For the wind,
“which hurls the rooks across the skies” and piles
the drifted leaves in every sheltered corner, dries at
last the lanes and field-paths which have lain foul and
heavy since the melting of the snow. It is possible to

59

60 BIRD LIFE THROUGHOUT THE YEAR

revisit one’s favourite haunts without a struggle with
mud and mire. The stronger light shows off to
advantage the plumage of our smaller birds, and
foliage does not yet hide those which spend most of
their time amongst the twigs and branches. Plumage
is now at its best, for the nesting season is at hand, or,
in some cases, actually begun. The birds which have
wintered with us are in full song, and towards the
end of the month fresh voices tell of the arrival of
returning wanderers from over seas. In the bird-
world renewed energies and fresh activities give to the
month its key-note.

Whilst several of our resident birds begin to sing in
February or even earlier, March brings a large accession
to the volume of song. The Mistle Thrush seems to
defy the shrill blast to drown his loud, harsh notes,
so often heard in dark, rough weather, or when the
north-easter rocks his perch amongst the topmost
boughs of the elm, that his country name of “ storm-
cock” seems more than usually appropriate. The
Song Thrush and Blackbird towards the end of the
month are too much occupied with nesting duties to
sing much, and are then chiefly heard at dawn and for
a short time before and after sunset. All day long the
Chaffinch rattles out his lively challenge, while the
leisurely strains of the Robin form a sort of under-
current of song. Greenfinches trill in the orchard,
and the cock-bird begins the long-drawn call-note

MARCH 61

which is the refrain of his love-song. On every hedge-
top the Yellow-hammer demands his “little bit of
bread and no chéése.” The Skylark is never in better
voice than in the burst of sun which follows a short
March squall of hail or sleet as the leaden-hued cloud-
piles roll away. Lastly, the Tits seem to surpass
themselves and ring a hundred changes on their
ordinary spring notes.

This increase of song heralds the approach of the
breeding season, and the other events which we note
this month have an evident connection with the same
important epoch. The flocks of finches, buntings
and larks, which have ranged over the stubbles and
hung about the stackyards through the winter, now
break up into pairs. The change is a gradual one
and does not take place in a day. There seems to be
a good deal of variation in the date at which individuals
of the same species feel the nesting impulse. Several
pairs of Ring Doves (our well-known Wood Pigeon)
may be breeding in the fir plantation while flocks of
their kindred on the neighbouring fields show no
indication of nesting. Sometimes, as we watch a
flock of Lapwings on moor or meadow, a pair will
separate from the rest and swoop overhead with
excited cries of “‘ pee-wit,” screaming and tumbling
as if already nesting. The family parties of Long-
tailed Tits which have ranged the woods all through
the winter are no longer seen, but pairs may be met

62 BIRD LIFE THROUGHOUT THE YEAR

with prospecting for nesting-sites in furze-bush or
blackthorn hedge. Starlings are still flocking, and,
though most of them will be nesting early next month,
a limited number seem to shelve matrimonial duties,
for they may be seen in small flocks all through April
and May. In fact, the breaking up of the winter
associations of small birds is by no means completed
when March goes out.

Free to roam at will through the winter, many birds
now seek their special nesting haunts. The Jackdaws
are again noisy round the crumbling ruins of the
abbey or the clefts and crevices of the limestone
crag. The Kingfisher leaves the marsh ditches, and
is seen again on the brook in the neighbourhood of the
steep bank in which it excavates its burrow. Moun-
tain and moor, which a month ago were deserted but
for the noisy crowings and restless flights of the Red
Grouse, again have their summer tenants. The
Curlew whistles once more over the barren uplands
and the Golden Plover’s plaintive call comes from the
dreary bog-lands. The Grey Wagtail seeks the merry
north-country “beck” or Welsh trout-stream, to
nest behind a tuft of fern on the moist ledges, having
for neighbour the Dipper or Water Ouzel, whose
nursery, a big flattened, dome-shaped structure of
moss, lined with oak-leaves, is placed almost in the
spray of the fall. On the coast Cormorants seek the
pinnacled “stack,” which for generations they have

MARCH 63

whitened and strewed with nesting-litter, while Herring
Gulls cackle about their nesting ledges, and Ringed
Plover and Oyster-catchers betake themselves to the
shell-beaches and shingle-banks to scratch out the
artless hollows which serve them as nests.

Putting aside abnormal instances which furnish the
regular crop of “early nesting” paragraphs to the
newspapers, recording how some ill-advised robin or
thrush has been found sitting upon eggs in Christmas
week, it may safely be said that the Heron and the
Raven are the earliest of our native birds to breed.
Even in January, if the weather is open, Herons
resort to their nests, and in the mild climate of the
south of Ireland young are often hatched by the first
of March. Though the solitary fisher is no longer
protected as royal game, there are at the present day
few counties which cannot boast one or more heronries.
One of these, if visited in the breeding-season, presents
a scene full of interest and animation. The tree-tops
are studded with the great nests, off which the sitting
birds come awkwardly scuffling, each as it gets fairly
under weigh, taking a turn round overhead, crying
“kronk,” or “ kraak,’ and making such uncanny
noises as herons only can. Other old birds stand,
gaunt and angular, upon their nests, spots of blue
grey against the dark foliage of pine or fir. The
young in the nests clap their bills loudly ; older ones
stand upright, steadying themselves awkwardly with

64 BIRD LIFE THROUGHOUT THE YEAR

their wings as they add to the uproar, until one,
overbalancing, flutters to the ground, clutching and
flapping. More than one brood appears to be reared,
for the herons are still about their nests in July.

In parts of the country where the Raven still exists,
as amongst the fells of the north and west or the cliffs
of the south coast, the birds may be seen at the
beginning of March, or even earlier, carrying sticks
and other nesting materials to the favoured site, which
is usually tenanted year after year. A hardy outlaw
is the bird of Odin ; in Wales we have often found the
hen bird sitting while snow-drifts still lay in the hollows
and icicles hung from the rocks. By the middle of
the month the Common Buzzard (“‘common” no
longer save in wild hill-districts beyond the limits
of game preserving) begins to bring sticks and small
branches to its nest.

Meanwhile, nearer home, in lanes, shrubbery and
garden, nesting is in full progress. The Mistle Thrush
places its large, untidy nest in a low fork of some
orchard tree. Careless of concealment, it seems to
trust to its powers of vituperation to guard its treasure,
and great is the outcry if magpie or prowling cat
approaches. In the laurels the Song Thrush is round-
ing off with a smooth lining of touchwood, cemented
with cow-dung, the structure which we know so well,
soon to contain four or five of the blue, black-spotted
eggs, so common and yet so fair to see. The Robin

ROBIN’S. NEST IN KETTLE
Photo W. Bickerton,

MARCH 65

has found a suitable hole amongst dead oak-leaves
on the mossy bank, and in the wood-yard or amongst
the pea-sticks which the gardener has piled up for
next season’s use, the Hedge Sparrow has a snug
nursery in which rest those eggs of a hue unlike any-
thing else.in nature, neither blue nor green, but a
compromise between the two. Joy of the village
urchin for untold generations—when did they fail to
figure amongst his spoils strung upon a thread by the
cottage chimney-piece ?

Of the country sounds associated with the present
month first and foremost is the cheerful clamour
of the rookery. Though in a mild season the Rooks
resort to their nests very early in the year, apparently
to fix upon sites and settle conflicting claims, it is not
as a rule till the closing days of February that they are
seen bringing twigs and taking the architectural
problem seriously in hand. Then follow the pilfer-
ing of building materials, the well-known fights,
scuffliig and buffeting of wings amongst the tree-tops,
while with softened modulations of voice other couples
strive to express their hymeneal bliss. The ground is
strewn with sticks, lining materials, egg-shells, cast-
ings of husks of grain, the branches splashed with
guano, worm-skins, grub-exuvie, as in a community
with too much real business on hand to be careful of
street sweeping. No country sound is more character-
istically English than the brisk uproar of a rookery in

5

66 BIRD LIFE THROUGHOUT THE YEAR

March ; abroad such colonies seem to be fewer and
their occupants comparatively quiet and subdued.

Meanwhile another early breeder, the Long-eared
Owl, deposits its eggs in an old squirrels’ ‘‘drey” or a
deserted nest of some crow or magpie, while the
Tawny Owl (the owl which hoots par excellence) seeks
a hollow tree, to brood in semi-darkness upon her
round white treasures.

By the end of the month Lapwings are shaping their
nest-hollows on moor and fallow, and a few eggs have
been deposited. The hardy Water Ouzel is nesting,
as we might expect of a bird which dives and dabbles
in cold mountain streams all through the winter,
cheerful as a Serpentine bather on Christmas morning.
In the latter half of the month the Woodlark may
regularly be found nesting upon the warm bracken-
covered slopes which it loves. Amongst dead leaves
in a bramble-thicket near the margin of the lake, the
Wild Duck hides her eggs in a hollow lined with down
from her own breast, and in parts of the country where
the Woodcock breeds its eggs may sometimes be found,
completing our list of birds whose breeding season
falls thus early.

The numbers of several of our familiar birds which
do not entirely leave us in winter are now augmented
by the return of many of their kindred from the south.
How seldom one saw a Pied Wagtail in January, but
now, in their dainty spring livery, they swarm upon the

MARCH 67

fresh-turned furrows, passing singly and in parties all
through the first half of the month. To those who
know the Meadow Pipit, its return to the water-meads
in straggling flocks is as familiar a feature of the month
as the re-appearance of the wagtails. The Linnets
twittering and singing in the ash, the black-capped
Stonechats on the furze, all, or a large proportion of
them, were absent while frost and snow held sway,
though their quest of warmth and sunshine may only
have carried them to the neighbourhood of the south
coast. Few have any idea of the extent to which
these local movements of birds occur within the
United Kingdom.

It is not until near the close of the month that we
look for the return of the first of thesummer migrants,
or birds of passage, whose annual wanderings have a
far wider range. The first to be reported, from
warrens, stony fallows, or the sand-dunes of the coast,
is almost invariably the grey-backed Wheatear, which
by the end of the month flicks its white tail and utters
its sharp “ chack, chack,” in many a rocky mountain
solitude. A few days later the Chiffchaff, a slim little
warbler, olive-green above and lighter below, may be
seen darting into the air for insects from the twigs
of a yellow-catkined willow or repeating its monotonous
distich amongst the tender green of budding larches.
Its arrival puts the seal to the promise of March, for the
chiffchaff, and not the cuckoo, is the true harbinger of

|

68 BIRD LIFE THROUGHOUT THE YEAR

spring. A few Sand Martins, skimming over lake or river
in the closing days of the month, give rise to the “early
swallow’ paragraphs in the newspapers. The Ring
Ouzel, the white-breasted “ moor blackbird,” some-
times reaches the fells thus early, and in the south of
England the hawk-like call of the Wryneck may be
heard, but the great wave of migration is still to come
and will spread itself over the coming six weeks.

THE MONTH OF AWAKENING.

THE March sunshine, which sees such a stir in the bird
world, serves to revivify much of the small populace of
field and wood. True, it is an inconstant month
which does not know its mind, and, after harking back
to winter pure and simple, may end in relenting mood
by borrowing two or three days from April and giving
us a few sunlit hours with the temperature in the
neighbourhood of 65°. Then, indeed, there is a magic
awakening, not only of the furred and scaled, but of
insect hosts which hum and creep and fly. Our native
animals present few instances of hibernation in the
sense of a deep and unbroken winter sleep. The
squirrel is abroad from time to time all through the
winter, and often in severe weather. But the hedge-
hog has certainly been in retirement, and now unrolls,
drowsy and rather unsteady at first, to root for grubs
in the garden paths at dusk. A rustle in the hedge-

PEEWIT AND HER NEST.
Photo W. Bickerton.

MARCH 69

bottom and a tiny vibrant squeak tell that the shrew
is abroad. On the first mild evening one may watch
once more the wavering flight of the small bat or
pipistrelle. Curled up amongst dead fern on the
heath, the adder, very sluggish as yet, suns its scaly
coils, and on warm banks the lizard basks. From the
pond comes the smothered “croc, croc” of spawning
toads.. Half-awakened wood-ants cluster in masses
about the entrance to their nest. The yellow-catkined
sallows are humming with bees. Across the meadow,
above the heads of the dancing daffodils, races one of
their number which has taken to itself wings—the
first brimstone butterfly. It is a wintry March which
does not bring forth at least one butterfly. The first
adventurer is often the peacock or small tortoiseshell.
There is nothing strange in their appearance as, like
the brimstone, they have been sleeping since last
autumn, waiting for the few sunny hours which call
them, sometimes all too soon, to fresh life. Even the
banded hedge-snails, making their appearance at the
first shower, are welcome as the damper and milder
air which brings them forth.

A change of this sort, a kindly breath from the
south-west after along spell of east winds, has a marked
effect upon the feathered choir. The early morning
concert of blackbirds and thrushes recommences with
new vigour. Skylarks and chaffinches, long delaying,
burst at length into full song. For song in its begin-

70 BIRD LIFE THROUGHOUT THE YEAR

nings is tentative, suggesting a distant vision of spring
days to come and of the joys of the nesting season
rather than any lively hope of their near fruition.
The Thrush’s early efforts in late autumn are often
unworthy of him, but with the new year comes an
improvement. In March he sings with conviction,
for are not the tree-tops thick with buds and the
catkins hanging from every bush ? But asudden snow
squall whitens the ground, and while it lasts all
voices are stilled. Not for long, however; a cheery
optimism is rooted in the feathered breast ; a break
in the clouds and the soft snow vanishes like magic
to the tune of “ cheer-up, cheer-up, cheer-up,” “told
you so, told you so, told you so.” ‘‘’Tis the wisethrush,
he sings each song thrice over,” and in fact all must
have noticed that in singing our friend of the spotted
breast has a preference for triplicate phrase. Repe-
tition of this kind is characteristic of many songs. A
nightingale, listened to last spring, ran on with its
“jug, jug, jug,” for more than thirty times without
apause. The pied-wagtail’s song is little more than a
reiteration, with variations, of its call note of “ chiz-
zick,” often delivered while the performer executes a
sort of aerial dance with brisk movement of wings and
tail. That song does not rise at once to high-water
mark is well seen in the case of the Chaffinch, which
begins to sing with the first bright day in February.
The first attempt ends in something very like a break-

MARCH 71

down, for the notes are too few and lack the proper
ending. Convinced that there is something wrong
both with time and tune, the chaffinch then begins
to practise, and in a week or so, having got “ the hang
of the thing,” trolls out the rollicking catch which we
hear from every budding orchard tree. There is, too,
individual variation, some birds being gifted above
their fellows. This fact is well-known to the bird-
keeping fraternity in many of our large towns, where a
“‘chaffinch contest ”’ is a popular fixture, the award going
to the owner of the bird which can rattle out the com-
plete number of notes most frequently in a given time.
Is there in bird-song anything comparable to dialect
and provincial accent ? Most certainly, and the
chaffinch again gives a case in point, for local variations |
may be noticed even in Britain, and abroad they
become much more marked. In a German forest
the chaffinches ended their song with a sharp
“tchick’”’ which we never hear in England. In
the chiffchaff’s simple ditty, which gives the bird
its name, there seems little scope for variation, yet
hearing it in the Pyrenees one may well feel a doubt
as to authorship, and in the Canary Islands may quite
fail to recognise the performer. Individual thrushes,
too, have a preference for certain notes. Did not one
particular bird weary us by his ceaseless offer of
‘*fresh herrin’, fresh herrin’”’ from the elm-tops all
through a sunny June? But the thrush is an

72 BIRD LIFE THROUGHOUT THE YEAR

artiste, and in the spring choir there are of course
voices of less compass and of more limited powers.
The Hedge Sparrow’s song always seems the same,
whether heard as the sun breaks through on a misty
autumn morning, setting the dew-drops sparkling on
every furze-bush, or when the snowy hawthorns tell
of spring in its prime. The Wren, too, whose sudden
burst of song seems too loud for so small a throat,
favours us to the same performance, his sole instrument
the clarionet, right through the year. The Tree
Creeper, which climbs mouse-like up the trunks and
round the branches of the oaks, is no bigger than the
wren ; how many know its short but joyous contri-
bution of song, which may be heard all day long in
bright weather early in the year? Another song
which must be listened for is that of the Goldcrest, a
small voice as befits its author of the golden coronet,
tiniest of British birds. Yet, when recognized, it may
be heard persistently in March coming from the firs
or the larch plantation. Has the Bullfinch a true
song ? If so, the writer has never heard it except
once from a bird in captivity, and in this case the notes
may have been acquired.

Another element in bird song is imitation. This is
sometimes evident in the case of the Thrush, which
will pick up familiar farm-yard sounds, such as the
clucking of a hen. The story is well known how, in
the neighbourhood of one of the old monasteries, the

MARCH 73

thrushes, listening to the chanting of the monks at
vespers and prime, acquired and repeated the oft-
heard refrain. But in this line our leading performer
is unquestionably the Starling—the troubadour of the
chimney-pots, giving to the term its true meaning of
one who invents or improvises as he sings. Who does
not know the starling on the roof or up in the elm
tops as he sings, whistling, piping, wheezing and
flapping his wings ? Thisis genuine starling minstrelsy
and all his own, but in early spring he runs over the
whole repertoire of sounds which he has picked up
at one time or another, interweaving them with his
true notes in a series of reminiscences or character
sketches. One starling gave a life-like rendering of
the corn-crake, another hit off the green woodpecker’s
cry to a nicety, a third mimicked the yellow-hammer,
and threw in one of the brown owl’s notes. At the
curlew’s call we have looked up, to find that the only
“curlew ” in sight is the starling on the chimney-top.
,_ These powers of mimicry are of course shared by the
starling with the members of the crow family, to which
it is so nearly related.

Such are some of the ideas called forth by the first
outburst of song in March. But bird-minstrelsy is by
no means confined to spring or to the breeding season,
and this will appear (with the possible exception of
tuneless August) as we trace the fortunes of our
feathered acquaintance through the ensuing months.

74 BIRD LIFE THROUGHOUT THE YEAR

CALENDAR FOR MARCH

March 4th.—Raven nests.
5th.—Curlew and Golden Plover return to the moors.
toth.—Lapwings begin to cry and tumble.

Pied Wagtails return.
12th.—Greenfinch begins its drawling note.
20oth.—Tawny Owl nests.

Meadow Pipits return.
21st.—Rook nests.
24th.—Mallard or Wild Duck nests.
26th.—Magpie builds.

Long-eared Owl nests.

Woodlark nests.

Wheatear arrives.
27th.—Dipper or Water Ouzel nests.
28th.—Blackbird builds.

Carrion Crow builds.

Mistle Thrush nests.
2gth.—Song Thrush nests.
30th.—Chaffinch builds.

Hedge Sparrow nests.

Lapwing or Peewit nests.
31st.—Ring Dove builds.

Robin nests.

Chiffchaff arrives.

oo»

a)

a»

”

Bird Life in April.

*
KENTISH PLOVERS AND THEIR NESTING PLACE.
From case in British Museum, South Kensington.

Bird Life in April.

LIkE March, April is a month of moods many and
varied, many-sided as the aspects of bird-life with
which it presents us. Popularly associated with
showers, how often do the harsh, dry winds hold sway,
so that only the closing days of the month bring the
short-lived downpour, followed by the burst of sun-
shine, during which the buds seem to swell visibly,
and the willow-wrens sing on every side. Who has
not qualified the poet’s “Oh, to be in England now
that April’s there!” with a strong desire to be some-
where else where the tooth of the east wind is less keen.
Yet who would miss an April, though her frowns be
more than tears or smiles? In virgin freshness of
leaf and flower, and, when in happy mood, in clearness
of her laughing skies, she remains the poet’s month,
and in the naturalist’s memory every one of her thirty
days is marked with a white stone. For now nesting
is in full progress, bringing into play marvels of
inherited instinct and showing varied traits of “the
mind behind the feathers ” which are little in evidence
at other times of year. Now a crowd of returning
songsters re-peoples copse and thicket, welcome as
77

78 BIRD LIFE THROUGHOUT THE YEAR

long absent friends who fill once more the accustomed
niche after wintering in Egypt or on the Riviera.
But, before we welcome the coming, let us speed
the parting guests, to wit, the feathered hosts which
made a descent last autumn upon our English woods
and waters to escape the rigours of a northern winter,
and whose instinct now draws them homeward towards
Highland loch or Norwegian fjeld. In April the
number of wild-fowl upon lake, river and estuary
grows daily less. The wild geese, the majority of our
winter ducks, such as the Pintail, Wigeon, Pochard and
Scoter, Mergansers and Divers, all seek their northern
breeding haunts, though some will still be with us
until the first or second week of May. The Woodcock
is no longer to be flushed from the soft ground under the
hollies by the spring-head, where his russet plumage
harmonises so well with the carpet of dead leaves.
The Jack Snipe has left the patch of swamp where any
day since last October we have been able to find him
amongst the tufts of tawny sedge. The little green
Siskins no longer hang from the twigs of birch and
alder as they extract the seed. Under the beeches we
look in vain for the Bramblings which, with their near
relatives, the chaffinches, have pecked all through the
winter at the fallen “ mast.’ With musical call-note
and the glint of sunshine on white wings, the Snow
Buntings leave our northern coasts. Who knows to
what far arctic solitude their summer wanderings may

APRIL 79

carry them, for their range in the direction of the Pole
exceeds that of any other land bird ? In hedge-row
elms the Fieldfares chatter noisily as they discuss their
approaching journey, while the grey-backed Hooded
Crows, which have haunted tidal river or rocky shore
through the winter, wing their way more sedately to
the north.

In the woods in early April the year still seems to be
marking time, so little progress towards leafing do we
note from day to day. Only where a shade of green
creeps over the larches, have we the look and smell of
spring. But there is spring in the air, and birds on all
sides answer to her magic call. The ancient Carrion
Crow tunes his voice to soft, unwonted modulations,
and amorous Jays, discarding their harsh screech,
produce a combination of notes almost rising to the
level of a song. Magpies cough and chuckle as, with
the thorniest of twigs, they seek to render impregnable
their stick-built fortress in the larch.

There is spring in the Nuthatch’s clear whistle and in
his sounding taps upon the oak bough, while the
Ring Dove, leaving his perch with clap of wings, shoots
upward, remains motionless for a moment on expanded
pinions, and then glides downwards as if on an inclined
plane of air. Now also in the still woods is heard
that curious jarring sound, as of a tree trunk suddenly
rent, which is the Spotted Woodpecker’s call to his
mate. The Green Woodpecker chuckles joyously and

80 BIRD LIFE THROUGHOUT THE YEAR

seeks the hillocks where the wood-ants are stirring.
By the cover-side two cock Pheasants are fighting,
sparring at each other with their wings. Suddenly
there is uproar in the woods, the scream of mistle
thrushes and the squalling of jays. The disturbers of
the peace have descried a Brown Owl, drowsing away
the noontide against a tree-trunk, and will hurl
contumely and vituperation at him until he takes
refuge in flight. In the thicket where the blackthorn
blossom shows snow-white, a pair of Long-tailed Tits
are finishing off their nest, the well-known barrel-
shaped structure studded with lichens exteriorly and a
perfect feather-bed within. Not less exquisite in
shape and finish is the mossy cradle which a pair of
Goldcrests have attached to the underside of one of
the pendant branches of a spruce fir. Where the white
crags of the old limestone quarry show through the
screen of leafing beeches, there is stir and clamour.
Jackdaws dart into their nest-holes in noisy crowds,
keeping up a continual chatter. Vociferous Starlings
hurry to and fro. A pair of Kestrels, toying and
squealing overhead, are preparing to nest in one of
the crevices, having as solemnly grotesque neigh-
bours a pair of White Owls, while another hollow,
under the overhanging roots of a tree, is tenanted by
Stock Doves. It is a scene of cheerful bustle such as
only the nesting season can show. For to the influence
of the season we must credit this overflowing energy

LONG-TAILED TITS AND NESTS.
From case in British Museum, South Kensington.

APRIL 81

and exuberant vitality, finding expression in many a
drama in which rivalry and the desire to make a brave
show in the eyes of a prospective mate are the actuating
motives. Listen to the Greenfinch as he trills and
drawls all day from the apple bough or takes his waver-
ing nuptial flights from tree to tree. Two cock
Chaffinches dart past in mad chase, then scuffle and
buffet in the dust of the road, so blind to all but their
quarrel that we come within an ace of picking them
up. Who does not know the tourney of the street
Sparrow, the combatants rolling in a tumbled, yelping
heap in the middle of the crocus bed? The cock
Yellow-hammer hopping down the path with raised
crest, drooping wings and partially spread tail to show
off his spring plumage to best advantage, has an eye
only to the plain little hen which to all appearance
ignores him utterly. How many have seen the
nuptial display of the male Pied Wagtail, when,
directing his bill towards the object of his attentions,
he waltzes slowly round her in a semicircle, executing
a tasteful pas seul? In such small comedies do these
April days abound.

Before the month has half run its course the birds
which breed early begin to hatch. The Hedge Sparrow
has converted her blue-green eggs into callow nest-
lings, which raise orange-red gapes for food as we part
the twigs to view them. The young Mistle Thrushes,
now too large for theirnest, scramble out on to its edge

, 6

82 BIRD LIFE THROUGHOUT THE YEAR

or on to an adjacent branch, where, with the white
down still showing amongst their feathers, they sit
with all the wide-eyed solemnity of fledglings who have
begun to see the world. An observer with quick-
trained eye, walking along the lanes, will “spot”
every Robins’ nest which he passes. It is not the nest
itself which is seen, for that lies snugly and deeply
in a hole of the bank, but the patch of dead leaves
with which the robin carpets what we may call the
hall or lobby, the passage leading to its nest. If the
bird sits resolutely, the chances are that she is already
covering a brood of nestlings, clad in the black down
which precedes their feathers. Does pious tradition
still throw its egis over the robin, as was the case in
Suffolk, at any rate, forty years ago, when every
village boy understood that while other nests were
fair game that of the robin must not be touched?
Now may be noted an amusing eccentricity of the Wren.
Before settling down seriously to house-keeping, a
pair of wrens will run up quite a number of nests—in
the thatch, in the ivy, in an old shed, anywhere. Not
one of them is ever completed or intended to be. The
real nest we find later, and usually where we least expect
it. The House Sparrow has long been collecting the
double handful of feathers, paper, string and oddments
in general for which he deems the funnel-shaped
receiver of the rain-water pipe the meet receptacle.
Chaffinches and Greenfinches are hard at work, yet

APRIL 83

with an eye to spare for the labours of the gardener
who has just got in the early-sown annuals. Mid-day
comes and his back is turned. There is a general
adjournment of the finch tribe to the seed-beds. Woe
to the mignonette, alas for the prospects of the candy-
tuft! By the middle of the month young Woodlarks
may be upon the wing. Rather later we see the
young Blackbirds, spotted and thrush-like, hopping
after the cock bird for food, and by the end of April
numerous hopeful broods are launched upon the world,
unwotting of such pitfalls as await them at the hands
of boys, cats, weasels and hawks.

But to wander farther afield this stirring April day,
through the green water-meadows and along the sunny,
rippling brook. The willows are humming with bees,
and the stream has a margin of widely-open celandines,
an embroidered edging in green and gold. Moorhens
croak and fight in the cover of the sedges. Watching
patiently, one may see the shy Water Rail steal out
to feed amongst the cresses of a weed-grown run. A
cock Reed Bunting chirps from the osiers, showing
his black cap and white collar, and a pair of King-
fishers flash past, the one chasing the other with shrill
piping note. Following the stream to the rough
boggy pastures in which it takes its rise, we are greeted
by the cries of anxious Lapwings, and may note that,
while the male bird at once throws himself into the air
with frantic tumblings, the hen steals quietly off her

84 BIRD LIFE THROUGHOUT THE YEAR

eggs and runs to some distance before she rises. Noisy
Redshanks are greatly concerned as to the safety of their
nests, which are carefully hidden in the tufts of rushes.
A Snipe starts up close before us, rises high into the
air till he is a mere speck, then swerves suddenly
downwards, making as he descends the well-known
buzzing sound, otherwise called “bleating” or
“‘ drumming,” and believed to be due to the action of
the air upon the stiff quills and tail-feathers. No more
curious performance marks this month of mating and
song. In certain parts of the country the Black-
headed Gulls now flock in large numbers to their
breeding stations, the meres and “ broads ” of Norfolk,
the “ fleets’ of the Essex marshes, or the “ flows”
of the Solway, hovering like a cloud of snowflakes
above the chosen site. In similar spots the Wild
Duck leads out her brood, and the Coot moors her
floating mass of dead flags and rushes to the branch of
a fallen tree which stretches out level with the water.
The Little Grebe, or Dabchick, has returned to the
reed-fringed pond, and on larger sheets of water the
Great Crested Grebe may be seen displaying in full
beauty its curious head-gear consisting of a double
crest and tippet.

Upon rocky parts of the coast, April is marked by
the return to their breeding haunts of a host of sea-
fowl, Guillemots, Razorbills and Puffins. The loud
jubilant cackle of the Herring Gulls is heard from the

APRIL 85

grass-grown ledges, where amongst the tufts of sea-
pink they form their artless nests. This, and not, as
one might suppose, the Common Gull of the bird
books, is the one which breeds so generally upon the
rugged parts of our coast. The Common Gull, so
called, abundant through the winter, now leaves for
the north, and nowhere breeds south of the Border.
So easily may a trivial name lend itself to error. The
gulls are in fact a puzzling family to the beginner,
the speckled and spotted dress of the young birds
giving place gradually to the adult plumage, which
is sometimes not acquired until the third or fourth
year. There is, further, the complication of a change
from summer to winter plumage. But for the study of
these minor differences some time of year must be
chosen when the calls in other directions are less
pressing than they are in these full-tide days of
April.

THE SUMMER MIGRANTS.

LITTLE more than a hundred years ago the annual
disappearance of our more delicate songsters was so
little understood as to be largely shrouded in mystery.
Dr. Johnson boldly stated that swallows on the
approach of winter, flying above a lake or pond,
“conglobulate” into a ball and sink below the
surface of the water, remaining quiescent in the mud

86 BIRD LIFE THROUGHOUT THE YEAR

until the return of spring. White, of Selborne, wavered,
at one time inclining to the opinion that the swallows
crossed the sea, at other times half expecting to hear
of their being discovered in mid-winter in a somnolent
condition in holes of sand-pits or under the roofs of
houses. This uncertainty has, of course, long since
vanished. A host of observers chronicle the re-
appearance of the welcome heralds of spring, so
that, in addition to knowing when and upon what
part of the coast they land, we may trace, step
by step, their gradual dispersal over the country.
Especially good work has been done by the lighthouse-
keepers, some of whom have become keen observers.
Captains of ships, too, take note of the feathered
wayfarers which accompany their vessels at migration
time, often perching exhausted upon the deck or
rigging.

The whole period of migration, from the appearance
of the Wheatear and Chiffchaff to that of such late-
comers as the Nightjar and Red-backed Shrike, is
about seven weeks. Each arrival goes hand in hand
with the attainment of a certain stage in the develop-
ment of leaf and herbage, with accompanying awakening
of fresh insect life. The particular date for the
appearance of the Wood Wren is marked by the leafing
of the beeches. The aquatic warblers do not appear
until the new growth of reeds affords them sufficient
cover. And the Nightjar need not be expected until,

APRIL 87

with milder evenings, abundance of moths are flying
at dusk. Of course mistakes are made, for how shall
either bird or man forecast the vagaries of the English
climate ? The Swallows had appeared as usual in
April, 1908, when the 24th of the month brought a
snow-fall of nearly three inches. They vanished
completely, and only returned when conditions once
more approached the normal. The list of our British
birds is swollen by the inclusion of a large number
of species of purely accidental occurrence. Some of
these waifs and strays have apparently, when migrat-
ing, got completely at sea as to direction, though no
doubt in other cases they have been carried out of
their course by contrary winds or sudden storms.
The migrants usually travel by night, and perilous
must be the passage in the gusty darkness of early
April, till they see the fiery eye of Beachy Head or
St. Catharine’s flash-light leap out of the sea, and
alight in the chilly dawn on English shores, to seek
shelter in the nearest thickets at the back of the dunes.
Perhaps the perils of the passage may account for the
fact that the numbers of some species, as of the Chiff-
chaff and Lesser Whitethroat, vary greatly from year
to year.

In distributing themselves over the country, the
migrants follow well-defined routes. Their main
arteries are usually the river-valleys, such as that of
the Severn, and almost all have an objection to travers-

88 BIRD LIFE THROUGHOUT THE YEAR

ing bleak ranges of hills, as shown by the fact that
those which land in South Devon diverge to either side
to avoid having to cross Dartmoor. It may seem
that inherited instinct has done enough in guiding the
migrants back to English shores, but she has still a
more wonderful task, that of enabling each bird to
find its way to its native district, in many cases to the
very spot where it was reared or which it frequented
the previous year. This seems to the writer the real
and inner mystery of migration. That birds are not
guided merely by the experience of their elders is
conclusively proved by the case of the cuckoo, where
the young birds of the year remain with us long after
the adult cuckoos have left.

Who that sees the Swallows at the moment of arrival
make straight for the shed where they nested last year,
or the House Martin fly direct to the eaves, can doubt
that they are the identical birds whose departure he
watched in the autumn? A pair of Wood Wrens
nested year after year within a yard of the same spot.
Over hundreds of leagues of land and sea the memory
of that shady bank deep in blue bells drew them with
the magnetic influence of home. Birds of the previous
year making for the spot where they were reared
and finding this occupied, or being perhaps driven
off by their elders, seek homes of their own. This
tends to a general dispersal, and, where the species is
increasing in numbers, to an extension of range into

APRIL 89

fresh localities. The fact that some species, such as
the Corncrake, appear to be dying out in certain
districts is evidence that there is not a general re-
distribution over the country each year. In general,
as is easily seen in the case of the Wheatear and
Yellow Wagtail, the males arrive first, as if to take
possession of the old home or seek a new one before
they are followed a few days later by their mates. If
we compare the migration, say of the Willow Wren, toa
wave breaking on our shores, its crest will represent the
main arrival, while a series of succeeding ripples will
stand for the smaller parties which continue to come
in for several days. When the wave is an unusually
strong one, it seems to carry individuals beyond the
ordinary range of the species, Thus it is only in
certain seasons that the Lesser Whitethroat reaches
Western Wales. The laggards, constituting the final
ripples of the wave, are probably birds which are going
much further north to nest. Thus long after our
resident Wheatears have settled down to breed, in
fact all through April and May, other wheatears may
be seen on passage. These we imagine to be on their
way to Iceland or Greenland, where the climate renders
it impossible for them to nest until a comparatively
late date.

In an ordinary April we may expect to note some
twenty arrivals, the bulk of them naturally falling
within the last ten days of the month. It is the

go BIRD LIFE THROUGHOUT THE YEAR

second week which as a rule brings the first Swallow,
skimming past on light and graceful wing and looking
all steel-blue in the April sunshine, which has filled
the meads with marsh-marigolds and brought a crowd
of bees to the wallflowers. The flight of the swallow
is so entirely different from that of any of our resident
birds that with the merest glimpse one recognises the
new-comer. For some days previously the Sand
Martin, shorter winged and mouse-coloured, has been
hawking gnats over the surface of lake and river.
With the Swallow comes the Willow Wren. Its soft,
liquid, musical chime is heard from the orchard,
when the grass begins to grow long and sends up the
first flower-spikes or bennets. Now, too, in the
meadows, running about amongst the grazing cattle,
is seen the Yellow Wagtail, not to be confused with the
so-called Grey Wagtail which has haunted brooks
and stream-sides through the winter, though the
latter, unfortunately for clearness of nomenclature,
also shows a good deal of yellow. But there is no
mistaking the rich canary-yellow breast of the new
arrival.

By the middle of the month the Nightingale should
be heard in its favourite haunts, not as yet in concert
form, but merely, as it were, running over the opening
bars. All the warblers, if the weather is cold when
they arrive, remain silent and are little seen. It is
noticeable that each pair of nightingales keeps through-

APRIL gr

out the season to the coppice or bushy thicket by the
roadside which it selects on arrival. The first Redstart
shows us a flash of colour as he goes along the hedge,
pausing to sing and vibrate his ruddy tail, while a
newly arrived Tree Pipit is making his restless little
ascents and descents, trilling out a song which would be
little noticed but for the louder, penetrating notes
with which it ends. These, as we have often observed
when travelling, are clearly audible above the noise
of a train in motion. The Blackcap from the leafing
oaks adds a voice of first-rate quality and compass
to the spring choir. Many consider that no rival
songster reaches the level of his rich, mellow strain.
A walk along the brook-side will now show that the
Common Sandpiper is back in his summer haunts,
trilling out his love-song and playing about over the
surface of the quiet pools with all the quick turns of
the swallow tribe.

In the third week of the month often comes a
change from the harsh, dry winds which have
prevailed for so long. At evening the birds sing
with fresh vigour for they feel the rain coming.
After a night of warm showers the morning shows
that the hedgerows have rushed into leaf and that the
chestnut leaves begin “‘ to spread into the perfect fan.”’
The change is accompanied by a rush of migrants ; five
or six new-comers may be noted in the course of the
day. Now, spring personified, comes the call of the

92 BIRD LIFE THROUGHOUT THE YEAR

first Cuckoo. The white-rumped House Martin, always
later to arrive than the swallow, twitters once more
about its nest under the eaves. The Wood Wren is
whispering in the tops of the beeches, and a half-
smothered babbling from the tangle of briers and
brambles tells where the Whitethroat is soliloquizing
sotto voce over his home-coming. Meanwhile, from
the thicket by the stream-side the Sedge Warbler
chatters and scolds, and the persistent note of the
Grasshopper Warbler rings on the ear, one of our
strangest bird voices, like the stridulation of cricket
or cicada in its monotony, or resembling rather the
noise made by the angler’s reel as it spins round when
he makes a cast. | Unless we live in western or
northern England, in some land of hill and dale, we
shall scarcely be likely to see the Pied Flycatcher,
and this is unfortunate, for, with its pleasing habits
and song and boldly-contrasted livery of black and
white, there is no more charming bird upon our
list.

April will be almost giving place to May when some
still night we hear from the hay-meadow the Corn-
crake’s strident discord, welcome at first, later to
become exasperating in its rasping monotony, more
especially if the performer has located himself under
our window. There are other migrants yet to follow,
but for these we must await the warmer sun and
leafier woods of May.

a

>?

APRIL 93
CALENDAR FOR APRIL.

1st.—Ring Ouzel arrives.
3rd.—Blackbird and Ring Dove nest.
6th.—Sand Martin arrives.
gth.—Stonechat and Moorhen nest.
toth.—House Sparrow nests.
12th.—Long-tailed Tit, Magpie and Common Snipe
nest.
13th.—Swallow, Willow Wren and Yellow Wagtail
arrive.
Brambling last seen.
14th.—Carrion Crow and Common Buzzard nest.
Young Rooks heard in the nests.
Hooded Crow Iast seen.
15th.—Black-headed Gull nests.
16th.—Nightingale arrives.
17th.—Meadow Pipit and Red Grouse nest.
18th.—Pheasant nests.
Tree Pipit and Redstart arrive.
1gth.—Chaffinch nests.
20th.—Goldcrest nests.
22nd.—Ringed Plover nests.
Common Sandpiper arrives.
23rd.—Linnet, Yellow-hammer, Skylark, Starling,
Jackdaw and Curlew nest.
Blackcap arrives.
24th.—Kingfisher nests.
25th.—Greenfinch, Pied Wagtail and Kestrel nest.
Whinchat, Common Whitethroat, Grasshopper
Warbler, House Martin and Cuckoo arrive.

94 BIRD LIFE THROUGHOUT THE YEAR

April 26th.—Wren nests.
27th.—Coot nests.
Wood Wren arrives.
28th.—The Tits, Great, Blue, Coal and Marsh, nest.
Teal nests.
Young Song Thrushes of first brood leave
the nest.
29th.—Lesser Whitethroat arrives.
3oth.—Wheatear nests.
Pied Flycatcher, Sedge Warbler and Corn-
crake arrive.

3?

2)

a?

Bird Life in May.

BULLFINCH ON NEST.
Photo W. BIcKERTON.

Bird Life in May.

AFTER the April days, crowded as they were with
incident, what shall we say of May? Now indeed
spring is in its hey-day and life is at the full. The air
is still fresh and cool, filled with the scents of opening
leafage. What is there in the very air of a May
morning which makes all things young again, some
property which is lost all too soon as “the merrie
month ” gives place to mid-summer? At no time of
year is a larger variety of birds with us, for, while
the later comers amongst the summer migrants are
making their appearance, many waders and wild-
fowl still linger on shore and estuary before taking
their long flight to the north. All birds which breed
with us are now nesting ; almost all are in full plumage
and in best voice. Those which nested early are now
busy with a second venture, almost before the first
family is off their hands. There are of course
exceptions ; the members of the crow tribe rear but
a single brood, and the same is certainly the case with
many pairs of tits. The primary reason why nests
seem so much more numerous in hedge and thicket
than they did last month is that the summer migrants

97 7

98 BIRD LIFE THROUGHOUT THE YEAR

are now breeding. But some of our resident birds,
and those of the hardiest, are far from being in a hurry
to take up parental duties. We have never seen the
eggs of the bullfinch before May is in, and rarely those
of the yellow-hammer with their inky scrawls, while
the common-bunting goes so far as to postpone nesting
until the latter half of the month.

The first half of May sees the list of our summer
migrants completed by the addition of some half-a-
dozen late comers. The month is scarcely in when,
with shrill screaming, the long-winged Swifts dash
once more round the steeples, abbey walls or battle-
ments of the ruined castle in which they nest. From
the copse, now deep in grasses amongst which the
white-flowering hemlocks grow tall and lush, come the
song of the Garden Warbler and the purring “‘ coo” of
Turtle Doves. One needs a nice ear for the minor
differences of bird song to discriminate at once and
with certainty between the songs of the garden-
warbler and the blackcap, but, while the rich warble
of the latter is delivered in separate phrases, that of
the garden warbler runs on like a rill, not so loud
but more continuously. Yet, knowing this much, we
may sometimes listenin doubt. For a bird’s song is the
expression of his varying mood. The Blackcap, as he
sings amongst the tender greenery of the young oaks,
is all animation. As we watch his erected crest and the
movements of his swelling throat, we may perhaps

MAY 99

catch a glimpse of the neat red-capped hen for whom
his minstrelsy is tuned. This is the typical song, but
at other times he improvises, singing quietly to himself
in a strain so different that we may fail to recognise its
authorship. Many other birds interweave at times
unfamiliar variations into their songs. The stonechat
and whinchat may be quoted as examples.

The next arrival is more likely to be identified by
its movements than by its voice. The Spotted Fly-
catcher is said to have a song, but it is so faint and low
that few can claim to have heard it. However, the
flycatcher’s rapid dash after an insect and return to its
perch are so characteristic that an added voice would
be superfluous. Various other birds, even the starling,
sparrow and chaffinch, attempt this manceuvre on
calm days when insects are flying high, but the fly-
catcher is the only one which performs it gracefully and
with certainty.

If, when the hawthorns are white, we chance to
catch a glimpse of a very shy bird which, as it goes
down the hedge-side, looks something like a large
edition of the redstart, we may know the Red-backed
Shrike or Butcher Bird, and may look for the nearest
blackthorn bush with the expectation of finding a
number of insect victims impaled upon its spines.

On the first warm evening after the month has half
run its course, the Nightjar may be looked for, as it
skims in the gloaming with noiseless flight round the

Ioo BIRD LIFE THROUGHOUT THE YEAR

trees on the edge of the heath, alighting sometimes on
a branch where it sits lengthways, producing the
strange churring noise which has earned for it in some
‘places the name of “ spinning wheel,” and which may
be compared to the distant sound of a lawn-mower.
With this mysterious bird of the twilight ends our list
of the regular summer migrants, or those which may
be looked for with certainty. That dashing little
falcon, the long-winged Hobby, comes to nest in a
few favoured woodlands, arriving in the latter half
of the month. Sometimes, but not every year, we
hear the liquid three-fold whistle of the Quail, coming
from a field of springing corn. Probably a May never
passes in which a few Hoopoes do not land upon our
shores to strut and bow and spread their fan-like
crests, while a brightly-plumaged Oriole flashes, all
gold and black, from treee to tree. But such visitors
are too conspicuous to allow of their remaining un-
molested. If permitted to breed, they would no
doubt return with their progeny in increasing numbers
from year to year. It is noticeable that the migrants
which are latest to appear, such as the flycatcher and
shrike, begin to nest within a few days of their arrival,
while the earlier ones proceed in a much more leisurely
manner. A feature of the month is the reappearance
of some of those bird associations which are merely
broken up for the nesting season. For the Long-
tailed Tits, as soon as they have left the nest, begin

NEST OF CHAFFINCH.
‘Photo J. T. Newman.

MAY IOI

to range the woods in family parties, and the Rooks,
with such juveniles as have escaped the baptism of
fire which greeted their first fluttering appearance as
“branchers,” again betake themselves to meadow and
corn-field.

Turn where we will this May morning, when the
woods are all one blue sheen of wild hyacinths, there is
something of interest to note. The air is cleared and
freshened by the showers of the night and every bird-
throat is thrilling with song. Willow Wrens answer
each other in a ceaseless chime. See the Whitethroat
as he bustles and fusses into and out of the hedge, then
throws himself into the air to sing. Next, with a beak
full of dry bents he disappears, just where the nettles
are growing up thickly through the lower part of the
bramble bush. Anon he dances off to a hedgerow
tree, singing as he flies, a restless sprite with all the
pleasing fever of spring-time in his blood. His flimsy
nursery, when finished, is so slight and frail, that the
eggs can almost be seen through it. What varying
grades of craftmanship are exemplified by the nests
which one may meet with in a May morning! At the
foot of the scale is the scanty handful of twigs upon
which the ring-dove broods, more pigeon than nest.
A. decided advance is shown by the platform of sticks
which the sparrow-hawk builds upon the side branches
half way up the stem of the larch. While the ex-
quisitely neat nest of the chaffinch exemplifies what

1o2 BIRD LIFE THROUGHOUT THE YEAR

may be done by artful blending of moss, wool and
lichens, that of the bullfinch shows what a high level
may be attained by the use of such unpromising
material as fine twigs and slender roots. The willow
wren and chiffchaff build the dome-shaped structures
which have led country boys to name them “oven
birds,” with the advantage that a roof shelters the
feather-bed upon which repose their fragile pink eggs.
Then what various tastes are shown in choice of site.
The flycatcher builds on the horizontal branch of
the pear-tree trained along the garden wall, the
nightingale in the drift of dead oak-leaves at the
foot of the honeysuckle, while the tree-creeper has
found that there is just room to squeeze in its nest
between the old ivy-stem and the tree-trunk to
which it clings. The great-tit has a weakness
for disused pumps and country letter-boxes; the
marsh-tit excavates in the touch-wood of the willow
stump, while the blue-tit, sitting deep in the hollow
gate-post, when investigated, hisses in a series of
explosive puffs, but refuses to budge.

But for variety of small birds commend us to some
quiet nook in the West Midlands where, by grassy lane,
past hop-yard and bluebell copse, one reaches some
sequestered orchard of old fruit-trees, their gnarled
limbs green with moss or grey with lichen, and abound-
ing in those holes so dear to many birds when on nesting
bent. A nightingale hops out from the hedge,

MAY 103

robin-like, to seize a worm. Goldfinches sing amongst
the falling apple-blossom, which begins to cover the
grass under the trees with a carpet rose-tinted and
white. The shy hawfinch, too, is extremely partial
to these orchards. At first it appears as if every hole
held its brood of hungry, clamorous starlings. The
old birds are constantly arriving with food, chattering
and squalling. The green-woodpecker has no sooner
hewn out his burrow in the old pear-tree than he is
promptly evicted by these pushing and unscrupulous
neighbours. The wiser nuthatches have plastered
up the entrance to their tenement with clay, which
sets as hard as brick, leaving a way of ingress just
sufficient for themselves, but impossible for any bird of
larger bulk. But there are holes which are not roomy
enough for the starling. These are prime favourites
with the redstart, the tree-sparrow and the various
tits. Here, too, the Wryneck, with its delicately
pencilled plumage of brown and grey and black
which harmonizes so well with the colour of the bark,
skulks out of sight behind the branch up which it is
climbing,—a mysterious bird, so little seen that only
its loud monotonous cry of “ pay, pay, pay,” tells how
numerous it really is in the orchard country. By
lucky chance one may surprise it at an ant-hill,
where its long sticky tongue takes up the startled
emmets in crowds. If taken unawares in its nest-
hole, it hisses and squirms in such a way that its

1o4 BIRD LIFE THROUGHOUT THE YEAR

country name of “snake-bird”’ requires no further
elucidation.

Or, in place of the orchards, let us visit the heath,
where the gorse is now in its glory. Linnets, crimson-
breasted cocks and plainer hens, twitter and sing
amongst the golden blossom. Stonechats scold from
their points of vantage on the topmost spikes. The
Whinchat, always to be distinguished from the last
by his buff breast and white eye-streak, is here also,
butis equally at home in the hay meadows. Amongst
the bare mounds of the warren the Wheatear flicks his
white tail and dives into a deserted burrow, in some
dark recess of which is his nest with the pale blue
eggs. The wild outcry of the Lapwings is explained
as we find their newly-hatched young crouching close
to the ground. The frenzied “ peewit ” of the old
bird is doubtless an exhortation to “lie low.” Is it
by accident that this youngster has squatted upon a
lichen-covered stone which its mottled down exactly
matches in colour? Meanwhile a Meadow Pipit
is taking its short butterfly ascents, making the most
by its industry of its feeble tinkle of a song. It
sings both in ascending and descending, while the Tree
Pipit rises silently from the bough of a hedge-row tree,
reaches his highest point, and begins to sing only as he
turns to come down, broad-arrow fashion, to his perch
again. One has only to walk at random and a titlark
(to give the meadow-pipit its familiar country name)

MAY 105

is sure, before long, to start out from almost under
one’s feet, from a snugly hidden nest with its dark-
coloured eggs. These are always of the same type,
while those of the tree-pipit vary immensely, red,
lilac or blotched like a reed-bunting’s.

All the pipits have a pretty habit of chasing and
playing, toying and kissing on the wing. How fond,
too, the Cuckoo is of heaths and rough hill-sides. These
abound in the insect food, such as hairy caterpillars,
which cuckoos prefer, and offer a large selection of
nests in which a cuckoo’s egg, placed there “ un-
beknown,” may be palmed off upon the unsuspecting
proprietors. Is the imposture not sometimes detected,
however ? Certain it is that the cuckoo is always
attended by small birds, which often appear to be
mobbing it with indignant outcry. Country people
will tell us that they take it for a hawk. Each cuckoo
has his own domain, and great is the chasing and
voluble the cuckooing when a rival intrudes upon it.
“In June he changes his tune,” as the saw has it, but
as a matter of fact by the middle of May many are
already shouting their stammering “ cuck-cuckoo ! ”

The observer of shore-birds is never more busy than
in early May. As soon as the month comes in, we
hear once more the clear, rippling call-note of the
Whimbrel. The various plovers and sandpipers
which paddle about the sand-banks and muddy
estuaries, more especially of the east coast, are now

106 )60d BIRD LIFE THROUGHOUT THE YEAR

reinforced by the arrival of others of their kin which
have wintered further south, such as the Curlew,
Sandpiper, Turnstone and Godwit. Some of these,
together with the Grey Plover and Knot, may be met
with, during their short stay, in full breeding plumage.
The Stork, Spoonbill and Avocet stray across from
Holland to the tidal flats of East Anglia, and, thanks
to protection, have more chance than formerly of
escaping with their lives. The Black-throated and
Red-throated Divers sometimes remain until they have
assumed the full livery of the breeding season. Now,
also, the Terns or Sea Swallows are seen once more
making quick headway with springy béats of their
wings, or neatly poising themselves and plunging along
the tide-edge. Small parties or “trips” of Dotterel
halt for a day or two upon the chalk downs on their
way to their nesting haunts upon the mountains of
the Lake District or of Scotland.

MAY ON THE MOORS.

It is late before spring brings any change to the dark
monotony of the heather-clad moors. Frequent
enough are chilly, sullen days when “ Winter lingers in
the lap of May,” and when, in the middle of the month,
there is scarcely a leaf to be seen in the oak-copse
which fringes the slope below the moor’s edge. But
the moorland birds come of a hardy stock. The

MAY 107

Lapwings often sit while the grass around them is
white with frost in the early mornings. The Grouse
cocks crow on all sides in the chilly dawns of early
April, and by the end of the month their mates are
brooding their richly-coloured eggs under shelter of
the bilberry and heather. By the same date the
Curlew has deposited her four pear-shaped eggs in a
saucer-shaped hollow of the damp soil near the spring
head, which is marked by yellow tufts of sedge and
soaking sponge-like cushions of the red and white bog
mosses. No moorland sound isso reminiscent of spring
as the long, rippling call-note of the curlew, commenced
as he takes wing and dying away in a regularly descend-
ing scale as he settles again after his flight. How
boldly, too, he drives off the carrion-crow, mounting
above him to get agood swoop, while the crow swerves
in clumsy attempt to avoid the onset. To the crow’s
account must be laid these broken eggshells of creamy
white and flecks of scattered down where the Teals’
nest was snugly hidden in the deep heather. But
some nests escape, for later, upon the margin of one
of the lonely pools in the hills where the sandpiper
whistles upon the pebbly shore, we come upon a family
party, the mother teal shamming wounded in a
desperate attempt to cover the retreat of eight tiny
ducklings as they bravely breast the wavelets in her
wake. The soft rushy bogs surrounding these pools
are the nesting haunts of the Dunlin, which run

108 =©©BIRD LIFE THROUGHOUT THE YEAR

tamely before us or wade knee-deep in the shallows,
while amongst the tufts of sedge, under shelter of
the bog myrtles, is a Snipes’ nest, containing newly-
hatched young in their richly variegated down, amongst
which dull red predominates.

But forward again, over heather-grown slopes, now
broken by a few rocky ledges where the growth is
taller, having escaped burning when the moor was
fired in order that the tender shoots of the ling, as it
begins to grow again, may afford food for the grouse.
Here we may expect to find the Merlin, and sure
enough, with sharp ringing note our gallant little
falcon cleaves the air, in outline not unlike a large
swift. In a hollow, deep down amongst the heather,
are the four red eggs, smaller and more finely marked
than those of the kestrel, in the slightest of nests—a
mere handful of moss and dried grass. Much perse-
cuted by the game-watcher for reputed depredations
amongst the young grouse is the blue-backed merlin,
though, judging from its castings, its usual prey appears
to be the meadow-pipit, with an occasional wheatear
or ring-ouzel. No doubt also the twite, the “ yellow-
billed lintie”’ of the Scotch moors, furnishes it with
many a meal.

The merlin’s noble relative, the Peregrine Falcon,
naturally meets with scant shrift, and is now banished
from the neighbourhood of most grouse-moors, though
a number of eyries remain upon the coast, usually upon

PEREGRINE FALCON FEEDING YOUNG.
From case in British Museum, South Kensington.

MAY 109

cliffs tenanted by a multitude of sea-fowl. Still it
would not be difficult to find a bold escarpment from
which, as one nears it, the fierce falcon dashes out, with
clamorous outcry, from the overhung ledge where, in
the dry earth, she has scraped out a hollow amongst
the grass tufts for her big red eggs. She sweeps round
in great circles, cleaving the air with swift, clean
strokes, then settles on a rocky pinnacle, where the
glass shows her black moustaches and the wavy lines
on her breast. Meanwhile, her mate, the tiercel,
smaller and with shriller cry, is on the wing, tilting
at the ravens which have a nest further along the same
line of cliffs. Sometimes it comes to actual blows
and the black feathers have been seen to fly freely.
Happily a sentiment is spreading in favour of such
picturesque bandits as the falcon, a feeling that they
are beautiful in themselves and that their presence
adds interest to their wild and desolate haunts.
Thanks to the grace thus afforded, we may still in a
few localities, watch the fork-tailed Kite circling high
in the air above remote Welsh woodlands, as it did
some centuries since above the metropolis, when it was
the scavenger of London streets. The same senti-
ment has come to the rescue of the Golden Eagle,
which, once nearly extinct in Scotland, is again fairly
numerous in the Highlands.

But our list of moorland birds is far from complete.
The Ring Ouzel shows his white gorget where blocks

110 BIRD LIFE THROUGHOUT THE YEAR

of millstone-grit stand out from their setting of bil-
berry and heather, or, perched on the old wheel of the
deserted lead-mine, pipes monotonously between the
drizzling showers. Higher still is the summit of the
moor, a dreary desolation of peat-bog, scantily
covered with coarse grass and rushes, amongst which
the white heads of the cotton-grass wave, and worn
into a thousand bare, black furrows by the action of
storm and rain. Here grows the crowberry, whose
small black berries furnish the grouse with a favourite
food. Here, too, is the home of the Golden Plover,
now showing the black under-parts characteristic of its
breeding plumage. Its low, piping call is deceptive,
often causing us to look far afield while the bird is
standing upon a tump amongst the bog mosses close
at hand. The golden-plover seems to have caught
the very spirit of the moors, so well does its cry har-
monize with the dreary desolation of the scene, where
no other sound is heard but the startled sniff of the
active hill-sheep bounding off at our approach.

Here, welling up amongst the mosses, the sundews
and bog asphodel, the streamlets take their rise.
Let us follow one of them in its downward course as it
cuts deeply into the flanks of the moor. It falls from
pool to pool, trout-haunted, at times almost hidden
from sight by the deep fringe of heather or the un-
curling fronds of sweet-scented fern, then between
rocks where the fresh green bilberry shrubs with their

MAY III

waxen blossoms and the wood sorrel, with its delicately-
veined flowers, clothe every ledge. The white-
breasted Dipper will fly before us with sharp “zit,
zit,” or stand on a stone bowing to its reflection in
the water, while sprightly Grey Wagtails, surely the
most graceful of a graceful family, and full of life as the
waters of the infant river, fly from stone to stone
amongst the eddies and spray at the foot of the fall.
The male has the full black throat and the special
call-note “twee, twee” of the breeding season. Birch
and rowan (how preferable is the old North Country
name to “ mountain ash”) now begin to clothe the
sides of the little dale, furnishing nesting holes to many
a pair of Redstarts and Pied Flycatchers. Many a
May morning here sees a keen white frost and, when
such an one falls late in the month, we have seen the
opening fern-fronds and the young shoots of ash and
oak hang black and dead. A Raven passes with hoarse
croak, and from far up in the blue comes the wild
mewing cry of a soaring Buzzard. Its mate sweeps
out from the ivied crag to join it. Stunted trees
cling to the face of the cliff and, supported by one of
these, is the nest, nearly a yard across, built of smaller
sticks than that of the raven, lined with tufts of moor-
grass torn up by the roots and garnished round the edge
of the cup with fresh leafy twigs of birch. As we
climb to it, the cries of the birds become more angry
than plaintive, and their lazy floating is exchanged

112 BIRD LIFE THROUGHOUT THE YEAR

for a rapid flight as they swerve and circle, at times
mounting to a great height. If late in the month, the
two or three large roundish eggs, slightly clouded and
zoned with red, have probably given place to young
birds in greyish down. Fierce as young eaglets, they
will strike at the hand of the intruder, in fact, the first
hatched, and consequently the strongest of the brood,
not infrequently pecks and worries his nest fellows to
death. Round the edge of the nest is strewn the
provision for this hopeful family, a field-mouse, the
remains of a mole and portions of a dead lamb. The
harmlessness of the buzzard is now ,so generally
recognised that most landowners have given their
gamekeepers orders not to molest it, and to all appear-
ance its presence may long add an item of beauty and
interest to the rocky dales of the north and west.

CALENDAR FOR MAY.

May 1st.—Golden Plover nests.
Whimbrel arrives.
and.—Reed Bunting nests.
Common Gull last seen.
Swift arrives.
3rd.—Mistle Thrush nests for the second time.
4th.—Tree Creeper nests.
Young Ravens leave the nest.
Garden Warbler arrives.

a”

a”

ora

NEST OF GRASSHOPPER WARBLER.
Photo J. T. Newman.

MAY II3

May 5th.—Fieldfare last seen.

2?

Turtle Dove arrives.
6th.—Bullfinch and Sparrow-hawk nest.
7th.—Young Rooks leave the nest.
8th.—Chifichaff and Common Partridge nest.
Song Thrush nests for the second time.
Spotted Flycatcher arrives.
gth.—Lesser Redpoll nests.
roth.—Nightingale nests.
r1th.—Tree Pipit nests.
r2th.—Little Tern arrives.
13th.—Sand Martin and Oyster-catcher nest.
14th.—Redstart, Willow Wren and Common Sand-
piper nest.
Red-backed Shrike arrives.
r5th.—Common Tern arrives.
16th.— Whinchat nests.
17th.—Common Whitethroat nests.
18th.—Nightjar arrives.
19th.—Blackcap nests.
20th.—Swallow nests.
21st.—Wood Wren nests.
23rd.—Garden Warbler nests.
24th.—Sedge Warbler and Spotted Flycatcher nest.
25th.—Puffin nests.
26th.—Grasshopper Warbler nests.
28th.—Red-backed Shrike nests.
30th.—Swift nests.

Bird Life in June.

Bird Life in June.

WHILE in early April we had all the promise of spring
before us, early June carries that season to its com-
pleted perfection and rounded fulness. When, as
sometimes, though, alas, not always, happens, its
third week brings those “perfect days in June,” when
the garden is full of roses and when the first straw-
berries ripen, we feel that the coming months can have
nothing quite so fair to offer. For all too soon the
longest day is reached ; the flowery wealth of the hay-
meadows falls before the scythe ; there is the blaze of
charlock and the flaunting scarlet of poppies amongst
the corn, and one feels that summer is here. Towards
the close of the month many birds become ‘silent ;
we hear only solitary voices in place of the full chorus
of its opening days, and this is especially the case
if the weather is hot and dry. In no other month
are our birds so stationary as in June; migration is
at a standstill ; there are neither goers nor comers.
June may be characterized as the month of young
birds. Innumerable broods of fledglings are launched
upon the world to swell the bird population of copse
and hedge and thicket, their parents being frequently
117

118 BIRD LIFE THROUGHOUT THE YEAR

distracted between the claims of a first family and
their preparations for quickly following it with a
second. At no time of year do birds work harder.
Watch the Wren popping into its nest every three or
four minutes all through the long day, with a beakful
of caterpillars to feed its nearly fledged young, and
think of the labour which goes to the gathering of such
small and nimble provender. Or note the assiduous
and unwearied foraging of parental Tits, just before
the emergence of their young from all sorts of unsus-
pected holes and crevices at the beginning of the month.
About the same date, an unusual commotion tells
that the young Starlings have left the nest. Crowds
of them come trooping over the meadows, now glowing
with buttercups or reddening with sorrel. For the
time being, their noisy squalling drowns all quieter
bird notes.

Meanwhile, the Hedge Sparrows have their hands
full in catering for a young cuckoo, which already
fills the nest and by further growth will expand it
quite out of shape. One may still find a Robins’
nest with eggs, surely an attempt at a third brood.
Very late nests of the Blackbird and Thrush can, no
doubt, be similarly explained. It is doubtful if the
House Sparrow always draws the line even at three
families, but here—sole opportunity—we may say
a word in its favour, for it feeds its young with insect
food and largely with small green caterpillars. The

JUNE 119

Willow Wrens, which yesterday were peering out of
their domed nest on the ground amongst the springing
bracken, are now being fed by the old birds in the
hedge, which, with its feet deep in foxgloves and
campion, already shows the pink blush of a rose here
and there. The young birds, more yellow in colour
than their parents, keep up a low plaintive chirp,
perhaps to hold the party together. How marvel-
lously rapid is the growth and development of nest-
lings such as these, in accordance with the amount
of food, vast in proportion to their size, which they
consume. Young blackcaps or garden-warblers,
if alarmed, will scramble out of the nest long before
they are able to fly. In all these small birds the feet
and claws show a precociously strong development.
They are thus able to perch at an early age, and to
cling to their perches tenaciously, remaining quiescent
for a time, and then, as a rule, giving a sudden and
loud call for food. However well hidden by the
leaves or undergrowth, their parents find them easily
by means of this call.

At no other time of year is one so puzzled by the
multiplicity of unfamiliar bird-notes. Many of these
are the calls of young birds to their parents, but it
has always appeared to the writer as if the old birds
used a sort of endearing “baby talk,’ especially
when encouraging their young to leave the nest or
to attempt a first flight. Certain it is that one hears

1z0o BIRD LIFE THROUGHOUT THE YEAR

all kinds of confidential twitterings which are dis-
carded as soon as the fledglings can shift for them-
selves. This family life which seems to show birds
at their best, involving, as it does,so much care and
watchfulness on behalf of their young, is only a fleeting
phase, for the family is soon merged in the flock, but
while it lasts it gives us many a pleasing picture, ¢.g.,
of a whole family of tits in fluffy and engaging infancy
perched side by side upon a branch, or of the cock
chaffinch, spick and span, hopping up to place a grub
in the wide-open mouth of one of his hopeful fledglings
whose quivering wings and impatient cries tell of its
eager expectancy, or again of the flycatcher, which
in an aerial excursion has just made prize of a “ long-
legs”? with an audible snap of his bill, carrying his
booty to the young bird, more mealy in plumage than
himself, perched on a croquet-hoop or on the edge of
the tennis-net. What a twittering and trilling and
scolding there is where the education of young linnets
is proceeding amongst the gorse, while in the hay
meadows whinchats, perched on the taller heads of
cow-parsnip, with slowly dipping tails and sharp note
of “u-tick”” warn their young to keep down amongst
the long grasses. What prettier sight than to see the
swallow poise on fluttering pinions for a moment to
feed a young bird on the wing, or hover to fill each
gaping bill of its young family perched side by side
on the telegraph-wire.

LINNETS’ NEST IN ROSE BUSH,
Painted by GEorGE SopER.

JUNE 121

The first or nestling plumage of young birds is of

special interest, as in many cases it very soon under-

goes modification. It is evident that fledglings in
general resemble the female bird, but in young males,
as of the chaffinch and bullfinch, the distinguishing

. features of the plumage of the cock bird soon become

‘apparent. The nestling dress is perhaps a reminiscence

of ancestral plumage before specific distinctions had
become so marked as at present, ¢.g., the spotted breasts
of young blackbirds indicate a near relationship to
the thrush, and if the spotted dress of young robins
leads us to include the redbreast in the same family,
we shall not be far astray.

But it is not only the small perching birds which
the long June days find busy with nursery duties.
Upon her platform of sticks the Sparrow-hawk is
dividing a neatly-plucked blackbird amongst her

young, whose dress of spotless down lends them an

air of innocence but little in keeping with their true

character. The young Kestrels in the hole in the old

quarry, when inspected, shrink as far back as they
can, then stand and face us with defiant eyes and
wide-open menacing beaks, their claws clutching
nervously.

About the middle of the month the Partridge leads
her young, dainty as bantam chicks, to the old weedy
pasture, unmown for years, there to scratch amongst
the anthills to lay bare the succulent ‘‘eggs” of which

122 BIRD LIFE THROUGHOUT THE YEAR

they are so fond. If surprised, the whole family
squats and often escapes observation, but, if detected,
the old birds tumble before us with trailmg wings while
the young run “cheeping”’ to hide. Much the samething
occurs if we happen to stumble across a brood of newly-
hatched Grouse chicks on the moor. As the old bird
flaps and scuffles on the ground, the young, one and all,
become perfectly motionless, and seem to vanish before
our eyes, so perfect is their harmony of tint with that
of moss and lichen and heather. The Curlew, whose
loud “‘troo-ey, tro0-ey”’ betrays a world of anxiety for
the safety of young crouching close in the sedge amongst
the bog mosses, sometimes resorts to the same device
as the hen partridge or grouse. Picking up one of
the nestlings, we note that its bill, later so long and
curved, is at present quite short and straight, under
an inch in length.

By the lake side we come upon a brood of young
Wild Ducks and, as the half-grown “‘flappers”’ cleverly
gain cover, the old bird, in a frenzy of quacking and
splashing, endeavours to cause a diversion in their
favour. This trick, “shamming wounded”? as it is
called, is also a regular part of the stock-in-trade of
some of the small birds, notably of the Reed Bunting,
which will tumble off the nest—lame, broken-winged,
in a hopeless state—recovering in direct proportion
as danger to its nest grows less. Ina hole in the steep
clay bank which overlooks the quiet backwater of the

JUNE 123

river, where the young Pied Wagtails in their slaty-
grey plumage run about on their rafts of floating
water-buttercup, a pair of Kingfishers is rearing a
brood. Their sanitary arrangements are imperfect,
for filth trickling from the entrance and a strong smell
of ammonia are the invariable indications of a growing
family.

All the quiet water-meadows this day of blue June
weather are given up to the hay and the cattle and the
birds, while the warm air is laden with the scents of
midsummer, of elder blossom, honeysuckle, meadow-
sweet and fern. A Moorhen, swimming amongst the
waving trails of white-flowered ranunculus, nods his
head with every stroke, while his mate croaks from
cover of the flags and water-docks close by. Presently,
as we watch, she comes into view with a fleet of downy
young in her wake. The Sand Martins are swarming
like bees round their holes where the brook has worn
for itself a steep, sandy escarpment. A mass of soaking
water-weeds floats near the reedy margin of the pond.
Remove the uppermost layer, laid loosely on when
the owner left, and we find the eggs of the Dabchick
or Little Grebe, originally white, but now deeply
discoloured. Reed Warblers chatter and scold, and
one may find, neatly suspended between the reed-
stems, their deep purse-shaped nests. Far more
difficult of discovery is the nest of the Grasshopper
Warbler, deeply hidden amongst dense herbage, and

124 BIRD LIFE THROUGHOUT THE YEAR

not to be found by watching its owners, which, when
they visit their treasure, creep mouse-like through
the thicket.

The summer migrants which were the latest to
arrive are scarcely to be found nesting before the first
week in June. The Turtle Dove’s nest of light, wiry
twigs may be found in woods and thickets. For that
of the Red-backed Shrike one must search a high,
overgrown hedge-row, and so shy are the butcher-birds
that often the first indication of their presence is the
discovery of their rather bulky nest, with the eggs
always of one of two types, either ash-grey or salmon-
coloured. As we search, a Cuckoo alights on the
fence and calls time after time, his head held low, his
tail somewhat higher and partly spread. But by the
end of the month most cuckoos have become silent.
The Rooks, nesting duties completely over, have
deserted the rookery. The Nightingale’s croak or
scolding “cur-r’’ shows that the olive-brown eggs
are hatched in the nest down amongst the dead oak-
leaves. Upon the heath or in some opening of the
woods one may chance upon the Nightjar, drowsily
brooding with half-closed eyes upon her two beautiful
eggs, and looking for all the world like a rough piece
of bark. Apart from sea-fowl, the nightjar is the only
one of our British birds which makes absolutely no nest.

But is not one of the chief glories of June to be found
in its long lingering twilights ? When the thrushes

JUNE 125

and blackbirds have shouted their good-night and
are silent, the Grasshopper Warbler ceases his trill
from the thicket, and even the restless Sedge-birdseems
to feel the stilly influence of the hour. The Swifts
dart screaming round their nest holes to serenade
their mates. So late are they upon the wing that we
have heard them within an hour of midnight. Few
people have any idea of the amount of life which is
astir during the few short hours of the midsummer
night. As the white mist rises from the meadows, the
Corncrake still calls with rasping monotony and
apparently keeps up its vigil till dawn. The Cuckoo
frequently calls all night long. Lapwings flutter
moth-like overhead as one walks the downs, their
shrill ‘‘ peewit” having a. peculiarly eerie sound in
the darkness.

As the full moon rises over the spinney, the Nightin-
gale trills and bubbles over with song. We have
heard the Wheatear singing well on a moonlight night.
The air vibrates with the reeling of the Nightjar, as
it chases the white moths above the dewy meads
or skims round the resting cattle to catch the flies
which trouble them. Then there are of course the
authorised night watchmen, the owls, for whose vocal
performances we are prepared, but how many voices
of the night remain unidentified and mysterious.
Some may perhaps be attributed to the Moorhen.
Certain it is that moorhens are constantly on the

126 BIRD LIFE THROUGHOUT THE YEAR

move at night, when apparently they fly from pond
to pond.

One weird sound will only be heard by dwellers
upon the coast. This is the voice of the Manx Shear-
water, a sort of ghostly “ cuck-cuckoo-,” and the writer
has only heard it about midnight on hot, sultry nights
of June. When the full moon falls in the last ten
days of the month there is of course no darkness, and
we are reminded of the bright summer nights of the
far north. Such of our birds as do go to rest have at
midsummer a scant six hours for repose. We have
heard the blackbird singing at 9.30 and again at 3.5
the following morning. A robin is singing at 3.15,
sparrows chirping half an hourlater. By four, swallows
are on the wing, wood-pigeons cooing and birds in
general are awake and active.

THE LEAFY MONTH.

In a backward year plenty of ash-trees and some
elms are not half in leaf by the first of June. But
though “ the lingering ash delays while all the woods
are green,” the popular fancy is right in characterizing
the month as that of full and perfect leafage. Al the
delicate winter tracery of branch and twig is now lost
in those shapely masses of foliage which give charm
and dignity to our English timber-trees, especially
when massed in grove or copse or disposed in stately

JUNE 127

avenues. This is the time of year, when the great
trees stand girt to the feet with bluebells or rise from
feathery undulations of fern, to visit those vestiges
of our English forests which are scattered over the
country, chiefly from the Midlands to the Channel.
The majority of them are now enclosed within park
wall or fence, but are none the less survivals of the
old England of the smokeless skies and the merry
greenwood, when

In the boyhood of the year,
Sir Launcelot and Queen Guinevere
Rode through the coverts of the deer,

or when again, in Sherwood’s glades,

The wood-wele sange and wode not cease,
Sittynge upon a spraye,

So Ioude he wakened Robin Hood,
On the greenswarde where he laye.

The ‘‘ woodwele” is of course the Green Woodpecker.
A forester born, he wears the lincoln-green, and his
jocund shout rings full and mellow on the ear in every
well-timbered district, whether it be amongst the great
hedge-rowelms of Warwickshire, the noble beeches of
Buckinghamshire or the sturdy oaks which love so
well the clay soil of the Weald. Such oaks, which may
well have seen their prime in Shakespeare’s day, still
cast their shade upon the windings of the placid
Avon.

128 BIRD LIFE THROUGHOUT THE YEAR

Once inside the park fence, we may wander at will
amongst the forest giants, gnarled, rugged and hollow,
scattered about singly or in groups, knee-deep in fern.
In June the fallow does with their newly-dropped
fawns lie hidden amongst the fragrant bracken. The
only wild fallow-deer in England are in Epping Forest ;
these are dark brown, almost black, in colour.
Squirrels skip about on trunk and branch, their homes
and fortresses. Rabbits scarcely trouble to move out
of our path; the pheasants strolling about under the
trees, watch us with a decided air of nonchalance, so
well awareare both furred and feathered that the aegis
of game-preserving is over them. Yet even in this
sanctuary they are not entirely exempt from foes. A
stoat comes slowly along the path, dragging a small
rabbit, probably as heavy as itself. It scampers off,
then, as we stand perfectly still, comes racing back
to reconnoitre and finally succeeds in carrying off its
victim. A fox, which springs out almost under our
feet from a sort of lair where he has lain amongst, the
blue-bells, could account for the fate of more than one
sitting pheasant. Yet, though a good stock of
pheasants be the chief end and aim of game-preserving,
no less necessary is it that the covers, when drawn,
should not fail to produce a fox. Here a rabbits’
nest, a double handful of soft dried grass and fur,
has been pulled out of the short burrow which the doe
rabbit makes for her brood. Possibly a badger is the

REED WARBLER FEEDING YOUNG CUCKOO.
Photo O. G. Prxe.

JUNE 129

culprit, though the badger, when it scents the young
litter, usually digs straight down to the nest. There
are badger-earths in the steep sandy bank under the
roots of the pine. One may always know if they are
tenanted as the badger’s sanitary arrangements require
that all refuse matter should be coated with earth, and
thus, made up into balls, be rolled out of the burrow.
The badger is known also to be a destroyer of wasps’
nests which it unearths for the sake of the grubs.

These ancient woodlands, first amongst which in
name and fame is the New Forest, are known to the
entomologist as the haunt of many of our rarest and
choicest insects. No tree fosters such a variety of
insect life as the oak. Myriads of larve feed upon
its foliage, chiefly those of the moths known as
Geometers, whose caterpillars from their manner of
progression are called “loopers,’ and the various
Tortrices whose grubs roll up the leaves to form a
protective case. Not infrequently we have the sorry
sight of fine oaks, within a short time of their leafing,
denuded of foliage until they are as bareas at Christmas.
This is often the misdeed of the little Tortrix viridis.
Some amount of recovery takes place by a later summer
leafing.

Great numbers of beetles feed upon the wood and
bark of the oak in every stage of their decay. The
large, flesh-coloured grub of the goat-moth drives its
burrows through the solid wood and ruins many a

q

130 BIRD LIFE THROUGHOUT THE YEAR

tree in its prime. The sap which exudes from the
mouths of the holes made by the goat-moth caterpillar
is particularly attractive to many insects. Hornets
may constantly be seen visiting the trees from which
it exudes, while its fermenting sweetness acts as a bait
to the stag-beetle and to many butterflies. Upon
one occasion we noted that some alders much attacked
by goat-moth had drawn no less than twenty-five
red-admiral butterflies to the spot. All were in perfect
condition and formed a brilliant picture. Few are the
localities where one may now hope to watch the buoyant
flight of the purple-emperor round the tops of the
tallest oaks or the graceful evolutions of the white
admiral. Some of our finer English butterflies seem
to be dying out in a way which cannot be altogether
accounted for by the large increase in the number of
those who wield the net.

Teeming as they do with insect life, it will easily
be understood why oak-woods are frequented by so
many birds. Compare in this respect a grove of oaks,
all alive with the songs and movements of birds, with
the silent and deserted pine-wood. When the horn-
beam grows intermixed with the oak, as at Epping
and in many of the woodlands to the north of London,
we shall find the shy Hawfinch, whose big conical
bill is strong enough to crush acherry stone. Nutshells
firmly placed in crevicesof the bark aresuretoken of the
presence of the Nuthatch, which fixes them thus that

JUNE 131

it may hew a way to the kernel. We notice that, with
each sounding blow, the nuthatch moves its whole body
like a hammer swinging on a pivot, and not its head
merely as the woodpecker does.

Besides the “‘ yaffle,” to give the Green Woodpecker
its West Country name, the Pied Woodpecker may be
seen passing with dipping flight from tree to tree.
Alighting at the foot of an oak, it rapidly works its
way up, climbing by a series of jerks, assisted by the
support given by the stiff feathers of the tail.

Meanwhile the smaller Barred Woodpecker moves
restlessly about amongst the tree-tops, and the little
Tree Creeper, a woodpecker in miniature, creeps
spirally upwards over trunk and branches. Oaks
hold out another attraction to small birds, for they
abound in nest-holes. These, when dry, well situated
and of the right dimensions, are never untenanted,—
in fact the competition for them is keen, tenancies
are short and evictions frequent. In one case, the
same hole was occupied successively by nuthatches,
wrynecks, starlings and two species of tit. Another,
no doubt in bird view, “an attractive flat with all
modern conveniences,” was the home in successive
seasons of great-tits, starlings, robins and tree
creepers.

Ancient oaks are often hollow as chimneys and are
then the favourite resort of Jackdaws, which carry
in quantities of sticks and drop them until they at

132 BIRD LIFE THROUGHOUT THE YEAR

last find a lodgment, and so form a foundation upon
which the nest may be built. Some such trees, mere
shells many of them but still making a show of
youthful verdure, contain many wheel-barrow loads
of sticks. The Stock Dove is always ready to take
to an unoccupied hole, and certain trees are known
as the ancestral patrimony of owls. The presence of
a family of young Barn Owls is indicated by those
snorings and snappings of the bill which have often
caused a belated countryman to quicken his steps as
he passes the churchyard elms. Their spotless white
down is so thick about the head as to suggest a com-
parison with the wigs of legal luminaries. Some of
these trees contain bushels of castings, the lower
stratum reduced to dust or rather finely pulverised
fur and bones, while the more recent ones if examined
give an exact inventory of the owl’s food,—skulls
of the field-mouse and field-vole, of shrews, sparrows
and an occasional bat. If its character for utility be
impugned, the owl has only to adduce its castings as
sufficient evidence for the defence. The Brown Owl
is a bolder bird and sometimes brings young rabbits
to the nest. It resents too close an inspection of its
property. In one case known to the writer, a brown
owl, whose two nestlings were being investigated, came
noiselessly behind the intruder and gave him a blow
in the back as if a cricket-ball had struck him.
Formerly amongst well-grown timber it was no uncom-

TWO YOUNG BARN OWLS.
Photo HERBERT LAZENBY.

JUNE 133

common thing to find a “raven tree,” containing,
amongst its upper branches, a huge pile of sticks,
tenanted each year by a pair of Ravens from a date
beyond the memory of the oldest inhabitant. Few
such now remain, but fortunately quite a number of
heronries survive, many of them dating back to the
days when knight and dame with hawk on wrist rode
through the forest glades.

CALENDAR FOR JUNE.

June 1st.—Corncrake nests.

Young Starlings leave the nest.

» 2nd.—Young Wheatears leave the nest.

»» 3rd.—Turtle Dove and Reed Warbler nest.
Greenfinch nests for the second time.

» 4th.—Young Magpies leave the nest.

» 6th.—Nightjar nests.

» gth.—Young Jackdaws leave the nest.

» Ioth.—Young Jays leave the nest.

» I1Ith.—Young Goldfinches leave the nest.

» 12th.—Young Willow Wrens leave the nest.

» 15th.—Common Partridge hatches.
Young Common Whitethroats leave the nest.

, I6th.—Nightingale ceases to sing.

» 25th.—Cuckoos becoming silent.

, 26th.—Young Spotted Flycatchers leave the nest.

Bird Life in July.

Bird Life in July.

In the bird world July is a month of transition, for, as
it runs its course, the feathered life of the woods
relapses into its summer quiet and comparative in-
activity. When the month comes in, many birds are
still breeding and the majority are still in song ; when
it goes out, the breeding season is practically over and
almost all voices are silent. In the third week of the
month there is usually a marked cessation of song.
Birds are no longer bubbling over with the nervous
energy which inspired the full chorus of May ; their
strains, few and fragmentary, are scarcely heard above
the drowsy hum of the bees in the limes. Fledglings
are everywhere calling for food, but, on account of the
full leafiness of copse and thicket and the general
similarity of nestling language, something like intuition
is needed if we would credit each note to its unseen
author.

Apart from their songs, the small birds, and especi-
ally the warblers, have a large variety of shorter
notes, some used to call their mates or young, while
another series is expressive of alarm or irritation as
when watched or spied upon by prying naturalists.

137

138 BIRD LIFE THROUGHOUT THE YEAR

To recognise them by their several scolding or alarm
notes is an education apart, though many know the
Nightingale’s croak or harsh “cur-r”’ and perhaps
the Blackcap’s “tack, tack,” a type of alarm-note
shared by the chat family with most of the warblers,
and also with other birds as the shrike and ring-ouzel.
But for the evidence of these notes, short remarks,
exclamations and objurgations, the summer birds might
be supposed to have left us, while in reality they are
still present in their usual haunts and, in fact, in far
larger numbers than was the case earlier in the season.
For the birds which have not brought off the last of
their young broods by this date are in the minority,
though early in the month a nest of eggs of blackbird,
thrush, robin, or any one of the smaller birds in fact,
is no rarity. These belated nests represent in some
cases a normal second or third brood, in others a
forlorn hope where earlier attempts have resulted in
failure.

The nests of birds which breed upon the ground are
specially liable to disaster. Field-mice to a certainty,
and ants we strongly suspect, destroy a large number
of young of such low-building species as the pipit.
When containing young, they are, moreover, readily
scented by keen-nosed marauders. We have known
a sporting dog to “ point” unfailingly nests of the
titlark and stonechat. Eggs of the Lapwing are not
only diligently collected but are apt to be trodden

JULY 139

upon by cattle, hence, while nesting began in March,
young peewits but just hatched may be seen in the
first week of July. The nesting season of the Heron
extends over fully as long a period, for there are young
still in the nests up to the middle of the month.

Some birds may be called habitual late-breeders ;
such are the buntings and notably the Yellow-
hammer. The Wood Pigeon will sometimes go on
nesting far into the autumn. Almost as late the
House Sparrow sometimes rears a last brood, and
it is matter of common observation that Swallows
and House Martins often have young in the nest
until within a few days of their time of leaving us.
The Barn Owl is sometimes quite irregular in its nest-
ing, and will rear a family at almost any time of year.
One may suspect that the Wren is still breeding thus
late from the energy with which it scolds at a weasel,
a bright-eyed streak of reddish-brown rustling amongst
the ivy leaves on the bank. But at all seasons the
wren is the watchman of the woods and never fails
to spring his miniature rattle when suspicious char-
acters are abroad. Such is the sparrow-hawk which
at daybreak caught up a young pheasant from the
coops to feed its young, which, having left the nest
to perch near by, keep up a wailing outcry all day
from the larch plantation.

Amongst thickets and on bushy hillsides we may
hear the hawk-like call of the young Shrikes or Butcher-

140 BIRD LIFE THROUGHOUT THE YEAR

birds, for whose benefit their parents have just spiked
upon a thorn a freshly-killed nestling whitethroat.
The young Woodpeckers have left the nest-hole and
creep about the bole of the tree in which they
were hatched.

Family parties of Goldfinches, amongst which the
newly-fledged “grey pates’”’ are conspicuous, sport
amongst the ragwort and knapweed and all the gay-
flowered tangle of weedy field-corners. No bird
has had more cause to rejoice over the depressed
state of the farming industry, for uncleared fallows
quickly revert to the condition of a goldfinches’
paradise. :

On all sides we meet with this family life, and see
the education of the young birds proceeding. There
is the weird outcry of Brown Owls in the plantation
on moonlight nights when the rising generation is
being initiated into the mysteries of mousing. Less
commendable is the careful foresight of Blackbirds
in leading their spotted-breasted young to the currant
bushes. The Hawfinch will sometimes join in a
raid on the garden, and has been known to destroy
row after row of peas, biting across every pod.

As we cross the heath, a Nightjar rises before us,
tumbling and fluttering, finally alighting in a cart-rut
with wings outspread and quivering. This behaviour
is explained as we find her two downy young, wide-
mouthed as frogs, crouching close to the turf.

YOUNG NIGHTJARS—NINE DAYS OLD.
Photo J. T. Newman.

JULY I4I

Young Cuckoos have left the nest, and may be seen
in their curious, spotted first plumage; with their
foster parents in attendance. Sometimes a diminutive
titlark may be seen to perch on the head of the great
ugly fledgling in order to reach its mouth. Not only
does the young giant keep its proper caretakers very
hard at work; but it seems able to excite the benevolent
interest of other small birds which chance to be in the
neighbourhood. On one occasion a querulous note,
as of some young bird calling for food, drew attenton
to a young cuckoo, which was perched on a ridge of
the plough-land, with fluttering wings and great red
mouth agape, while six wagtails industriously hunted
the neighbouring furrows for food. From time to
time one of them, tripping up to the cuckoo, deposited
the insects which it had collected in his capacious jaws.

Dearly do the Wagtails love the well-kept sward of
summer lawns, where the Spotted Flycatcher hawks
insects all day from the edge of the tennis-net and the
Nuthatch’s brisk “whit, whit” is heard from the
neighbouring elms, while in many such a sanctuary
the shy Kingfisher visits the fountain-basin in quest
of young goldfish. Who would not tide through the
sunny hours of a July day in company with a hammock,
the birds and a book, until at sunset the Swifts rush
screaming past the eaves to serenade their sitting mates,
to be joined sometimes by the bats, so late do they
linger ? Against the evening sky one may recognise

142 BIRD LIFE THROUGHOUT THE YEAR

the noctule or great-bat by its bold flight, broken
by sudden downward swoops.

The Corncrake becomes silent towards the end of the
month, but the Nightjar still reels from the heath
where it hunts the white moths above the dewy fern.
In wood and copse the pageant of summer passes in
stately progress, garlanded with wild flowers, while
butterflies, such as the large and gaily-painted frit-
illaries, dash proudly by or sun themselves upon the
heads of thistle and scabious. In the plantation the
cooing of Wood Pigeons is still heard, though the voice
of the Turtle has ceased. Ifa change passes over the
day, and from some dark cloud comes a clap of thunder,
the cock Pheasants crow in answer to it. In the
same way the noise of blasting or of cannon will always
draw from them a defiant challenge. The Swifts seem
to revel in thundery weather; their screaming is never
more shrill and piercing than in the height of a storm.
And after the rain passes and the sun comes out, who
has not wondered at the swarm of tiny frogs upon the
steaming road, limbs just developed and tail—last
badge of tadpoledom—but newly absorbed ?

The coveys of young Partridges are on the wing.
The Chaffinches flocking upon the first bare stubbles,
and the Starlings racing over the meadow, or rising
in a cloud to wheel and manceuvre as one bird, herald
the larger assemblages of autumn. In some quiet
inlet of the lake amongst pond-weed and sedges, hide

JULY 143

the Wild Ducks, now all alike in plumage, for the
drakes have undergone that curious transformation
of dress which for nearly five months of the year
renders them indistinguishable from their sober-
coloured mates. Some broods of “ flappers,” not yet
flying, take refuge amongst the reeds, which also afford
shelter to the white-fronted Coots, each followed by
her brood of young in black down with some rusty
red about the head.

It is not too late for those who seek the sea in July
to find much of interest about the sand-dunes and
shingle-beaches of the coast. The shifting dunes,
held together by the wiry marram-grass, form a minia-
ture desert where every passer-by—rabbit, bird,
lizard or insect—leaves a characteristic track in the
finely sifted sand,

Where tracts of shingle and shell-beaches fringe the
sand-dunes, the Ring Plover pipe anxiously, and the
eye may chance to light on the four eggs, resting,
like miniature peewits’ point to point, in a slight hollow
which, whatever may be said to the contrary, the bird
often lines with a carefully-laid mosaic of small stones
and bits of shell. Or the young, a little ball of grey
cotton-wool on stilts, may be found running over the
foreshore or squatting flat upon the shingle, in every
tint and shade part and parcel of its surroundings.
Here, too, Oyster-catchers, whose black and white
dress has earned for them the name of “sea-pie,”

144 BIRD LIFE THROUGHOUT THE YEAR

shriek their anxious fears as to the security of hidden
young or dart up with shrill vituperation at a passing
gull. Graceful in shape and spotless in plumage is
the Little Tern which shares the same haunt, laying
its eggs upon the foreshore, so little above the highest
tide-mark as to leave but a narrow margin of safety.
We have known all three, plover, oyster-catcher and
tern, to have nests within a couple of yards of each
other. The handsome Sheld-ducks leave the sand-
bars and oozy channels in which they love to paddle,
to lay their eggs in deserted rabbit-burrows in the
midst of the warren. Their beautifully contrasted
plumage of white, chestnut and green renders them an
ornament to the parts of the coast where they. are
found.

Not less strange is the choice of the Stock Dove,
which will often nest in a similar burrow at a depth
of two or three feet, having as neighbour the Wheatear,
which flicks its white tail and “‘chacks” noisily in every
little hollow of the dunes. The plants of the sand-
waste—sea-holly, houndstongue, sea bind-weed—are
not less characteristic than its birds ; even its insects
and land-shells will be found to be peculiar to itself.

In spite of the wealth of beauty which it brings,
July marks one of the turning points of the year, for
towards the end of the month one has a feeling that
summer, if not exactly upon the wane, has at least
passed its meridian. Daylight lingers less long and

STOCK DOVES AND NEST.
From case in British Museum, South Kensington.

JULY 145

twilight shuts down more abruptly. Nature marks
the epoch in her calendar by the flowering of the hair
-bell, of the heather, and of the dwarf-furze which
lends a golden glow to the rough slopes from now
onwards till October. The first returning visitors
from the north—Dunlin and Sanderling, Whimbrel
and Turnstone—reach our shores, to wade in the
shallows or pick up sand-hoppers from the masses of
drifted weed. .

At the very end of the month certain birds, as : tlie
Chifichaff and Willow Wren, commence to sing again
in a quiet, subdued manner. The Chaffinch, too,
begins his broken song of late summer, but an im-
perfect echo of the rattling challenge which he threw
to his mates in May. And the Robin on the rose-trellis
warbles a low and slender strain which has in it a fore-
taste of autumn and of leafless boughs. It is the
writing upon the wall which tells of coming change
and of the passing of all that summer brings.

SEA-FOWL HAUNTS.

Sea-birds are not as a rule early breeders, and July
finds the fullest activity still prevailing in the great
sea-fowl nurseries which are scattered round our coasts.
There are low islets above which the graceful terns
hover thick as snowflakes, reef and skerry tenanted by

scormorant and gull, stacks and pinnacles about whose
10

146 BIRD LIFE THROUGHOUT THE YEAR

rocky ledges guillemots and razorbills swarm like bees,
outlying hummocks capped with peat in which are
the burrows of shearwater and petrel and the far
western, sea-girt haunts of gannet and fulmar. All
these varied scenes of bird-life, often in wild and
picturesque setting, may be found around our
shores.

We may take our stand upon the bold chalk cliffs
of Flamborough, which front the North Sea like a
great white wall and overlook its restless waves from
such a height that they are dwarfed to a tracery of
finest ripples. Or we may stand where the grim
overhanging front of Spanish Head, with its memories
of the ruined Armada, looks across the narrow sound
to the Calf of Man, Or shall we choose some remote
spot upon the coast of Western Wales where rent and
twisted strata, stacks and natural arch combine to
form rock scenery of wild and varied type ? As each
swell passes, the water gurgles and spurts from a blow-
hole, and its hoarse, hollow murmur is heard as it ebbs
and flows into dismal caverns haunted by otter and
seal. Not less suited to our purpose are parts of the
Irish coast, where the black and jagged cliffs are
brilliant with patches of the white campion, sulphur
kidney-vetch or rose sea-pink.

To enjoy a general survey of such a sea-bird colony
we must take a boat and cruise along the foot of the
cliffs. Earth, air and water teem with birds. Heavy

JULY 147

flying Guillemots and Razorbills whizz past overhead.
Single birds, select parties, whole fleets of them—always
in company with Puffins—paddle at ease, dive, bob up
again like corks, splash along the surface of the water
or rise clumsily, adjusting their steering gear by spread-
ing feet and tail. Puffins swim up close to the boat;
one of them will retain its hold upon the first-caught
slippery fry, diving for more, until a whole string of
them depends from its beak. A few weeks later there
will be many young guillemots, which could never
have made their way down from the ledges. without
parental assistance, each one swimming in the wake
of the old bird.

Now to change one’s standpoint to the verge of the
cliff, or reach, by the aid of a friendly gulley,some point
midway between its top storey and the basement. All
the grassy ledges are peopled by Herring Gulls, whose
mottled young have mostly reached the sea, though
some remain at the nests. Every suitable spot on the
cliff face, where the rough grass covers earth of a
sufficient depth to be burrowed into, is a warren of
Puffins ; their orange feet show up as spots of colour |
against the dark background. On the barer ledges
stand the Guillemots, shoulder to shoulder, nodding
their heads as if bowing to one another, We can see
their bright green eggs on narrow exposed ledges where,
if they rolled a couple of inches, they would go over
the edge. No eggs are more wonderful in their beauty

148 BIRD LIFE THROUGHOUT THE YEAR

of varied coloration and marking than those of the
guillemot.

Further down are the Kittiwakes’ nests—real nests
of seaweed properly rounded and hollowed—seemingly
glued to the face of the cliff and standing out from it
like brackets. It is a busy scene and a novel one;
the razorbills and guillemots darting down to the
waves in a constant stream,some tossing on the waves
light and buoyant as corks, others arriving at the
ledges and struggling for foothold, uttering mean-
while a hoarse guttural note, which, mingling with
the “kitty-wauk,” “ kitty-wauk” of the dove-like
kittiwakes on the ledges and the cackling and barking
of the larger gulls above, forms a strange and weird
chorus. A pair of Great Black-backed Gulls laughs
gruffly overhead.

Every outcrop of rock and, here and there, the edge
of the cliff itself, is tenanted by Puffins, all standing
upright, all with spotlessly white breasts and gorgeous
bills. The eye wearies of regiments of puffins in
endless perspective. Some are constantly arriving
from the sea and alighting with a plump on the rocks,
giving a little flutter with their wings to steady them-
selves. The Razorbills, in their black dress-coats the
picture of prim respectability, are, if anything, more
ridiculously tame than the puffins. Their eggs are
in holes or under overhanging boulders, but never
far back or in regular burrows like those of the puffin.

PUFFINS FEEDING THEIR YOUNG.
From case in British Museum, South Kensington.

JULY 149

An indescribable and all-pervading smell, as of ancient
and decaying fish, clings to these bird-whitened cliffs,
and becomes more pronounced when Cormorants are
present to add variety to the scene by their odd
gestures and vulturine aspect. On their favourite
perch they preen themselves with much writhing
of their snaky necks. One sits with its beak pointing
almost vertically upward ; another spreads its wings
to dry, and rests with them expanded like some giant
vampire. The cormorant gives a unique instance of
a bird which is not in its best plumage in the breeding
season, for the slight crest, silvery neck-hackles and
white thigh-patch of the nuptial period are lost
almost before nesting begins.

In one instance well-known to us, the breeding place
of the Cormorants is a jagged rock rising some thirty
feet out of the sea, a narrow channel of clear, green
water separating it from a larger island. Upon the
summit, which appears as if it had received a coat of
snow, sit the birds, looking at a distance like so many
wine-bottles. Ifwe invade their stronghold, the young
birds, which are full-grown but not yet able to fly,
~ tumble over the stones'and fall into the pools of liquid
filth in their endeavour to escape, while others blow
out their cheeks and pouches and cluck threateningly.
Others again, more nervous, essay a first flight to the
sea, but first lighten ship ‘by throwing up the remains
of their last meal. An old cormorant comes in from

150 BIRD LIFE THROUGHOUT THE YEAR

the sea to feed its young, and we can watch the whole
performance. The old bird, with head down, wide-
open mouth and flapping wings, is surrounded by
scuffing, fluttering young, which put their heads one
by one into its mouth and seize the savoury morsels
from its pouch. The newly-hatched young have
bare, purplish skins, and are ugly as juvenile harpies.
The whole affords a scene of novel though malodorous
interest.

Apart from the true sea-fowl, there are other birds
which share their haunts, living sometimes upon the
most neighbourly terms with the toilers of the deep,
at other times as undesirable hangers-on of whose
presence the colony would gladly be rid. To the
latter class belongs the Peregrine Falcon, which may
often be found breeding in a haunt of sea-birds in the
midst of the most thickly-populated ledges. Its
harsh outcry is heard above the general clamour and
as it passes with a bold sweep out to sea, sometimes
making a feint of stooping at a slow, heavy flying
cormorant to the consternation of the latter, the lazy
gulls are soon left behind. Aloft, Kestrels show the
silvery underside of their wings as they glide and
swerve, having as neighbours the Rock Dove and
the sable Chough. The Rock Dove, ancestor of our
tame pigeons, is so often found intermixed with stock
escaped from neighbouring dove-cotes, and more or
less reverted to type, that we shall scarcely find the

JULY 151

breed in its full purity at Flamborough, or indeed
nearer than the wave-washed precipices of the west
coast of Scotland or of Connemara, where, as in
the case of the grand Meenawn Cliffs of Achil Island,
it nests in caves which are filled with the mist of the
sea-spray. Here, too, though gone wholly or almost
so from its ancient haunts on the Cornish coast, is the
red-billed Chough, most active in flight and pleasing
in appearance of the crow tribe. As it flies lightly
and swiftly, rising and falling in graceful curves, the
eye is pleased with the contrast which the chough
presents to the white-winged gulls and its shrill note
makes itself heard above the roar of the surges and the
whistle of ocean breeze. Yet for some reason apart
from the fact that collectors are always ready to pay
a good price for its eggs, the chough decreases in
numbers, and has vanished from wide stretches of
coast which formerly knew it well.

And what is the small bird, dark olive in colour
with spotted breast, which haunts the bare rocky
ledges of the gull islands, the grassy slopes of the cliffs
and the boulders and seaweed on the shore? It is
not a land bird which has strayed from its proper
haunt, for the true home of the Rock Pipit is close to
the breaking waves and salt sea spray, and its sharp
note is the proper accompaniment of old ocean’s wildest
music. Strange is it, too, to see the House Martins
plastering rows of mud-built tenements under the

152 BIRD LIFE THROUGHOUT THE YEAR

shelter of overhanging ledges in the thick of the sea-
bird colony, just as they do on many a limestone cliff
inland, as in Derbyshire or West Yorkshire. Such
must have been the. original nesting haunts of the
species as a whole until, with the advent of house-
building man, a large proportion of them. came to
utilize his eaves. The list of these associates and
allies might be extended—we have found a corricrakes’
nest upon a lonely islet amongst the terns’ eggs, which
lay so thickly that it was impossible to avoid treading
on them—but those which have been mentioned are
the most ordinary supernumeraries in scenes where the
sea-birds themselves play the chief part.

CALENDAR FOR JULY.

July ist.—Young Partridges flying.
» 2nd.—Redshanks flocking.
» 3rd.—Young Kingfishers still in the nest.
» 4th.—Some young Lapwings but newly-hatched.
» 5th.—Most Cuckoos silent.
», 7th.—Young Blackbirds of late brood leave the nest.
» 8th.—Young Robins of late brood leave the nest.
» Loth.—Young Kestrels still in the nest.
», I1th.—Young Herons perching close to nest.
» I2th.—Sedge Warbler still has eggs.
Young Red-backed Shrikes leave the nest.
» 13th.—Young Sparrow-hawks still in the nest.

JULY 153

July 15th.—Cuckoo last heard.

a

Common Sandpipers resort to the coast.
16th.—Song Thrush still has eggs.
17th.—Mistle Thrushes flocking.
1gth.— Young Nightjars not yet fledged.
2ist. —Skylark still has eggs.
22nd.—Corncrake ceases to call.
Young Common Whitethroats of second brood
leave the nest.
23rd.—Song Thrush ceases to sing.
25th.—Some Skylarks still sing freely.
26th.—Turtle Doves cease to coo.
27th.—Robin, Chiffchaff, Willow Wren, and Chaffinch
begin to sing again.
29th.—Whimbrel arrives on the coast.
30th.—Chaffinches and Linnets flocking.
3Ist.—Grey Plover, Turnstone, Greenshank, Knot,
Curlew-Sandpiper and Sanderling arrive
on the coast on their return from the
north.

Bird Life in August.

Bird Life in August.

WuatT becomes of the birds in August ? They seem
to disappear. Of course this does not apply to birds
which are constantly to be seen in the open, as rooks,
starlings, lapwings, swallows. But the silence of the
woods is scarcely broken by a single note. How little
stir and movement of feathered things is there in the
lanes, along the hedge-rows, in thicket and plantation.
The explanation is simple. August is the moulting
month. Presumably birds feel “ off colour,” a little
shabby in dress, not up to the effort of song, disinclined
for society. The gay tints and ornaments of nuptial
dress are replaced by a quieter and more sober scheme
of coloration as the change occurs to what is known as
winter plumage.

To discuss the different cases in which the moult is
complete or only partial, and those in which a modi-
fication of tint occurs by a change in the colour of
individual feathers, without their being shed, would
lead us too far afield. But the result is the same;
for the time being birds do not feel at their best.
Occasionally one may even be seen unable to fly from
loss of quills,—good reason enough for wishing to

157

158 BIRD LIFE THROUGHOUT THE YEAR

avoid observation. Even the tits, irrepressible as a
rule, are but little in evidence. In short, there is no
month when birds lend less of colour and cheerful
activity to the country-side, in keeping with the fact
that August landscapes are less bright and varied than
those of either the preceding or the succeeding month.

Wild flowers are largely over ; foliage has lost its
freshness and has the dull and tarnished look which it
will wear until touched by the dying glories which
precede its fall. The hedges along the main roads are
covered with a coating of dust, which grows ever deeper
as the automobile multiplies and spreads through the
land. Beside such highways dust hangs heavy on the
feathery-seeded clematis, renders the blackberries
uneatable, hides the deepening crimson of hips and
haws. Happy the country-lanes which are exempt
from the passage of the destroyer of rural peace, the
hot chalk-banks alive with butterflies, the low-lying
meads where the grass, helped by the heavy morning
dews of late summer, deepens into a rich aftermath.

A moderately wet August tends to preserve the
beauties of summer leafage, while drought brings the
sere and yellow leaf before its time. In time of
drought, as of frost, the thrushes search the hedge-
bottoms to turn out the yellow-banded snails. Then
the shrunken ponds yield the carrion-crow a feast of
fresh-water mussels. Then, too, assaults upon the
fruit-garden become more frequent and systematic.

AUGUST 159

All are agreed that the blackbird is in this respect a
much greater offender than the thrush. The black-
cap, garden-warbler and whitethroat have a special
weakness for raspberries, while a magpie, gobbling
furtively, will soon thin the produce of a gooseberry
bush. Be it put to the credit of the cuckoo, upon the
other hand, that it visits gardens in quest of the
saw-fly grub,—a well-known pest which often clears the
bushes of every leaf. Nightingales, too, often pay
the garden a visit, tempted not so much by the fruit
as by the “ green fly ” and other insects which are to
be found amongst the peas and kidney-beans. But
we fancy that many nightingales have left us, or at any
rate withdrawn towards the coast, by the end of the
month. For in August those of our summer birds
which are the first to leave are already upon the move.
Not only of the cuckoo is it true that “come August,
go he must”; the incoming of the month brings
to others their marching orders. While the House
Martins congregate in the early mornings to bask
on sunny roofs and the Swallows collect on the tele-
graph wires as if to choose leaders and make up
travelling pasties, the sickle-winged Swifts, which
screamed round the eaves, have already disappeared,
the twentieth of the month marking their average date
of departure. Thus, almost the last to come, they
are amongst the first to go. How different is the
departure of the summer birds as, unmarked, they

160 BIRD LIFE THROUGHOUT THE YEAR

silently steal away, from their arrival which was
heralded by the music of their voices on every side.

Migration chiefly occurs at night, and, even upon
the south or east coast, we may be unaware of what
is taking place, unless we notice the large flights of
swifts all pointing southward, an unusual number
of turtle-doves on the oat-stubble near the edge of the
cliff, or find cuckoos and nightjars sheltering amongst
the marram-grass and stunted tamarisks above the
foreshore, where they certainly would not be met with
under ordinary circumstances. They are waiting for
a favourable opportunity to make the passage of the
Channel. The Common Sandpiper leaves the hill
pools and mountain tarns to spend the remainder
of its stay beside the lowland brooks. The Curlew
deserts the high sheep-walks for the coast ; and the
Grey Wagtail abandons the burns and trout streams,
where it has spent the summer in flitting from stone
to stone amongst the eddies and ripples, to reappear
at the same runnel of water by the roadside where,
winter after winter, we never fail to note it.

In the case of a few birds the breeding season, which
practically closed in July, is prolonged until mid-
August, but, as a rule, only by isolated pairs whose
domestic arrangements have been thrown out of gear
by mishaps earlier in the season. There is nothing
unusual in finding a nest of young greenfinches or
yellow-hammers when the month has half run its

PIED WAGTAILS AND NEST.
From case in British Museum, South Kensington.

AUGUST 161

course. With the goldfinch, too, family duties often
run on well ‘into August. Some ring-doves are
flocking, but others are still cooing in the plantations,
and are likely enough to bring off a late brood this
month or next. The moorhens’ nest, in a tuft of flags
bordering the old moat, still contains eggs, as does
also the floating heap of water-weeds which serves the
dabchick as a nursery. These exceptions merely
serve to show up the fact that with August we have
reached the extreme fag-end of the breeding season,
upon the close of which the moult follows as a natural
sequence. The young of the earlier broods have indeed
left far. behind them the inexperience of nestling days,
and begin to put on the toga virilis, the garb of their
elders. In the case of the young chaffinches and
bullfinches the reddening breasts of the cocks now
indicate their sex. We may even surprise the young
blackbirds in transition dress, with patches of black
showing amongst the spotted brown of their nestling
plumage. Amongst the young wild-ducks, too, it is
noweasy to pickoutthe drakes. In othercases juvenile
dress is worn for a much longer period. A young
shrike only showed himself in his true colours, as a
fine male bird, after eight months residence in our
aviary.

Upon the coast the young gulls furnish the un-
initiated with a standing puzzle. There are spotted
Black-backs and Herring Gulls, fresh from the nesting

u

162 BIRD LIFE THROUGHOUT THE YEAR

ledges, bearing not the least resemblance to their
elders, young Black-headed Gulls in mixed brown and
white livery, hailing from their gullery upon some
Norfolk “broad” or North Lancashire ‘ moss,”
while, further to complicate matters, the young
Common Gulls, bred upon the Highland lochs, now
make their appearance, to be dubbed “blue” or
“speckled” gulls by the east coast fishermen. One
welcomes such a distinctive mark as the black collar
by which the young Kittiwake may be known in
a moment. With the larger gulls the adult dress is
only gradually assumed ; apparently not till the fourth
or fifth year is it complete in every detail. The rela-
tionship of the young Cormorants, brown-backed and
white-fronted, to their sable elders, is also far from
being evident at the first glance.

Though bird-voices in August are quiet and subdued,
yet a few songs break the general silence. Foremost
are those of the several members of the bunting family ,—
late in song because late to breed. The Yellow-
hammer’s lilt is still heard by the dusty roadside,
where as a perch he seems to prefer the telegraph
wires to the twigs of bush and brier which suit the
taste of finch and linnet. How many know the
Cirl Bunting ?—a yellow-hammer but for his black
throat and for his song which is in a different key and
wants the yellow-hammer’s final flourish, being in
fact a monotonous trill, to be syllabled as “ zi, zi, zi.”

AUGUST 163

Yet, the cirl-bunting is common enough no further
from London than the chalk downs of Surrey, where
it nests by preference in the juniper-bushes. We have
met with it in Devonshire, close to the locality where
the naturalist Montagu first recognised it as a British
bird, and in the ferny coombes of the Welsh coast.
It is exceptional to hear the thrush sing in August,
but the wren still sounds his tiny clarion, singing,
like the tree-creeper, in any month of the year, even
at times in hard frost. The chaffinch is often in half-
song ; chiffchaff and willow-wren sing in what old
Gilbert White calls ‘a soft and inward manner,” and
the robin pipes a few strains from the orchard bough.
But these summer songs are lacking in spirit and energy ;
they are merely an expression of contentment with
easy times of warmth and abundance, and are not
inspired by the delicious madness which fills the
throats of the choristers of spring. When in company
with their fellows, birds are naturally more lively
and inclined for vocal effort. Flocks of Linnets go
trooping over the weed-grown fallows, singing and
twittering in concert, and a crowd of Starlings, settling
thickly in the elm-tops, warbles and whistles in unison,
making a noise which at a distance sounds like that of
running water. But many voices of the earlier summer
we now miss entirely. By the time that the harvest
moon rises full over the hill, and long-tongued hawk-
moths poise before the white trumpet-flowers of the

164 BIRD LIFE THROUGHOUT THE YEAR

mcotiana at dusk, the corncrake has become
silent, and the nightjar no longer “‘churrs,” though
we may surprise it some warm day basking and dusting
like a barn-door fowl in the middle of the sandy path
which leads to the heath.

August sees the ripening of the first hedge-row
fruits and berries, bringing to the birds a foretaste of
the rich harvest which is to follow. Amongst the.
first come the scarlet clusters of the mountain-ash,
so beloved of thrush and blackbird that the whole
crop is sometimes cleared off within a week. The
Mistle Thrush, largest and boldest of his, kind, usually
comes in for the lion’s share. See him as he balances
with difficulty by the help of wings and tail, reaching
greedily hither and thither after the ruddy fruit, even
venturing in quest of it into town gardens and close
to the windows of houses, strewing the ground
beneath the tree with berries dropped in his haste.
It is the flocking of the mistle-thrushes in late summer
which leads country observers to write to the papers
from time to time reporting an unusually early arrival
of the fieldfare. Both are large thrushes, which have
a harsh note and show the white undersides of their
wings as they fly—hence the error.

The interest of the stout-billed Hawfinch in fruits
and berries of this kind is of a different nature ; when
seen visiting the mountain-ash or cotoneaster he is in
quest of the seed-kernels which he obtains by crushing

AUGUST 165

their hard, stony investment. The Greenfinch, on
the other hand, when enjoying the red, fruity part of
the “ hips ” of the dog-rose, may be seen to throw aside
the bristle-coated nutlets or “seeds.” The Sparrows,
nesting duties over, betake themselves to the cornfields
and by over indulgence in grain forfeit any claim to
consideration based upon the fact that they rear their
young chiefly upon green caterpillars. The noisy
crowd of them, disturbed by farmer’s boy with his
“ clappers,” rises from the stooks to cover the hedge-
top. But, mindful only of the danger which is evident,
they wot not of a silent and stealthy foe who glides
round the corner of the fence. In a moment the
Sparrow-hawk has singled out his victim—a plump
young bird, not yet strong upon the wing. Not only
for men and sparrows is it harvest-time ; the hawks,
too, in late summer find a plentiful table.

In the latter part of August, Guillemots, Puffins
and other sea-fowl desert the cliffs. The story of the
month would not be complete without mention of the
flights of wading birds, Greenshank, Knot, Grey
Plover, Sanderling, Stints, Godwits and the like, which,
coming from the north, alight upon our coasts,
preferring the muddy estuaries and oozy channels of
the Eastern counties. With them sometimes comes
an Avocet, Spoonbill or Stork, but the chance of a
visit from one of these distinguished strangers is much
greater in the month of May. The Whimbrel is about

166 BIRD LIFE THROUGHOUT THE YEAR

the coast throughout the month, and the flocks of
Dunlin are largely reinforced, many of the birds still
showing the black breast of the breeding plumage.
In fact, now that the ties of home and family are
relaxed, a general shifting of quarters ensues, and
through the next few weeks the night skies will be alive
with bird-notes as the travellers call to their fellows,
and myriads of tired wings will skim the waves of the
misty Channel. But as successive departures thin the
ranks of the summer birds, the arrivals of autumn
and winter guests are so numerous that we scarcely
mark our loss.

*

MOUNTAIN AND MOOR.

August is, and bids fair to remain, the great holiday
month. Happily when we are able to turn our backs
upon the madding crowd mountain turf is still fresh
and springy, and the moors, so late to respond to the
touch of spring, are crowned with the full glory of the
heather. And what a choice lies open to us, even
south of the Border. Shall we follow up the torrent
as it rushes down from Llyn Llydau, hurrying on in
fall and water-slide to the valley, till we see in front
of us the sovran peak of Y Wyddfa, flanked on the left
by the great precipices of Lliwedd and on the right by
the lofty knife-edge of Crib Goch ? Or shall we bear
with the humours of Lake District weather, and watch

AUGUST 167

the mists driving up the pass in slow, spectral proces-
sion, black storm-hidden crags above and milk-white
torrents racing down the hillsides, until, with a sudden
shift of wind, Scawfell’s brotherhood of summits
stands out bold and clear and sunny gleams turn
Grasmere’s leaden waters to silver? Or, yet again,
shall we tramp knee-deep in heather over trackless
moors, trampling out perfume with every step which
scatters the dusty pollen ?

But our main business after all is with the birds,
and few will fail to appreciate the added charm which
their presence gives to the wild scenery of which they
form a part. The fly-fisher hears the piping of the
sandpiper by the edge of some lonely tarn, rouses the
heron from his solitary fishing, or sees the dipper
shaking off the water as he emerges from the spray of
the fall. The rock climber, negotiating an awkward
“chimney ”’ or gulley, is conscious of the rush of wings
as raven or buzzard passes, apparently not unin-
terested in the possibility of a fatal termination to his
adventure, and even the tweed-clad sportsman of “ the
twelfth,” though his chief concern is naturally with
“the birds,” often has an eye for the minor feathered
folk—twite, ring-ouzel, golden-plover and the like—
which share the grouse-cock’s home.

By mid-August the Ring Ouzels have cleared off
most of the bilberries, which form their staple food
earlier in the summer, and have come lower to the

168 BIRD LIFE THROUGHOUT THE YEAR

“ shylls”’ or “cloughs”’ to whose rocky sides clings
a fringe of birch or rowan, the red berries of the latter
being as attractive to them as to their cousins the
mistle-thrushes. Below the edge of the moor the
Twites or Mountain Linnets flock to the crofter’s
weedy patch of oat stubble, now gay with charlock
and corn-marigold. A single plaintive call from a
neighbouring fallow draws attention to a Golden
Plover ; as it runs to take wing a whole flock of its
fellows, previously unseen, starts up to bear it company.

The Green Woodpecker often wanders out into the
open, miles away from trees, in search of ants’ nests
upon the warm moorland slopes. Of small birds the
Meadow Pipit and Wheatear are perhaps most charac-
teristic of the high sheep-walks and mountain moor-
lands. Every rocky “kopje” has its pair of wheatears.
They delight in the tumbled blocks of millstone
grit which overlook the Derbyshire moors, or in such
a craggy citadel as that which forms the summit of
Glyder Fach, where thirty-foot slabs, tossed at random,
suggest a dozen ruined Stonehenges. Toilsome is
the pull up, but, the cairn once gained, we breathe
enchanted air, serene and fair, while evening shafts
of light stream from Tryfan’s crest and the mountains,
of a deep neutral grey, float in a setting of rosy haze.
As we scramble, we disturb a family party of Ravens.
With rapid flights to ledge and brow, excited croaks
and growling bark, the old birds muster and draw

AUGUST 169

off their brood, long since, of course, strong upon the
wing. To our surprise we find the red-billed Chough,
usually a bird of the sea-cliffs, haunting the precipices
of Snowdon, where apparently it nests in the shafts of
the disused copper-mines. The Welsh Rooks, too,
though they do not range so high, are fond of a
change to the mountain sheep-walks as soon as
nesting duties are over.

Such uplands have their characteristic insects, as
seen in the Lake District, where we meet with the
Mountain Ringlet, a scarce, dull-coloured, sub-alpine
butterfly. Or further, crying truce to the birds,
one may range the line of crags in search of rare
plants, to find shady recesses where water drips
from cushions of saxifrage and hanging fringes of
moss, to reach with doubtful foothold the rose
lychnis, restricted to a few rocky ledges of a single
fell, or to mark underfoot the Alpine lady’s mantle
with its fingered leaflets silken-fringed. The
ledges are thick with mountain plants as we push
up this narrow gulley, so steep that the loose stones
underfoot slip and roll. There is a dank wall of rock
on either side, and at length as the rill slides down one
of the steps of its water-worn staircase, the smooth
face of stone, slippery with spray and greenery, bars
further progress.

One bird we never fail to meet with in the most
remote and rocky of mountain solitudes, namely, the

170 BIRD LIFE THROUGHOUT THE YEAR

Wren. This is a fact which the bird books do not
appear to notice when they write its biography, but
certain it is that in lonely corrie or amidst a chaos of
tumbled boulders the song of the wren rings out—
sole voice of living thing—as cheerily as in lane and
thicket. Our sizeable wild animals are now so few
that one is glad to hear of red-deer lingering in the
Martindale fells, and of the marten-cat still finding a
home in the wilder recesses of Borrowdale. The
fox ranges high into the hills ; we have seen it loping
leisurely across a ridge close to the summit of Snowdon.

Yet another bird of the mountain tops remains to
be mentioned,—not the ptarmigan which at the
present day is not found south of the border,—but the
Dotterel, if indeed this choice and dainty little plover
still breeds upon the Lake District mountains, where
twenty years ago its numbers had almost reached the
vanishing point. For, esteemed by the epicure, its
feathers were still more coveted by the trout-fisher
for the manufacture of artificial flies. An old shepherd
tells us that the birds fetched 3s. 6d. each,—small
wonder that they vanished. It is useless to look for
the dotterel except upon the mountain summits,
the land of grey mists, where there is a loose shale
underfoot, or in places a dark, woolly, alpine moss.
Here, if fortune favours, the bird may start up close
before us with a weak, plover note, or run tamely
over the patches of stones, stopping from time to

AUGUST 171

time to pick up an insect. Sometimes we notice a
backward jerk of the head, and recollect the old idea
of the dotterel imitating the movements of the
fowler. It was a red-letter day when, after watching
the birds till we were stiff and chilled to the marrow,
we found the two eggs in a slight hollow of the moss,
for nest there was none. One of the birds in its
anxiety threw itself on the ground, its wings a little -
raised and shivering, its white-tipped tail spread to a
perfect fan,—the whole attitude much like that of a
partridge covering young, or still more that of a night-
jar feigning wounded. On a subsequent occasion this
bird allowed us to stoop and touch it before it left
the nest. Strange that in the case of the dotterel,
as in that of some of the other waders, it is the male
bird which takes the chief share in incubation, being,
in accordance with this but in striking contrast to the
general rule, somewhat smaller and duller-coloured
than his mate. “ The hen is the finer bird” as our
old shepherd concisely puts it.

Now to leave the wind-swept summit for the deep
hollows, carved in the mountain’s flank, where birch
and stunted oak cling to the face of the crags. Here
we shall have as music the Buzzard’s wild and
melancholy cry, and may see the big hawk floating
lazily on upraised wings or mounting in a great spiral
till it becomes a mere speck in the blue. Usually
considered a timid or cowardly bird, we are prepared

172 BIRD LIFE THROUGHOUT THE YEAR

to contest this view, for, when its nest is threatened,
the buzzard will sometimes swoop at the intruder
with great spirit. A friend of ours while climbing in a
particularly awkward spot upon a Welsh cliff was thus
“held up” for at least an hour by an angry buzzard.
Another, in the Lake District, pushed the attack so
closely that its wing was broken by a blow from a
stick, showing lack of discretion perhaps but certainly
not of valour.

Between mountain and moor comes a fringe of copse
where every bank is carpeted with the delicate fronds
of beech and oak-fern, and where in wet spots the
stately osmunda rears its five foot fronds and golden
spore heads. This, rather than the open moor, is the
haunt of the Black Game, and here we may chance to
put up a noble black-cock which goes off as if with
no intention of stopping short of the next county.
Would that we could be present at one of those gather-
ings in the frosty dawn of a March morning when the
black-cocks strut and spread their tails and spar at
one another and scuffle for the edification of the assem-
bled grey-hens. But the black-grouse is far from being
such a favourite as its kinsman of the moors,—a bird
which the true sportsman regards with patriotic pride,
for the Red Grouse is supposed to be the only one of our
native birds which is entirely confined to Britain. The
more general view, however, is to look upon it as an
island race of the Willow Grouse, so widely diffused in

AUGUST 173

Northern Europe and Arctic America, which, owing to
milder winters, has given up the practice of donning
white, or partially white, plumage in winter. Be that
as it may, the plucky little game bird is with many a
sportsman the central figure in memories of halcyon
days, sweet with the scent of heather-bells and bog
myrtle, redolent of the reek of peat-smoke from the
keeper’s cottage, reminiscent of the long line of beaters
working down towards the butts, of the clever working
of the dogs when an off-day is given to “‘ walking them
up.” The object of a pursuit which brings health and
happiness, esteemed in death and treated to post-
humous honours, long may the grouse-cock remain
the glory of north-country moorlands.

CALENDAR FOR AUGUST.

August x1st.—Chaffinch’s summer song heard.
» 3rd.—Ring Doves flocking.
» 4th.—Young Spotted Flycatchers of Iate brood
leave the nest.

, 8th.—Starlings begin to sing from the chimney-pots.

, iI1th.—Young Barn Owls snoring in the nest.

,, xz2th.—Young Turtle Doves still in the nest.

» 13th.—Many Swifts seen on migration.
Hawfinch at mountain-ash berries.

», x4th.—Young Yellow-hammers still in the nest.
Herons still come from their nests.

174

BIRD LIFE THROUGHOUT THE YEAR

August 17th.—Cirl Bunting sings.

”»

”

18th.—Young Bullfinches still in the nest.
Igth.—Young Greenfinches of late brood ready
to fly.
2oth.—Swift last seen (average date).
21st.—Coal Tit’s note heard.
22nd.—Dipper or Water Ouzel sings.
Sand Martins congregate to roost in reeds.
23rd.—A late Goldfinches’ nest with eggs.
House Martins congregate.
24th.—Tree Creeper sings.
25th.—Golden Plover flocking.
26th.—Grey Wagtail returns from its breeding-
haunts.
29gth.—Some Ring Doves still coo.
31st.—Common Bunting sings.

Bird Life in September.

Bird Life in September.

WHILE there is no month of the English summer which
may not belie the name, surely September may claim
to inspire a feeling not far removed from confidence,
so seldom does it fail to bring day and night skies
of perfect serenity, accompanied by a stillness of
atmosphere rarely known at any other time of year.
How often within the memory of all has September
thus redeemed the summer. For the lingering smile
of summer is still over the land, red berries in the
hedges, stubbles fast becoming bare, clusters of nuts
on the hazels. Some morning towards the end of the
month, what time the bracken-covered slopes have
turned to russet, the horse-chestnuts are pranked in
ruddy gold and the virginia-creeper flames against the
gable end of the old manor-house, one wakesto find the
first touch of autumn freshness in the air. A white
frost early on has laid its finger on tomatoes, marrows
and kidney-beans. All that remains by the time the
sun is well up, is that keen breath which brings fresh
zest to life, alike to birds and men. There is a general
revival of the feathered folk, for the moult is behind

177 te)

178 BIRD LIFE THROUGHOUT THE YEAR

them while food of all kinds is plentiful and will be so
for many weeks to come.

Now the tits recommence their notes, the thrush
begins to sing again and skylarks soar as blithely as
in spring. Thus, in late September, autumn and
summer strive for mastery. The sun has not power
to dry the dew which lies all day long upon the after-
math in sheltered bottoms, while it is still strong enough
totempt out the basking lizard, to set the grasshopper
trilling upon a sunny slope and to bring out the late
butterflies, admirals and peacocks, which hang
balancing upon the scabious heads or hover round
the clump of Michaelmas daisies.

Yet the genial September days when the ivy flowers,
providing a honeyed feast for flies and bees innumerable,
fail to tempt our summer birds to a longer stay. By
far the greater number of them make the Channel
passage before the oncoming of the rough weather,
which often follows closely on the equinox, though it
may be delayed far into the autumn. Quietly they
withdraw, and in the greater stir and animation of
those birds which winter with us, finding their voices
after the moult and coming once more into the open,
their going is little marked. One day a chattering or
scolding note tells us that the Sedge Warbler is still in
its accustomed haunt beside the pond ; the next day
we may search the tangle of meadow-sweet and purple
loosestrife for it in vain. A Cuckoo, a young bird of

SEPTEMBER 179

the year, perches tamely on the wire fence of the
paddock long after its elders have gone, proof sufficient
that, in this case at least, migration is independent
of leadership, for, when its time comes, it will find the
palms and temples of the south as easily as if personally
conducted. Swallows and House Martins are still
with us, and should be seen well into October, but, if
rough, chilly weather sets in, they are ready to ante-
date their time of departure, and, after struggling
against the wind for a day or two, sometimes hawking
low to pick up insects from the herbage, they will
leave in a body before September is out, not unfre-
quently abandoning a belated brood or two in the nest.

Of the myriads which leave us how small a proportion
returns in the spring, bearing witness to the perils which
beset the migratory flight, and lending countenance to
the generally-expressed opinion that both swallows
and martins decrease in number from year to year.
One may take comfort in seeing the Sand Martins still
swarming about their burrows in the soft sand and
gravel cliffs of the East coast, so exactly fitted for their
tunnelling that they seem to flourish there as nowhere
else, and in counting one hundred and ninety nests
of the House Martin under the eaves of a large Essex
flour-mill, but the stress of wet and chilly summers
falls upon them heavily, as also the persecution to which,
when nesting, they are subjected at the hands of the
common house-sparrow, hence their failure to hold

180 BIRD LIFE THROUGHOUT THE YEAR

their own. Those migrants which showed their
superior hardiness by being the first to come are
amongst the last to go. The Wheatear lingers for some
time longer about the sand-dunes and warrens of the
coast, and the Chiffchaff may be seen, often hawking
for the flies attracted by the flowering ivy, until October
is well under weigh. The Pied Wagtails and Meadow
Pipits collect in the meadows and upon low-lying
flats in preparation for moving southward. In fact
the migratory flocks of pipits are as familiar a feature
at this time of year as they were upon their return
in spring. The birds move in leisurely fashion, and
will often spend the greater part of a day chasing and
playing about a sunny slope.

It is to arrivals from the north that we must look
to fill the ranks thinned by the departure of the soft-
billed summer birds. The Snipe come to reinforce
the numbers, comparatively small, of their kindred
which have remained with us to breed. Flights of
waders—Godwit and Knot, Greenshank and Grey
Plover—settle upon the mud-banks and oozy channels
of the coast, often to pass on after a few hours of rest.
The Wigeon, first of the “flight ducks” to reach us,
pitch in sheltered bays and upon tidal waters, where
also the Divers once more appear, following the south-
ward movements of sprat and herring. Many of them
are young birds, and the old ones no longer show the
distinctive plumage which they exhibit during the

BLACK-THROATED DIVER.
Photo O. G. Prxe,

SEPTEMBER 181

breeding season upon Highland loch or Norwegian
fjord. ;

But for a re-opening burst of song late in the month
from thrushes and skylarks, the songsters of September
are practically the same as those of August. Should
we not give a word of acknowledgment, however, to
the Pied Wagtail’s sprightly ditty, heard as it runs
briskly on the roof hawking flies, often springing
into the air to come lightly down again? In mild
and favoured districts of the West Country, one may
hear the Woodlark’s flute-like notes, uttered as it flies
to-and-fro overhead, seemingly quite at random,
and often with a wavering bat-like flight, quite unlike
the pushful upward mounting to the accompaniment
of which the skylark trills. Robins chase one another
pugnaciously, warbling little snatches of song, for the
young birds begin to show their red breasts, a sign to
their elders that they had better go out into the world
to fend for themselves. No bird is more attached
than the robin to its own special haunt, where it
breoks no rival, hence the young hopefuls receive
forcible notice to quit, and to the disputes which thus
occur is due no doubt the common idea that the
young robins kill the old ones in autumn.

Perhaps it is family discussions of the same nature
-which cause the Brown Owls to be unusually noisy
at this time of year. The loud hooting of the old
birds, accompanied by the sharp “ kee-wick”’ or

182 BIRD LIFE THROUGHOUT THE YEAR

“ty-yack”’ of the young, are always associated in
our mind with those glorious nights when the September
moon is at its full. On all sides birds make themselves
heard after the silence of the moult. “ Yip, yip, yip,”
squeals a Kestrel, treading air in his usual easy style.
At the spot from which he rose hurriedly, we find
a lizard’s tail still squirming. There is the silver-
toned twitter of a “charm” of Goldfinches at the
thistle-heads, and, above all, there is the cheerful
uproar of the Rooks once more. One must live with
a rookery close at hand to understand the manifold
activities of the sable folk, all voiced in modulations
of a pliant tongue. At present their clamour expresses
satisfaction at the improved supply of worms and
grubs, due to the falling of the first autumn rains
upon the sun-burnt pastures. But there is also the
torrent of cawing which the whole flock, with sudden
downward swoop, hurls at the head of a fox or other
enemy discovered sneaking to cover, and the deafening
outburst of comment or condemnation which follows
a sudden silence at the conclusion of one of those
mysterious conferences known as “ crows’ courts.”
We incline to connect the noisy exuberance of the
rooks with the great emergence of Tipule, popularly
craneflies or “daddy longlegs,” which takes place
about the third week of September. When full grown
the grubs, known as “leather jackets,” come to the
surface of the ground and place themselves upright in

SEPTEMBER 183

readiness to turn to pupw. When the rooks are seen
visiting the same meadow day after day and busily
pulling up the grass-tufts, it is probable that they are
well aware of the feast which is offered. In fact,
September spreads a well-filled board for all comers.
The wood-pigeons bustle sleepily out of the oaks,
so gorged with acorns that they can scarcely fly.
For thrush and blackbird, when they have stripped
the mountain-ashes, there are the elder-berries. Tits
may be seen pecking at the seeds of the sunflower-
heads, so attractive, when they have fallen, to the
partridges as sometimes to lure these shy birds into
country gardens. Nuthatches are most musical and
lively, as they vie with the squirrels in despoiling the
hazels. Fixing the nut into a crevice of the rough
bark, the bird fairly hews out a part ofthe shell, making
a jagged hole through which the kernel is extracted
in fragments, the bristles at the end of the tongue
forming a useful brush for this purpose. The squirrel’s
ivory chisels make a far neater job to the same end.
The calm and mellow days of a sunny September
see much insect life upon the wing. Sometimes the
air is filled with aphides or “ green blight,” on their
way to seek winter quarters or to lay their eggs before
they die. And the swarming of the ants, when
myriads of them emerge from the nest to take a single
short flight upon gauzy wings, though it frequently
takes place earlier in the summer, may be continued

184 BIRD LIFE THROUGHOUT THE YEAR

into September. Hence it appears that birds which
are not cut out for the part are tempted to emulate
the flycatcher’s art. Certain it is that in these still
days we most commonly see the chaffinch or house
sparrow dart upwards from its perch and attempt
to catch a passing insect. Even starlings may be
seen hawking for flies with the exact flight of the
house-martin. On several occasions we have seen a
number of .the small black-headed gulls quartering
to and fro at a fair height, with short, quick turns
and twists quite unlike their usual mode of flight.
Were they merely playing, weaving the figures of an
aerial dance, in the enjoyment of the finest and warmest
weather of the summer, or were they essaying an insect
diet ? It was impossible to say.

It is perhaps the fact that weather conditions are
usually ideal at the time which gives some of its
popularity to the “little brown bird ”’ to whose pur-
suit the opening days of September are consecrated.
The grouse-moor must always be for the few, but “ the
man in the street ’’ may have his few acres of partridge
shooting. True, upon the first of September late broods
are anything but strong upon the wing, while some
young birds are scarcely past the “cheeper”’ stage.
Later in the month the survivors have greatly improved
in strength and condition. Exceptionally large coveys
are probably seldom the produce of a single nest.
Thus in one case known to us, the hen bird having been

SEPTEMBER 185

killed by a sparrow-hawk, her family amalgamated
with another brood, forming a fine joint covey of
twenty-five. The light soils of East Anglia seem
specially favourable to the Red-legged or French
Partridge, less of a favourite than the original breed
on account of its habit of running before the dogs.
Sometimes in partridge-shooting the unexpected
happens. A bevy of quail is flushed, or a corncrake
takes wing, but only as a last resource when it can
no longer run or hide. As the dogs work down towards
the marsh-ditches, a water-rail or spotted-crake
may be brought to bag. That scarce visitor, the
great-snipe, has a habit of presenting itself to the
sportsman as the dogs are working a patch of turnips,
a potato-field or a barley stubble where nothing but
partridges is expected. Thus our knowledge of the
natural history of a district is often indebted to sport
for contributions not a few, and more especially to those
gunners who, having found a rare bird, proceed to
make a note of its occurrence.

THE SACRIFICE TO GAME.

Though the first of October is the date fixed for legal
execution of the pheasant, September sees the thinning
of the partridge coveys and inaugurates that part of
the shooting season which chiefly interests the general
public. Hence it is no unsuitable time for considering

186 BIRD LIFE THROUGHOUT THE YEAR

the extent to which the fortunes of our British birds
are influenced by our British system of game-pre-
serving. Everybody knows that the chief business
of the gamekeeper is to promote the well-being and
increase the numbers of pheasants, partridges and
grouse, and to wage war upon certain fere nature
which are supposed to be prejudicial to their interests.
Who does not know the “ gamekeeper’s museum ”
or “‘ keeper’s larder,’ which by its proportions attests
his prowess with trap and gun? By the side of the
plantation is a wooden frame-work, supporting five
rails, placed one above the other and eachnearly twenty
yards in length. Hanging from these rails, is what
we take at a distance to be a collection of tawny
and parti-coloured rags.. Draw nearer and one gets
an unmistakable whiff of carrion, for upon the rails
the remains of vermin, winged or four-footed, are
nailed side by side as closely as they can be placed.
There are whole regiments of stoats and weasels with
their thin, dried-up bodies, rows of cats’ tails and
bunches of rats’ tails, hedgehogs’ heads, with here and
there an owl, hawk or magpie, often the head only,
time and the elements having dissipated the rest. For
the collection has not been made in a day, but is the
accumulation of years. Many of the specimens are
very old, some of the weasels being only represented
by their little white skulls, and weasels hold together
for along time. There are scores of rusty nails, from

SEPTEMBER 187

which all trace of the victim has disappeared. By
the side of a path just inside the wood are the bodies
of defunct cats, dry and mummy-like. One seems
to recognise on their faces the innocent expression of
the hearth-rug pet, slain during her first stalk, and the
scowl of the hardened offender who died fighting
hard, with teeth and claws in full play. Some of
these cats, the progeny in the second or third genera-
tion of house-tabbies which have taken to the woods,
reach a great size and revert in colour and markings
so completely to those characteristic of the true wild
cat as often to be mistaken for that species.
In every collection such as the one which we have
described, will be found the weather-beaten remains
of several carrion-crows, while blue-barred wings serve
to identify the jays even in the last stage of
dilapidation.

Where game-preserving is carried on in the neigh-
bourhood of wild hill-districts, there will probably be
in addition the remains of ravens and buzzards.
We shall rarely nowadays find the polecat, unless in
Western Wales, where it is stillcommon. Marten and
wild-cat (the genuine Felis catus) are not likely to
fall into the hands of any but a Highland keeper, and
so scarce have they become that he is now more
disposed to forward them to a taxidermist than to
nail them up. The first named are the ordinary
victims which constitute the holocaust, the great

188 BIRD LIFE THROUGHOUT THE YEAR

sacrifice at the altar of game-preserving. Sometimes
a land-owner who is a fishing enthusiast will put a ban
upon the heron, with the result that it fills a space, by
no means a small one, upon the wall of the kennels
or upon the vermin rails.

Such, then, are the condemned. Now let us look
into the counts of the indictment, for a first glance
suggests that there may be degrees of guilt and in fact
that the innocent, or relatively innocent, have in some
cases suffered for the misdemeanours of villains of a
much deeper dye. It must not be forgotten that the
gamekeeper’s motto is “when in doubt, kill,” also
that he is in no wise likely to give bird or beast credit
for being better than it appears to be. Upon weasels
and stoats one need waste no sentiment; they are
notorious little cut-throats, though the weasel destroys
a large number of field-mice, but one is sorry to see
the hedgehog—quiet, inoffensive seeker of grubs and
earth-worms in the twilight—in such company. Sad
to say, the hedgehog’s occasional lapses from the path
of virtue are but too well attested, when temptation
presents itself in the form of a partridges’ nest or a
young leveret hidden in the grass.

The Sparrow-hawk deserves no mercy, but how
about the Kestrel ? Its manner of hunting, examina-
tion of its castings, too, if further evidence be needed,
proclaims it a destroyer of insects, chiefly beetles,
and of small rodents. The gamekeeper, if pressed,

A BROOD OF YOUNG KESTRELS IN NEST.
Photo J. T. Newman.

SEPTEMBER 189

will admit at the last that he shoots it because it is a
hawk, and will improvise a story of his having once
seen a kestrel kill a young pheasant at the coops.
So, for a crime as rare as it is ill-attested, the race
must suffer. Upon the moors the Merlin is destroyed
because of its fancied penchant for grouse chicks,
though all observers agree that it preys, chiefly or
entirely, upon the smaller moorland birds, pipits,
twites and wheatears. But when we come to the
Owls we have a still stronger case. Here upon the
rails are the recognisable remains of sixty owls; five
have been hanged within the week. There is some-
thing pitiable in seeing an owl, with its soft and
downy plumage showing such exquisite gradations
of colour, hanging, bedraggled by weather, until it
becomes a mere scarecrow—a thing of shreds and
patches. It is the pole-trap which has wrought this
fatal havoc. In the middle of the straight ride which
runs through the fir plantation, an upright post
bears upon its summit a toothed gin, like an ordinary
rat-trap but round in outline. This narrow alley
between the trees is a general highway. Every owl
or hawk which skims along it will alight upon the post,
the hawk to throw a keen glance around, the owl to
listen for the least rustle or stir of mouse or shrew.
Caught by the legs, they hang there, alive, sometimes
for days. The employment of this instrument of
torture is now prohibited by law, but it is doubtful

190 BIRD LIFE THROUGHOUT THE YEAR

whether its use is more than checked. Upon the
moors it not only catches the merlins for which it
is intended, but cuckoos, nightjars and ring-ouzels
fall victims as well. The harmlessness, not to say
utility of the owl tribe, whether barn, tawny or long-
eared, is now so generally recognised that the game-
keeper will usually tell us that he does not care about
destroying them, but that he sets the traps for hawks
and that the owls blunder into them. The result in
either case is much the same.

Considering how long continued and systematic have
been the efforts of gamekeepers as a body, it is remark-
able how few species have disappeared from our avi-
fauna. The fork-tailed kite, once the scavenger
of the London streets, has gone. The buzzard has
vanished from the lowlands, but it is still plentiful in
the north and west. The blue-grey harrier is now
rarely seen beating over fen or moorland. But the
sparrow-hawk, though hard pressed, is nowhere
exterminated, and, though the magpie has become
a rare bird in some game-preserving districts, the
numbers of the jay show little, if any, diminution,
probably because its nest is not easily found, while the
stick-built edifices of crow and magpie are so evident
as to offer an easy means of destroying them at one
particular time of year. But even in the lowlands
there are estates which are not strictly preserved or
outlying covers which are neglected. As we reach the

SEPTEMBER IQI

wilder hilly districts towards the Welsh border, or
parts of the Midlands or North Country too industrial
to allow of successful game-preserving, these pre-
dominate, and their overflow population restocks the
low country with hawks and ground-vermin. Amongst
the Welsh uplands the carrion-crow almost replaces
the rook, and may be seen in bands thirty strong.
It is a curious fact that round London and each of our
large cities there is a zone in which pheasant-rearing
is impossible, and where, in consequence, such birds
as the crow, magpie, jay and brown-owl are par-
ticularly numerous. Only careful observers, who are
early abroad, know what a large variety of birds find
shelter in the London parks.

From what has been said it might be inferred that
game-preserving fosters the favoured few at the ex-
pense of dealing death and destruction all around.
This is far from being the case ; with more justice it
may be likened to the arm of the law which
descends with crushing force on the evil-doer while
promoting the happiness and security of the general
public. Myriads of small birds, such as the various
warblers, breed in safety in the game-covers, protected
from intruders and from the attacks of their natural
enemies. The mistle-thrush affords a case in point ;
it has greatly increased in numbers owing to its habit
of nesting in the plantations. Comparison with the
state of things which prevails upon the Continent brings

192 BIRD LIFE THROUGHOUT THE YEAR

the conclusion that England is pre-eminently the
country of small birds because nowhere else is game-
preserving so general. Only let the latter be carried
on with rather more discrimination and humanity,
and every naturalist will express his indebtedness to
the system.

CALENDAR FOR SEPTEMBER.

September 1st.—Young Greenfinches of late brood leave
the nest. ¢
and.—Sand Martin still goes to its burrow.
3rd.—Brood of young Moorhens not yet able to
fly.
4th.—Red-backed Shrike last noted.
8th.—Blackcap and Garden Warbler last noted.
gth.—Common Tern last noted.
rath.—Corncrake last noted.
14th.—Swift last noted (exceptionally late).
r6th.—Tree Pipit last noted.
17th.—Skylark begins to sing again.
18th.—Common Whitethroat last noted.
Jack Snipe arrives.
20th.—Song Thrush begins to sing again.
i 22nd.—Spotted Flycatcher last noted.
is 23rd.—Hedge Sparrow begins to sing again.
Yellow Wagtail last noted.
24th.—Young Barn Owls still in the nest.

”

a”

SEPTEMBER. 193

September 25th.—Lesser Whitethroat and Turtle Dove last

”

a”

noted.
Willow Wren last heard.
26th.—Common Sandpiper last noted.
A large arrival of Common Snipe.
27th.—Whinchat last noted.
28th.— Young House Martins still in the nest.
Whimbrel last heard.

- 30th.—Sedge Warbler and Sand Martin last

noted.

B

Bird Life in October.

Bird Life in October.

OcTOBER is the mellow month of fruition, the kindly
season when the promises of summer are redeemed
in full. How lavishly it strews the ground with the
ungarnered harvest of hedge-row and plantation,
with horse-chestnuts, beech-mast and acorns, tempt-
ing the squirrel to wander far from his accustomed
woods into the open. Who does not know the misty
morning which brightens into a typical day of October,
perfectly still, with an almost imperceptible haze
softening every feature of the landscape,—a day of
St. Luke’s summer, when the bird-cherry flames in
the spinney amongst the yellows of birch and hazel,
and the last chestnut-leaves fall silently ? The genial
warmth of mid-day brings out the bees and butterflies
once more; drone-flies and blue-bottles cluster at the
flowering ivy. The pheasants, which have wandered
far from cover in search of acorns, lie dusting like
fowls on a warm bankside. Under the oaks in the park
two fallow stags fight, pushing one another backward
with clashing of interlocked horns. Chaffinches sing
blithely. Skylarks burst into song, but their flight is
shorter and they do not mount so high as in spring.

197

198 BIRD LIFE THROUGHOUT THE YEAR

But there comes a night of storm, sometimes a notable
gale, which leaves its traces for years in the shape of
jagged stumps and uprooted trees. At daybreak the
mistle-thrush flings a few wild strains from the top-
most elm bough. Overhead, before the wind which
scatters “the flying gold of the ruined woodlands,”
drift the first Redwings and Fieldfares, and the sports-
man who is afoot betimes will find the first Woodcock
at the usual spot in the dingle where the hollies shelter
the moist ground round the spring-head. Autumn
has come in with “a noise of rooks,’ tumbled and
flustered by gust and eddy. Such are two aspects
of the month when summer and autumn overlap, for
the redwings are sometimes here before the last
swallows have departed. In chalk and limestone
districts the land-drains, dry all the summer, now
run again. ‘‘ The autumn’s leafy spoils lie strewn the
forest glades along,” giving to the air that ripe October
flavour, as of leaf-mould in the making, which is char-
acteristic of English woodlands and which we miss
in drier climates. Now in copse and spinney the
fungi are at their best ; groups of white agarics, like
delicate flowers on their slender stalks, cluster round
the hazel-stools. The summer birds which have
lingered latest now leave us, to be replaced by
hardier invaders from over the northern sea. And
our resident birds settle down into the mode of life
which they will pursue through the winter, and

OCTOBER 199

which is only interrupted by the contingency of a
severe frost.

This settling into winter quarters involves, even in
the case of our common resident birds, a large amount
of movement about the country and change of haunt.
It may be no more than a change from the woods to
the lanes, as in the case of the Bullfinches which now
leave the plantations and appear in the hedge-rows,
their presence made known by a glimpse of white
rumps disappearing into a thicket and by the low
piping call-note which the bird-catcher can imitate
so well.

The Golden Plover have left the moors to appear
on sand-bars and tidal flats, and the blue-backed
Merlin, which nested near them amongst the heather-
knolls, also seeks the coast where it picks up many a
wheatear or rock-pipit. The Sparrow-hawk, too,
glides with straight and noiseless flight along the
cliff-slope on the look-out for similar game. It is
sometimes chevied and scolded by half-a-dozen wag-
tails, just as, earlier on, the swallow’s sharp “ feet-a-
feet ’” never fails to raise the alarm when the enemy is
about. Chaffinches and Linnets now flock upon the
stubbles and weedy fallows. The cock chaffinches
seem slow to join these gatherings, wishing perhaps to
enjoy a longer spell of freedom, at any rate so large
a proportion of the flocks consists of hen-birds and
young of the year as to have led Linnzus to apply the

200 BIRD LIFE THROUGHOUT THE YEAR

rather fanciful term of celebs, the bachelor, to our
dapper and light-hearted finch. It by no means
follows that all the chaffinches, yellow-hammers or
skylarks which we see on the fields have been reared
in our own particular neighbourhood, indeed they are
often so numerous that this cannot possibly be the
case. The tendency of almost all birds in seeking
their winter quarters is to move south, be it only by a
couple of degrees of latitude. One may even feel
a doubt whether the robin which “eyes the delver’s
toil,” ready to drop on to a worm or to sing perched
on the handle of his spade if he leaves his work for a
moment, is our own familiar robin which nested on a
shelf of the garden tool-house. Some of our own
thrushes are still with us, piping their rather inferior
autumn song, but there are others which go about
in small parties and whose want of familiarity with
our shrubberies and shyness in venturing on to our
lawns stamp them as aliens. At times we may surprise
so many blackbirds in a hedge-row as to feel a moral
certainty that they are a migratory party.
Meadow-pipits and pied-wagtails continue to be on
the move all through the month. Whether the various
bands of roving free-booters are merely from the
northern part of the kingdom or are invaders from over
sea is not always easy to determine, but the voracious
hordes of wood-pigeons, which of late years have
driven farmers to exasperated and organized reprisals,

OCTOBER 201

are undoubtedly immigrants. Such unlikely birds
even as jays have been known to reach our shores in
large numbers. The movement is in general terms
from the north-east, for one must remember that the
winter not only in Scandinavia but also in northern
Germany is much more severe than our own.

A thick, close night without a moon, at any time
after the twentieth of the month, never fails to bring a
rush of migrants, and there isno more favourable locality
for observing the phenomenon than the cliffs of the
Yorkshire coast. All night long the light-house acts
asamagnet. A crowd of feathered wayfarers emerges
from the gloom to flutter moth-like in the dazzling
rays, some to pass on, others to beat and buffet them-
selves against the glass. Wild-ducks have been
known to come with such force as to crash right
through it. Out of the darkness one hears on all sides
the single “ gluck” which is the call-note of the red-
wing. The first gleam of daylight shows that the
skylarks are still coming in from the sea in thousands,
and, as the sun breaks through the mist, goldcrests
are seen swarming all over the cabbages in the light-
house keeper’s garden, tiny wanderers who have braved
the North Sea passage of three hundred miles while
one would suppose that a flight into the next parish
represented the limit of their powers. A fisherman
who is early astir finds a tired woodcock sheltering
under the side of his boat ; others have dropped into

202 BIRD LIFE THROUGHOUT THE YEAR

all sorts of holes and crevices amongst the rocks.
From amongst the bents and sand-grass just above the
foreshore we put up a short-eared owl,—‘ woodcock
owl ” it is often called, for the two are fellow-travellers,
-and if the owl is noted the long-bills will not be far
behind. The lighthouse keeper will tell us that next
to the skylarks in point of numbers come the starlings.
The two together constitute a large proportion of the
basketful of dead or crippled birds which he picks up
below the light in the morning. But in regular “ mi-
gration weather,” warm and foggy, birds often appear
to lose their way, and anything may turn up. One
Norfolk naturalist fell in with a whole flock of blue-
throats, and certain Lincolnshire ornithologists, who
regularly work the fringe of thickets behind the fore-
shore or at the back of the dunes at migration time,
know from experience that there is no rare warbler,
European or even Asiatic, whose occurrence is beyond
the bounds of possibility.

Rough weather with snow-squalls will, later on,
bring the Snow Buntings, with a sprinkling of Shore
Larks. A bird-catcher has been known to net sixty-
four of the latter at a single haul upon Yarmouth denes.
A heavy gale towards the end of the month causes
various storm-driven wanderers to appear inshore,
whereas in fine weather their path of southerly migra-
tion lies far out at sea. Sometimes from the harbour
pier one may see a Storm Petrel flitting amongst the

OCTOBER 203

crests of the waves. After such a night, when it has
been blowing great guns, we have seen the Grey
Phalaropes swimming amongst the tangle of drifted
sea-wrack, paddling about like miniature ducks,
though far more lightly and trim-built, long-winged and
swift of flight as a plover.

Amongst the Kittiwakes, whose presence in the bay
is always an indication of dirty weather outside, one
may detect the rare and beautiful Sabine’s Gull. We
have known a west coast bird-stuffer to have nearly
a dozen of them through his hands in one week of
wild autumn weather. Similar conditions sometimes
bring a flight of the dark-plumaged robber-gulls known
as Skuas, which make their living by forcing the true
gulls to disgorge their finny spoil.

A keen October morning which has opened with a
white frost is always associated with the “shack
shack, shack” of the first Fieldfares as they pass
overhead or rise from the meadows as their sentinels
in the tree-tops shriek a chattering alarm. At the
sound how memory reverts to their summer haunts
amongst the birch-woods which fringe the Norwegian
fjords. Wary birds are the blue-backed “ felts,”’
first object of pursuit of many a youthful gunner.
Rarely does the stalk under cover of the well-berried
hawthorn hedge prove successful ; snow, frost and
scanty fare must tame their spirits before they will
allow of a sufficiently near approach. The smaller

204 BIRD LIFE THROUGHOUT THE YEAR

thrushes which so often bear them company, showing
foxy-red sides and a white streak above the eye, are
Redwings which, like the fleldfare, have exchanged
the long sunny nights of the northern summer for our
murky winter, still, in spite of its drawbacks, more
kindly than their own. Under the beeches Chaffinches
peck at the kernels of the fallen “‘ mast.’ A harsher
note, “‘ kek, kek,” tells that there are other finches with
them, and with the binoculars one soon picks out the
orange shoulder-patches, buff breast and white rump
of a cock Brambling. Further examination shows
that the northerners form no small proportion of the
flock, and this is always the case when there is a heavy
fall of beech-mast, though we see few bramblings in the
alternate years when the beeches do not fruit.
~ In the third week of the month the Hooded Crows
begin to arrive on the East Coast, coming in in small
parties with easy and leisurely flight. Called “grey
crows” from their ash-coloured mantles, they are
familiar enough all through the winter upon rocky
shores where they feed upon shell-fish at low tide. Less’
numerous inland, they there prefer the neighbourhood
of kennels or the mud-flats of tidal rivers and are always
ready to pounce upon a wounded bird which has
escaped the gunner.

It is not every winter that we shall see a bird whose
plumage of white, black and pearl-grey suggests at first
view a small magpie, but whose lively movements

OCTOBER 205

as it flutters down the hedge and flirts its tail on alight-
ing at once show its kinship to the more familiar
butcher-bird. Some years, however, there is quite
an immigration of Grey Shrikes, and the chance of
meeting with one, especially in the north of England,
is far from remote.

October brings in larger numbers another acquaint-
ance whose appearance was noted last month, to wit
the Jack Snipe. Winter after winter the little patch
of bog at the overflow of the pool never fails to harbour
its jack-snipe, which, after lying like a stone while the
retriever is scenting about close to it, starts up when
least expected, with weak, wavering flight, and, after
flying for about twenty yards, pitches again into cover.

This month sees further arrivals of the “ flight ”
ducks which come from the north to join the mallard
and teal which have passed the summer with us. By
the middle of the month, the drake mallards have lost
the plumage in which they so closely resemble their
mates and are once more in full dress. To various parts
of the coast come the diving ducks, Scaup, Golden-eye,
Pochard and Scoter, which spend the winter chiefly
upon the sea or upon tidal waters, obtaining their food,
whether shell-fish or vegetable matter, by the method
which earns for them the above appellation. The
waders, from the curlew down to dunlin and stint,
have received further accession to their numbers, and
give tosand-bars and mud-flats an important element in

206 BIRD LIFE THROUGHOUT THE YEAR

their winter bird-population, ready to share with us
all the hazard of winter and rough weather unless an
exceptionally severe spell of frost should send them
still further south.

SEED-TIME AND HARVEST.

As the autumn runs its course a hundred crops are
garnered which do not affect the world’s food supply,
and regarding which no reports emanate from Mark
Lane. Furred and feathered harvesters alike are
keenly alive to the fact that this is the time of year of
the ripening and perfection of grain and seed, nut and
berry—of crops which are all their own to garner or to
glean. The birds have naught to think of but the
moment’s enjoyment of this “feast of fat things,”
but the small rodents, squirrel, vole and field-mouse,
have in addition to make provision for a time of sleep
or of drowsy inactivity. From a hole in a sandy bank
beside a field-path protrude some ends of straw which
a dog has uncovered in scratching. On opening up
the miniature granary, it is found to contain just
over two hundred ears of corn, each neatly cut off
close to the top of the stalk. The proprietor, whose
“best-laid schemes” have thus gone “agley,”’ is
no doubt a short-tailed field-vole. The same little
animal, or possibly a long-tailed field-mouse, has filled
this old blackbirds’ nest full of alder-cones and seeds,

OCTOBER 207

and has stored this double handful of haw-stones in a
crevice of the limestone rock.

A fruitful autumn is hailed as making all the differ-
ence between plenty and want. Note the riotous
rejoicing of rooks, jays, pheasants, wood-pigeons
when there is a heavy fall of acorns and beech-mast.
And in addition to these larger fowl, which bolt them
whole or in good-sized fragments until their crops are
round and firm as a cricket ball, acorn and beech-nut
afford entertainment for weeks to chaffinches and
bramblings, great and coal-tits, which peck and
hammer chippings from them in a more retail manner.
Look further at all the lavish profusion of the hedgerows
in a kindly season, at bryonies white and black, cornel,
buckthorn, privet and guelder-rose. One of the
beauties of a fine and warm autumn is that the wood of
tree and shrub being well ripened, we are sure next
spring of a profusion of blossom, first and foremost
requisite for an abundance of hedge-fruit later in the
year. Much must of course depend upon the state
of the weather at the time of flowering, for, by no
possible understanding of the law of cause and effect
are we able to see in a plentiful supply of berries an
anticipation of the needs of the birds during a severe
winter to follow.

It is evident that some of the hedge-fruits are not
favourites with the birds ; these are probably unpalat-
able or actually unwholesome. The coral ropes of

208 BIRD LIFE THROUGHOUT THE YEAR

the black-bryony and the crimson egg-shaped droplets
of guelder-rose and woody-nightshade remain un-
touched ; honeysuckle berries appear to be little
noticed and for sloes there isno demand. On the other
hand how generally popular are the “ haws” of the
whitethorn and the“ hips” of the dog-rose. The
thrushes and blackbirds, having stripped the mountain
ash, betake themselves to the elders, apparently because
this crop, which comes next in season, is but a fleeting
one. When the black, wine-juiced clusters are thinned,
the haws remain as a stand-by for the greater part
of the winter, with the possibility of recurrence to holly
and yew berries in time of scarcity. If the winter is
mild and open, so that worms and insects are obtain-
able throughout, the berries are neglected, but, if
recourse is had to them, we think that haws are
preferred to yew and holly berries, and with good
reason, if one may judge from personal experiment.
But the nuthatch when not pressed as to choice will
take yew-berries, and the wood-pigeon will fill its
crop with holly-berries when haws are equally available.
But then nothing in the form of grain, green crops
or berries appears to come amiss to this voracious
feeder, which is even said to grub up and eat the
tuber-like roots of the lesser celandine. After the
bean-harvest, too, the scattered pods left upon the
ground burst and afford grand entertainment to
pigeons and rooks.

GROUP OF BLACK-HEADED GULLS.
Photo W. BickEeRTON.

OCTOBER 209

How many specific predilections and traits are
exhibited by birds in their mode of feeding. This is
well-shown in the case of the chaffinch and the bull-
finch. While the chaffinch spends much of its time
upon the ground, searching for the seeds of small
cornfield weeds, the bullfinch is much more strictly
arboreal. It seldom joins the other finches upon the
stubbles, but finds most of its food in the hedge-rows,
though it will sometimes drop down to the thistle-
heads or to any seeding herbaceous plants, such as
the willow-herb and nettle, which run to about the
same height. Thus we have noted as included in its
menu the seeds of the dandelion and sorrel, the seeds
from the “ keys”’ of the ash and the winged seeds of
the birch. It also takes the clematis seeds, nipping
off the feathery appendage, and is particularly fond of
privet-berries. The goldfinch’s proclivities, as is
well known, lie in the direction of the thistle with all
its kin such as ragwort, knapweed, and teasel, while
the linnet’s services in connection with such cruci-
ferous weeds as the charlock and shepherd’s purse
scarcely need to be mentioned. The strong-billed
hawfinch, on the other hand, need be looked for
neither in field nor hedge-row. Its special taste is for
the nutlets of the hornbeam and it is consequently
a bird of woods and plantations, to be met with
wherever that tree occurs in any quantity. This
is particularly the case in the Home Counties, as

14

210 BIRD LIFE THROUGHOUT THE YEAR

in Epping Forest, parts of Hertfordshire and in
fact as near London as Hampstead and Highgate.
In all this district the hawfinch is an abundant
though, on account of its shyness, not a familiar
bird.

Even two such nearly-allied species as the Ring
Dove and the Stock Dove are far from being identical
in their tastes. We had the opportunity of noting that
the parties of pigeons which came daily to the borders
of a Midland reservoir to feed on the seeds of water-
plants consisted solely of stock-doves, and those who
have waited with a gun for pigeons to come in to a
plantation to roost report that the stock-doves, coming
from their own particular foraging expeditions, arrive
separately from the ring-doves. The Turtle Dove
clears off a great number of seeds of weeds, such as
those of the corn-spurrey, from the fallows and stubbles,
and when the Sand Grouse, those rare wanderers from
the steppes of the Caspian, visited us in 1888 they
showed the same taste.

The tits, a highly versatile family, are all but om-
nivorous. The Blue Tit will peck the “eye,” the softer
part at the more pointed end, out of the grains of Indian
corn, while we have frequently seen the Marsh Tit at
the sunflower seeds. The Great Tit has a liking for
the neighbourhood of the kennels where the game-
keeper has hung up meat for his dogs, and a dark
whisper attaches to it the stigma of cannabalism.

OCTOBER 211

Certain it is that it has been seen to hammer in the
skulls of small and defenceless birds, and to make a
bonne bouche. of their brains. Some bird, probably
a tit, pecks open the oak-apple galls, to obtain
the fat, white grub which occupies the central cavity.
Here, then, is a small problem which suggests
others.

Does the Cuckoo suck eggs ? We believe the well-
known lines

The cuckoo is a merry bird; he sings as he flies,
He brings us good tidings and tells us no lies,

He sucks little birds’ eggs to make his voice clear,
He only sings ‘‘ cuckoo” three months in the year,

contain an unjustified aspersion. The cuckoo’s diet
consists largely of caterpillars, chiefly hairy ones, such
as those of the oak-eggar and fox-moth. Should not
the responsibility for the sucked eggs which one
finds, sometimes so neatly emptied that they will
pass muster in a collection, be laid at the door of the
jay or magpie ? The keeper’s regular bait for a Jay,
when he arranges a few upright sticks to support a
little platform of sods which contains a well-hidden
trap, is a thrush’s egg. Nothing, too, is more fatal
to the magpie than a hen’s egg into which a few
grains of strychnine have been introduced, but it
must be partially hidden ; if too evident it will excite
suspicion.

212 BIRD LIFE THROUGHOUT THE YEAR

Then there is the matter of the Dipper or Water
Ouzel, whose food, it is more than hinted, includes
trout-spawn amongst other items, so that upon some
carefully-preserved waters it is shot off. When one
has the rare opportunity of looking down upon a
dipper at work at the bottom of a pool, it is seen to
maintain itself there by vigorous movement of its
wings as it searches the bed of pebbles or gravel.
It may safely be surmised that the pursuit of water
insects and their larve is its primary object ; possibly
some small amount of spawn may be disturbed or even
eaten. :

Even the diet of the birds of prey may be more
varied than one ordinarily supposes. The Buzzard,
though a noble-looking hawk, does not disdain earth-
worms and beetles. A farmer remarked to us that a
pair of buzzards, which nested on the rocks above his
house, had entirely cleared his fields of moles. A
friend, holiday-making in Wales, saw a buzzard
rise from the bushy cliff-slope with a writhing snake
hanging from its talons, and a gentleman who inad-
vertently wounded a female Brown Owl and turned her
into an old pheasantry to recover tells us that her
disconsolate mate nightly brought, not only mice and
birds, but also numerous frogs and toads. But a
general discussion of so large a subject as the food of
birds would lead us too far from the berried hedges
of October.

OCTOBER 213
CALENDAR FOR OCTOBER.

October 1st.—Hedge Sparrow sings.

”

”?

39

”

2nd.—Pheasants wander in search of acorns.
4th.—Twites or Mountain Linnets flock.
5th.—Tree Creeper sings.
7th.—Skylark sings.
toth.—Cirl Bunting sings.
r1th.—Cuckoo (young) last seen.
12th.—Chiff-chaff last heard.
15th.—Swallow last seen (average).
16th.—Chiff-chaff last noted.
17th.—Hooded Crow arrives.
18th.—Wheatear last noted.
r19th.—Redwing arrives.
20th.—Two young Wood Pigeons still in the nest
22nd.—Brambling or Mountain Finch arrives.
23rd.—Grey Shrike seen.
Thrushes heard on migration at night.
25th.—Fieldfare arrives.
House Martin last seen.
26th.—Woodcock arrives.
Black Redstart seen.
28th.—Migratory party of Blackbirds seen.
30th.—Short-eared Owl arrives.
31st.—Bullfinches begin to appear in the lanes and
hedges.

Bird Life in November.

Bird Life in November.

NOVEMBER perhaps of all the months holds the lowest
place in popular esteem. In cities and large towns it
often presents itself under an aspect so depressing as
to defy all attempt at palliation, and even in the
country it must be admitted that a large proportion
of the dark and dismal days which lead up to Christmas
fall within the compass of its last three weeks. There
are days when all the daylight seems to die out of the
damp-laden atmosphere before the afternoon is half
spent,—when in the sodden, dripping woods all is
silent, as if the birds were afraid of their own voices.
But let us not forget how, earlier in the month,
St. Martin never fails to bring us a day or two, some-
times a whole fortnight, when it is summer again for
the few sunlit hours on either side of mid-day, when
the flies still bask against a sunny wall and hive-bees
visit the ivy-blossom for their last scanty potations
of the year.

After the frost of early morning the ash-leaves fall
silently, unchanged in colour and unstirred by the
least breath of wind. As the sun gets through, robins
pipe cheerfully from the hedges, and skylarks trill,

217

218 BIRD LIFE THROUGHOUT THE YEAR

as they chase one another above the fresh-turned
furrows, till we momentarily expect them to break
into song. Belated visitors to the coast may enjoy
days such as the August crowd sighed for in vain,
halcyon days of kindly skies and placid sea, when
knots of gulls scream above the shoals of fry, or float
lazily up the estuary with the tide. Over field and
woodland the glamour of departed glories is cast once
more, till, with oncoming dusk, the partridges crow
from the stubbles, and the pheasants, with tumult of
wings and voices, fly up into the oaks to roost. As
we stand by the lake-side, the last gleam of daylight
is reflected from the silky breasts and necks of a pair
of crested-grebes, while, nearer the margin, many a
waterhen splashes a silvery track amongst the
darkening shadows. Magpies noisily go to roost in
the plantation, and in the shrubbery the blackbird
“chink, chink”’s his vesper hymn. A familiar sight
in many parts of the country is that of a vast flock of
starlings, manceuvring, like a drifting cloud of smoke,
as they seek some well-known resort to roost in company.
With what exactitude the flock wheels as one bird,
changing in a moment from closed formation to
extended front, and finally dropping like a stone to
the plantation or reed-bed which is their nightly haunt.
Not less wonderful is the well-drilled precision with
which the lapwings carry out their evolutions in lines
and squadrons, and, familiar as it is, the spiral circling

NOVEMBER 219

of a flock of rooks is no less a marvel of concerted
wingmanship.

November is in truth a medley of all the seasons:
The illusion of the few all-but-summer days with
which the month enters is sometimes heightened by
the sight of a belated swallow. These November
swallows are as a rule young birds of late broods.
Not strong enough upon the wing to leave with their
fellows, they linger with us until cut off by the first
sharp touch of frost. Later in the month, when the
bulbs send up green, pointed wedges to break ground,
when silvery-white willow catkins push back the
bud-scales, and when primroses and violets flower in
sheltered nooks, the time of the year might almost
be early spring. But these tentative and premature
awakenings are not seldom discouraged before the
month is out by a sharp reminder that the winter is
still before us.

However, if open weather continues, there is, in
November’s closing days, a fresh and louder-voiced
element of hopefulness in the thrush’s song, which
tells of faith that the turn of the year is not far distant.
The mistle-thrush, too, sings more frequently, and
now and again a tit may be heard practising its spring
note. At the beginning of the month the chaffinch
ceases his autumn song—but a poor affair at the best
—but the robin and wren, and, in districts where it
is found, the woodlark, do not fail us. But there

220 BIRD LIFE THROUGHOUT THE YEAR

seems at times a strain of pensive sadness in the
robin’s song, in keeping with ‘‘ the melancholy days, the
saddest of the year.” The questioning pose of its head,
as it regards us with bright, full eye, seems to speak
an intelligence beyond that of most feathered things,
so may the robin not possess a soul attuned to nature’s
moods? On foggy mornings the hedge-sparrow
sings, and the goldcrest’s note calls attention to its
tiny personality as it darts into the air to catch gnats,
or explores in search of spiders the inmost recesses of
a furze-bush, all gemmed with dewy gossamers. A
peculiarity of the goldcrest, which it shares with one
or two others of the very smallest birds, as the tree-
creeper and coal-tit, is that at times it seems absolutely
indifferent to one’s presence, so that it may be watched
from a distance of three feet. Whether it is pre-
occupation, or a faith that the observer, like the law,
de minimis non curat, certain it is that a coal-tit
busily hammering at an acorn, or a_ tree-creeper
running up an old mossy wall, has more than once
allowed us to come so near that we could all but touch
it. These small birds seem to spend a large part of
the winter in ranging the woods in company. One
may pursue the forest path for half an hour, hearing
no sound but that made by the few leaves still upon
the trees tap-tapping in readiness to join the drifted
ranks of those which have fallen, and seeing no living
thing but a squirrel which sits with paws folded over

NOVEMBER 221

a comfortably filled vest, then rushes up a spruce with
rattling of bark, flicks its tail half a dozen times in
defiance, and anon nibbles as it watches us with black
eyes and mobile nose. Now the low piping of hidden
bullfinches is heard, and a distant jay squalls an
obtrusive advertisement of his presence. But suddenly,
a moment later, the trees are alive with small birds.
A whole party of long-tailed tits is jerking with
short, restless flights from branch to branch. Coal
tits and blue-tits perform acrobatic feats on the finer
twigs. Several goldcrests are of the company, while
two or three tree-creepers devote their attention to
the trunks and larger limbs, always beginning to
investigate a tree at its base and dodging artfully to
keep branch or stem between themselves and the
observer. In a few minutes all have passed on and
the wood seems more silent than before. Whether
pure sociability or a feeling that there is safety in
numbers is the motive which leads to these associa-
tions we cannot say, but they are constantly to be met
with, and the units of which the foraging party is
composed are almost always the same. Possibly a
nuthatch may make one of the coterie, creeping
about the oak-boles, head downwards as usual, or
bolder movements and a stronger note than those of
the small fry betray the great-tit.

On a dull day when the light is bad, any trick of
manner or movement is a help towards identifying

222 BIRD LIFE THROUGHOUT THE YEAR

these woodland birds. Thus the jay is known by its
manner of going up a tree by taking long hops from
branch to branch; a blackbird, glimpsed in fading
light, can be nothing else if it gives its tail a sharp,
upward jerk as it alights. Just as characteristic is
the shuffling movement of the hedge-sparrow’s wings
as it shows itself upon the outside of the hedge. But
there is a less familiar note—a plaintive “see-see-
se-ep,” from the tops of the beeches which are still
splashed with fiery yellow and ruddy gold where
sheltered from the November gales. As the bird flies
we know the Hawfinch by its stumpy figure and
undulating flight, which almost gives the impression
that its big beak makes it top-heavy. And once in a
way, generally where there is a group of firs, we may
chance upon a party of finch-like birds, whose call-note
and general appearance at once stamp them as some-
thing out of the common. The glass shows that the
plumage of some is chiefly dull crimson, while in that
of others greenish-yellow predominates, also that they
cling to the branches in curious parrot-like attitudes,
as, with a slight wrench or twist, they detatch the
seeds from between the scales of the cones. Such are
the Crossbills, well called “ gipsy-migrants,’’ for they
appear to wander about the country in haphazard
fashion, sometimes spending a day or two in some
familiar grove of firs where we have never seen them
before, and where we may not see them again for

NOVEMBER 223

twenty years. They breed, often quite early in the
year in February or March, wherever they may happen
to be when they feel the impulse to do so, and thus lead
a free Bohemian existence which brings them but
rarely within the ken of the south-country naturalist,
though further afield, in the old pine-woods of the
Grampians, they are always to be met with.

About the fields and lanes the varied tribes of finches
and buntings now appear to be the all-prevailing
birds. One notes with pleasure the extent to which
the Goldfinch has benefitted from protective legislation.
The “charms” of goldfinches which are to be seen
about overgrown fallows and weedy field-borders,
are far more numerous and stronger in point of numbers
than was the case twenty years ago. And wherever
there is arable land, how thickly chaffinches and
yellow-hammers people the hedge-rows. If a census
of the feathered tribes of the British Isles could be
taken, one or the other would, we feel sure, easily
distance all competitors, not excepting the house-
sparrow. For while the sparrow is a hanger-on to
civilization, and is quite rare in some districts, as
amongst the Welsh uplands, finch and bunting are
everywhere. Coming from a party of the latter, one
may hear on a bright day in November what sounds
like a variant of the yellow-hammer’s refrain, but a
nearer approach shows that the author is a Cirl Bunting,
who shows his black throat as he puts up his head to

224 BIRD LIFE THROUGHOUT THE YEAR

sing, relapsing after each effort into the listless attitude
so characteristic of all his kin.

Judging from the scattered feathers which mark
the sparrow-hawk’s “ kill,” the chaffinch is its most
frequent victim, but that it will attempt larger game
the well-picked remains of a wood-pigeon not seldom
indicate. This is no doubt the work of the hen
sparrow-hawk—a much larger and bolder bird than her
mate, to whose powers the blackbird forms a more
appropriate prey. No other of our raptorial birds
is possessed by such a blind ferocity. We have known
the sparrow-hawk frequently to dash against the
wires of an out-door aviary in the attempt to seize a
singing-bird, and for the same purpose it will sometimes
enter a room or stun itself against a window-pane in
trying to do so. In one instance of which we knew, a
sparrow-hawk, not content with killing two parent
blackbirds at the nest, returned and took the unfledged
young. It probably had a brood to satisfy, and for
the wants of such the sparrow-hawk is known to cater
with a liberal hand.

Along the brook-side, where we have watched the
water-rat on the feed at dusk, and have seen the water-
shrews playing about like miniature otters, all the
gay tangle of summer, creamy meadow-sweet, purple
loosestrife and yellow flag, is now sere and dead. As
a Kingfisher darts past, its azure-blue back looks all
the more brilliant by contrast with such lifeless

A SITTING WOODCOCK.
Photo H. Lazensy.

NOVEMBER 225

surroundings. Alighting on the top of a stake, it
drops into the water with an audible plunge to seize
a minnow. The yellow breast of a Grey Wagtail,
wading daintily amongst the cresses, makes another
spot of colour. With harsh “ giach, giach,” a Snipe
rises from a patch of rushes. Lower down, before it
enters the pool, the stream loses itself for a time in a
small boggy copse, where the alders stand amongst
miry pools, upon whose borders earlier in the year
marsh-marigolds—the king-cups of our childhood’s
days—shine like fire. There are small birds in the
tops of the alders, clinging tit-like as they extract the
seed from the cones, the process causing a tiny rattling
noise, just loud enough to be heard. But they are not
tits, for the glass shows here the gold-banded wing and
green breast of a cock Siskin, and there the crimson-
dyed frontlet of a Redpoll. Mixed bands of these two
small finches may always be seen at this time of the
year amongst the alders and birches, which they only —
desert when the seed has fallen; and a few minutes
spent in watching their active and lively proceedings
will not be thrown away.

By the end of November the arrival of northern
birds is practically completed. Visitors to the south
coast may sometimes see the Black Redstart, which
every autumn arrives in small numbers from the
Continent to spend the winter in sunny nooks amongst
the cliffs of Cornwall and South Devon, though it is

5

226 BIRD LIFE THROUGHOUT THE YEAR

also fond of catching flies against the warm sides or
upon the sloping roofs of large buildings. When first
seen it gives the impression of being one of the summer
birds which has failed to migrate with the rest; a
second glance shows that it is a redstart, greyer and
darker in plumage than the “ firetail,’ for whose
arrival we watch in spring.

THE HOME OF A NATURALIST.

Who is there that takes a pleasure in fresh-turned
earth and leafing woods, and in all furred and feathered
things which disport themselves therein, but will be
ready to honour the pious memory of old Gilbert
White, arch-priest of the cult of the field-naturalist,
and founder of his craft? No doubt,as there were
mighty men before Agamemnon, so there must have
been yet earlier votaries of nature who strolled by
quiet ways, with quick eye and listening ear, but they
passed away, mute, inglorious, because they did not,
like the sage of Selborne, commit their observations to
writing. And probably he, as he penned that long
series of letters to his faithful correspondents, Mr.
Pennant and the Honourable Daines Barrington, had
little idea of the possibility of their ever appearing in
print. Hence, in part, their easy, simple flow, without
pose or affectation, no small advantage attaching to the
epistolary style. And what a far away eighteenth

NOVEMBER 227

century atmosphere one breathes in these letters,
which cover a period roughly of thirty years, from 1760
to 1790—the time of wigs, cocked hats, short breeches
and knee-buckles. While a famous divine made the
world his parish, White made his parish his world.
But for rare visits to Oxford, and at long intervals
journeys into Sussex in a post-chaise, he passed his
days at Selborne, type of those whose every care a few
paternal acres bound, proto-type of the stay-at-home
naturalist, who cares not to roam, because within a
mile of home he can find enough of interest to fill a
lifetime. What need of Alps with the South Downs
at hand, of lakes when he had Frensham Pool? As the
years ran on, everything upon which he set eyes
surrounded him with the friendships of a lifetime, and
each year eclipsed in interest the last, as he accumulated
fresh material for his calendar of the seasons, and
worked out in fuller detail the natural history of his
loved parish. He was unmarried, and his only occupa-
tion appears to have been that of a curious enquirer
into nature’s ways and special reporter to the seasons,
—a life of perfect leisure, yet never dull, how far apart
from the strivings of this frenzied age, hermit-like in
its aloofness from the stir of cities, remote as ruffs and
farthingales, irrecoverable as the dodo. How the
mellow-warmth of by-gone summers seems to cling
to these pages—the memory of leisurely tea-drinkings
on the lawn, prolonged till the nightjar droned from

228 BIRD LIFE THROUGHOUT THE YEAR

the hanger. We doubt whether White felt much
interest in the news-letter when it reached him; no
topic which it touched upon could be so important as
a rumoured discovery of hibernating swallows in the
next parish. How mild, too, his ambitions—that the
‘falco’ which he sends up to the authorities to be
named may turn out to be a new species,—that his
friends may find something of interest in the basket of
fresh-water fishlets from Selborne’s brook, which he
despatches by the London coach neatly packed in
water-weeds. With what modest, yet honest pride,
too, he describes his new “locustella, or grasshopper
lark.” For those were the palmy days when even a
stay-at-home naturalist might aspire to add his quota
to the British fauna.

It is a fine morning in November as we leave the
train at Liss, on the South-Western line, and make
enquiries as to the way to Selborne. After walking
for perhaps three-quarters of an hour, we approach a
fine, bold-looking hill, whose steep, chalky side has
been a landmark all the way. With the exception of
this precipitous south-eastern face, it is covered with
beech-trees, giving an example of the hanging woods,
or “hangers,” so characteristic of the district. On
enquiry of a labourer, this proves to be Nore Hill,
“that noble chalk promontory,’ as White calls it,
“remarkable for sending forth two streams into two
different seas.” A number of wood-pigeons, flying

NOVEMBER 229

from the tree-tops, show as moving specks of bluish-
grey against the dark, coppery background of the
beeches. The trees are well-grown, shapely specimens,
recalling the eulogy of White on this “‘ the most lovely
of all forest trees, whether we consider its smooth rind
or bark, its glossy foliage, or graceful pendulous
boughs.” Following a sort of track along the top of
the hill, and down its further side, the corner of Selborne
Hanger appears, and a few of the houses of the village, .
some half a mile away. At the entrance to the village
a spring gushes out, which it is easy to recognise as the
old Well-head, “that fine perennial fount, little
influenced by drought or wet seasons,’ now meta-
morphosed into a handsome brass fountain with a
trough at which the villagers may fill their pails. The
single street, of which the hamlet consists, straggles for
perhaps half a mile north-west from this point, the
church and more interesting part, so far as we are
concerned, lying at its further extremity. The cottages
are with scarcely an exception of a very humble order,
and the sights and sounds are those of a thousand other
English villages—the inn, with its swinging sign and
the waggoner’s team halting in the road before it, the
fold-yard where the cattle stand knee-deep in straw,
the smithy under whose porch, curiously supported
by three pollard lime-trees, the sparks are flying, the
villageshop, which seems to sell everything from biscuits
to boot-laces, and lastly the modest school-house,

230 BIRD LIFE THROUGHOUT THE YEAR

whence we may hope sufficient light has emanated to
make certain practices pursued by the rude forefathers
of the hamlet, and described by White, long since
things of the past.

At the end of the street we come suddenly upon a
square space of no great extent, round which the interest
of the village to most visitors doubtless, as to ourselves,
centres. It is the Plestor, about which antiquarians
have had so much to say in the various editions of the
Natural History of Selborne, gathering-place of the
rustics, perhaps from Saxon times. In the middle of
it is a sycamore of no great size, the successor of “ the
vast oak, the delight of young and old,” which stood
here till “the amazing tempest of 1703 overturned it
at once to the infinite regret of the inhabitants.”
That long and rather irregularly built house, facing the
road upon the south side of the Plestor, we have no
difficulty in recognising, in spite of its new red-brick
front, as “the Wakes,” formerly the home of the
naturalist. Though partly rebuilt, its look of old-
fashioned comfort and quiet prosperity has not been
disturbed. To the right is the high wall of the kitchen
garden, which restricted the wanderings of Timothy
the tortoise, till one sunny morning “he found the
wicket open, eluded the vigilance of the gardener, and
escaped into the sainfoin, and thence into the beans.”
No doubt this is the wall which in 1773 produced
“ten dozen lovely peaches and nectarines.” Turning

NOVEMBER 231

now to the other end of the Plestor, we enter the
churchyard and stop to admire the fine yew, said to be
second in size only to one other in England. Compared
with the date when it was a slender stripling, White’s
time seems modern indeed. A pair of nuthatches
has adapted one of the holes in its venerable trunk to
nesting purposes. No doubt White often stood in its
shade to watch the swifts darting into their holes in
the church tower, or the white-owl bringing mice to
her young ones under the eaves. His grave within the
church is unmarked except by his initials, and date,
26th June, 1793.

We now turn our steps towards the Hanger, that
“ vast hill of chalk rising three hundred feet above the
village.’ The beeches with which it is covered are
tall and slender, owing to their growing so closely
together. It was here that a boy climbed one of them
“though standing on so steep and dizzy a situation ”
to plunder the honey-buzzards’ nest. A large part of
the wood has been cleared from the top of the hanger,
the trees having apparently fallen before some south-
west gale. The little summer-house where White and
his friends used to come to take tea on fine summer
evenings, when on one occasion a nightjar, perching
on the roof to “‘ churr,” caused the whole structure to
vibrate, must have been somewhere hereabouts, perhaps
at the spot where the trees have been removed to allow
us to catch sight of the village below. From this point

232 BIRD LIFE THROUGHOUT THE YEAR

we can see the garden of “the Wakes,” and the
paddock or park-like meadow behind it, also the
south side of the house. Descending by the slippery
chalk path called “the zig-zag,” which was made in
White’s time, the hour or more which remains is spent
in a stroll to Woolmer, where we hope to see something
of the forest so often mentioned by White. The road
is one of the two “ rocky, hollow lanes ” referred to by
him as being amongst the singularities of Selborne,
the other, to Alton, being now disused. On each side
are high banks of loose, white freestone, amongst
which the ivy and the roots of trees twist curiously
about and the fronds of the polypody and shield fern
fill every little hollow formed by the overhanging
bank. Presently the “ forest,’ so-called, comes in
sight, a bare, heathery waste, stretching away towards
Hindhead, and much modified, we believe, since the
date of our visit by its adaptation to the purposes of
military training. Some of its large ponds or meres,
to which ospreys, long-legged stilt-plovers, and other
rarities used to come, are drained ; others still remain.
A walk of five miles to Alton concludes our pilgrimage.
In the fields are great piles of hop-poles, ready for use
again next season. The poor people still, as in White's
time, “ enjoy a second harvest in September by hop-
picking.”

White was the first of that school of British out-door
naturalists who, as close observers of birds and their

NOVEMBER 233

ways, have not been surpassed, or indeed equalled,
by those of any other nation. For this painstaking
and sympathetic study of birds in the field, as distinct
from the work of the museum or closet-naturalist,
may almost be called a speciality of the Anglo-Saxon
race, including in that term its transatlantic off-shoot,
and is merely one manifestation of that kindly tolerance
and friendly intimacy with animated things which
characterizes the Teutonic spirit at its best, and which
is noticeably lacking amongst the Latin peoples. A
hopeful sign of the times to the well-wishers of our native
fauna is that this,spirit steadily broadens and deepens.
Whether it is that the destructive spirit derived from
savage ancestors asserts itself less strongly in each
succeeding generation, or that sport necessarily becomes
increasingly the pastime of the few, certain it is that
the tendency of the naturalist nowadays is to take
the field armed with binoculars or camera, rather than
with breech-loader—a state of things which would
have rejoiced the heart of White, and which, to the
birds themselves, must seem to bring the millennium
notably nearer.

CALENDAR FOR NOVEMBER.

Nov. sst.—Bullfinches more numerous in the lanes.
» 2nd.—Ring Ouzel last noted.
» 3rd.—Chaffinch still sings.
» 4th.—Migratory party of Pied Wagtails seen.

BIRD LIFE THROUGHOUT THE YEAR

8th.—Cirl Bunting sings.

oth.—Woodlark sings.
r1oth.—Rooks resort to their nesting trees.
11th.—Hedge Sparrow sings.
tath.—Swallow last seen (exceptional).
13th.—Mistle Thushes flock in company with

fieldfares.

14th.—Skylarks sing freely.
15th.—Black Redstart seen.
roth.—Cold inland drives Golden Plover to the coast.
20th.—Bramblings at beech-mast.
21st.—Large party of Meadow Pipits seen.
22nd.—Nuthatch takes yew berries.
a5th.—Tree Creeper sings. 7
27th.—Mistle Thrush sings.
29th.—Song Thrushes sing more freely.
30th.—Wren sings.

Bird Life in December.

Bird Life in December.

In spite of short, dark days, it is impossible to take
seriously December’s claim to be a winter month.
‘‘Old-fashioned winters,” if they ever existed, waned
with the stage-coach and went out finally with Dickens.
For every Christmas upon which frost and snow bestow
their traditional benison a dozen are celebrated to the
accompaniment of drizzle and mud. Your modern
December is, in fact as by the calendar, but a con-
tinuation of autumn ; winter but toys playfully with
the nut-brown damsel; if snow and ice appear it is
but for short rehearsals, any serious call upon these
scenic effects being reserved for the new year. So
well is this recognised that those who are curious in
meteorological matters point here and there to a
Christmas Day, which was actually warmer than the
following twenty-fifth of May, while no jury of youthful
Britons would acquit the month of a peculiar aptitude
for raising hopes of hyperborean sport only to be dissi-
pated as soon as skates appear and the first snowball
is thrown. In an average December flowers of a
dozen kinds,—monthly roses, stocks, chrysanthemums,
linger on in the cottage gardens. The small bat or
237

238 BIRD LIFE THROUGHOUT THE YEAR

pipistrelle is out on mild evenings almost up to Christ-
mas time, and memory recalls at least one December
butterfly. In the middle of the month the honey-
suckle begins to show its new leaves, and the gorse, in
the kindly climate of the west, breaks into a thousand
points of colour upon the bank where the rabbits sit
out, basking in the pale sunshine of the closing year.

For “there are sunny days in winter after all,”
days which come after rain and storm, when the level
beams strike on the ruddy trunks of the Scotch firs,
and brighten the hues of the dying bracken. There
are blue skies to light up the berried hollies, the red
twigs of the cornel, the spindle-tree’s rosy fruit bursting
to show the orange-coated seed. And December’s
sunsets, —the flying storm-rack rent to show the flaming
west, the deep orange afterglow which means frost—
will vie with those of any month in the year. Few
are the days when the naturalist in ordinary health
will fail to be abroad to taste the brisk air after the
morning’s touch of frost, to see the leafless trees once
more displaying their symmetry of limb and twig,
and to note in the hedges, still hoary with masses of
feathery-seeded clematis, the empty nests of the
warblers, once so deep in tangled greenery and now
so plain to view. A short “nip ” of frost, lasting three
or four days, has scarcely time to harden the surface
of the ground before the wind veers to the west and all
is soft again.

DECEMBER 239

Wintry “alarms and excursions” of this kind keep
many birds upon the move, but do not drive them far
afield, or cause them real inconvenience. Ground-
feeding birds have seldom in December to contend
with the iron-bound crust or long-lying snow which
may come later. When the frost begins to “ give,”
the thrushes tunefully hail the return of easier times,
and the robins warble snatches of song, low and soft,
as if the thaw had brought with it some suggestion
of ‘spring.

Fresh-turned earth means a plentiful food-supply,
not only to rook and jackdaw but to a host of others.
This is well seen in the neighbourhood of the coast,
where the gulls at this time of year keep up aconstant
sailing over the land to find out where ploughing is
going on. Fieldfares are scattered over one of the
low-lying meadows where fresh-made hillocks show
that the soil is still sufficiently friable for the mole to
be at work. Suddenly a wheeling squadron of Starlings
deploys into foraging formation and drops down to
join them. Then may be seen a curious difference
in manner of feeding. The fieldfare is the embodi-
ment of vigilance,—a hop, a cautious look round, a
hurried peck, then again on the guz vive. Meanwhile
the starlings race hither and thither, run together
into little knots upon the least suspicion that a neigh-
bour has made a find, and dispute noisily, while those
in the rear continually fly over the heads of the others

240 BIRD LIFE THROUGHOUT THE YEAR

to take front rank. Every bird is keen on pushing
his own business and in such a hurry that manners
have to go. In the midst of their quarrelling they
suddenly dart into the air, and begin frantically
manceuvring, then fall as if shot, striking the
ground with a thud. Just as they do this, a
Sparrow-hawk dashes through their ranks, and,
without checking its flight, goes off with one of
their number.

A wet December, when the streams run bank-high,
floods the river-flats and forms wide, shallow plashes
beloved of the lapwings and equally attractive to
wandering gulls and wading-birds of all sorts. A
tall, moody-looking Heron comes to see whether the
newly-discovered lakelet affords scope for his pisca-
torial craft. Such Meadow Pipits and Pied Wagtails
as have not left us trip daintily about the water’s edge,
and, as the floods subside, the Carrion Crow comes to
look over the slimy deposit which remains on chance
of stranded fish or drowned-out mice. The month
seldom passes without more or less rough weather,
and sometimes brings a storm which, upon the coast,
may vie with the worst of the autumn gales. The
shore-haunting gulls, with a premonition of what is
coming, pass overhead drifting inland for shelter.
All night it blows great guns, and next morning, when
the air is full of spindrift and flying foam-flakes, we
see the Kittiwakes, under ordinary circumstances

HERONS AND WILD DUCKS.
From painting by Frank SouTHGate.

“mass

Lgneree:

DECEMBER 241

the gulls of the open sea par excellence, close inshore
and making the best of the partial protection afforded
by the harbour-pier. In continued rough weather
many of them are drowned, beaten down into the sea
by the gale. Bewildered by the darkness and driven
before the tempest, disabled sea-birds,—gannet, shear-
water or petrel,—are often picked up far inland when
the gale has spent itself. Thus we hear of a puffin
found fluttering on the roof of a midland church, just
as we have known a water-rail to go astray on migra-
tion and turn up in a boot-and-shoe shop. Overhead
wires in large cities are often fatal to such storm-driven
wanderers, while platelayers and others who are much
about the railway line know what a toll the telegraph
wires exact.

Given a fine morning even the December sun may
for an hour or two make a brave show and give us light
sufficient to see what business is forward in copse and
, hedge-row. We follow the wide, grassy track, nearly
‘disused at the present day, of the old Roman road,
deserted now by the summer birds which found cover
in its ample edging of briers and brambles. A kestrel
climbs the air with easy sweep, then stands for a
“moment against the breeze. The fourfold combination
of sparrows, chaffinches, greenfinches and yellow-
hammers greets us from every hedge. As we come
to a dry ditch we hear the squeal of a rabbit and,

pulling aside the bushes, see it giving its last convulsive
16

242 BIRD LIFE THROUGHOUT THE YEAR

kicks, while the assassin, a stoat, slips like a guilty
shadow into the thicket. The victim has a single bite
behind the ear. Amongst the hedge-row timber there
is here and there a decayed stump at which the wood-
peckers have been at work. A Pied Woodpecker,
crimson-capped, dips from tree to tree and, alights
upon one of these. Ascending by a series of active jerks
or upward leaps, he stops to peck with fierce energy
at a loose piece of bark to dislodge the hidden
grub. A knock upon the next hollow trunk, and a
Brown Owl emerges from a hole above our heads and
sits with head inclined, wisely observant, upon its
cushion of moss and polypody. Nuthatches, creepers
and tits are busy turning hibernating spiders out
of crevices in the bark. As the nuthatch calls
“hwit, hwit, tweet, tweet,” it moves its head from
side to side with a rapid, twitching movement.
Amongst the old timber the Stock Dove is often to
be seen, its note a hoarser ‘“‘coo” than that of
the wood-pigeon, and its flight lighter and more
nimble.

Now the wood is entered, and here half-a-dozen
squirrels are at work, digging for acorns amongst the
fallen leaves. Long-tailed pheasants crash heavily
up or go footing it away along the dry ditches. Their
guardian of the velveteen and gaiters tells us that in
outlying covers he still has a few of the old English
race, with neck unmarked by the white ring, an inno-

DECEMBER 243

vation due to the introduction, about a century ago,
of a variety from the far East. If we accompany the
man of traps and guns as he makes his round we shall
come to the conclusion that his knowledge of the ways
of the tenants of copse and spinney falls little short of
all that there is to know. Being a master of his trade,
he trusts more to traps than to his gun. Here the bait
of a dead rabbit has proved the undoing of a carrion
crow, and in this ditch he has placed a little wooden
culvert up which any creature of the weasel kind will
be certain to venture in its travels, the said culvert
containing a well-hidden trap. Sometimes a gin,
artfully concealed by soil and grass, is placed in a hollow
out of which a sod has been lifted. In thenice adjust-
ment of snares and poisoned baits he is, too, a past
master. This rabbit skin, neatly turned inside out,
bespeaks the handiwork of the fox. Not such was the
fate of the furry owner of the little white skull which
we pick up soon afterwards. Two lower incisors
grown out into long curved tusks show that dental
troubles shortened its days.

Crossing the fields beyond the plantation, we note
that the remains of the partridge coveys are uniting
to form packs, as they always do towards the close of
the shooting season. So the short day passes, well-
spent, until with dusk the sparrows noisily go to roost
in the ivy, and the greenfinches seek the shelter of the
clipped yew-hedges. °

244 BIRD LIFE THROUGHOUT THE YEAR

One must seize the opportunity of a bright, keen day
of Christmas weather to see how the moors look in
wintry guise. As we follow up this rippling, eddying
north-country “beck,” we hear a song which seems
like a more musical variation of the chatter of the
stream over its stony bed. A white breast, which we
take at first for a drifted foam-patch amongst the
dark rocks, shows that the author is a Dipper or Water
Ouzel. Presently he enters a pool, diving and
dabbling as cheerily in the ice-cold water as if the
month were May. No winter day, however cheerless,
raw or chill, seems to affect the spirits of this Mark
Tapley of a bird. In the fringe of plantation below the
moor, the Grey Hens come bustling silently out of the
spruce firs which are gemmed with frost work,—while
with whirr of wings their lord, a stately Black-cock,
rises from a patch of rushes. Drifting showers, half
snow half frozen sleet, have powdered the moors with
white, but, as the sun shows through, we hear, the
Grouse “ becking ” and crowing on all sides, and upon
the drifts one notes the print of their mittened feet.
Here amongst the heather is a grove of small thick-set
pines. Approach the nearest of them and with muffled
flop a Long-eared Owl leaves its perch and flaps away
with noiseless wing-beats, shortly followed by another,
and so on, until we have counted six in succession.
From the litter and vast accumulation of castings on
the ground below, the tree is evidently a regular family

DECEMBER 245

roosting-place. There is a peculiar beauty about the
eyes of this bird, with their irides of brilliant and
luminous yellow.

As we near the borders of the moorland tarn, a Heron
raises his long neck, stands at attention, then, un-
folding ample pinions, takes to flight. The night
frosts have crisped the shallows with a coating of ice
just strong enough to bear the weight of the Wild
Ducks, green-headed ruddy-breasted drakes and their
more sober-coloured mates, which stand upon it, some
preening, others apparently asleep with their bills
tucked under their wing-coverts. Now every head is
raised, and the next moment the whole flock starts up
with whistling wings and vociferous quacking, and,
dividing into parties, keeps passing and repassing
overhead, clearly outlined against the sunset sky.
A bunch of Teal follows, but these smaller wild-fowl
have a different flight. They twist about like a flock
of dunlin, turn quick as a flash and soon pitch again
into cover. We have known a whole flock of wild
swans, forty-two of them, to alight upon one of these
moorland pools and to remain for some weeks. A pair
of tame swans easily put the whole party to rout, and
it was a fine sight as they rose one by one, each
beginning to give tongue as it left the water. But the
short twilight fades, and visions of a blazing hearth
outweigh the doubtful attractions of the darkening
moor.

246 BIRD LIFE THROUGHOUT THE YEAR

WILD FOWL ON THE COAST.

Cold and bleak lies the salt-marsh, in summer gay
with sea-lavender and rose flower-heads of thrift. Yet
this is no time to sit at home at ease, but rather to
sally forth armed with field-glasses, or, if on destruction
bent, with lethal weapons, mindful of the wildfowler’s
_ aphorism “ the worse the weather, the more the birds.”
For the latter are here in far larger number and variety
than was the case when winds were soft and skies were
blue. As regards some species there is little change.
The Black-headed Gulls still paddle restlessly about
the tide-edge, screaming querulously, and the Ringed
Plover still rise with feeble piping note from the-shingle
where, until they move, they are as invisible as the
common-sandpiper ison a mud bank. Only the grace-
ful terns are gone,—a loss more than atoned for by
the arrival of a host of wildfowl from loch and fjord
and northern sea. True, the times are not what they
used to be, before the birds were harassed by an
ever-increasing number of punt-gunners and shore-
shooters, or driven from some of their favourite haunts
by the vast increase of traffic into and out of the ports
and harbours of the east coast. Still when the winter
is favourable, z.e., when it brings one or two spells of
sharp cold not too long continued, there is something
like a return of past glories. Then one may hear again
the distant clamour of the wild geese sounding like

DECEMBER 247

a pack of beagles in full cry. The Brent Geese
(“brants” or “Scotch geese” of the east coast
fishermen) come to feed with the wigeon on the banks
where the ribbon-like grass-wrack grows. Sometimes,
as they stand in rank, looming large in the mist, they
look like a regiment of soldiers, and often a favourite
shoal is black with them. The old gunner who puts
out in pursuit tells us that six Grey Geese passed over
his head at daybreak as he was laying down lines for
codling. Presently we hear the boom of his big
stanchion gun, which moves on a swivel in the stern of
his punt. Some of the men who make a living in this
way develop powers of eyesight, and an intuitive
knowledge of the habits of the birds which almost
pass belief. Of course even the uninitiated may
pronounce a distant speck to be diver or grebe if it
swims with straight, upright neck, in figure and in
outline entirely different from a duck. The eye picks
out a parti-coloured Sheld-duck from amongst fowl of
less boldly-contrasted plumage, and the shill whistling
of the Wigeon betrays them from afar where they feed
with the geese on the outer shoals. Parties of dark-
plumaged ducks which dive incessantly near inshore,
i.e., above the mussel-beds, are likely to be either
Scaup or Scoters. These last are the “black ducks ”
of the fisherman, as his “ dun-birds” are the red-headed
Pochards. Of course the common Wild Duck or
Mallard is familiar enough upon the coast, especially

248 BIRD LIFE THROUGHOUT THE YEAR

when frost drives it from the inland waters. The
Golden-eye is known by the whistling or rattling noise
made by its wings in flight, and often owes its life to its
quickness in diving, disappearing at the flash. As
with many of the diving ducks, it is chiefly the females
and young birds which come thus far south, so that the
obtaining of an old drake Merganser or Goosander
in full plumage is a rare event,—pity that the delicate
salmon-tint of the under-parts of the latter bird
so quickly fades. The Long-tailed Duck, whose loud
musical call is heard in summer amongst the northern
isles, appears every winter in varying numbers, and is
the “ pintail ” of the gunners upon the Yorkshire coast.
For memories of the finest sight of all, that of a flock
of Wild Swans upon the wing, trumpeting their bugle-
call in time to the beating of their great pinions, we
must go back for some years to a winter of Arctic
severity, when the ice-floes went grinding to-and-fro
in the estuary and lay piledupupontheshore. Further
still, but within the memory of the oldest sportsman,
stands out the Crimean winter, when there were all
sorts of unfamiliar birds about, and he counted two
hundred head of wild fowl one evening in the larder.
Round the winter fire while the curlew and redshanks
are calling outside in the darkness, further reminiscences
follow,—of that great shot at wigeon with the heavy
shoulder-gun which took half an ounce of powder,
and which resulted in eight and a half couple being

DECEMBER 249

brought to bag,—of the three Wild Swans killed with
the old flint-and-steel duck gun at one discharge with
No. 8,—of the wire cartridge which stopped the Great
Northern Diver at an unheard-of distance, and of the
great frost when he was at it all night, cutting a hole
in the ice for the dun-birds and other fowl, after making
a rough shelter for himself near by. He once fell
asleep while watching, and awoke in a pool of water,
which the warmth of his body had melted. The hole
was full of dun-birds and the resulting shot gave him
eight or nine, some having dived under the ice. Of
course there is many a lament at the degeneracy of the
present day. “‘ Ah, the winters are not what they were ;
often they do fare to be more like summer, and those
Dutchmen catch all the fowl the other side in their
decoys.” But when was an old sportsman known to be
other than a laudator temporis acti; and, whether
ducks be many or few, we may see much of interest
in these short winter days spent in the cabin amongst
the sand-hills.

The finches which go trooping over the saltings
amongst the seeding aster and sea-lavender, are not
linnets but Twites from the north country moorlands.
Reed Buntings come daily to the dunes to feed on the
seeds of the sand-grass, and amongst the skylarks
one may sometimes detect the Shore Lark, which we
have seen in its summer home amongst the Lapland
fells. The warren at the back of the dunes has more

250 BIRD LIFE THROUGHOUT THE YEAR

than once been visited by an eagle. The great bird
is almost always a young example of the white-tailed
species, though, if it fall a victim to the keeper’s gun
or traps, the chances are ten to one that it will be
recorded in the local papers as “a fine golden-eagle.”
At long intervals an Osprey may be seen to flap and
circle above the tidal lagoon, plunging to seize a
mullet which it bears away in its claws. The coarse
tussock-grass of the marshes is full of the runs of field-
mice; these have proved an attraction to the Short-
eared Owls, one or more of which may be seen upon
the wing, not only in the twilight, but at all hours of
the day. Kingfishers frequent the half-frozen marsh-
drains. Every morning, as soon as the sun has got
the better of the light purple mist which hangs over the
sea, a great flock of Dunlin is on the move, looking in
the distance like a shifting cloud of smoke, then
wheeling so that we catch the gleam of sunshine on
five hundred snowy breasts. Otherwise there are not
many wading birds about, but the Oyster-catchers still
follow the tide as it retires, paddling about on the ooze,
and, when the ebb has transformed the lagoon into a
narrow channel lost amidst wide-stretching mud-banks,
Curlew and Redshanks flock, as earlier in the season,
to their favourite feeding-grounds.

Now to hie northward, away from tidal-flats and
oozy creeks, to a bold, rocky coast, and to the sharp
Yorkshire air. Keen is the salt tang of the north-easter

DECEMBER 251

as it whistles across this rocky ledge, which runs far
out to sea. It is a favourite landing-place for birds
coming in from the north or north-east, and wildfowl
passing up or down the coast must either cross it or go
out of their way to avoid it. As they usually adopt
the former course, this natural breakwater makes the
best of stations for observation and also, as many an
old gunner knows, for lying ambushed amongst the
boulders, his black-coated retriever at his feet, and his
heavy muzzle-loader in readiness for the flight-ducks.
There he will wait for hours, sometimes in bitter
weather, when it is blowing hard, and when snow-
showers close in the outlook but for a momentary
clearance about every half hour. Under such
circumstances the ducks are sure to be on the move.
A wood-pigeon comes in from seaward, and a wood-
cock follows, just topping the waves,—curious that
migration should be continued thus late, to the very
close of the year. A little bunch of Knots in grey
winter dress alights close at hand to seek shelter on
the margin of a rock-poo]. In a lull between the
squalls, Snow Buntings twitter cheerfully from the
grassy cliff-slope. Following them up, we find a large
flock of Golden Plover, resting with peewits on a frozen
stubble. In another field a party of Dunlin, driven
from the shore by the tide, is running about with larks
and starlings. In such wild and wintry weather we
never fail to see the Glaucous Gull, a fine species

252 BIRD LIFE THROUGHOUT THE YEAR

hailing from the polar seas and with the same stretch
of wings as our Great Black-Back. In really severe.
weather they may appear in some numbers, but there
are few adults amongst them, the majority being young
birds in spotted plumage.

But the braw north-easter does not always whistle
even on this exposed coast. At the very end of the
month comes a day of calm sea and cloudless sky.
Out in the bay the glass shows us diver after diver
and party after party of ducks resting at ease on the
slow-heaving oily swell. The ducks in such weather
are hopelessly unapproachable; not so the divers,
which often swim close inshore, turning to dive through
an advancing wave just before it breaks. Black-
headed Gulls, playing about the tide-edge, descend with
sudden swoop, just touching the water with their feet.
A Cormorant flaps along the surface splashing like a
coot, while others sit in solemn conclave on a rocky
stack. Curlew, wild and wary as always, feed upon
the outer skerries until the rising tide moves them, and a
heron, which has remained until knee-deep, at last has
to flap away. MHalf-a-dozen Oyster-catchers stand
upon a flat reef in the wash of the tide; their orange
bills seem to flame against the dark background of
weed and rock. The glass shows that at times they
rest on one leg with the bill tucked into the feathers
of the back, in attitudes and movements extremely
stork-like. With them, moving briskly about amongst

DECEMBER 253

the fronds of the sea-wrack stirred by the incoming
ripples, is a smaller bird which proves to be a Purple
Sandpiper: Far less shy than most of its kind, we may
watch it, usually solitary, in its search for small molluscs
and crustaceans upon the weed-grown ledges and upon
the margins of the pools. With shrill note a Rock
Pipit rises, acting as sentinel to the larger fowl.

So the short day closes; the purple hues of sunset ,—
the last of the year—die away on sand-flats and
shallows, and we turn homeward, thinking of all the
wealth of enjoyment which the study of nature has
afforded us through the twelve months which are
ended and anticipating a renewal of the outdoor life
with all its pleasures in the year which is to come.

CALENDAR FOR DECEMBER.

Dec. 5th.—Mistle Thrushes begin to sing more freely.
» 9th.—Meadow Pipits still flocking.
» 16th.—Tree Creeper still sings.
», 2ist.—Common or Corn Bunting sings.
» 23rd.—Stock Dove coos.
», 25th.—Dipper or Water Ouzel sings.
Lesser Redpolls at the alder-cones.
» 27th.—Remains of Partridge coveys pack.
», 28th.—Pied Woodpecker working at a fresh boring.
» 2gth.—Fieldfares resort to turnips in frost.
» 30th.—Redwings at holly berries.

.

INDEX

Aux, Little, 31, 32.
Avocet, 50, 106, 165.

BITTERN, 50.

Blackbird, 18, 30, 33, 42, 45, 60, 69,
83, 118, I2I, 140, 159, 161, 183,
200, 208, 218, 222.

Blackcap, 91, 98, 119, 138, 159.

Black-cock, see Grouse, Black.

Bluethroat, 202.

Bramtbling, 22, 78, 204, 207.

Bullfinch, 44, 72, 98, 102, 121, 161,
199, 209, 221.

Bunting, Cirl, 162, 223.

Bunting, Common or Corn, 45, 98.

Bunting, Reed, 22, 53, 83, 122, 249.

Bunting, Snow, 29, 78, 202, 251.

Bunting, Yellow, 22, 29, 33, 45, 61,
81, 98, 139, 160, 162, 200, 223,
241.

Butcher-bird, Shrike,
backed.

Buzzard, Common, 33, 64, 111, 167,
171, 187, 190, 212.

see Red-

CHAFFINCH, 18, 22, 45, 60, 69, 70, 71.
81, 82, 99, IOI, 120, I2I, 142,
145, 161, 163, 184, 197, 199, 200,
204, 207, 209, 219, 223, 224, 241.

Suan, 67, 71, 87, 102, 145, 163,
180.

Chough, 150, I51, 169.

Coot, 26, 30, 53, 84, 143.

Cormorant, 62, 149, 162, 252.

Corncrake, 92, 125, 142, 152, 164,
‘185.

Crake, Spotted, 185.

Creeper, Tree, 33, 45, 72, 102, 131,
163, 220, 221, 242.

Crossbill, 222.

Crow, Carrion, 79, 107, 158, 187,
190, IQI, 240, 243.

Crow, Hooded, 79, 204.

Cuckoo, 92, 105, 118, 124, 125, 141,
159, 178, 211.

Curlew, 43, 62, 107, 122, 160, 205,
248, 250, 252.

254

Dascuick, 53, 84, 123, 161.
Dipper, 42, 62, 66, I11, 167, 212,

244.

Diver, Great Northern, 249.

Diver, Black-throated and Red-
throated, 78, 106, 180, 252.

Dotterel, 106, 170.

Dove, Ring, 19, 22, 29, 30, 42, 61,
79, IOI, 139, 142, I61, 183, 200,
207, 208, 210, 224, 228, 251.

Dove, Rock, 150.

Dove, Stock, 80, 132, 144, 210, 242.

Dove, Turtle, 98, 124, 142, 160,

Golden-eye, 205, 248.
Long-tailed, 248.
Pintail, 78.

Scaup, 205, 247.
Sheld, 144, 247.
Tufted, 52.

Wild or Mallard, 66, 84,
122, 143, I6I, 205, 245, 247.
Dunlin, 56, 107, 145, 166, 205, 250,

251.

EaGue, Golden, rog.
Eagle, White-tailed, 250.

Fatcon, Peregrine, 108, 150.

Fieldfare, 20, 29, 30, 42, 79, 198,
203, 239.

Finch, Mountain, see Brambling.

Flycatcher, Pied, 92, 111.

Flycatcher, Spotted, 99, 102, 120,
141.

GADWALL, 52.

Gannet, 241.

Garganey, 52.

Godwit, 51, 106, 165, 180.

Goldcrest, 33, 72, 80, 201, 220, 221.

Goldfinch, 21, 33, 103, 140, 161, 182,
209, 223. ‘

Goosander, 248.

Goose, Brent, 31, 247.

Goose, Grey Lag, 50.

Grebe, Great Crested, 52, 55, 84,
218.

INDEX 255

Grebe, Little, see Dabchick.

Greenfinch, 22, 33, 60, 81, 82, 160,
165, 241, 243.

Greenshank, 165, 180.

Grouse, Black, 172, 244.

Grouse, Pallas’s Sand-, 210.

Grouse, Red, 32, 62, 107, 122, 172,
244.

Guillemot, Briinnich’s, 31.

‘Guillemot, Common, 84, 147, 148,

165.
Gull, Black-headed, 43, 51, 84, 162,
184, 246, 252.
Gull, Common, 85, 162.
Gull, Glaucous, 251. .
Gull, Great Black-backed, 148.
Gull, Herring, 43, 63, 84, 147, 161.
Gull, Iceland, 31.
Gull, Ivory, 31.
Gull, Kittiwake, 148, 162, 203, 240.
Gull, Lesser Black-backed, 161.
Gull, Sabine’s, 203.

Harrier, Marsh, 51.

Harrier, Montagu’s, 52.

Hawfinch, 103, 130, 140, 164, 209,
222.

Hawk, Sparrow-, 44, I0I, 121, 139,
165, 188, 190, 199, 224, 240.

Heron, Common, 19, 33, 41, 53, 63,
133, 139, 167, 188, 240, 245.

Hobby, roo.

Hoopoe, 100.

JACKDAW, 23, 25, 30, 62, 80, 131.
Jay, 30, 79, 80, 187, 190, 191, 201,
207, 211, 221, 222.

KESTREL, 21, 42, 52, 80, 121, 150,
182, 188, 241.

Kingfisher, 33, 62, 83, 123, 141,
224, 250.

Kite, 109, 190.

Knot, 106, 165, 180, 251.

LAPwWING, 22, 30, 31, 42, 61, 66, 83,
104, 107, 125, 138, 218, 240.

Lark, Shore, 202, 249.

Linnet, 42, 67, 104, 120, 163, 199,
209.

Linnet, Mountain see Twite.

MaGPIE, 24, 42, 79, 159, 190, I9QI,
211, 218.

Martin, House, 88, 92, 139, I51,
159, 179.

Martin, Sand, 68, 90, 123, 179.

Merganser, 78, 248.

Merlin, 108, 189, 199.

Moorhen, 25, 53, 83, 123, 125, 161,
218,

NIGHTINGALE, 70, 90, 102, 124, 125,
138, 159.

Nightjar, 86, 99, 124, 125, 140, 142,
160, 164, 227, 231.

Nuthatch, 25, 45, 79, 103, 130, 141,
183, 208, 221, 231, 242.

ORIOLE, Golden, roo.

Osprey, 232, 250.

Ouzel, Ring, 68, 109, 138, 167.

Ouzel, Water, see Dipper.

Owl, Barn, 80, 132, 139, 190, 231.

Owl, Long-eared, 66, 190, 244. ,

Owl, Short-eared, 52, 202, 250.

Owl, Tawny or Brown, 66, 80, 132,
140, 181, 190, IQI, 212, 242.

Oyster-catcher, 63, 143, 250, 252.

PARTRIDGE, Common, 19, 29, 33,
I2I, 142, 183, 184, 218, 243.

Partridge, Red-legged, 185.

Peewit, see Lapwing.

Petrel, Storm, 202, 241.

Phalarope, Grey, 203.

Pheasant, 80, 128, 142, 207, 218,
242.

Pigeon, Wood, see Dove, Ring.

Pipit, Meadow, 23, 42, 67, 104, 168,
180, 200, 240.

Pipit, Rock, 23, 151, 253.

Pipit, Tree, 91, 104.

Plover, Golden, 22, 42, 62, 110, 167,
168, 199, 251.

Plover, Grey, 106, 165, 180.

Plover, Ringed, 55, 63, 143, 246.

Pochard, 52, 78, 205, 247, 249.

Puffin, 84, 147, 148, 165, 241.

QualL, 100, 185.

Ratz, Land, see Corncrake.

Rail, Water, 52, 53, 83, 185, 241.

Raven, 41, 63, 64, III, 133, 167,
168, 187.

Razorbill, 84, 147, 148.

256

Redbreast, 19, 21, 24, 33, 41, 60,
64, 82, 118, 121, 145, 163, 181,
200, 217, 219, 220, 239.

‘Redpoll, 225.

Redshank, 52,.55, 84, 248, 250.

Redstart, Black, 225.

Redstart, Common, 91, 103, III.

Redwing, 20, 23, 30, 46, 198, 201,

204.

Robin, see Redbreast.

Rook, 19, 30, 31, 41, 65, for, 124,
169, 182, 198, 207, 208, 219.

Ruff, 51.

SANDERLING, 145, 165.

Sandpiper, Common, 91, 107, 160,
167, 248.

Sandpiper, Curlew, 106.

Sandpiper, Purple, 253.

Scoter, 78, 205, 247.

Shearwater, Manx, 126, 241.

Shrike, Great Grey, 204.

Shrike, Red-backed, 99, 124, 138,

Siskin, 46, 78
iskin, 46, 78, 225.

Skua, 203.

Skylark, 18, 22, 28, 31, 42, 45, 61,
69, 178, 197, 200, 201, 217.

Snipe, Common, 22, 52, 84, 108,
180, 225.

Snipe, Great, 185.

Snipe, Jack, 78, 205.

Sparrow, Hedge, 19, 65, 72, 81,
118, 220, 222.

Sparrow, House, 25, 44, 81, 82, 99,
118, 139, 165, 184, 223, 241, 243.

, Sparrow, Tree, 23, 103.

Spoonbill, 50, 51, 106, 165.

Starling, 23, 28, 31, 45, 62, 73, 80,
99, 103, 118, 142, 163, 184, 202,
218, 239.

Stilt, 232.

Stint, 165, 205.

Stonechat, 23, 31, 33, 45, 67, 104.

Stork, 106, 165.

Swallow, 87, 88, 90, 120, 139, 159,
179, 199, 219.

Swan, Wild, 245, 248, 240.

Swift, 98, 125, 141, 142, 159, 231.

TEAL, 52, 107, 245.
Tern, Black, 51.
Tern, Common, 106, 152.

INDEX

Tern, Little, 144.

Thrush, Mistle, 20, 33, 41, 60, 64,
80, 81, 164, I9I, 198, 219.

Thrush, Song, 18, 20, 30, 33, 41,
42, 60, 64, 69, 70, 71, 72, 118,
163, 178, 183, 200, 208, 219, 239,

Tit, Bearded, 51.

Tit, Blue, 25, 47, 102, 210, 221.

Tit, Coal, 25, 47, 207, 220, 221.

Tit, Great, 25, 31, 47, 102, 207, 210,
221. +

Tit, Long-tailed, ‘33, 61, 80, 100,
221.

‘Tit, Marsh, 25, 47, 102, 210.

Turnstone, 106, 145.
Twite, 167, 168, 249.

Wactall, Grey, 31, 62, III, 160,
225.

Wagtail, Pied, 23, 42, 66, 70, 81,
123, 141, 180, T81, 199, 200, 240.

Wagtail, Yellow, 89, 90.

Warbler, Garden, 98, 119, 159.

Warbler, Grasshopper, 52, 92, 123,
125.

Warbler, Reed, 52, 123.

Warbler, Savi’s, 51.

Warbler, Sedge, 92, 125, 178.

Warbler or Wren, Willow, 77, 89,
90, IOT, 102, 119, 145, 163.

Warbler, or Wren, Wood, 86, 88, 92.

Wheatear, 67, 89, 104, 125, 144,
168, 180.

Whimbrel, 105, 145, 165.

Whinchat, 104, 120.

Whitethroat, Common, 92, 101, 159.

Whitethroat, Lesser, 87, 89.

Wigeon, 78, 180, 247, 248.

Woodcock, 22, 66, 78, 198, 201, 251.

Woodlark, 29, 45, 66, 83, 181, 219.

Woodpecker, Great Spotted or
Pied, 79, 131, 242.

Woodpecker, Green, 79, 103, 127;
131, 168.
Woodpecker,
Barred, 131. :
Wren, 19, 31, 33, 72, 82, 118, 139,
163, 170, 219.
Wryneck, 68, 103.

Lesser Spotted or

YELLOw-HAMMER,

see Bunting,
Yellow.

”

ns