TALKS ABOUT
BIRDS

f

IRENE D. PACE

J Jo

e

TALKS ABOUT BIRDS

AGENTS

AMERICA . THE MACMILLAN COMPANY

64. & 66 FIFTH AVENUE, NEW YORK

AUSTRALASIA THE OXFORD UNIVERSITY PRESS

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INDIA . . MACMILLAN & COMPANY, LTD.

MACMILLAN BUILDING, BOMBAY

309 Bow BAZAAR STREET, CALCUTTA

FISHING WITH COKMOKAXTS. Pao'S 26, i7.

TALKS
ABOUT BIRDS

BY

FRANK FINN, B.A., F.Z.S.

AUTHOR OF 'BIRDS OF THE COUNTRYSIDE,' ETC.

CONTAINING THIRTY-SIX ILLUSTRATIONS
SIXTEEN OF WHICH ARE FULL-PAGE IN COLOUR

LONDON

ADAM AND CHARLES BLACK
1911

PREFACE

IN this book I have made an attempt to talk
over with young people who are fond of birds
the points which have always interested me in
my studies of them — and I have studied birds
ever since I can remember. What I have
always cared about in connexion with them
has been their ways of living, their habits and
tricks, and their minds and thoughts, so far as
we know them to have any. I have also
always paid particular attention to the dis-
tinguished and remarkable birds of all parts
of the world, and not to the birds of one
country only. I find that most people who
are not specialists in ornithology, young people
especially, share my tastes in bird-study, and
this has encouraged me to pen these chapters,

2040590

vi TALKS ABOUT BIRDS

hoping that some bird-lovers who sympathize
with me, but have not had my opportunities,
may find in them some interest and instruc-
tion. The illustrations have been especially
selected to give some idea of birds which are
either found in many countries or are remark-
able in some way; the black-and-white ones
in the text are from Newton's Dictionary of
Birds.

FRANK FINN.

CONTENTS

CHAPTER I

PAGE

WHERE OUR POULTRY CAME FROM . ... 1

CHAPTER II

BIRDS IN TRAINING , . 21

CHAPTER III

FAGGING IN THE BIRD WORLD 39

CHAPTER IV

BlRDS THAT ARE BOARDED OUT 48

CHAPTER V

BIRDS AT PLAY . . . ... . . 66

CHAPTER VI

GIANTS AND DWARFS ........ 78

viii TALKS ABOUT BIRDS

CHAPTER VII

PAGE

BIRDS IN THE NURSERY ...... 94

CHAPTER VIII

BIRDS AT SCHOOL 110

CHAPTER IX

BlRDS THAT KEEP ORDER 123

CHAPTER X

BIRDS UNDER WATER 138

CHAPTER XI

BIRDS ABOUT TOWNS . . . . . . 160

CHAPTER XII

SOME STRANGE NESTS 174

CHAPTER XIII

BIRDS AT NIGHT 189

CHAPTER XIV

BIRD ADVENTURERS 208

CHAPTER XV

SOME BIRD NOTABILITIES 223

INDEX . 237

ILLUSTRATIONS

IN COLOUR

1. Fishing with Cormorants .... Frontispiece

FACINO PAGE

2. Redpoll . . 24

3. Peregrine Falcon 33

4. Richardson's Skua . . . . ;'•''•« 41

5. Cuckoo , . 4,8

6. Moorhen 96

7. Kingfisher . 1 05

8- Eagle . . . . . . , , . 120

9. Red-throated Diver . . . . . 145

10. Red-breasted Merganser . . . . . 152

H. Kite .169

12. Stork . . . . . . . 176

13. Magpie . . . , . . . . 208

14. Waxwing . . . . . . 217

15. Wren ' . , -,« . . ... . 224

16. Starling . . . « "; . 233

ix

TALKS ABOUT BIRDS

IN BLACK AND WHITE

17. Flamingo .

18. Harpy

19. Ostrich

20. Rhea

21. Bee Humming-bird .

22. Heron

23. Hoatzin .

24. Cariama

25. King-bird .

26. King-Penguin .

27. Great Auk or Gare Fowl

28. Nest of Oven-bird

29. Hornbill .

30. Kiwi ....

31. White Owl

32. Nightjar .

33. Sand-grouse

34. Hoopoe .

35. Quezal

36. Secretary-bird .

PAGE
13

37

79

81

85

98

107

124

134

139

144

179

187

195

197

204

211

227

231

233

TALKS ABOUT BIRDS

CHAPTER I

WHERE OUR POULTRY CAME FROM

I EXPECT it has occurred to a good many of
my readers to wonder where all the poultry-
yard birds first came from, and what they
were like when they were wild, for one can
hardly imagine them as always having been
tame. Some savage tribes keep fowls, but a
great many do not, and there is nothing about
poultry - keeping in the Old Testament, so
that the early Jews did not know anything
about poultry-yard birds.

One does not see wild fowls living in our
woods, so it is pretty obvious that they are
foreign birds, although even Julius Caesar,
when he landed here, found the ancient
Britons keeping fowls for pleasure — which
meant cock-fighting, I strongly suspect, as

2 TALKS ABOUT BIRDS

that is a very favourite pastime among more
or less uncivilized races, and always has been.
At the same time, a friend of mine who has
travelled in New Guinea told me that he had
found one chief there who kept fowls simply
as pets, though they were unknown in most
places in the island, so that Caesar's early
Britons may have simply been the first of the
poultry-fanciers.

As a matter of fact, the real home of our
fowls is India and Burma, and there are any
amount of wild fowls — jungle-fowl people call
them — there still. They are quite tropical
birds, for you find them chiefly in the hot
plains, and they do not go high up in the
mountains where you find a temperate clim-
ate ; and, as there are not many birds suitable
for shooting in the plains of India, except in
the winter when wild ducks and snipe come in
from the north, sportsmen find the jungle-
fowl very useful indeed.

In fact, they go out regularly to shoot
jungle-fowl as we shoot pheasants here, and
the birds give quite as much sport, for they fly
just like pheasants do, and are about the same
size ; only it seems to newcomers rather like

POULTRY 3

raiding a neighbour's farm-yard when an old
cock or hen gets up with a desperate cackle
and flutter. To look at, too, jungle-fowl are
just like some tame fowls, especially game
bantams, for the cocks are black and red, and
the hens brown, but they are smaller than
most tame fowls, though not so small as
bantams ought to be, being about as big
as pheasants, as I said. They have single
combs — the upright sort with notches — and
the hen's comb is very small, like a young
pullet's. The little chickens are striped with
chocolate and cream-colour, just like game
chickens ; you do not see any yellow or black
ones.

Jungle-cocks crow just like bantams — you
know how a bantam always ends up his crow
with a jerk — but they do not crow so much as
tame cocks ; I never heard of a jungle-cock
doing anything so silly as crowing in the
night, which would advertise his roosting-
place to all his enemies, such as wild cats and
the great horned owls. They have tremend-
ous spurs, about two inches long, and tapering
most beautifully to a point, and they know
how to use them. An old friend of mine in

4 TALKS ABOUT BIRDS

India, who knew a good deal more about
cock-fighting than he ought to have done, as
it is illegal there just as it is here, told me that
a tamed jungle-cock will generally beat any
game-cock, as he is so much more clever with
his spurs, but he said the wild bird has not the
courage of the game-cock, and will run away
if he finds he is getting the worst of it.

However, these wild cocks do kill each other
in the forest at times, for one has been picked
up dead with such a wound as the spur would
give, and they seem to have regular " cock-
pits " of their own. Mr. Hume, who is one of
the greatest authorities on Indian birds, once
had the good luck to find one of these fighting-
places. Some native gipsies told him they
could show it to him, and took him to an
open place in the forest where there was a
mound all littered with fowls' feathers, and
said if he climbed up into a tree near by before
daybreak he could see what went on. He did
this, and heard the wild cocks crow and
answer each other, and presently one ran out
on to the mound with his tail up, which
showed he was in a warlike frame of mind,
for the wild fowl usually trails his tail like a

POULTRY 5

pheasant and does not stick it up as the tame
ones do. However, before his enemy could
meet him and come to blows the warrior was
frightened off by one of Mr. Hume's dogs,
which had got loose and tracked his master,
and arrived just in time to spoil the fun.

The natives catch these wild cocks in a
very simple but clever way. They peg out a
tame cock with a string to his leg, and all
round they set nooses ; the decoy bird is sure
to start crowing before long, and when a wild
cock comes to fight him, of course he gets
caught in these nooses before the fight has
gone very far.

The sort of country you find jungle-fowl in
is very much like what suits pheasants here ;
there must be woods for them to hide amongst
and roost in, and water must be not far off,
so that they can easily get a drink. They
particularly like wooded islands in a river,
as these make the safest roosting-places. If
there are cornfields near, it is all the better
from the wild fowls' point of view, for they
like corn just as much as tame ones do, though
hundreds and thousands of them live all their
lives without ever tasting any, and feed entirely

6 TALKS ABOUT BIRDS

on wild seeds, grass, berries, insects, and so
on. They cannot go very far away from
the woods for their food for fear of eagles,
which are always ready to pounce upon them
if they catch them in the open.

The wild hen makes a very rough sort of
nest on the ground, like a hen pheasant, and
only lays about half-a-dozen eggs. However,
I expect she finds that number of chickens
quite as many as she can look after, although
she is a very brave and careful mother, for
what with hawks, crows, snakes, mongooses,
jackals, and half-a-dozen other enemies, she
has plenty to do if she wants to bring up any
of them. No one knows exactly when these
wild fowls were first tamed, but they are quite
easy to tame, whether you catch them young
or old ; I used to know of a jungle-cock
which had been caught full-grown, and which
went about a yard with the tame fowls quite
at liberty, though he disappeared in the end.
All we know is that, as one would expect, the
Persians had fowls before the Greeks, for the
Greeks call the fowl " the Persian bird " ; then
the Romans must have got them from the
Greeks, and one or other of these two nations

POULTRY 7

would have taken them all over Europe. Our
own people most likely got them from the
Greeks or the Phoenicians, who carried on
trade in this part of Europe long before the
Romans found it out. The fowl has always
been kept more widely than any other tame
bird, as it is so useful and so easy to manage,
so that it is not surprising that many savages
were found keeping it when Europeans first
discovered them, just as Caesar's early Britons
were doing in his day.

But there was another tame bird that he
found in their possession as well, the goose,
and this is one of our own British birds, for
wild geese still breed in a few places here,
mostly in the North of Scotland, and no doubt
in those old days, when so much of the country
was marsh land, they were quite common.
But it may not have been these geese that the
Britons had tamed, because the Greeks in
Homer's time, who were much more civilized
than the ancient Britons were, seem to have
looked on tame geese as something valuable,
and we hear of them being white. Now, wild
geese are grey, and when we hear of white
ones we may be pretty sure they had been

8 TALKS ABOUT BIRDS

tamed for a long time, for such varieties are
always rare at first. The Egyptians seem to
have been the people who first tamed geese,
for they kept a great many, and there is a
very ancient picture in the British Museum
showing a flock of tame geese, some grey, some
grey-and- white, and some all white, just as
you may see them on any common to-day.
So I expect the Greeks got their white geese
from Egypt, and they and the Romans carried
these tame birds about as they did the fowls,
until they were spread about everywhere.
Caesar says the Britons kept the geese, as they
did the fowls, for pleasure, for they did not
think it right to eat either of them. Very
likely they found the geese of some use for
sentinels, as you will remember the Romans
did when the Gauls nearly took the Capitol,
and the sacred geese kept there gave the alarm.
The goose looks very stupid, but it is really the
cleverest of all our tame birds, and it will
give warning of a stranger even better than
a dog ; and this is a great consideration to
people living in a state of constant war, as
savages so often are. There is a peculiar sort
of wild goose in Hawaii, and in the old days

POULTRY 9

when the natives there were savages, they
used to keep this bird specially to give warn-
ing against a surprise attack.

As Homer mentions tame geese and says
nothing about fowls, we must suppose that he
did not know anything about cocks and hens,
and the Egyptians seem not to have done so,
as there are no pictures of them in their
sacred picture-writing or " hieroglyphics." It
is true that one often comes across a little bird
which is very like a young chicken among
these signs, but it is just as much like a young
quail or a young moorhen. As they certainly
did have tame geese, as we have seen, it would
seem that the goose was the first of poultry
birds, and there is none so easy to tame and
keep, for a goose is so sensible that it soon
knows when it is well off. Mr. Hume, in his
book on game-birds, says that a wild grey
goose, only a short time after it has been
captured, by its wing being damaged by a shot,
will follow you about like a dog ; and a goose
lives on grass and needs no shelter, so it gives
no trouble and is in every way a likely bird to
be tamed early. But although the wild grey

goose is found in India in the winter, that is

2

10 TALKS ABOUT BIRDS

not the ancestor of the tame geese you see
there. All over India and China the tame
geese are of the sort with a knob on the beak,
and with brown plumage instead of grey —
when it is not white — which are always called
Chinese geese over here. These come from
a different sort of wild goose, which is found
in China and was tamed there long ago, and
brought into Europe some centuries back.
To any one who has lived in the East it seems
strange to see these geese kept as park orna-
ments, just as it seems funny to see the Indian
cattle with humps kept in the Zoo in yards
like wild bisons, when in India you see them
in every road and field drawing carts and
ploughs.

There is some reason to suppose that pigeons
were tamed in very ancient times, for they are
often mentioned in the Bible; but pigeons
may have lived half tame about towns, like
sparrows, for a long time before people ever
tried shutting them up ; and the ordinary blue
pigeon, with two black bars on the wings, is
found building on the sea-cliffs in this country,
and on mountains all across Europe and Asia.
In India it often builds in ruins and in the

POULTRY 11

walls of wells, and even in inhabited buildings.
It does not care about trees, and you hardly
ever see a tame pigeon settle in one, while
wherever pigeons are seen living a free life
about towns you are certain to see plenty
of the original blue black -barred sort. As
Herodotus says that when the Persians in-
vaded Greece white pigeons were first seen
there, we can be sure that pigeons had not
been much looked after in Europe at that
time, for so pretty a bird as a white pigeon,
when one did appear, would have been taken
care of and bred from by pigeon-fanciers.

The Romans, we know, thought a great deal
of pigeons, both for eating and as fancy birds,
and they used to build towers for them to live
in, no doubt the original patterns for the old
stone pigeon-houses which are now and then
to be seen in old farms in the country.

One naturally thinks of ducks next to fowls
as poultry, but ducks are not such very
ancient tame birds as history goes. In a
description of a Roman poultry-yard which
has come down to us there is nothing said
about ducks, though flamingoes and peacocks
are mentioned as well as fowls and geese and

12 TALKS ABOUT BIRDS

pigeons, and another writer says that you
should keep ducks in a special yard netted
over, for fear they should fly out. This shows
the Roman ducks must have been pretty wild,
for the ordinary tame duck can hardly fly a
foot off the ground ; and besides he goes on to
say that if you want to increase your stock of
ducks you should get wild ducks' eggs and
put them under hens. This was at about the
beginning of the time of the Roman emperors,
and the duck they were taming was no doubt
the ordinary wild duck which is still so common
in this country, as our modern tame ducks are
certainly its descendants.

The flamingo seems a strange bird in the
poultry-yard, but the Romans do not seem to
have bred it, but only kept it to eat, no doubt
fattening the birds which had been caught
wild. Flamingoes are still common all along
the Mediterranean coasts, and are still caught
for zoological gardens and the collections of
people who like keeping rare and beautiful
birds.

Peacocks were very important birds to
the Roman poultry-keeper, for they took the
place that the turkey does now, and were kept

POULTRY

13

FLAMINGO.

14 TALKS ABOUT BIRDS

quite as much for eating as for ornamental
purposes, though one Roman poet says how
hard-hearted one must be to kill such a beauti-
ful creature. The real wild home of the pea-
cock is India, where it is still common in many
places. You can get a good idea of the wild
peacock's appearance and habits from our
tame birds, for tame pea-fowl still look just
like wild ones — except the few that happen to
be white or otherwise unusually coloured —
and they are usually allowed to roam about
and live naturally. Peacocks were first seen
by Europeans when Alexander the Great
invaded India, and he was so delighted with
them that he made an order that none should
be killed. Not long afterwards they were
brought to Greece, and were first kept in
Athens, which was the great city for all that
was new, beautiful, and strange. The owner
of the peacocks was so bothered by people
asking to see his wonderful birds that he had
to appoint a special day for seeing them, and
this is not surprising, for though we are so used
to peacocks that they are too often looked
down upon and made fun of nowadays, they
are really the most wonderful and splendid

POULTRY 15

birds in the world, and we shall never see
anything better in feathers.

Solomon, by the way, had them, so the
Jews were acquainted with peacocks long
before the Greeks were, but no news of his
birds seem to have reached the West. Pea-
cocks were never forgotten, and were kept
and cared for somewhere or another from
Roman times onwards ; but guinea-fowls,
which the Romans and Greeks also knew,
seem to have disappeared altogether during
the Middle Ages, for an Englishman writing
two hundred years ago says that when he was
a boy they were shown as a curiosity, though*
they had since become common poultry.
The wild guinea-fowl is found in West Africa,
and, like the wild fowl, has much the same
habits as the pheasant. The ordinary dark
ones, covered all over with little white spots,
are very like the wild bird still, but there are
several sorts of wild guinea-fowls which are
quite ordinary game - birds all over Africa,
and the Romans seem to have kept another
sort besides the one we know ; ours has red
wattles, and they seem to have also had one
with blue wattles, like some of the kinds which

16 TALKS ABOUT BIRDS

we do not keep, but which are well known as
wild birds.

I have said that the peacock took the place
of the turkey among the Romans, for the
turkey, in spite of its name, did not come
from Turkey, but from North America, and
so, of course, the ancients could not know
anything about it. But when America was
discovered it was found that the natives had
tamed turkeys and were keeping numbers
of them, so turkeys were soon brought over
here and found to be much easier to rear in
quantities than peacocks, so that peacock on
the table soon went out of fashion. Wild
turkeys are still found in America, and very
wild they are, for of course they have been
very much shot down, and those that remain
are not at all easy to get at. The wild turkey
is of a glossy bronze colour, very like the best
tame ones, and it is mostly found in the
woods, coming out now and then to feed, very
like a pheasant ; in fact, all our ground poultry
have much the same ways as pheasants have,
when they are wild, and, like pheasants, feed
on all sorts of food.

The only other bird that the natives of

POULTRY 17

America were keeping and breeding tame was
what we call here the Muscovy duck. This,
like the turkey, has got a wrong name, for
Muscovy was the name given to Russia in
those days, and I do not know how it got
fixed on to this American duck. Muscovy
ducks have very different habits in some ways
from our ducks ; when they are wild they
roost in trees like fowls, and you can even see
the tame ones fly up on to walls or roofs.
The wild ones also lay their eggs in holes in
trees. You can always know a Muscovy
duck because it has a bare red skin round its
eyes ; people only keep them as curiosities
here, but over a large part of the world in hot
climates, in Africa as well as in their proper
home in the warm parts of America, they are
the ordinary tame ducks that are kept. The
wild ones are black with white patches on the
wings, and are bigger than our wild ducks,
especially the drakes.

So we see that to trace back our poultry to
the wild state takes us into quite a lot of geo-
graphy and ancient history ; and the story as to
how some of them came to be so different from
their wild relations is also a very interesting

s

18 TALKS ABOUT BIRDS

one. It is easy enough to see why most of
them fly so little ; in a wild state a bird must
fly well or it may easily lose its life, but this is
not so when it is protected and looked after,
for then a lazy bird which does not use its
wings has a better chance of being kept than
one which flies about, because when people
are killing their poultry they would naturally
make sure first of those which were likely to
fly away — if they could catch them ; and if the
birds could not be caught they would simply
go back to the wild state, and so again those
that did not fly would remain. It is natural,
too, that such birds and their young ones
would be more inclined to get clumsy and fat,
and that is why most tame birds look so
awkward beside the wild ones, as you may
often have a chance of seeing with tame and
wild ducks, since both sorts of ducks are
common here.

The reason why tame poultry are of so
many colours is very similar ; it comes about
through their living under our care. We may
be sure that the colour of the wild bird is the
best it can have as things go. It may be
harder for enemies to see, or it may be the

POULTRY 19

colour that goes with the strongest constitu-
tion— there is some reason why the black and
white and variegated fowls and ducks and
pigeons do not get common in the wild state,
though single ones may appear among the
wild birds, just as we see white and pied
sparrows and blackbirds. But when men
tame and protect these birds, those which
may have strange colours have as good a
chance as the rest, and are very often kept in
preference, since fanciers like a novelty, even
if it is not as pretty as the original sort ; for
instance, many people value white peacocks
very much, though they certainly cannot
compare in beauty with the coloured ones.
And, of course, the more odd-coloured birds
are reared the more chance there is of their
finding mates of a strange colour, so that the
varieties keep on increasing until all possible
colours for that kind of bird are produced.
Some colours seem to be impossible for certain
birds ; for instance, we have black fowls and
pigeons, but although the goose has been tame
so long, no one seems ever to have heard of
a black variety of that bird. Peculiarities
in shape in our tame birds get a chance to

20 TALKS ABOUT BIRDS

arise in the same way ; for instance, some
fowls and ducks now and then appear with
crests, and if the owner likes the look of them,
he will preserve the crested ones, and even
try to get them with as big crests as possible,
so that what we call a breed is formed. And
so things have gone on, till at last we have got
the great variety in our tame birds that we
see in a poultry show ; and there is no telling
when these changes will stop, as nowadays
we hear of a new breed of poultry almost
every year.

CHAPTER II

BIRDS IN TRAINING

WE do not hear so much about trained birds
as we do about educated beasts, but it is quite
possible to teach birds to do things which are
either useful or amusing, and some very
wonderful things have been done, and still
are done, in the way of bird training.

The British bird one most often sees trained
to do tricks is the redpoll, a little bird of the
finch kind, smaller than the sparrow, and not
uncommon with us in some parts of the
country. The trick he is usually made to
learn is that of fetching his food and water
by pulling up a truck and a bucket. The cage
is arranged with a slanting board at one end
on which the truck runs, and a glass at the
other into which the tiny bucket drops. When
the bird wants seed or water, he takes hold of
the string attached to the bucket or truck

21

22 TALKS ABOUT BIRDS

with his bill and pulls at it, putting his foot on
the string as he hauls it in, until he has got
the food or water vessel up to the hole through
which he reaches it. When he has had enough
he lets go the string, and the bucket drops, or
the truck runs back, by its own weight.

As a rule he has to learn this trick by degrees ;
the seed and water vessels are at first fastened
close up to the cage, and then the string is
lengthened a little, so that he has to give a
peck at it. When he has learnt to put his
foot on the string it can be lengthened by
degrees, till he has to pull in several feet of it
to get what he wants. This is, I think, rather
too bad, as it is not fair to sentence the poor
little fellow to continual hard labour ; and it
would be better to give him canary-seed and
water in the cage, and confine his pulling to
a truck of hempseed, or a bunch of green food,
so that he would only have to work for these
extras. The goldfinch will also learn this
trick, but some birds never understand it ;
for instance the canary, who cannot be got
to see that he must keep on pulling and hold-
ing the string with his foot as he goes on.
Some redpolls, too, are cleverer than others ;

BIRDS IN TRAINING 23

there is a case of one very bright bird who
learnt the trick simply by watching another
bird doing it.

In India there is a very clever bird, the
baya, or weaver-finch, which seems to be
able to learn almost anything you could teach
a dog. It has been taught to fire a toy
cannon, to pick a leaf off a tree and bring it
to its master, and to twirl a stick burning at
each end, so as to make a ring of fire. But the
baya is naturally very clever, as one may
judge from the wonderful nest it makes; this
is woven of grass or palm-fibre, and hanging
by a sort of rope, while the entrance is under-
neath and lengthened out into a sort of spout
hanging down, up which the bird shoots,
while it is hard for snakes or other enemies
to get in, especially as the nest is always hung
at the end of a thin twig or the leaf of a palm.
I have had young weavers myself in India, and
two of them which got away recognized me
in the street after being away a day and night,
and came down and let me catch them, so
that they must learn very quickly, as I had
only kept them a day or two.

But the cleverest Indian bird I ever saw

24 TALKS ABOUT BIRDS

was one of the common green parrakeets of
that country, which had been brought to
England by the gentleman who showed it
to me. It did not talk at all, but its tricks
were almost more than one could have be-
lieved without seeing them done, as I did, for
it was put through a performance for my
benefit. It began by twirling the fire-stick ;
then a little model of a native temple was put
on the table, and the bird, at the word of
command, rang the bell for service, pulled up
a bucket for holy water, and placed flowers
on the altar before the idols. On the altar
it also placed a shilling, and a small watch of
its master's, when this was given to it. But
it was more wonderful to see it shoot an
arrow from a bow ; the bow was fastened on
a stand, and the bird put on a perch opposite
it. Then, when the arrow was given to it, it
fitted the notch of it on the string, pulled the
string, and shot the arrow off.

It also threaded beads, by means of a
needle which had been cut down to about
a quarter of an inch from the eye. It took
this in its bill, and picked up the beads in its
bill too, one by one, threading them — I sup-

EEDPOLL. Page 21

BIRDS IN TRAINING 25

pose with its tongue — more quickly than one
could have done it oneself, although some of
the beads were hardly bigger than pins' heads.
It is very hard to understand how the bird
could have been taught this trick, and it
seemed to me the most wonderful of all.

It is true the final performance looked
more wonderful, because this consisted in
the parrot being told to pick out the ace
from several cards which were put, face
down, on the table. It turned them up one
by one, and when it found the ace, took that
card and showed it to its master. But I was
told that this trick was done by signs ; the
owner raised his finger when the bird had
got the right card, and he told me that the
Indian native who had trained the parrot
did not even do this, but sat with his arms
crossed and gave the sign with one of his
toes, which the bird watched all the time.

The parrot's owner told me he had seen
these tricks done by other parrots, but had
never met with one which knew them all,
and it must have been an exceptionally
clever bird, with a very good memory, to have
learnt as much as this. These parrakeets

26 TALKS ABOUT BIRDS

are very common in India, and it is quite easy
to get them very young and unfledged, while
they are easier to rear than any other young
birds I know, so that there is no difficulty in
beginning their education early in their lives,
which, of course, makes a lot of difference.

Birds can be trained not only for amusing
people, but to perform real services, as I said
at first ; and of these the most wonderful
are the Chinese fishing cormorants, which
earn their masters a living as well as them-
selves. These cormorants are bred and reared
in confinement, but they do not bring up
their own young, for their eggs are taken
from them and put under hens. Then the
little cormorants have to be reared by hand,
for, although the cormorant is a water-bird
like the duck, the young ones do not take
to the water at once and look for their food
like ducklings, but remain helpless in the nest
till they are full-grown, like young pigeons.

When they are fit to learn fishing they
are put into training, and they become almost
as docile and intelligent as dogs. They go into
the water at the word of command, dive for
fish, and when they have got one, come with

BIRDS IN TRAINING 27

it to the raft where their master stands. It
is true that they are prevented from swallow-
ing what they catch by having a cord tied
round their neck so that nothing large will
pass down, and so the fish would be of no
use to them, but still it is wonderful enough
that they should be taught to " retrieve "
in this way ; two birds will even unite to
land a fish which is too large for one. When
the bird comes to hand the Chinaman makes
him disgorge the fish, and when the fishing
is over, the collars are taken off the necks
of the cormorants and they have some of the
fish given to them to swallow for good ; these
are, of course, small and valueless ones, the
best fish being kept for sale.

Naturally, the wild cormorant, greedy
though he is, soon catches enough fish to
satisfy himself, and then roosts on a rock
or tree till he feels hungry again ; but John
Chinaman makes him work overtime, and,
I fear, wears him out in the end, for it is said
that the birds show signs of old age at about
ten years, while cormorants kept in captivity
at St. James's Park in London, but living as
they liked, lived for twenty years.

28 TALKS ABOUT BIRDS

The Japanese fishermen also work with
trained cormorants, but their birds cannot
be so well trained as the Chinamen's are,
since they are not allowed to go loose, but are
held by a cord attached to a sort of harness,
something like what is often put on pet dogs
instead of a collar ; this not only keeps them
from getting away, but serves to haul them
in when they have made a catch. Although
this shows that the Japanese birds are not
so docile, their masters need great skill in
managing them, because each man works
with several birds at once, sometimes as
many as a dozen, and has to look out to
avoid their lines getting tangled, to say
nothing of hauling them in every now and
then.

The cormorant that is used in this way in
the East is the same kind that is found wild
in this country, and a few years ago, at the
London Hippodrome, a Chinaman with his
trained birds went through the whole per-
formance. It was very interesting to see the
way in which the bird which had got his fish
jumped from the water on to a pole which the
fisherman held out for him, so as to bring him

BIRDS IN TRAINING 29

on board, and how well they all knew what
was going to happen when the fishing was
finished, when they crowded round him on
the raft to be uncollared and fed. In fact,
they were the only performing animals I ever
saw which seemed to enjoy their work, which,
after all, was quite natural, as it was what
they did every day in the ordinary course of
things.

Cormorants have been trained in England
by Englishmen, and the sport was practised
in James I.'s time ; and, although a full-
grown wild-caught cormorant is a most spite-
ful and unpleasant bird to handle at first, it
is found that he can be tamed and trained,
though no doubt hand-reared ones would be
much easier to manage.

But, generally speaking, Europeans have
given up the custom of making birds work
for them, and so even hawking, which is a
much more generally popular sport than cor-
morant - fishing, is very little practised among
us nowadays. In the olden times the sport
was so popular that one can hardly under-
stand Shakespeare, for instance, unless one
knows something about the language of

30 TALKS ABOUT BIRDS

hawking, for he so often makes allusions to
it as an everyday affair ; the hawk in those
days was to sportsmen what the gun is now.
Hawks, however, were never so well trained
as the Chinamen's cormorants, for they would
not bring in the game ; in fact, it needs a good
deal of care to keep a hawk from carrying off
anything it has caught, which it is very likely
to do if not treated gently and carefully.
Hawks were also very likely to fly off alto-
gether and get lost, and this is not to be
wondered at, for a great many were full-
grown wild -caught birds, though some were
also hand-reared from the nest.

When at home hawks were kept in a place
called a " mews," on perches or blocks, to
which they were tied by a leather leash,
which was fastened to the ends of short
straps or "jesses," tied one to each leg.
These were always left on, but the leash was
slipped when the bird was let loose after its
prey. To keep them quiet when at home, or
when being carried on their owner's wrist to
the place where they were used, they had
hoods placed over their heads, covering their
eyes completely, and when it was necessary to

BIRDS IN TRAINING 31

call them back after a flight, a " lure " was
swung at the end of a string ; this was a heavy
pad with a pair of wings fastened to it, and on
this the hawk's food was often fastened also.
From this comes the expression, still so often
used, to " lure " any one, meaning to entice
them.

In order to tame a newly caught hawk,
which was, of course, very fierce, it was usual
to keep it awake for several nights till it was
subdued and worn out for want of sleep ;
then it was taught to take its food while
sitting on the owner's hand, and to come to
him for it. When once tamed, many hawks
will get quite affectionate with their owners,
and they were greatly valued as companions.
The female birds were most esteemed, being
bigger and stronger than the males, and the
peregrine falcon and the goshawk were the
most general favourites. The peregrine flies
high and fast, and was used to hunt the heron,
wild duck, and other strong-flying birds, more
for sport than anything else, for to work with
the peregrine one needed to ride a good horse
to keep the birds in sight, and plenty of space,
for the peregrine likes to rise high and come

32 TALKS ABOUT BIRDS

down with a swoop, and does not care about
dodging among trees or coming near the sur-
face of water, so that a place had to be found
where the hawk could have a good long fly
after the victim before this could get near
wood or water. It is particularly important
at starting the hawk's training to make sure it
catches the birds it is let loose after, for it is
easily made sulky by failure, and often the
poor birds used for practice were tethered or
had their eyes sewn up to keep them from
escaping.

The favourite hawk with boys and ladies
was the merlin, a very pretty little hawk
hardly as big as a pigeon, and looking very
like a miniature of the peregrine falcon ; it
was particularly used for flying at skylarks,
and is very bold and persevering.

With birds that fly high, like herons and
larks, it was usual to use a " cast " or couple
of hawks, so that when one had missed a swoop
the other could cut in, as two greyhounds do
when they are chasing a hare.

Sport with the goshawk, which is like a
giant sparrow - hawk, was rather different ;
this bird cannot fly fast for any distance, and

. * •

PEREGBIXE FALCON. Pa.jf 31. ADCLT (/<•/(>• Yor.NC

BIRDS IN TRAINING 33

takes its prey with a short sharp rush, if it
can. If it misses, it does not make another
attempt, but either gives up, if the prey
has flown off, or sits and waits for it if it has
hidden itself. So hunting with the goshawk
was not fine picturesque sport like that one
gets with the falcon. But, on the other hand,
there was no need of riding, or of keeping
to open country ; you could take a goshawk
anywhere, and, if the prey had not too long
a start, she would take almost any game,
being good for rabbits and hares as well as
birds. For this reason goshawks were much
used for practical purposes as well as sport,
and it was reckoned that a good bird would
keep her master as well as herself. This is
not surprising, for a strong hen goshawk can
even hold and kill a hare, although the animal
is several times bigger and heavier than
herself ; but if she is to take such large prey
she must not be allowed to do easier work,
such as catching rabbits. Goshawks were
always considered rather hard to manage,
for they easily turn sulky, and are so fierce
that they cannot be flown in couples, like
falcons. Indeed, if a goshawk manages to

34 TALKS ABOUT BIRDS

unpick her jesses in the mews and get loose,
she will kill all the other hawks, not sparing
even her own mate. In spite of this, the gos-
hawk was always a very popular bird, and is
so still in those parts of Asia where hawking
is still carried on ; these are chiefly the central
portions, from Turkestan to China, for in
most parts of India very little hawking is
done nowadays.

The fact is, that a hawk requires so much
training, and needs to be kept in such constant
exercise, that it is almost one man's business
to look after one bird, so that it is not wonder-
ful that in our times hawking has been mostly
given up for shooting.

A few people, however, have always kept
up the ancient sport even in Europe, and
for them the wild hawks are still caught at
one place, Valkenswaard in Holland, where
this has been done for hundreds of years
past. The great time for it is the autumn,
when hawks, like the other birds they feed
on, are on their travels ; and they are caught
in a net baited with a live pigeon. The line
by which the net is pulled over is carried
to a hut where the falconer sits, and he has

BIRDS IN TRAINING 35

a very clever device to save the trouble of
constant watching.

He tethers out a shrike, or butcher-bird,
where it can see the net and the bait, making
a little hut of turf for it to run under when
the hawk comes. The shrike, although it
feeds on other birds itself, is much smaller
than a hawk, and much afraid of the fiercer
kinds, and so it can be relied on to give warning
by its cries and movements when a hawk
is coming. Not only that, but it will give
some idea of the kind of hawk, and how near
it is. It will see a hawk of any kind long
before the trapper can ; but if this hawk
is only a slow, lazy buzzard or kite, it does
not upset itself much. But it is much more
excited over a falcon, and is wild with fear
when the terrible goshawk is seen. When
it darts into its little turf hut for shelter,
the falconer, who is watching from his own
hut, knows that the hawk has pounced on the
pigeon, and makes ready to work the net.
But — and this is a proof that the shrike is a
very clever and observant bird — it can only
be used for one season as watchman, for after
it has by many experiences found out that

36 TALKS ABOUT BIRDS

whatever happens to the poor pigeon it is
quite safe itself, it leaves off bothering about
hawks, and then it cannot be depended on
to give the alarm ; so that the hawk-catcher
has to catch a fresh shrike every season to
undertake this duty.

Falcons and other hawks are not the only
birds that have been and are used for hunting ;
their big relations, the eagles, have also been
trained like them. When the Spaniards in-
vaded Mexico, they found that the natives
trained the great harpy eagle for hunting,
and Cortez, the conqueror, himself was pre-
sented with a trained harpy which was called
" Prince of the Air." Cortez was a cruel
man, and in a fit of temper he mortally
wounded the eagle ; but it did not die without
revenging itself, for with its dying strength it
seized its master's finger, and crushed it with
its bill, and this, curiously enough, was the
only wound which Cortez received during his
conquest of Mexico.

Powerful as the harpy's bill is, however,
its feet are still more so, for it has toes as thick
as a man's fingers, and can give a really
terrible grip ; but I have never heard that it

BIRDS IN TRAINING

37

will attack such powerful animals as our
golden eagle sometimes will. This splendid

bird is trained by the Tartar tribes of Central
Asia even at the present day, and will even
attack the wolf. It seems hard to imagine
that the eagle could hold so strong a beast as

38 TALKS ABOUT BIRDS

this, and one which can bite so terribly ; but
at any rate the bird can hold a fox, and even if
it only swooped at the wolf and knocked him
over, this would be of great assistance to the
hunters who are following him. A trained
eagle is, of course, very much harder to
manage than a hawk ; it can go long without
food, and has to be starved some days to
make it really fierce, and it is far too heavy to
be held up on a man's wrist, so its owner has a
sort of crutch-handle fastened to his saddle,
which he holds in one hand, and this supports
the arm on which the eagle sits. Another
difficulty about the trained eagle is, that if it
is disappointed in catching the animal it is
sent after, it is very likely to come back in a
rage and try to knock its master over, so that
hawking with the eagle is not exactly a sport
for boys. However, it is certainly the finest
sort of hawking, and putting the king of birds
into training to help us against one of our
greatest animal enemies, the wolf, is the most
remarkable thing that has ever been done in
the way of bird management.

CHAPTER III

FAGGING IN THE BIRD WORLD

THERE is a very common idea that birds, as
they have wings, can do just as they like,
and are under no sort of control, and so one
often hears of people who wish they were as
free as the birds ; but really birds have their
restrictions and their troubles just like any
one else, and in some cases they actually
have to work for the benefit of others who are
stronger or more clever than they are.

You can see this even in London in the
winter time ; when the gulls are being fed by
people along the Thames, the small black-
headed gulls will come up and take the bread
sometimes even from their hands, but the
big herring-gulls are afraid to do this, so they
take advantage of the small gulls by letting
them get well out into the river with a big bit
of bread and then taking it away from them.

39

40 TALKS ABOUT BIRDS

But this is just an incident in gull-life, and
herring-gulls generally get their own food for
themselves. When one gets out into the
wilds, though, one finds the professional
pirate-gull at work, a bird who spends most
of his time in making the other gulls give up
what they catch, and does not mind attacking
one which is bigger than himself. This is the
skua, a gull which is only about as big as the
small black-headed gull, but flies much faster ;
you can recognize him by his dark colour, for
he is sooty-brown instead of grey-and-white
or speckled, and by his tail being pointed
instead of square at the tip. He seems to
have a very good idea of when a gull is " full
inside," for he does not waste his time in
chasing one that has nothing to give up ; no
doubt he can tell by the style of flight whether
his victim has had dinner or not. So he goes
straight at the bird he selects, and hunts him
as hard as he possibly can ; the poor gull does
his best to get away, but his pursuer flies so
much faster, and seems so fierce, that he loses
heart altogether, and throws up whatever he
has swallowed lately ; this the pirate snaps
up, and goes gaily off to find some one else to

RICHARDSON'S SKUA. Page 10. ADULT (above). YOUNG (Mow).

FAGGING IN THE BIRD WORLD 41

whom he can call " stand and deliver." There
are several different kinds of skuas, found
mostly in the northern seas, but the sea-birds
in the tropics do not escape from pirates
because there are no skuas there, for there are
much worse ones in tropical seas ; in these
warm regions lives the frigate-bird, which is
a very desperate character indeed. He is
only about as big as a fowl in the body, but
the body is only a small part of him, as he
has a long forked tail, wings each more than a
yard long, and a long neck and long hooked
bill. His feet are quite small, like a swallow's,
for he hardly ever walks, and still less often
does he swim — almost all his life is spent in
the air, where he glides and soars like an eagle,
with his wings spread out and motionless.
His home is generally on some tropical island,
and in such places you always find sea-fowl ;
not ordinary gulls, which are rare in the
warm seas, but terns or sea-swallows of some
sort, and boobies, which are a kind of gannet,
very like our own " solan goose."

The frigate-bird treats these just as the
skua here does the gulls, hunting them till
they throw up their food ; but he has a

42 TALKS ABOUT BIRDS

greater advantage over them, for he is bigger,
and no bird in the world is such a wonderful
flyer. But when there are no other birds
handy to work for him, the frigate-bird is not
so well off as the skua, for the skua can swim
or run about and pick up plenty for himself
like any other gull, but the frigate-bird must
depend on what he can snatch up while he is
on the wing. He is so helpless when he is not
flying that the boobies sit side by side with
him on the trees — for in the tropics the sea-
birds often perch in trees — and a photograph
has even been taken of a frigate-bird and
booby having a rough-and-tumble fight on
the ground. So the frigate-bird is often hard
up for food ; he is glad to pick up scraps
about a harbour, and even devours his own
neighbours' young ones if he gets the chance.
He catches some fish, of course, and also young
turtles ; flying-fish are his especial favourites,
and the frigate-bird seems to be almost the
only sea-bird which catches them. Of course
it is particularly convenient for a bird which
does not care about swimming to have the fish
come out of the water and fly !

In the islands of the Pacific the natives

FAGGING IN THE BIRD WORLD 43

often take young frigate-birds out of the nest
and bring them up as pets ; perches are set
up for them on the shore, and they fly out and
return home again just like pigeons. Indeed,
missionaries out there have often sent letters
by them from one island to another, just as
one uses carrier-pigeons here.

Although they may not be professional
pirates like frigate-birds and skuas, the gulls
themselves do not mind doing a little piracy
when it comes convenient ; not only does the
herring-gull rob the black-headed gull, but
the black-headed gull itself, when it is feeding
on the meadows and marshes along with the
peewits, will rob them of the worms or grubs
that they find. A South American gull does
the same thing with the peewit of that country,
and in New Zealand the common gull there
follows the long-billed oyster-catcher about
and takes away the crabs that he digs up.

It is just the same with the birds of prey ;
many of my readers have most likely come
across the description of how the American
white-headed eagle chases the osprey, or
fishing-hawk, and takes away the fish it has
caught; in fact, this habit has long been so

44 TALKS ABOUT BIRDS

well known that the great Benjamin Franklin
said he did not think that the eagle should be
taken as the emblem of the United States,
because he was such a dishonest bird. But
he is not worse than many other eagles ; in
our poet Spenser's works there is a fine passage
describing how an eagle swoops down and
snatches away prey even from the fierce
goshawk, and falconers in India well know
that the wokhab, or tawny eagle, is one of the
worst enemies of their trained hawks, and is
always likely to chase these birds, so that
they are often driven away and lost. Even
if the hawk is not carrying any game, it is
wearing the " jesses " or leg-straps, and the
eagle, seeing these trailing behind, naturally
thinks the hawk has got something which can
be taken from it.

One does not expect sober creatures like
the duck tribe to have wits enough to take
advantage of other people's work ; but they
do it, and the wild swans when they are feed-
ing are often surrounded by a crowd of ducks,
who will snatch a share of whatever weeds
the big birds can reach and pull up from the
bottom with their long necks. I have never

FAGGING IN THE BIRD WORLD 45

seen or heard of this being done by ducks to
the tame swan ; but he is a very crusty-
tempered bird, and perhaps the wild swan
has more patience. One duck will even rob
another ; in America there is a diving species
of duck, the canvas-back, which is very like
the duck known over here as the pochard ;
it feeds much on a weed called wild celery,
which it gathers at the bottom, and this weed
is also liked by the widgeon of America, which,
like our widgeon, is not a diver. So it hangs
about round the canvas-back, and snatches
what it can when the diving-duck comes to
the top with his mouth full, thus making him
work for the two of them.

There is even a bird which makes people
work for him, but in his case it is a fair
exchange, as he simply takes a " commission "
on what the man gets, and helps him to get
it. This is the honey-guide of Africa, which
is constantly being mentioned in books of
African travel. It is quite an ordinary little
bird to look at, like some brown finch or
sparrow, though it is really more nearly
related to the woodpecker, and has its toes
in two pairs like that bird, not three in front

46 TALKS ABOUT BIRDS

and one behind as usual. Its favourite food
is the combs of the wild bees' nests, especially
those which contain the young bee-grubs,
and it has somehow found out that the way
to get at this food is to have human assistance.
So whenever it comes across a man anywhere
near a hive it knows of, it comes and calls
him by chirping, and, if he pays attention
and follows, it will lead him to where the
bees have their store ; then it waits quietly
till the hive has been robbed, knowing that
a piece of comb will always be left for it in
payment. The natives have a great respect
for this clever bird ; in fact, they are afraid
not to treat it fairly, for they think that if
they do not give it some of the honeycomb
it will wait its opportunity to lead them
away again — only this time it would be not
a bee-hive, but a wild beast, or a poisonous
snake, that the bird would lead them to !

Whether there is any truth in this it is
hard to say, but one has to be careful how
one disbelieves the stories natives tell about
animals, for sometimes very unlikely-sounding
ones turn out to be right ; and at any rate,
many animals are well known to show feelings

FAGGING IN THE BIRD WORLD 47

of revenge, and the honey-guide must be a
very intelligent bird, for it has to learn its
trade quite by itself, since it is one of the
birds which are brought up, not by their
own parents, but by other species of birds,
as our cuckoo is. The habits of these " para-
sitic " birds, who put their young ones out as
boarders, give another example of the way
in which some birds make others work for
them, but they are so curious and remarkable
that they must have a chapter to themselves.

CHAPTER IV

BIRDS THAT ARE BOARDED OUT

THE history of birds which begin their lives
as boarders in the nests of other kinds is a
particularly interesting one, and especially so
as it is not nearly yet understood altogether,
although one or other kind of these " para-
sitic " birds is found in every large country
in the world, and many countries have more
than one.

Far the most celebrated is, of course, our
own welcome spring visitor the cuckoo, who
is such a familiar bird all over Europe that
it is not surprising that the circumstances of
his disreputable youth were well known even
to the ancient Greeks and Romans, while
our own poets, even as far back as Chaucer,
naturally mention the subject.

Indeed, the old writers were so much im-
pressed with the wickedness of the young

48

CUCKOO. ADULT (below). YOUNG (above).

BIRDS THAT ARE BOARDED OUT 49

cuckoo in throwing his bed-fellows overboard,
that they exaggerated his misdeeds, and made
out that when he grew up he even went on
to kill the foster-parents who had so devotedly
reared him instead of their own children.

The hedge-sparrow fed the cuckoo so long
That it had its head bit off by its young.

It is quite likely, all the same, that the young
cuckoo does at times ill-treat the little birds
which have cared for it, for one kept in a cage
has been known to peck out the eye of a
thrush which had been kind enough to feed
it — although also a young bird itself —
just because the poor thrush ventured to
eat a worm given it, instead of handing it
over to the lazy bully it was silly enough
to fag for. And then the cuckoo, in its young
plumage especially, is so easily mistaken for
a hawk that people have often made the
opposite blunder of mistaking the hawk for
the cuckoo, and seeing it kill and eat a hedge-
sparrow or other little foster-parent of the
cuckoo, have put the crime down to the
cuckoo's account, as if he had not enough to
answer for already.

This likeness of the cuckoo to a hawk, and

7

50 TALKS ABOUT BIRDS

its disappearance from Europe in the winter,
is, of course, the origin of the old fable that
the cuckoo actually turned into a hawk at
that season ; this is so old a mistake that
it was corrected by Aristotle, the tutor of
Alexander the Great, and yet some people
believe it still !

The little birds also are always making
this blunder, for they " mob " the cuckoo
as if it were really an enemy which they
would like to drive away ; and in the aviaries
at the Zoo the keepers do not like to have a
cuckoo loose among the other birds, as these
are very likely to get frightened at finding
themselves shut up with what they imagine
is their worst enemy.

Very likely this hawk-like look is useful
to the cuckoo when she comes near a small
bird's nest to put her egg there, for it may
make the little birds afraid to drive her away ;
but in any case she almost always chooses
the nests of birds much smaller than herself,
so that they have not much chance of
fighting against her. If she simply took the
easiest nests to find we should discover plenty
of cuckoos' eggs in thrushes' and blackbirds'

BIRDS THAT ARE BOARDED OUT 51

nests, but, as a matter of fact, they are very
rarely put there ; no doubt these birds are
too much for the wily cuckoo, and give her
no chance.

The bird that gets most of the cuckoo's
eggs is probably the little titlark, or meadow-
pipit, and this is because it is so widely spread,
as you can find it everywhere in open country ;
the hedge-sparrow is also a very common
foster-parent, and, as this is such a well-
known little bird, and so often builds close
to houses, it is not surprising that it gets the
reputation of being the most usual foster-
parent of the cuckoo. But, as a matter of
fact, almost any little insect-eating bird gets
a cuckoo's egg to take charge of at times,
and sometimes even the finches ; while in
some places the fierce little butcher-bird is
quite often favoured, in opposition to the
cuckoo's usual rule of only oppressing the
weak birds. Her method of proceeding must
surely be very different in this case, and it
would be interesting to know how she manages
to dodge birds which are so fierce that they
will kill others bigger than themselves, as the
butcher-bird often does.

52 TALKS ABOUT BIRDS

The most wonderful thing about the young
cuckoo is, of course, its habit of pushing out
its bedfellows ; this is literally a blind instinct,
for the little cuckoo, like other birds that are
born helpless, has its eyes closed during the
first few days of its life, and yet it is at this
time that it empties the cradle of the real
owners. Its back is quite hollow at this
time of its life, and very sensitive ; if it feels
anything there it cannot help trying to push it
out backwards, and so the murder of the other
little birds is done unconsciously, so to speak.

There is one comfort, they cannot suffer
very much, for naked little birds require a
great deal of warmth, and soon become in-
sensible and then die, when left out in the
cold, so that they do not die a slow death
from hunger. The old birds do not care a
bit what happens to them, for most birds
seem to think that if a young one can't keep
in bed it is not worth bothering about, and
they also usually give the food mostly to the
chick that squalls for it most. So it is really
quite natural that they should devote all
their care to the greedy young cuckoo, while
he is in the nest ; and by the time he has

BIRDS THAT ARE BOARDED OUT 53

grown up into a bird several times as big as
themselves and looking suspiciously like the
hated hawk, they have got so used to him
that they never notice points of that kind.

Another very strange thing is the power
that the young cuckoo has of exciting the
sympathy of birds that have not brought him
up, even if they can never have seen such a
bird before. Not only will British birds
feed a strange young cuckoo, but a case
happened some time ago at the Zoo in which
a black tanager — a small bird from South
America, a country where there are no parasitic
cuckoos — squeezed through the bars of a
parrot-cage in which a young common cuckoo
was being kept, inside the aviary, and fed it
there.

There has long been an idea that the
cuckoo's egg is apt to be like those of the birds
in whose nests it is placed, but this does not
hold good in every case, by any means. The
cuckoo's egg varies a great deal, and on the
whole is more like the skylark's than any other
British bird's ; but then the cuckoo does not
particularly favour the skylark's nest, and,
though its egg is a fairly good match for the

54 TALKS ABOUT BIRDS

titlark's or the wagtail's, it is not at all like
the robin's or the hedge-sparrow's, which are
also favourite foster-birds with it.

Then it has also been suggested that the
same cuckoo sticks to the same sort of nest to
put her eggs in, and even that she hands down
the custom to her daughters ; according to
this idea a hen cuckoo which had been reared
in a hedge-sparrow's nest would make a habit
of putting her own eggs there ; but this
would be very hard to prove, and in some
cases the cuckoo's egg has been found in nests
of birds which certainly could not rear a
young cuckoo — even the wood-pigeon's and
the dabchick's — so that it would seem that
even if a cuckoo does prefer some particular
bird's nest, she will in case of need put her egg
in any nest she can get at.

The egg is usually laid on the ground, and
the cuckoo then takes it in her mouth and
places it in the nest ; this, and the young
cuckoo's habit of turning out his bed-fellows
are the most wonderful parts of the whole
history of the cuckoo, for the mere going to
another bird's nest and laying in it would not
be so very remarkable, for birds often lay in

BIRDS THAT ARE BOARDED OUT 55

each other's nests, and so long as the young
got brought up somehow a bird which simply
took up this habit would get on all right;
but it is difficult to see how these other strange
ways of the cuckoo arose. At any rate, it
seems plain that we ought not to call the
cuckoo a silly bird, as is often done — every one
has heard the expression " you silly cuckoo " —
for it certainly knows its own business very
well, and some people who have reared and
kept young cuckoos have found them very
intelligent pets.

There are some stories about the cuckoo
having been known to lay its eggs on the bare
ground and sit on them itself; but there is
always the chance, in cases like these, of
people having mistaken the nightjar for the
cuckoo, since the nightjar lays on the ground
without making any nest, and in size and
shape and flight is not at all unlike the cuckoo.
But any one with any experience ought to be
able to tell the two birds apart ; the nightjar
is a brown bird, while the cuckoo is grey,
except when it is young, when it would not
be laying at all.

It seems natural to speak of " the " cuckoo,

56 TALKS ABOUT BIRDS

but really there are very many kinds of
cuckoos, though, as they mostly live in the
tropics, and are very seldom brought over
here alive, they are little known to people who
have not been abroad.

But those who live in India know one of
them, at all events, very well ; this is the koel,
or black cuckoo, a bigger bird than ours.
Only the cock is black, the hen being speckly
brown, rather like a hen pheasant. This bird
lives mostly on fruit, not on insects and
worms like our cuckoo, and it lays its eggs in
the nests of crows. This, of course, is a very
different matter from placing the eggs in the
nests of little helpless birds as the common
cuckoo does, for the crows, although they are
cowardly birds, are bigger and stronger than
the koel, and do their best to hunt it to death
when it appears. Fortunately the koel can
fly much faster than the crows, and her mate
helps her by leading them away after him
while she slips to the nest and lays her egg
there. My friend Mr. D. Dewar has very
carefully studied the habits of the koel and the
Indian crow, and he finds that the young koel
does not try to throw the young crows out of

BIRDS THAT ARE BOARDED OUT 57

the nest, but that they all grow up together ;
and also, that though the koel's egg is very like
a small crow's egg, this cannot matter much,
for a crow will even sit on a fowl's egg and
hatch it ! It is rather a pity that the young
crows are not turned out, for most people
who have been in India will agree that there
are a great many more crows there than are
wanted. Every garden is full of them, even
in towns ; and as its foster-parents are so
common, the koel is common too, and is much
more often seen than our cuckoo here. In
fact, it is commoner than many people wish,
for it is a terribly noisy bird, and sometimes
insists on keeping up its call at night, when,
in the terrible Indian heat, it is hard to get
to sleep, and even the nightingale would be.
put down as a nuisance !

The call is really very pretty, though not
at all like our cuckoo's ; it is something like
" kuk-kuk-ko-eel, ko-eel, ko-eel," running up
the scale ; the natives think the koel is one of
the sweetest of singing-birds, and keep it for
a pet as often as our people keep thrushes and
blackbirds. Because of this it is easier to
get alive than most foreign cuckoos, and is

58 TALKS ABOUT BIRDS

often to be seen at the Zoo. Another Indian
cuckoo which is now and then brought here
alive is one which has the curious name,
among English people living in India, of
" crow-pheasant " ; it is really not at all unlike
a small pheasant with a crow's head, as far as
shape goes, and, like a pheasant, it passes
much of its time in running about on the
ground, and does not fly much. As you may
judge from this, its habits are very different
from those of our cuckoo, which flies a great
deal and can only hop awkwardly when on
the ground. Indeed, the crow-pheasant is
more like our magpie in its ways ; it kills
small animals and young birds, and, when
taken young, makes a very tame pet. The
reason why I mention it here is that it builds
a nest for itself and rears its own young ; all
these large magpie-like cuckoos do this, and
there are many kinds of them, but only found
in warm countries ; none are European.

There is a story of an American who had
read about the habits of the common cuckoo,
and was so indignant at the existence of such
a wicked bird, as he thought it, that he shot
every cuckoo he came across. Of course he

BIRDS THAT ARE BOARDED OUT 59

was quite wrong in this ; in the first place,
we ought not to blame the cuckoo for following
its natural instincts, which it cannot see to be
unjust, as we do; and in the second place,
the American cuckoos, whatever their shape
and habits may be, always make nests and
look after their own families.

This is very strange, because the common
cuckoos of North America are just like ours in
very many ways, though the colour is not the
same, as they have not the barred markings ;
they even agree in such a small detail as being
very fond of eating hairy caterpillars, and in
getting the inside of their stomachs covered
with hair in consequence of this habit. There
is always something strange and interesting
about the ways of cuckoos, even when they
are not parasitic on other birds ; their note, or
their feeding-habits are strange. The " crow-
pheasant," for instance, will eat toads, which,
like hairy caterpillars, are creatures that few
birds will touch.

The American cuckoo builds a flimsy nest
of twigs, very much like a wood-pigeon's, and
lays blue eggs ; and these eggs are laid at such
long intervals that, as the old bird begins

60 TALKS ABOUT BIRDS

sitting at once, some of the young are hatched
out long before the others, and so the brood
are of various ages, and there may even be
eggs and well-grown young in the nest at the
same time. Here again is a cuckoo custom
which is strange ; for though some other
birds, such as the barn-owl, also bring up
their family in this straggling way instead of
waiting till they have a full set of eggs and
hatching them all at once, the custom is not a
common one in the bird world, as every one
knows who has been bird's-nesting.

Indeed, if any one wants to take up a
natural history hobby that would give plenty
of employment for a life -time, they would
find one in the study of the cuckoos ; our own
bird would give them plenty of puzzles to
work out, and if they kept in aviaries the few
foreign cuckoos they would be able to obtain,
and read all that is written about cuckoos in
various countries, they would at last be able
to write a most interesting book.

Just as, if the gulls which are persecuted by
the robber skuas in our seas were to go south
they would be attended to by the frigate-
bird, so any of our little birds which wanted

BIRDS THAT ARE BOARDED OUT 61

to avoid cuckoos and emigrated to America
would find themselves no better off there ;
for though all the American cuckoos are
honest, other American birds have taken up
the idea of boarding out their families.

These are the birds which are known as
cow-birds ; they are something like starlings in
appearance and ways, but have thick, short
beaks, more like those of finches, and, like
finches, they eat a great deal of seed as well
as insects. The common cow-bird of North
America quite takes the place of the cuckoo
here, depositing its eggs in the nests of various
little insect-eating birds. The result is very
much the same; only the young cow-bird is
reared, and the other little birds disappear;
most likely they are starved to death and
thrown out by the old ones, as the cow-bird
does not seem to throw them out like the young
cuckoo. But some of these American foster-
birds do not see the fun of rearing cow-bird
chicks if they can help it, and these get out
of the difficulty, not by throwing out the
strange egg, as one would expect, but by build-
ing another floor to the nest on top of it, and
sometimes, if they are unlucky enough to

62 TALKS ABOUT BIRDS

have another cow-bird's egg dropped in the
nest, they will build over it yet again. As
this cow-bird lays only one egg in each nest
it visits, it thoroughly understands its un-
principled business, but there is a cow-bird in
South America which goes about its affairs in
a very slovenly and careless way, as has been
described by Mr. Hudson, in his charming
book on the birds of Argentina.

The glossy cow-bird, as this bird is called,
the cock being of a splendid silky purple-
black, goes about in flocks ; the hens often
drop their eggs on the ground and do not
bother about them at all ; several of them
will lay in one nest of another bird, and they
are very fond of breaking any eggs they may
find there, not only the eggs of the real
owner of the nest, but those of their own kind
as well. Yet a great many of their young
must be reared, for this is a very common
bird, and many are sent over here and are
often kept in aviaries ; some fanciers have
even had them lay eggs in other birds' nests
there.

Then there is a brown cow-bird in Argentina
which builds its own nest — when it cannot

BIRDS THAT ARE BOARDED OUT 63

steal another bird's — and always rears its
young itself; but, what seems rather hard,
this kind has another cow-bird imposing on it ;
for there is a third sort of cow-bird in that
country of which both cock and hen are black,
and this one lays in the nest of its brown
relation ! This is carrying things very far,
for there seems to be no case among the
cuckoos in which a parasitic cuckoo lays its
eggs in the nest of one of the hard-working
cuckoos, though in Africa and India the
honest and the lazy cuckoos live side by side ;
but it only shows how very remarkable the
habits of these parasitic birds are.

I said in writing about the honey-guide
that this strange and clever little bird lays in
the nests of other birds, and the birds whose
nests it chooses are the barbets, which are
birds rather like woodpeckers, and peck out
holes in trees to lay their eggs in, as wood-
peckers do. The honey-guide goes into the
hole to lay its egg, and often has a tough
fight with the barbets in its attempts to do
so, as they are as big as it is itself. The
young honey-guide is believed to throw the
young barbets out, not by shoving them out

64 TALKS ABOUT BIRDS

with its back like the cuckoo, but by the use
of its beak, which, when this bird is quite
young, is hooked at the end of both jaws,
and so is well shaped for taking a tight hold
of anything. But so far very little is known
about this part of the honey-guide's history,
and there is a great deal left to be found out
about it; the most interesting thing to dis-
cover would be how it gets the idea of leading
people to bees' nests, for the barbets certainly
would have no idea of teaching it that !

This is probably the trouble of the parasitic
birds' lives ; they never get properly edu-
cated, and have to find out everything for
themselves, as the foster-parents, however
devoted they may be, cannot teach them so
much as parents of their own kind would be
able to do. Mr. Hudson says that the young
cow-bird in South America is often carried off
by the slow and clumsy carrion-hawk, because
when it is out of the nest it sits on exposed
perches, and that it does not understand the
warnings its foster-parents try to give it;
and any one may see here how the young
cuckoo, in the brown-barred plumage of its
first year, sits in places where it is easily seen,

BIRDS THAT ARE BOARDED OUT 65

while it is not often that one sees the old
grey bird, although its call sounds everywhere
in the country. No doubt those young
cuckoos which live to moult into the grown-up
dress and come back to us in the next spring
have learnt a great deal when they were in
their winter quarters in Africa ; and especially,
what their real parents have never taught
them, that it does not do to be too tame, a
lesson which even the London sparrow takes
care to give its little ones as soon as they
leave the nest for the wide world.

CHAPTER V

BIRDS AT PLAY

ALTHOUGH birds seem to be such busy
creatures, it is not by any means a life of all
work and no play with many of them ; only
it sometimes takes a good deal of watching
to find out whether a bird is really playing
or earning its living ; a swallow, for instance,
chasing the tiny flying insects, looks as if
it were merely at play when it is really hunting
for a dinner. But when you see your pigeons,
which get their food on the ground, flying
round and round and trying to sail and glide
without flapping their wings, you can tell
that this is only play ; besides, when a pigeon
is really travelling it goes straight ahead in
quite another fashion.

It is not always the lightest and most
active birds that are the most playful ;
geese and ducks, which look so clumsy, play

66

BIRDS AT PLAY 67

in the water a great deal when they are washing.
Every one has seen how even fat tame ducks
flap along the water, chase each other, and
dive with a noisy splash to come up with a
jerk some 'way off. And geese, which look
so much more solemn than ducks, have an
amusement which the ducks have not thought
of ; they turn somersaults in the water, and,
as they are not quick in their movements, even
in play, you get the ridiculous sight during
the performance of the clumsy bird on its
back in the water, waving its legs in the air.

Fowls and turkeys do not seem to care
about playing as a rule, though little chickens
get up sham fights, or what look like them,
but perhaps they are only practising for real
fights later on ; but these birds have not the
sense of the water -fowl, and it is generally
the cleverer birds that are more inclined to
play, as they have the sense to keep them-
selves amused.

Cockatoos are very clever birds, and I
have even seen them play with toys ; in the
big parrot aviary at the Zoo there are a lot
of the small grey-and-pink cockatoos called
in Australia " galahs," and now and then

68 TALKS ABOUT BIRDS

one of these birds can be seen rolling on its
back on the ground, and holding a piece of
stick or a stone in its bill or feet, as if trying
to juggle with it.

Then one day at the Zoo I saw a white-
necked crane practising drop-kicks ; it had
got hold of an empty paper bag, and was
tossing it up into the air and striking it with
its feet as it fell. This was quite in keeping
with crane character generally, for cranes
are intelligent birds, and fond of dancing
among other amusements ; they may often
be seen bowing and skipping and spreading
their wings in the most absurd way.

Some birds get a great deal of amusement
out of a sham fight ; this is generally the
custom of playful parrots. You may see a
pair of macaws chewing at each other's great
beaks, and trying to push each other off
the perch, and at the same time making the
most awful growling screeches, which sound
as if they were trying to murder each other ;
but nothing is plainer than that the whole
thing is meant in fun, and I knew a macaw
that would play with his master, of whom
he was very fond, in just the same way. The

BIRDS AT PLAY 69

beautiful scarlet lories are also very fond of
wrestling matches, and when a pair are kept
in a cage you will constantly see them hanging
from the roof or a perch by one foot, and
skirmishing together with their bills and the
other foot.

The most playful birds I have ever seen
are those horrible New Zealand parrots, the
keas, which have taken to gnawing meals of
raw mutton from live sheep ; not that they
want to kill the sheep, but of course the poor
beasts generally die from the shocking wounds
they get, and there is a reward paid for the
heads of the destructive birds.

Some of them are kept at the Zoo in a
fine large aviary on a sloping bank, and they
are always having some game or other. At
one time they got a lot of fun by rolling a
barrel-shaped wire rat-trap, which had been put
in their aviary, as far as they could up the
bank, and then jumping out of the way as it
rolled down again. A football, if they did not
succeed in tearing it to bits, would give them
any amount of fun.

One very miserable afternoon in December
I remember noticing that they were quite the

70 TALKS ABOUT BIRDS

j oiliest creatures in the gardens ; I found one
of them rolling on its back, while another
jumped on top of it with screams of glee, in
spite of the dull cold day, which was enough
to take the spirit out of anything. It seems
strange that such jolly birds should be so
cruel ; but they must attack the sheep from
real want of food, for at the Zoo it has been
found that they soon get tired of the raw
mutton chops which are given them at first,
and like the ordinary parrot-food better.

The crow tribe are well known as very
funny fellows, and I have seen them have some
very amusing games. At the Battersea Park
aviary they had at one time a raven in one
compartment and a crow in the adjoining
one, and one day there was quite a got-up
game between them. The raven picked up a
quill-feather and laced it into the wire-netting
of the partition ; then he seemed to " dare "
the crow to take it, for he would walk up and
down as if he had forgotten it, and the crow,
quite entering into the spirit of the thing,
would sneak up to steal it, but just as he
nearly touched it, the raven would make a
fierce-looking rush at the wires and drive him

BIRDS AT PLAY 71

off. Thus the game went on until the big
bird got tired of it and let the crow win the
prize, which he did not really want, as the
quill had belonged to a magpie which lived on
his side of the wires.

But the great place to see crow games is in
India, where a small kind of crow, much like
our jackdaw, lives in the towns like the sparrow,
and is very easy to watch. As he picks up
most of his food in the shape of scraps thrown
out from houses, he has plenty of time to
spare, and always seems ready to spend the
hour before bedtime in having a game. At
the Museum buildings in Calcutta, where I
lived, the great evening game for the crows
was very like " I'm king of the castle." There
were lightning-conductors on the building,
and some crows used to try to perch on these
straight pointed upright rods, which, of course,
was not easy, and the others did their best to
push them off while they were doing their
utmost to balance themselves on these un-
comfortable perches.

Another game they played was to swoop
down on the backs of the kites as they soared
and circled about ; for the kite, although a

72 TALKS ABOUT BIRDS

big hawk, is a very cowardly one, and the
crows do pretty much what they like with
him. For instance, if a kite was busy in
getting hold of a big heavy stick for its nest,
or went down to the pond to have a drink, it
would often occur to some crow that now was
the time to pull his tail, and of course he went
and did it.

Tail-pulling is a great idea of the Indian
crow's, and I used to see some very funny
scenes at the evening playtime between the
crows and a little striped squirrel which had a
nest under the eaves of my quarters. The
crows would get on the edge of the roof and
caw insultingly at the squirrel's front door ;
out would rush the brave little beast, and
they had to jump up in a hurry to save their
toes. Then, when she had driven them off,
she would bolt for home, while the crows
did their best to grab at her tail, and,
judging from the scantiness of the hair at
the tip of it, they succeeded pretty often in
getting hold.

I was pretty sure, also, that these crows had
their fun with people ; during the hot days
it was a common thing for a crow to come and

BIRDS AT PLAY 73

perch on the shutters and caw till one got up
to throw something at him, when he departed
in a hurry, and I strongly suspect that all this
was done for, was to make one move when
one wanted to sit still.

Most of the crow's jokes, as may be seen,
are quite of the practical kind, and bird play
is often very much on the lines of practical
joking. One of the first queer habits I re-
member noticing in any bird was the sparrow's
trick of chasing a flying pigeon in the streets ;
it seems to do its best to peck it, and it is
funny to see how fast the pigeon flies and
how it twists about to escape the nips. Any
bird will do for this game from the sparrow's
point of view, so long as it is not dangerous ; I
have seen a sparrow chase a starling, and even
a wild duck in Hyde Park.

Even the dignified peregrine falcon will
play in this way ; one of these fine birds
used to make the Museum buildings his home
during the winter in Calcutta, and the other
birds got used to him in time, as he did not
attack them, but went away to kill birds for
food. But I have seen him swoop down on

a tame pigeon, and stop his swoop at the

10

74 TALKS ABOUT BIRDS

moment when he was just about to strike it,
a kind of joke which the pigeon probably did
not think very amusing.

Another solemn bird I have seen play a
trick which looked very like a practical joke,
though it might have been in earnest — the
peacock. At the time they had several
peafowl, cocks and hens, loose in Regent's
Park, and one day when a peacock was spread-
ing out his train and doing his best to display
his fine feathers before the ladies, another
peacock crept behind him and gave him a
fearful kick in the middle of the fan, which,
of course, was folded up in a hurry. As
peacocks, although they are not timid birds,
very seldom fight, it is quite possible this
was only a bit of fun ; very unbecoming fun,
too, for so dignified a bird as the peacock
generally is.

One would naturally expect young birds
to be more playful than old ones, and they
certainly are so sometimes. The sports of
pigeons and geese, and the tricks of cockatoos
and crows, are the fun of grown-up birds,
but I have seen some birds play when they
were young, and become quite sober when they

BIRDS AT PLAY 75

were older. A young dabchick I turned out
on the pond in the Calcutta Museum grounds
was very fond of playing practical jokes on
the ducks I kept there ; it would dive under
them, especially under any fresh one I turned
out, and, from the way in which the ducks
would jump and splash, it must have pinched
their toes ; but after a few months it gave
up this amusement.

Then at the Zoo here they had, some years
ago, a young gull of a rare kind, Scoresby's
gull from South America. This bird used to
think it funny, when the other gulls were
sitting down and dozing with their bills
snugly tucked in their back-feathers, to rush
among them and wake them all up; but it
left off this amusement when it was in full
plumage. I ought to say that in neither of
these cases the bird was in the down, but in
its first feather dress ; it is at this time that
young birds are playful, for when they are
downy, like human babies, they are not old
enough to play properly, and of course those
kinds which live in nests and are helpless at
first could not do so even if the nest were
big enough to play in.

76 TALKS ABOUT BIRDS

I said at the beginning of this chapter that
it was the clever birds that were most inclined
to play, but they do not have the fun all to
themselves, for some quite stupid birds have
their games as well. A very common bird
in South America is a kind of tinamou, which,
though it does not belong to the same family
as the partridge, is so like one in appearance
and general habits, that it is always called
" partridge " there. These tinamous are often
caught by being snared with a noose at the
end of a stick, carried by a man who rides
round and round them, getting closer at every
ring, until he is within touching distance.
Birds which will stand this sort of thing can-
not be very clever, yet, Mr. Hudson tells us,
they have their amusements ; although they
do not live in company, they will now and
then meet for a game, darting out at each
other from the grass, and chasing each other ;
the bird that is chased either dodges, or
crouches to let his pursuer jump over his back,
so that the game is a sort of combination of
hide-and-seek and leap-frog. *

We see, then, that the idea of having
games crops up here and there all over the

BIRDS AT PLAY 77

bird world, and no doubt, as the habits
of birds are more studied, we shall find
that there is a great deal more sport and
recreation in their lives than has ever been
dreamed of.

CHAPTER VI

GIANTS AND DWARFS

ALTHOUGH there are not the great differences
between the sizes of birds that we find among
beasts, there are enough to make the subject
of size interesting, for there is always an
attraction about something very big or very
small. It has long been known that the
ostrich is the biggest of all birds, and none of
the other giant birds, all of which, like the
ostrich, are runners and cannot fly, are nearly
so large, neither have any of them such hand-
some feathers as the ostrich bears in its wings
and tail — the celebrated ostrich plumes.

The true ostrich, as most people know, is
mostly an African bird, though it is also
found in Arabia and Syria, and since it has been
tamed and bred like cattle on farms, it has
been carried to many parts of the world.
The wild ostriches one hears about in South

78

GIANTS AND DWARFS 79

80 TALKS ABOUT BIRDS

America, however, are not real ostriches,
but rheas, birds of quite a different kind, and
not nearly so big. A fine ostrich may be as
much as eight feet from the ground to the top
of his head, but a rhea would not be more
than five. Besides, the rhea has no notice-
able tail, and three toes instead of two, the
ostrich being the only bird there is which
has as few as two toes.

It has, indeed, several other peculiarities
as well as its great size ; for one thing, though
its plumes are so fine, it has less feathers on
its body than any other bird, for the sides
and the big muscular thighs are quite naked,
and the head and neck are nearly so. This
gives the ostrich rather an unfledged, un-
dignified appearance, and it is not so stately
as many much smaller kinds of birds. No
one would ever think of making the ostrich
king of birds, even if he were able to fly.

It may seem strange at first that all the
biggest birds have to live on the ground like
beasts ; but it seems to be the case that a very
big bird gets too heavy for its wings to be
of much use to it. There have been bigger
birds than the ostrich which could not fly,

GIANTS AND DWARFS 81

n

82 TALKS ABOUT BIRDS

like the moas of New Zealand, which were
exterminated only a few hundred years ago,
so that we still find plenty of bones, and even
feathers and eggshells ; they had hairy-looking
plumage like the emu and cassowaries, which
are living now, and come next in size to the
ostrich. But there is no proof that any bird
ever lived, and was able to fly and at the same
time was as big even as Darwin's rhea of
Patagonia, which is smaller than the common
rhea of Argentina, and so ranks as the smallest
of our giant birds now living.

And with our tame fowls and ducks, which
we know have descended from wild ancestors
which fly well, we see that the big fat breeds,
like Cochin-Chinas and Aylesbury ducks, have
wings much too small for them and cannot
fly, or only a very little, while the little bantams
and the dwarf ducks called call-ducks can
use their wings well, and have good-sized ones.
So we see that a bird's body is inclined to grow
too big for its wings, and if a bird once got
too big to have much fear of enemies on the
ground, it would not want to fly, and so it
would not matter to it if the wings were too
small to be of any use ; while it is quite possible

GIANTS AND DWARFS 83

X

that however big and strong the wings of a
bird as big and heavy as an emu or rhea,
to say nothing of an ostrich, might be, it could
not rise into the air, for the biggest of the
flying birds we have nowadays have a good
deal of trouble in rising into the air ; in spite
of their great wings, they cannot easily lift
themselves straight up, though they go fast
when they are once started.

A wild duck will spring straight up off
the water to several yards' height, but a swan
has to take a long splashing, flapping run
before he gets started into the air, though
when he is once well up he will pass the duck,
in spite of the slowness of the strokes he
gives with his great wings. Very few birds
that can fly are heavier than a fine male
swan, which may weigh thirty pounds, and
he is now the giant among our British birds,
the smallest being the gold -crested wren.
The great bustard, however, which used to
live on our open downs and plains, and is
still common in parts of the Continent, such
as Spain and Russia, is a rival to the swan
among the land birds, and the great bustard
of Africa, which the Boers call the paauw, is

84 TALKS ABOUT BIRDS

much bigger than either, for it may weigh
fifty pounds, more than any turkey. This
great bird is eight feet across the wings, and
though some birds, like the condor and the
albatross, are broader in span than this,
they are not so heavy, so that the paauw is
the biggest flying bird we know of, either
living or extinct.

For a long time, of course, people always
thought the wren, or at any rate the golden-
crested wren, was the smallest bird ; but that
was because they only knew the birds of
Europe and countries near it. When America
came to be discovered, people were not long
in making the acquaintance of the humming-
birds, most of which are smaller than wrens ;
indeed, the giant of all the humming-birds
is not bigger than a swallow. The smallest
of the humming-birds is the smallest bird
there is ; this is the bee humming-bird of
the West Indies, of which you may see a
specimen in the South Kensington Museum,
under the scientific name Mellisuga minima,
which means " the smallest honeysucker."
This midget bird is very little bigger than
the big queen humble-bees which you see in

GIANTS AND DWARFS

85

the spring buzzing along the banks in search
of a place to form a hive, as can be seen from
the illustration, which is of the natural size.

BEE HUMMING-BIRD. (After Gosse.)

There is another humming-bird nearly as
tiny as this, the bumble-bee hummer of
Ecuador (Chaetocercus bombus), which you
will also see at the Museum, so that the
smallest known bird does not stand well

86 TALKS ABOUT BIRDS

away from all the other competitors so well
as the ostrich does from his rival giants ; and
he is not very brilliantly-coloured for a hum-
ming-bird, being only glossy-green and white.
Still, he can claim to be a distinguished and
remarkable bird quite apart from his size,
just as the ostrich can ; he is the only
humming-bird that can sing, and a very
tiny squeaky performance his must be, one
would think. The giant birds, being big like
beasts, go further in the same direction, and
have plumage of black or brown or grey, like a
beast's coat, to say nothing of living on the
ground all their lives.

The family of tiny humming-birds, on the
other hand, go to the extreme of being as
" lively " as possible ; not only do many of
them have the most brilliant and glittering
plumage of any birds, while hardly any are
quite dull, but they are more truly flyers than
any other birds. It is not that they remain
long on the wing at a time, but that they use
their feet so little, and are so clever in their
flight. When they perch they sit still, or if
they want to move along the twig, they whizz
their wings to help themselves ; and they

GIANTS AND DWARFS 87

seem never to hop or walk at all. When they
fly, their wings, in most kinds, move so quickly
that, like a bee's or moth's, they cannot be
clearly seen, and they go up and down, from
side to side, with the greatest ease, and in
quite a small space ; a humming-bird search-
ing under leaves or up a trunk for insects, will
not settle anywhere, but keep moving about
on the wing, and when sucking honey from a
flower, will hang motionless in the air till it
has drunk all it can.

It is quite possible to observe all these
beautiful movements in humming-birds in
confinement, and I was never tired of watch-
ing two they had at the Zoo some years ago,
which lived for a month, while most of their
unfortunate companions died in a week or
two. The kind to which these belonged
must be one of the more hardy ones, and
perhaps some day when people understand
keeping humming-birds better, it may be
possible to see them as a regular thing.

At the time one used to hear a good deal
about the poor little creatures pining for the
tropical sun ; but it is quite a mistake to
think that all humming-birds live in hot

88 TALKS ABOUT BIRDS

climates. Two kinds come up as far north as
Canada in the summer, one lives in the cold
miserable climate of the straits of Magellan
at the other end of America, and some keep
high up in the Andes close to the snows of the
mountain-tops. The real difficulty in keeping
them is in finding some food which will take
the place of the tiny insects they eat, for they
cannot live long on nothing but honey ; con-
densed milk suits them fairly well, being
animal food, and no doubt some one will
succeed with humming-birds sooner or later.
At any rate one was once kept in Italy for
eight months.

Some people seem to think that because
humming-birds are tiny like insects, and fly
like them, they have not more intelligence
than these creatures ; but I feel sure that this
is wrong, and that they are quite as clever as
any other little birds. They certainly are not
nervous or easily upset ; one of the smallest
kinds they had at the Zoo escaped in the
Insect House and buzzed all round it for some
time, never bumping against the glass as any
other bird would have done ; at last it became
tired out and fell down on to a cage where

GIANTS AND DWARFS 89

two marmosets lived, and one of these little
monkeys seized it by the head, and it was only
rescued just in time. In spite of this exciting
adventure, it had not been put in with its
companions a quarter of an hour before it
was hovering in the front of the glass-fronted
cage, and trying to peep into the lens of a
camera which was being used in an attempt
to photograph some of these birds.

But this very cool behaviour has been
noticed in humming - birds when they are
wild ; they will attack birds of any size when
these come near a nest, and they show very
little fear of people. Most likely this is
because very few enemies can get at them ;
no hawk has any chance with such little
dodgers on the wing, and when perched they
are so small that they do not attract much
notice from other enemies, so that they really
do not know what it is to be afraid.

The giant ostrich, on the other hand, is
very nervous ; he is very hard to shoot, as he
is so tall and can keep such a good look-out,
and he is naturally so timid that a very
common cause of death among tame ostriches
is their being scared and bolting off madly

12

90 TALKS ABOUT BIRDS

until they come to grief against a wire fence.
It is true that in the nesting-time the cock
ostrich is fierce and dangerous, but on the
whole he is not at all a brave bird.

So far, I have been talking about birds of
very different groups ; but you will sometimes
find giants and dwarfs in the same family, and
in these cases it is often to be noticed that the
little bird has much more spirit than the big
one. Eagles seem grand and noble birds, and
some of them really are very fierce and brave ;
but on the whole the sparrow-hawk and
goshawk, and some of the falcons, show more
spirit, and some of the fiercest birds of prey
are the pigmy hawks called falconets, which
are found in South-Eastern Asia. These are
only about as big as sparrows, and mostly
black-and-white in colour ; and there is not
much that they are afraid of, for though you
will see one in the South Kensington Museum
set up in the act of pouncing on a butter-
fly, they kill other birds as well as insects, and
sometimes very big ones for their own size.
One was once captured in India which had
killed a bird bigger than itself, and, having
got its feet entangled with the feathers of its

GIANTS AND DWARFS 91

prey, could not fly away. When this little
hawk was put in a cage, and any one came
near, it would try to fly at their faces, instead
of dashing to the other side of the cage, as
most newly-caught birds would do.

The late Mr. Rutledge, who was the leading
animal-dealer in Calcutta in my time, told me
that the natives say this tiny hawk will kill
the great Sarus Crane, which is one of the
biggest birds that flies, being four or five feet
high. They say that the falconet flies at the
crane while it is on the wing, fastens on to its
side, and gnaws its way into the big bird's
liver ! This sounds very incredible, but there
are pigmy owls as well as pigmy hawks, also
about the size of sparrows or not much
bigger, and in Chili the people tell a very
similar tale about one of these tiny owls and a
large ibis. In this case they say that the owl
sneaks up close to the big bird when it is on
the ground, and then rushes at it with a
shriek. The big bird lifts his wings in alarm,
and the owl fastens on his side, and clings to
him as he flies madly through the air, until he
falls dead to the ground.

It seems hardly likely that these tales,

92 TALKS ABOUT BIRDS

told about quite different birds in different
parts of the world, can be quite without
foundation, but it would be interesting to
know exactly how much truth there is in
them.

The small bird may attack the big one
simply for fun and mischief, as the sparrow
chases pigeons ; and the big bird, in his
wild terror, may simply overbalance himself
in the air and come down like a damaged
aeroplane and so be really killed by the fall.
At any rate even the eagle cannot do anything
when a smaller but more active bird attacks
him, as is done by the flycatcher called the
king-bird in North America, though in this
case no harm happens to the giant who is
being bullied by a dwarf.

Even in the case of birds which are all of
one species, like fowls, we can see giants and
dwarfs, but in this case the great differences
have been developed to some extent by
fanciers selecting the biggest or the smallest
for keeping ; in this way very great extremes
in size may be obtained, as one can see at any
poultry show. The biggest fowl I ever heard
or read of was a Brahma cock mentioned by

GIANTS AND DWARFS 93

Mr. Wright in CasselVs Poultry Book, which
weighed just over eighteen pounds — a great
contrast to a tiny bantam, which weighs less
than a pound and a half.

But with fowls, as with wild birds, we often
find the small ones have the most spirit;
many of my readers have no doubt seen a big
lumbering rooster forced to run by a lively,
spiteful little bantam ; in fact, a bantam I
once knew wrenched off his only spur — he
had lost the other in a previous fight — in
beating a cock bigger than himself.

It seems, on the whole, that the little birds
have just as good a time as the big ones ; they
have more enemies, as a rule, but they can
dodge them more easily, and they have not
the same difficulty in finding enough to eat.
If they do not live so long, their lives are
most likely more merry than those of the big
birds.

CHAPTER VII

BIRDS IN THE NURSERY

THE bringing up of any young creature is
very interesting to watch, and this is particu-
larly so with young birds, for these belong to
different types according to the kind of birds
their parents are, and so one has a good chance
of finding out interesting things about them.

Even among our few kinds of tame birds
we can notice many important things about
young birds ; in particular, they show us the
two leading types of baby birds, which we
may call the active and passive, the run-
abouts and the lie-abeds. Every one has
seen how very lively are young chickens
and ducks, very soon after they have been
hatched ; they are covered with a thick
coat of very pretty down, and are very much
interested in finding their food and in the
world about them generally. Nearly all the
care they want from the old bird is to be

94

BIRDS IN THE NURSERY 95

defended from enemies, to be warmed up
every now and then under her feathers, and
to be " brooded " in this way at night, when
the air is cold.

But young pigeons and canaries are of a
quite different type ; they are hatched blind
and nearly naked, and can only lie in the nest
and cry for food, so that they must not only
be almost constantly warmed, but every
bit they eat has to be found and brought
and given them by the old ones. All through
the bird world we shall find these two styles
of young birds, but we never see the two
sorts of youngsters in the same family of birds.
For instance, the guinea-fowl and turkey
and peafowl all belong to the same family
as the fowl, and their young ones are very
like young chickens ; it would be a wonder,
indeed, if a young peacock, for example,
were helpless like a young pigeon. On the
other hand, wherever we go, we shall find
different kinds of pigeons, but these always
have helpless young ones like our common
pigeons ; even the " squatter " pigeons of
Australia, which always live on the ground
and look very much like partridges, have

96 TALKS ABOUT BIRDS

helpless " squeakers," not active little runners
like the chicks of the real partridges, which
belong to the fowl family.

So it is with the water-birds ; one would
expect all the web-footed birds to hatch out
lively little swimmers like young ducks, or gos-
lings, but when one comes to know the different
families one finds it is not so ; the cormorant,
which belongs to a different family from the
duck and goose, has, as I said in a previous
chapter, helpless young ones like young
pigeons, which are brought up in a nest, and
never take to the water till they are full-fledged.

If you come across a bird of a family you
do not know, you can generally guess what its
young ones would be like by looking at its
feet. This sounds strange, but the explana-
tion is simple enough. Birds which have
helpless young ones generally build their nests
high up, and such birds have large hind-toes,
so that their feet are suited for grasping and
holding on to a perch, as you can see with
pigeons and canaries ; therefore, if your strange
bird has a grasping foot like this, you can be
pretty certain that its young ones will be
hatched blind and helpless.

MOOEHEX, Page 100.

BIRDS IN THE NURSERY 97

Birds which live most of the time on the
ground, and build their nests there, have
downy, lively young ones which run or swim
about almost at once, and as such birds perch
only now and then, or not at all, they do not
need a large hind-toe so as to take a good hold
or move about easily among boughs, and so
we find their hind-toe is small and hardly
touches the ground, or not at all. Such toes
you will see in fowls and ducks ; and some
wild birds have gone further, and have no
hind-toe at all, such as the golden plover,
which never perches anywhere.

You can see this difference quite well even
in the web - footed birds ; the cormorant's
foot is different from the duck's, as it has a big
toe behind, which makes its foot suitable for
perching as well as for swimming, though
there is a loose web stretching from the back
toe to the front ones. Among the wading
birds, the heron perches and builds its nest in
trees, and people often wonder at this, for
wading birds generally keep to the ground
and shallow water. But if you can get a look
at a heron's foot, you will see that it is as
well suited to hold on to a perch as a crow's

13

98 TALKS ABOUT BIRDS

or a sparrow's, the hind toe being large and
strong.

Of course there are exceptions to these
rules ; sometimes a bird which seems meant to

live and make its nest on the ground will nest
up in a tree, as I mentioned was the case with
the Muscovy duck, but this duck comes from a
hot climate, and most wild ducks in such
countries build up in trees, perhaps from fear

BIRDS IN THE NURSERY 99

of the alligators and crocodiles which live in
the water, and would soon snap up a duck
which made her nest on the ground near the
shore. Then, on the other side, we have
some birds which have a foot suited for perch-
ing and yet build on the ground, like the
Australian squatter pigeons and like our
skylark.

There are also a few whole families of birds
which form exceptions, such as penguins,
which do not fly and of course do not perch,
and have quite a small hind-toe, and yet have
helpless young ones ; but on the whole the
rule is one quite worth remembering.

There are interesting differences also be-
tween the birds which have active young
ones ; most of these downy chicks find their
own food with but little help from the old
birds, or none at all. The hen picks up food
and shows it to her chicks, but they find most
of it for themselves, and ducklings look after
their own food entirely, each one running or
swimming on his own account. So do young
plovers, but young moorhens expect their
parents to find the food and hold it for them
while they are only a few days old, though

100 TALKS ABOUT BIRDS

they run and swim about all right. Young
sea-gulls can also run and swim, but they do
not do so much, and the old ones find nearly
all the food, and throw it up from their
stomachs for them, when the little gulls either
take it from their beaks or pick it up from the
ground, and this goes on till the young gulls
can fly well. So the young gulls are getting
into lazy ways ; but it is the best thing they
can do, for gulls generally build close together,
so as to be able to join in defending their eggs
and young, and with such a number living in
the same place the young ones would never
be able to get enough to eat if they tried
looking for food themselves.

Some birds have very strange ways of
looking after their young ; and these can be
studied among our own wild birds in some
cases. Moorhens have more than one brood
in the year, and when the first young ones
are feathered, but long before they can fly,
they find another lot of little brothers and
sisters have been hatched off, and the older
young birds help their parents to feed these
new ones. This is a very unusual way of doing
things, but no doubt the helpful ways of the

BIRDS IN THE NURSERY 101

older family are of great use in bringing up
the next lot, and this may be one reason
why the moorhen is the commonest of our
water-birds.

The little dabchick and its handsome big
relative the crested grebe, have a quite original
way of managing the nursery ; the little ones
can swim from the first, but they do not do
so very much for the first week or two, because
one of the old ones carries them on its back,
under the wings, while the other hunts for
food and brings it to them. With the Indian
dabchick I have noticed that the old ones
sometimes take turns in carrying the young,
and that at bed-time the old bird goes back to
the nest, and that the young ones sleep on its
back there, not under the parent's breast,
as most young birds do. The old ones put
fresh material on the nest every day, and I
once even saw one of the little ones helping
in this. Another bird which carries its young
ones is the woodcock ; this bird lives on
worms, which it finds in mud with its long
bill. But the young ones are hatched in
woods away from the feeding-ground, so the
old birds fly there with them every night,

102 TALKS ABOUT BIRDS

instead of bringing the food to them, as most
old birds do when the young cannot find food
near their homes. It was long a puzzle how
the woodcock does this, for its feet are not
at all suited for carrying anything, nor is its
bill ; but by watching it has been found out
that the little bird is carried between the old
one's legs as it flies, so that there is not much
strain on the feet. Only one can be taken
at a time, so it is lucky for the old woodcocks
that they have only four young ones in the
brood.

With birds that keep their helpless young
ones in nests and feed them all the time, you
can see that there are two different ways of
doing this, even among our tame birds. When
pigeons feed their young ones the little bird
puts its beak inside the old one's, but when
canaries do this, the little birds gape widely,
showing the red inside of their mouths, and
the old birds put their beaks in the little ones'
mouths. This is the usual plan with birds
which have helpless young ones to feed, as
you will find if you watch the young of most
of our common wild birds being fed. But
some birds besides the pigeon family take

BIRDS IN THE NURSERY 103

the young bird's bill into their own, and even
go further. Young cormorants, for instance,
not only put their bills in their parent's mouth,
but their heads as well ; in fact, they get as
far down the old bird's throat as they can,
a way of feeding which looks very uncomfort-
able for the feeder.

Generally, when young birds are brought
up in a nest both the old ones help in the
feeding, as our common pigeons do, but
some of them can bring up the brood alone
if necessary ; many hen canaries will do this,
and a few cock pigeons — a hen pigeon does
not seem so devoted to her eggs and young
as a fowl or canary is, and always wants her
mate's help. Young birds which live in nests
always get their feathers gradually and all
over their body at once, as is the case with
pigeons and canaries ; but there are differences
in the way of feathering in active young
birds. With fowls, and all birds of that
family, the wing-feathers are the first to come ;
every one must have noticed how little chickens
have quite fair-sized wings when they are only
a fortnight old, and try to fly a little. With
ducklings it is quite the other way; their

104 TALKS ABOUT BIRDS

bodies go on growing, and getting bigger and
bigger, while their little featherless wings
look as if they were never going to make
a start, and they do not begin to grow large
and have quills until the rest of the duck's
body is fledged. Then, young sea-gulls grow
their feathers all gradually together, like
young pigeons, so birds which are hatched
downy and active may fledge in three different
ways, according to the family they belong to.

There are some birds which are helpless
nestlings and born naked, which get beautiful
coats of down later on ; this is so with young
owls, for instance, which have such thick coats
of down that they look like powder-puffs.
Unlike most peculiarities in young birds,
there are differences in this point in the same
family ; for instance, all young parrots are
blind at first, and helpless, like young owls ;
but some kinds of them are always naked until
the feathers come, and some have plenty of
down. Many of you must have noticed, too,
that young sparrows are quite naked, al-
though young canaries, which, like sparrows,
are finches, have a certain amount of fluff.
So it seems that if a young bird passes its

KINGFISHER.

BIRDS IN THE NURSERY 105

babyhood in a sheltered hole or nest, it
does not much matter if it has down or
not.

Some of the funniest young birds among
the helpless kinds are young kingfishers ;
these are hatched naked, and never get any
down, but when the feathers begin to come
and are sheathed in a sort of skin, as new
feathers are, this sheath is of a silver colour,
not bluish-grey as usual, so that a baby king-
fisher looks rather like a live pincushion at
this age. Also, although it cannot do much
for itself, it has some idea of moving, but it
runs backwards instead of forwards ! This
seems very strange, but then baby kingfishers
live in a hole ; and if after crowding to the
entrance to watch for one of the old ones
coming back with fish, they wanted suddenly
to get back inside when they happened to see
some enemy instead, they would be very likely
to stick fast if they all tried to turn round at
once. But by " reversing engines " it is easy
enough for them to retreat down the tunnel
in a hurry without getting in each other's
way in doing it.

Another British bird which has a very

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106 TALKS ABOUT BIRDS

curious way of moving when it is a baby is
the young dabchick ; as we have seen, the old
one carries it about on her back just as a
human baby is carried about in the mother's
arms, and it is also like a human baby in
another way, that is, in crawling on all fours
before it can walk. Young dabchicks do not
have much walking to do, it is true, as they
only come on to the nest when out of the
water or off the old one's back ; but when
they move about the nest for about the first
week of their lives they crawl on all fours,
using their little downy wings as front legs,
and looking, with their striped coats and
pink bills, very like some big queerly coloured
beetle.

A very different bird is also a quadruped
when it is young, and in an even more re-
markable way. This is the young of the
hoatzin, a South American bird which looks
something like a crested pheasant ; but its
habits are different from a pheasant's, for it
hardly ever comes to the ground, and makes
a stick nest on the boughs, like a wood-
pigeon's. The young hoatzin is also not at
all like a young pheasant ; it is nearly naked,

BIRDS IN THE NURSERY 107

like a young pigeon, but it can see and crawl
about, and it uses its wings as well as its legs
to hold on to the twigs. The wings have two
claws on them, which come in very usefully

when the bird is climbing like this, but after
the feathers come they disappear. You can
see specimens of this queer bird and its nest
and young ones in the Bird Gallery at the
South Kensington Museum.

There is one family of birds whose young

108 TALKS ABOUT BIRDS

ones are never in the nursery at all, so to
speak, but look after themselves as soon as
they come out of the egg. These are the
mound-birds, which look rather like part-
ridges or, sometimes, small turkeys, and have
much the same habits as these birds when
they are grown up, except when they are
nesting. Then they do not sit on their
eggs, but bury these in the ground, or in a
mound of sand or earth and leaves or twigs,
which they scratch up with their big strong
feet.

When the young ones are hatched, they
scratch their way up to the open air, and run
off to begin life on their own account. They
can not only run at once, but fly, for their
wings are feathered at the time of hatching,
and so they are well fitted to make a start in
the world at once. These strange birds are
found in the islands of the South Seas and in
Australia, and one Australian kind, which is
called the brush-turkey, is always kept in
the Zoo, and sometimes makes its mound and
hatches out its queer chickens there.

The young of these mound-birds are wild
and timid from the first, which is well for

BIRDS IN THE NURSERY 109

them, as they are not looked after and edu-
cated by their parents, and young birds, as
we shall see presently, generally have to go
through a certain amount of what we may
fairly call schooling.

CHAPTER VIII

BIRDS AT SCHOOL

MANY people have an idea that birds and
other creatures are able to get on in the world
entirely by "instinct"; that is to say, that
they are born with a natural knowledge of
what to do and where to live, what to eat and
what enemies to avoid. This is true to some
extent, but not altogether, and, as a matter
of fact, young birds have to learn many things
by experience or teaching, just as we have,
and this is the " schooling " that I spoke
about in the last chapter.

There is not much, of course, that little
helpless birds in a nest can learn ; only to lie
quiet when their parents give the alarm-call.
They are certainly not taught manners, as
far as I have seen, for they do not wait their
turn to be fed, but the greediest keeps on
taking all the food it can get till it has had
no

BIRDS AT SCHOOL 111

enough. I was able to see this very well
with a brood of starlings which were reared
in a hole in a roof below a window in some
lodgings I occupied many years ago at Oxford ;
when the young ones were getting well
feathered, one generally had his head out of
the hole when an old bird arrived. No doubt
he stood on his brothers ; at any rate he got
nearly all the food until he had had enough,
some being at times snapped up by another
head which appeared a little lower down. In
breeding pigeons, too, you can generally notice
that the young one which is hatched from
the first of their two eggs gets more food than
its brother or sister which comes out of the
second egg, simply because it is stronger and
more pushing. So it is with canaries ; if
you want all the brood to have a fair chance,
it is best to take away all the first eggs as fast
as the hen lays them, and put them back
when the last is laid, so that all the young ones
can be hatched at once and have a fair start.

This practice of feeding the young accord-
ing to the principle of " those who don't ask
won't have " must be useful to birds which
build dark covered nests with only a little

112 TALKS ABOUT BIRDS

entrance hole, like the wren. It has often
been a puzzle how little '* Jenny " manages to
feed all her large family in the dark when she
herself is blocking up the doorway of her
round nest by standing in it, but if she keeps
on feeding as long as any little one cries and
gropes with its mouth towards her she cannot
very well miss any young one as long as it is
strong enough to gape and cry ; weak young
birds in a state of nature simply die.

With dabchicks, which, as I have said, feed
the young ones at first, though these are not
helpless as far as moving goes, I did notice that
they observed fairness, and did not feed the
same young one twice in succession ; indeed, I
have seen a little one get a peck instead of
a mouthful when it cried for more food out of
its turn, so that dabchicks, at any rate, have
some notion of discipline. But then they are,
I think, more intelligent than most other birds.

Active little birds which feed themselves,
like ducklings and chicks, are of course learn-
ing all the time ; they know naturally, or by
instinct, that moving creatures like insects
are good for food, but they do not know that
all kinds are not equally nice, and so they will

BIRDS AT SCHOOL 113

peck at first at some nasty insects which, after
experience of their bad taste, they do not care
to try again. They also learn not only to
lie still when the old bird gives the alarm-call,
but to avoid enemies on their own account
when they have been warned a few times.
So their education goes on by degrees, and
by the time they are grown up they have
learnt most of what they will ever need to
know. But as their schooling has to be gone
through while they are still very small and
cannot fly, it is not often that the whole brood
lives to grow up in the wilds ; some of the
little things are certain to be snapped up by
some enemy or other, or they may meet with
accidents, such as falling into holes or cracks,
or wander so far away from the old ones that
they never find them again, and die of cold.

Some birds are better than others at looking
after active young ones ; the common hen is
much better than the pheasant, and will save
more of her brood, for the hen pheasant is
careless, and if she has had to fly away and
leave her chickens to hide, is quite contented
if she can collect two or three of them when
she comes back, and goes off leaving the rest

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114 TALKS ABOUT BIRDS

to their fate. This is one reason why people
so often use hens for rearing young pheasants ;
but then it is best to keep the little pheasants
close to the coop, by means of a wire run,
for a few days, till they have learnt the meaning
of the old hen's call, for they do not understand
her clucking at first. This shows that they
have to learn a strange language much as we do.
Many people have been amused at the trouble
that an old hen has with a brood of ducklings
when she has had duck's eggs given her to
hatch ; it is not only that they will go into the
water, but they are very disobedient little
things, and do not pay much attention to her
in any case. Ducklings are very much in-
clined to straggle about all over the place,
and so very often their own mothers cannot
keep them together, and thus they lose many
of a brood by various enemies ; the Muscovy
duck does best with hers, for she is not only
a very brave and careful mother, but her
ducklings are more reasonable, and keep closer
together and nearer her, when they are small.

As to birds which are brought up in nests,
they have to begin most of their education
when they come out into the world ; and it

BIRDS AT SCHOOL 115

is then that their real troubles begin. When
they are in the nest, their parents at least
know they are all together, and, if no enemy
finds the nest, or if they can defend it from
any foe that does find it, they can generally
manage to rear all or most of the brood till
they can fly. But then the young ones still
have to be fed for some time, and they are
still nearly as ignorant of the ways of fierce
animals as the active little ones are when
they first come out of the shell. You can see
this very well with young sparrows, which
will sit about in places where anything can
see them, and let you walk up quite close
to them ; in fact, I once touched a young
sparrow's tail before it flew away — I really
could have " put salt on its tail " as people
say ! But you will generally find, if you get
near a young sparrow like this, that some old
one will come along and make a harsh chatter-
ing noise to warn it ; if you are not too near,
it may even rush at the young bird and
absolutely drive it away. It seems to be most
often the cock sparrow who does this, and,
generally speaking, the fathers of young birds
of the passive sort of young birds are attentive

116 TALKS ABOUT BIRDS

to them as well as the mothers, though not
all as much as the cock sparrow, who is one
of the best of fathers in the bird world.

With birds that have active young ones,
the father often does not bother himself
about them, but leaves all the care of them
to the mother ; this you can see with the
ordinary cock and drake. Male birds who,
like these two, have very much finer plumage
than their wives, generally behave in this
unfeeling way. But perhaps it is not so un-
feeling as it looks, for it is important for young
birds and their mothers not to be seen, and
one bright -coloured bird going about with
them might put the enemy on their track by
being too conspicuous. However this may
be, it is certain that male birds whose plumage
is not much, or any, brighter than their mates'
are generally attentive fathers, as in the case
with the gander and the cock partridge ;
the cock partridge even broods or warms his
young ones as well as the mother, besides
helping her to defend them against enemies.

The warning against enemies which is given
to the young sparrows, as I said just now,
soon makes them wilder ; besides, no doubt

BIRDS AT SCHOOL 117

with these and with other young birds of any
sort, the sight of any of their brothers or
sisters who are slow to learn being seized and
devoured by an enemy soon makes the rest of
the family nervous. And it must always be
remembered that they have to learn about
enemies ; a young bird may be nervously
afraid of any bigger bird or of a four-footed
animal coming near him, but he does not
know, till he learns by observation, that a
hawk will behave differently from a pigeon,
or that a cat is not so harmless as a rabbit !

That some birds will learn more quickly
than others one can guess by rearing a family
of young birds ; you will often find among
them one very clever and one very stupid one,
and the others ordinary, as you may say ;
indeed their characters are quite different,
just as those of a family of children are.
But the most nervous ones, even if they are
not clever, often have a better chance to live,
for it is better that they should be frightened of
every big creature they see, till they learn the
different kinds, than that they should be too
unsuspicious of strangers. Where cleverness
will come in is when they begin to learn what

118 TALKS ABOUT BIRDS

animals are dangerous, and how far they must
keep away from each foe they may meet.

For instance, a young skylark must learn
to get well away as soon as he even sees the
swift merlin, which will try to fairly chase
him down, but he need not keep so far off
from the sparrow-hawk, which can only catch
him if it comes upon him suddenly and can
clutch him in its short fierce rush.

Because of this need for learning the look
of enemies and what they can do, it turns out
that a bird may be wilder when it is young
than when it is grown-up, the opposite of what
one might expect. In Calcutta the house-
crows are all about the streets, and you can
notice that the newly-fledged young birds,
which can be told from their parents by not
having such glossy plumage, are more timid
than the old ones are. If you point a stick
or an umbrella at them they will jump, or
dodge in their flight; but an old crow will
not care, for he knows that these things are
not guns. But if you simply show a gun to an
old crow, he will be off in no time, for it is
not necessary to point it at him — he knows
what it is well enough.

BIRDS AT SCHOOL 119

In the same way, no doubt, birds learn to
know the different kinds of birds of prey
from each other ; they see which are slow and
cowardly, like the kite and buzzard, and which
are quick and fierce, like the falcon and hawk.

The birds of prey themselves have their
lessons to learn, and they have more schooling
than most birds. Old birds do not have to
teach their young ones to fly, as one often
hears ; they can fly by instinct, just as they
can walk or hop, but they are clumsy at first,
and fly better with practice. Now a bird of
prey has not only to learn to fly cleverly and
settle neatly, like all birds that fly, but it must
also learn how to seize its prey, and this is
often taught it by the parents.

Eagles have been seen teaching their young
to catch things in the air ; one old bird soars
high, carrying in its claws some creature
which it has killed ; underneath the young
bird flies, and tries to catch the prey which
its parent drops for it, while the other old
one keeps handy to seize the food if the young
one misses it, which it is very likely to do at
first.

Then the young hunter has to learn what

120 TALKS ABOUT BIRDS

prey he can attack with a good chance of suc-
cess, so as not to waste his time over creatures
which are too swift or strong for him. It is
not of much use for a sparrow-hawk to chase
swallows, and an eagle must be careful how it
seizes a wild cat or a fox. No doubt many of
the strongest and fiercest birds come to an un-
timely end by seizing a prey which is too strong
for them, while they are young and inex-
perienced ; for there must be some reason
why these powerful birds, which also live a
long time, are not more common, and some-
times such birds have been seen to be killed
by creatures they have seized.

The little singing -birds, also, have their
music-lessons, for it is not all of them that can
sing their proper song without hearing it sung
by old birds of their own kind. They may do
so, if the song is of a very short and simple
kind, just as the young cock will crow if he
has been hatched in an incubator and brought
up in a " foster-mother " ; but a really good
song must be learnt. A young nightingale
brought up in a cage may have a good voice,
but he will not sing his real and beautiful song
unless he has heard an old bird sing it many

BIRDS AT SCHOOL 121

times. I had a good opportunity of noticing
this when I was a boy ; a schoolfellow of mine
took a young linnet from its nest and reared it,
and in due time the little bird began to sing.
But it was kept in a town, where it never heard
a wild linnet sing, and so all it could do was to
imitate the chattering of the sparrows and the
whistling of the starlings, which were all the
masters it had.

People who rear the German high-class
singing canaries always take care to keep
some very fine old birds to teach the young
ones when they begin to sing, and these are
actually called " schoolmasters," and always
cost much more than an ordinary singing
canary.

Then, when the young birds are quite
grown up and have got mates of their own,
they have to learn, more or less, how to build
a nest ; I say more or less, because they
always have some idea of it, this being really
one of the things they know by instinct. A
young martin, for instance, will naturally
make its nest of mud, and a young sparrow
of straw or hay ; but the first nests are often
not nearly so well done as those the birds

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122 TALKS ABOUT BIRDS

afterwards make when they have had more
practice and experience. Of course they are
very often helped in this by having a mate
who is older than themselves, and knows
better what is to be done ; for so many young
birds are killed before their first year is over,
because they do not learn all they should
about enemies and so forth, that it is quite a
chance if they find another one of their own
age for a mate. When a bird has lived a
couple of years it has learnt about as much as
it can, and then, if it has luck, it stands a good
chance of living for many years if it is a big
bird with few enemies, for its school-days
ought to be finished by that time.

CHAPTER IX

BIRDS THAT KEEP ORDER

BESIDES the particularly unscrupulous birds
that go about imposing on others, taking
away their well-earned food, and impudently
giving them their greedy, ill-mannered children
to bring up, there are here and there others of a
much better nature than the ordinary kinds,
who make it their business to keep order
among the rest of the feathered world. You
can notice this even in the poultry-yard ; if
a fight arises among the hens or the young
cockerels, the master cock of the yard comes
up and puts a stop to the disturbance, letting
them see very plainly that if there is going to
be any fighting done where he is, it is he that
is going to do it. But since the cock has
generally a large family to rule over, it is
natural after all that he should take an
interest in keeping them in order, and, no
doubt, such a high-spirited bird as he is

123

124

TALKS ABOUT BIRDS

feels some jealousy when he sees any others
of his own kind fighting. What is really
very strange is the habit some birds have
of appointing themselves to the position of

magistrate or monitor when they get into
the company of other species quite different
from their own, some of which they would
never meet in a state of nature.

This is the case, for instance, with that

BIRDS THAT KEEP ORDER 125

curious South American bird the cariama, a
creature which looks and behaves like nothing
else that wears feathers. It has a strong
crow-like beak, and, like a crow, feeds mostly
on insects and small animals, and anything
too big to be swallowed whole, it holds down
with its foot and tears in a very crow-like
fashion ; yet in other ways it is not at all
crow-like. It has the long legs, bare above the
hock, of a wading-bird, but it does not wade,
or even wash. Its hind-toe is so short that it
is no use in holding on to a perch, yet the
bird roosts on one at night, though it spends
most of its time on the ground ; and it also
nests in trees and bushes. Its short wings are
like those of a pheasant or partridge, but its
real relationships are rather with the large-
winged cranes. It is the only bird which will
lie sprawling on its back, or nearly so, in the
sun, and is altogether a puzzle, with no near
relations but one, for there are only two kinds
of cariama known.

One of this queer bird's eccentricities is
the idea of making other birds behave, as I
have said ; it is easily tamed, and when kept
among other birds has the reputation of doing

126 TALKS ABOUT BIRDS

its best to preserve order among them ; and
I once saw a most remarkable case of this
myself. At one time the pair of cariamas at
the Zoo were kept in the great wire aviary
where the gulls live. Among these were, as
usual, some of the large, fierce, greater black-
backed kind, which in the spring often fought
and hurt each other. On one occasion I saw
one of these gulls, with bleeding head, run-
ning away from another, who had evidently
wounded him and meant to finish him off if
he could get him into a corner.

The poor victim ran past one of the
cariamas, which also joined in the pursuit; but
it evidently soon saw how the case really stood,
for it quickly turned about, faced the pursuing
gull, and sprang at it, striking it with its feet
like a cock, and made it give up the chase.

Then on another occasion I saw a pair of
wild wood-pigeons having a fight in one of the
cranes' paddocks at the Gardens ; but the
fight did not last long, for one of the cranes —
the common grey European kind — ran up and
stopped the disturbance by driving off the
quarrelsome pigeons in different directions.
This kind of crane seems especially to ap-

BIRDS THAT KEEP ORDER 127

preciate doing police duty, for in Brehm's
book on bird-life there is a very interesting
account of one which had been reared from a
chick and allowed to go loose on a nobleman's
estate and the village belonging to it, in
Germany, and occupied most of his time in
looking after the other creatures' affairs. He
was particularly great on keeping order among
the poultry, and was more severe with geese
and turkeys than he was with the fowls and
ducks ; and with good reason, for the turkeys
sometimes joined forces against him and de-
feated him by numbers. However, he was
fair even to them, for once he was seen to
interfere between a turkey and a cock which
were fighting, and to have a tough fight with
the big bird before it gave in ; but he did not
forget that the cock was also an offender
against the rules he had laid down, for when he
had finished with the turkey he looked out for
him and punished him too ! This remarkable
bird did not content himself with being police-
man and magistrate all in one among the
feathered world, but he looked after the affairs
of the horses and cattle as well, and stopped
any quarrels or disturbances which arose

128 TALKS ABOUT BIRDS

among them, using his beak with much more
force on their hides than he did on his fellow-
birds, as was necessary, no doubt, in dealing
with creatures so much bigger and stronger
than himself.

It is certainly strange that he should have
taken upon himself to settle their disputes at
all ; for one bird policeman I knew myself
did not even think that all birds' quarrels
needed his interference, but only troubled
himself about rows between birds more or
less of his own sort. This was an Australian
magpie or piping crow, who used to live in the
mixed collection of birds which were once
housed in the big aviary at the Zoo on the
Canal Bank, now only inhabited by various
parrots. There were parrots in it then, but
he did not bother himself at all whenever
there was an uproar among them ; the char-
acter he specially kept his eye on was a com-
mon English magpie which was a sad bully,
and very much given to ill-treating any other
bird of the crow tribe, such as a jay or jackdaw,
if it was for any reason not very well able to
look after itself. But before he had been
long at this game the Australian bird would

BIRDS THAT KEEP ORDER 129

be down on him, drive him off his victim, and
hunt him all over the aviary ; indeed, he was
so severe with this bird that in the end he
put an end to his iniquities by killing him
outright.

It must not be thought that it is only tame
or captive birds which have these ideas about
keeping order and discipline among their
neighbours, for something of the sort may
often be seen among birds in their wild life.
I once saw our crows in Calcutta behave in
a way that certainly looked as though they
sympathised with a weak creature in trouble,
though in the ordinary way there is nothing a
crow likes better than to find anything weak
at his mercy, when he will very soon give it
trouble enough.

I had taken a dabchick which I had bought
alive in the bazaar — where all sorts of water-
fowl, caught in nets, are sold for food in
winter — down to our pond in the museum
grounds, and thrown it up in the air, thinking
it would fly down to the water as a duck
would do. But such a sudden start did not
suit the poor little diver, and it fell fluttering
to the ground a yard or two from the bank.

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130 TALKS ABOUT BIRDS

Before I could save it, a kite swooped down
from above and carried it off to a ledge on a
building close by, where it began to pluck the
poor little bird, alive and screaming. I felt
bad enough, thinking I had been partly to
blame, but the crows seemed quite furious ;
they cawed fiercely round the kite, and even
sprang on it and pecked it, but could not save
its victim. Perhaps they would have treated
the dabchick in the same way themselves,
but they did not behave as if they wanted the
prey, but rather as if they were angry with
the kite. They often rob kites of their food,
but then they go about it in a quiet and well-
planned way, two birds acting together ; one
gets in front of the kite and caws in its face,
while another waits behind to pull its tail.
Then, of course, the kite turns round in a fury,
and the crow in front snatches the food it has
been trying to save from them and flies off
with it.

At any rate, whatever the reason for the
behaviour of the crows was on this occasion,
there is no doubt that both crows and kites
in India are themselves kept in check and
tyrannized over by a bird much smaller than

BIRDS THAT KEEP ORDER 131

themselves, and no doubt his attacks often
keep them from snapping up some young and
more or less helpless bird of another kind.
The bird that does this is called, from this
habit, the king-crow ; it is a kind of shrike,
about as big as our starling, and black all over
from bill to tail. This tail is a very striking
part of the bird, for it is long and very much
forked ; and as the king-crow's favourite
perch is a telegraph-wire, it is a bird that
every one who notices live things at all knows
by sight. One curious thing about the bird's
forked tail is that one of the forks is generally
more or less worn away, which looks as if
the bird always turned round in one direction
when he left his wiry perch, and so rubbed
that side of the tail away ; but I never found
out if this really was the reason. The king-
crow feeds on insects, but when he is not
hunting these he finds time to chase and bully
the kites and crows, especially when his mate
is sitting on her nest high up in a tree. It is
funny to see the big clumsy birds flying away
in fear of this active black fly-catcher, but
they cannot very well do anything else. It is
as impossible for a big slow-flying bird to

132 TALKS ABOUT BIRDS

catch a small active dodging one on the wing,
as it is for a stout policeman to catch a lively
small boy in a lot of winding streets, so that
the large birds cannot turn on the king-crow
to punish him ; while, whenever he catches
them up he can punish them to some purpose,
as I found when I handled a live king-crow
which had been caught. His bill and claws
are remarkably sharp for so small a bird, and
can make themselves felt even on tough
human skin ; so that it is not wonderful that
other birds are afraid of him. It is not only
birds that the king-crow attends to, for my
friend Mr. Dewar has seen a monkey driven
away by them ; monkeys are very properly
looked on as suspicious characters by birds,
for they are the greatest of birds'-nesters
whenever they get the chance.

The king-crow is found all across the warm
parts of the old world from West Africa to
China ; indeed, I think the two queer birds on
the well-known " willow-pattern " plates are
meant for king-crows. This struck me very
forcibly in India when I saw two of these
fighting in the air. He has relations, too,
with very similar habits and ideas, so that

BIRDS THAT KEEP ORDER 133

practically all over the East the loafing
criminal birds are looked after by these black-
coated policemen.

In South Africa, however, we find a very
beautiful bird which distinguishes himself in
this way. This is one of the rollers, a family
of insect-eating birds of rather large size, being
about as big as jays ; and as they have more
or less of blue in their plumage, like jays,
they are generally known as " blue-jays "
where they are found. There is one very
common kind in India, which shares the
telegraph-wires with the king-crow, and a
lovely bird it looks when flying, with its blue
and purple wings. I never saw it chase other
birds, but its African relative, which has two
long tail-feathers like streamers, but is very
like it otherwise, is a great warrior, and gives
hawks and crows a very lively time if they
venture anywhere near its chosen perch.

English people at the Cape call this roller
" Moselikatze's bird," for that grim old
Matabele chief, the father of Lobengula,
thought a great deal of it, and would let no
one wear its feathers but himself ; no doubt
he looked on it as a great war-chief in the

134

TALKS ABOUT BIRDS

bird world, as he himself was among the
natives.

But the best known among all these police-

officer birds is the king-bird of North America,
because this country has so long been settled
by Europeans, and so much has been observed
and written about its birds that they are as
well known as European ones. So for a long

BIRDS THAT KEEP ORDER 135

time people who are fond of reading about
birds, even if they have never been to America,
have known of this brave little bird by name.

He has, indeed, given a name to all his
relations, for he was originally called the
tyrant-bird in scientific books, and all the
family to which he belongs are called tyrants,
though some of them are little insignificant
creatures enough.

The king -bird himself is much like our
fly-catcher in shape and habits, but twice as
large, and is much more handsomely coloured,
being nearly black above and white under-
neath, with a splash of orange-red for a crown
to mark his royal dignity. He is not really
a tyrant, for he does not bully harmless birds,
which, I am sorry to say, the black king-crow
sometimes does, now and then stealing from
them insects they have caught, or even catch-
ing a very little bird itself and eating it. The
king-bird only " goes for " the birds of prey,
and he does not respect any of them, even the
great white-headed eagle, which is the national
emblem of America, as most of my readers will
know.

Indeed, Benjamin Franklin gave this as

136 TALKS ABOUT BIRDS

another reason why he thought the grand eagle
an unsuitable emblem for a free people, since it
was not only a bully and a thief, robbing the
hard-working osprey or fish-hawk of his prey,
but a coward, letting this little bird drive it
out of a district. So the king-bird is always
a favourite with farmers, who know it will act
as a protector of their chickens against all
feathered robbers.

The missel-thrush among our British birds
is another enemy to birds of carnivorous habits,
and never misses a chance of attacking them,
from the stealthy magpie to the fierce sparrow-
hawk ; but it behaves rather like those robbers
who used to keep others of their trade away
and levy " black-mail " from people them-
selves, for when food is scarce in winter it will
drive other kinds of thrushes away from the
berry-trees, so that it can have all the fruit to
itself, and in spring it will sometimes steal the
broods of other birds, even of its own near
relation the song-thrush ; but even then it
can fairly claim some consideration from them
for keeping away far worse enemies.

Sometimes many birds will join together
against an enemy who is too strong for them

BIRDS THAT KEEP ORDER 137

singly ; in America, where the ospreys are
often quite common and numerous, instead
of being scarce solitary birds as they are in
Europe, they will combine against the robber
eagle and drive him altogether out of the
neighbourhood. And the pirate skua gull does
not always have it all his own way with the
other gulls ; though he will rob the big herring-
gull, which is so much larger than himself,
the common gull, which is a much smaller
bird than the herring-gull, though bigger than
the skua, will get his friends to come to his
aid, and turn the tables on the pirate for a
change.

And when the birds of daylight find out
an owl, whom they all hate as a midnight
murderer, they will all join forces against him,
no matter how unfriendly they may be to each
other at other times. Even in the bird world
might is not always right ; and the brave and
active birds, or those which have the sense
and the pluck to combine against every one's
enemy, can exercise some control over almost
any of the tyrants of the air.

18

CHAPTER X

BIRDS UNDER WATER

IT is, when one comes to think of it, such a
strange thing that the birds of the air should
invade the domains of the fishes, and even
chase and catch them in their own element,
that it is natural that people should be
specially interested in diving birds. You can
see this in the London parks, where the little
diving tufted ducks are quite the favourites
among the water-fowl, and in the Zoo, where
the penguins are some of the few birds which
are as popular as the beasts. Penguins are
the most perfect of the diving birds, and can
do what none of the others can in the way of
feats in diving and swimming. One of the
first things you will notice about them is that
they swim with their wings, not their feet ;
in fact, the penguin has changed his wings
for paddles, for they are real " water- wings,"

138

BIRDS UNDER WATER

139

of no use at all in the air, but the very thing
for driving him quickly through the water.
They do not fold like other birds' wings, but
hang down straight and stiff, so that the bird

KING-PENGUIN.

seems as if he had an overcoat on with the
sleeves too tight ; and they have no quills,
but are covered all over with little short
narrow feathers which look at first sight more
like scales. These queer " flippers " are very

140 TALKS ABOUT BIRDS

strong ; penguins not only swim very fast, at
any rate under water, as you can see in the
diving birds' tank at the Zoo, but they can —
some kinds at any rate — jump right out of the
water as fish do, and penguins of this sort
often come up to breathe in this way, just
like porpoises. Penguins also box with their
flippers, and can strike very hard blows ; one
of the small black-and-white Cape penguins
which one usually sees in Zoological gardens
can give a blow hard enough to numb one's
hand, and a great emperor penguin, more
than a yard high, which was captured by one
of the Antarctic expeditions, knocked four men
over before he was overcome. One advantage
that penguins have over most other diving-
birds is that they can swallow their food under
water, which gives them a chance of taking
several fish one after another without wasting
time in coming up, and also saves them from
the risk of having their prey stolen by any
gulls that may be about. Gulls are, as I said
in another chapter, great at stealing other
birds' food, and since they have been so
common in the London parks in winter, the
diving ducks have learnt to go under when-

BIRDS UNDER WATER 141

ever they get a bit of bread, and the surface-
feeding ducks to put their heads under water
with it, though both of them have to swallow
it above water in the end.

To return to the penguins, another use they
put their queer wings to is to work them as
front legs when they are in a hurry ; in the
ordinary way a penguin toddles along solemnly
in an upright position, but when it wants to
go fast it drops on all fours, the wings acting
as forepaws. Although they look so awk-
ward on land, penguins really do a great deal
of walking about, for their breeding-places
are often many yards from the sea, and so
they really spend a good deal more time on
their feet than other divers do, and walk about
more than a great many land-birds, especially
as their young ones do not go into the water
till they are fledged, so that all the food they
get has to be carried to them. And when an
old penguin is moulting it gives up going to
sea altogether, and stays on shore for weeks
at a time without anything to eat, until the
new suit of feathers has come through. For
all this, penguins sometimes stay out at sea
for a very long time together, for one was once

142 TALKS ABOUT BIRDS

caught off the New Zealand coast which had
barnacles growing on its toes, which were
quite sore and had lost some of the claws
in consequence ; and for shell -fish to have
settled and grown up on its feet like this the
bird must have been at sea for weeks, if not
months. It is no effort for a bird to keep
swimming for a long time, for they are all
lighter than water, so that they float natur-
ally ; and this is why so many of the divers
come ashore so little.

There are no penguins north of the equator,
and nearly all of them live quite down in the
south seas ; but in the north we get another
family of diving birds which look and behave
rather like them, except that they can fly,
and are not such perfect divers. These are
the auks, of which three kinds are very
common round most of our coasts, the guille-
mot, razorbill, and puffin. They swim with
their feet, like ducks, when they are on the
top of the water, but as soon as they dive they
take to their wings, and fly under water ;
but in doing this they do not spread their
wings so widely as they do when they fly in
the air, but keep them half closed. You can

BIRDS UNDER WATER 143

see, if you watch one of these birds diving in a
tank, that its wings are not so good for diving
as the penguin's, for the long quills are rather
in the way ; but, as these birds need their
wings for getting up to the rocks where they
lay their eggs, and for travelling to their
fishing-grounds, they have to put up with
what one may call a " general-purpose " wing,
long enough to keep them up in the air, and
short and stiff enough to be a fairly good
paddle under water. But they are not very
clever performers in the air ; they cannot
start up suddenly or turn quickly, as they do
under water, but they get up with a long
slant from the waves, and turn in a long
curve. No doubt they would be glad to give
up flying altogether, as the great auk, which
was much the biggest of the clan, did ; this
bird had only small wings, of no use at all to
raise its heavy body, and used to go ashore to
lay its egg on low beaches, as penguins do
now. Indeed, the great auk was the bird
which was first called " penguin," and the
birds we call penguins nowadays were named
after it. But wherever a shore is suitable for
a bird which cannot fly to land on, it is also

144

TALKS ABOUT BIRDS

easy for men, and so wherever the poor great
auks had a home, men found them out and

A5@f

•*^^^^^-i>

:^^^

GREAT AUK OR GARE FOWL.

killed them for food and feathers, and too
often in cruel sport, so that in time there
were only a few left, and these were all snapped
up for museums about half a century ago.

BED THROATED DIVER.

BIRDS UNDER WATER 145

That was the end of the great auk, and it is a
warning not to " put all one's eggs in one
basket " ; if the bird had kept up the use of
its wings ages ago it would have still had the
air as well as the water to trust to, and would
still have been living, as its small relatives
are to-day. The true penguins, which must
have been flying birds ages ago, for their
wing is still formed on the same plan as other
birds' wings, as is shown by the skeleton,
have made the same mistake, but they live
more out of the way of men, in the south seas,
and so have not come into contact with sailors
so much. But still, if they are not preserved,
as the penguins at the Cape are now, there is
great danger that many of the kinds will be
killed off, as they collect in such numbers in
particular spots, just as the great auks did.

The other wing-divers, if I may use the
expression, are very different birds from the
heavy penguins and auks of the sea-coasts.
These are the dippers or water-ouzels, which
are found living by mountain streams almost
all over the world ; one is quite a common
bird everywhere where there are swift clear
rocky streams in our country. Many of my

19

146 TALKS ABOUT BIRDS

readers must have noticed, in such places, a
bird much like a blackbird, but with a short
tail and white breast, perched alone on a rock ;
and the strange thing is that the dipper
really is, like the blackbird, a singing-bird of
the thrush kind, and no one, looking at it,
would have the least idea that it was anything
of a water-bird, much less a diver. Its feet
are just like a thrush's, and yet it swims like
a duck ; but it is not often seen swimming,
for it generally goes straight under water and
flies there, sometimes helping itself along the
bottom with its feet ; its food consists of
the different sorts of water-insects and shell-
fish that are to be found in streams. Young
dippers are reared in a nest like other young
thrushes ; but if they are put into the water
before they are fledged they know how to
dive, and use their half -folded wings as
paddles at once. So here we have a bird of a
land family which is quite at home in the
water, and in such water as the real water-
birds do not care about, for you find hardly
any of these in the mountain streams the
dippers love. Winter and summer the brave
little water-ouzel sticks to his stream, diving

BIRDS UNDER WATER 147

off the ice-crust of the edge, and singing
every now and then, for he is one of our few
winter-singers ; as long as the stream runs
he can always pick up some sort of a living
and keep cheerful.

The rest of the diving birds generally rely
on their legs rather than their wings for
travelling under water as well as on the sur-
face, and they are rather different in shape,
having longer necks than the birds which use
their wings as paddles, and bigger feet, as one
would expect, while their wings are generally
so arranged as to pack into a very small space,
and not leave the points of the quills sticking
out to be in the way. Among these we find
the most thorough water-birds of any, the
grebes and divers. Penguins and auks do
come ashore a good deal, and the auks have a
considerable amount of flying to do, as they
breed high up on cliffs, but grebes and divers
are hardly ever out of water ; they have to
fly now and then, but as to going ashore,
they avoid that so much that some people
have said they cannot even walk or stand.
This is not right, but the bigger kinds are
very clumsy, especially the divers, which often

148 TALKS ABOUT BIRDS

find it saves trouble to flop along on their
stomachs, rising a little and throwing them-
selves forward with their feet. The divers
often have to go a yard or two in this way,
for they make their nests on shore, though
quite close to the water's edge ; the nest is only
a few scraps of stalks, etc., that may be found
handy. Grebes make a good-sized nest, but
theirs is very often not on shore at all, but on
water-plants, or low-hanging boughs, or even
floating in the water itself ; and the nest is
always wet, for the birds build it of sodden
weeds and rubbish which they fish up from
the bottom, and cover the eggs over with
some of this wet bedding whenever they leave
them. For this reason, though grebes' eggs
ought to be white, you do not often find them
so after they have been sat upon for a little,
as they get stained to various shades of buff
by the juices of the weed. As I have said
before, grebes carry their young ones about
on their backs, although the little birds can
swim from the first ; but as far as I ever saw,
young dabchicks, at any rate, cannot dive for
a few days, and young divers do not seem
to be so active as young ducks. Grebes and

BIRDS UNDER WATER 149

divers are very much alike in general shape,
with long necks and broad, short bodies, and
feet right at the very hind end, so that it is a
strain for them to stand up, and they look,
when they do walk, about as comfortable as
a dog on its hind legs, and fall down very
easily. Divers have ordinary webbed feet,
but grebes have each toe webbed separately,
which gives a very queer look to the foot.

Both of them are fresh-water birds in the
nesting-season, though they go to sea more
or less in the winter, and the common " little
grebe " or dabchick, is the diver which most
people have the best chance of studying ; it
may be found on any fair-sized piece of water,
and nests in the London parks. It was in
St. James' Park last year that I had a parti-
cularly good chance of seeing a dabchick
travelling under water, as it was feeding close
to the bank ; it dashed along, as the birds
which dive with their feet always seem to do,
with strong strokes of both feet at once, not
paddling with one at a time, as birds do when
they swim on the top ; and the little fish it
was after seemed to have no idea of what
was coming till they were snapped up, which

150 TALKS ABOUT BIRDS

rather surprised me. One thing one always
notices with this little bird — that, if the
water is not clear enough to follow its course
far, as generally happens, it never by any
chance comes up where you might expect it,
which is a wise policy. I noticed this even
with my little friends in Calcutta, which
knew me so well ; and though they might
come up nearer me than they went down,
the place of their appearance was always an
unexpected one.

The big grebes and the divers are wonder-
fully strong and fast swimmers ; on the great
Swiss lakes it is the custom to hunt the great
crested grebe in a boat with several rowers,
and shoot at it when it comes up, and even
then the bird gives a very long chase, and
often gets away. It is interesting, showing
how differently birds of the same sort may
behave, that one naturalist says that when
you are getting up to a flock of grebes, many
of them will fly away and the others make up
their minds to dive ; he reckoned that any one
which dived three times would not fly.

Flying is not a very safe performance with
grebes ; they cannot start except with a long

BIRDS UNDER WATER 151

run, and do not rise quickly, and they travel
very straight, so that they must run a good
deal of risk from birds of prey, and it is not
surprising that they fly no more than they
can help, and generally at night. A couple of
years ago a great crested grebe was discovered
one day in one of the fountain basins at the
west end of the Serpentine lake in Hyde Park,
and there it stayed for about three days
before it could screw up courage to get away,
though the wild ducks often flew in and out.
I saw it go at last ; after following the ducks
about as if it wanted them to show it how
they got away so neatly, it made a slanting
rush and just managed to clear the edge of
the basin and whizz off down the lake ; but it
could easily have been knocked over if any
one had been near enough and cruel enough
to do such a thing, as it could hardly have
dodged.

Crested grebes are now being well pro-
tected in England, which is a good thing, as
the poor birds used to be sadly persecuted,
and even now one sees far too many of their
beautiful satiny breast-skins used as ladies'
furs. Though grebes are found nearly all

152 TALKS ABOUT BIRDS

over the world, unlike divers, which are only
seen north of the tropics, they are not really
so common or so widespread as another great
family of diving birds, the cormorants, which
one can really call the leading family of diving
birds ; there are so many of them, and they
live and nest in such different places, but
always in colonies. There is something crow-
like about cormorants, as their plumage is
generally dark, and they have a longer tail
than most water-birds, more like a land-
bird's ; and indeed their very name is from
the Latin corvus marinus — sea -crow, and
names like this are given to them in several
languages. Besides, like crows, they are perch-
ing birds and build great nests of sticks, often
on trees as well as rocks, and have helpless
young ones, though these are only naked
at first, and soon get a thick coat of down.
But, of course, they are not really related to
crows. The reason why they are so much
more at home in trees than other water-birds
is because their foot is suited for grasping as
well as swimming, with a large hind-toe
webbed to the front ones ; thus it is good for
gripping, and at the same time makes a very

EED BEEASTED MERGANSER. Page 156.

BIRDS UNDER WATER 153

big paddle. Generally they only drive them-
selves along, both above and under water,
with their broad feet, but it seems that if
hard pressed to escape an enemy they will
use their wings as well, though not in chasing
prey.

A cormorant afloat looks the very per-
fection of a diver, as he swims low with his
tail in the water and his head in the air, driving
himself along like a steamer, and sliding ever
so neatly under the water ; but he does not
care about staying in it nearly so much as
most of the divers, and when he has finished
fishing he comes out to roost on a tree or rock,
and seems never to sleep afloat as other divers
do. We mostly think of our common cor-
morant as a sea-bird, and our smaller kind,
the shag, very seldom leaves the rocks and the
salt water ; but the common cormorant, in
olden days when the beasts and birds had it
more their own way in Britain, must have
been much more of a fresh-water bird than
he is now ; we do not encourage cormorants
to come into the fresh water nowadays, as
they are so destructive to valuable fish like
trout and salmon.

20

154 TALKS ABOUT BIRDS

In India the commonest cormorant is a
small kind, not so big as a rook, and it is quite
a tree-bird, making big colonies in tree-tops
like rookeries. There are a great many of
these dwarf cormorants in India ; indeed,
they are the commonest diving birds there,
and along with them one often finds their
relative, one of the queerest of diving birds,
the darter or snake-bird. There are only a
few kinds of darters, only found in hot climates,
and they look like exaggerated cormorants.
That is to say, a cormorant has a long tail
for a water-bird, and a darter's is longer; a
cormorant has a long neck, and a darter's is
very long indeed ; a cormorant swims low in
the water, and a darter sinks so deep in it that
you only see his long snaky neck sticking out,
and can understand at once how he got his
second name.

These queer birds are often on view at the
Zoo, and interest people very much when they
are let out to fish in the diving birds' tank.
They harpoon the fish with their bill, which is
pointed, not hooked at the tip like a cormor-
ant's, and then come up to the top, jerk off
the fish, and catch and swallow it. As a

BIRDS UNDER WATER 155

general rule, cormorants also seem to come up
to swallow their fish, but a shag and a small
African cormorant they had at the Zoo used
to swallow under water like penguins, and
one common cormorant did so too, so perhaps
this is a trick that some clever birds learn,
and the others do not.

So far all the divers I have been speaking
about belong to families of birds all of which
dive, except the dipper, which belongs to a
land-bird family ; and in some water-bird
families we find that some are regular divers
and others only surface-swimmers. This is
so with ducks ; every one has seen how
ordinary ducks, though they dive for fun,
only turn " end up " when it is a case of
feeding under water, and so cannot reach the
bottom through more than a foot or so of
water ; but there are regular diving ducks,
like the tufted duck and red-headed pochard,
which always go down for their food. Tufted
ducks are very easy to watch in St. James's
Park, where you can see them travel about
over the bottom, looking for the shell -fish
on which they feed so much, and can notice
several interesting things about their move-

156 TALKS ABOUT BIRDS

ments ; one is that the feet strike very much
outwards as well as backwards, and another
is that the effort of the bird is all to keep itself
down, for when it wants to come up it has
only to stop paddling back and up it comes
like a cork. You can see, too, how, like other
ducklings, the young of these diving ducks
are active at once and start on their career as
divers, and very funny it looks to see a brood
of these little downy things all diving " on
their own " ; if the brood is a large one it is
quite hard to count them, for there are always
some down and some up. There are a good
many kinds of ducks which make a speciality
of diving, the most celebrated being the
eider-duck which furnishes the valuable down
for quilts ; this is a sea-duck, and one of the
deepest divers of all sea-birds.

There are some diving ducks which have
even gone into the fishing divers' line of
business, and chase and catch fish under
water ; these are called mergansers or saw-
bills, and one of them, the red-breasted
merganser, is quite common on the Scottish
and Irish lakes. These fishing ducks are
nearly as greedy as cormorants, and their

BIRDS UNDER WATER 157

beaks are narrow like a cormorant's beak, not
broad like a duck's, with peculiar saw-like
edges formed by rows of horny teeth, which
do not give a fish much chance of escape.

Sometimes some of the ordinary surface-
feeding ducks will dive for food, but few people
seem to have seen this done ; I have noticed
it with several kinds myself, but then I have
watched ducks a great deal, as they are
favourite birds of mine. It is a wise duck
that learns this accomplishment, for ducks
may easily find themselves on water which is
too deep for them to reach the bottom by
turning " end up," especially in winter when
the sides of rivers and streams are frozen up,
and then only those which will dive for food
will get anything to eat. But the surface-
feeding ducks are always at a disadvantage
when they practise diving, because their feet
are not so big as those of the diving kinds,
which makes it much more of an effort for
them to keep under, unless they use their
wings as well, which most ducks will do if
they are very hard pressed in diving, for
instance when a wounded one is chased
under water.

158 TALKS ABOUT BIRDS

When the ducks are ashore, however, the
diving bird's big feet and short straddling legs
are in his way, and he waddles much worse
than an ordinary duck ; and he also starts on
the wing much more awkwardly as a rule.
So that even in creatures so much alike as
ducks, one can see that getting one advantage
generally means giving up another more or
less.

A bird that is not very much known as a
diver is the moorhen's near relation, the
coot ; but it does dive for food a good deal,
and very fairly well too. It looks very funny
when doing so, because it takes such a jump
to go under that it fairly lifts itself out of
the water ; but it is interesting that it
should dive at all, for it belongs to a family
which is not even web-footed, though its feet
are rather better for water work than the
moorhen's, as the toes are fringed with a
scalloped skin which does duty for a web to
some extent.

It will be seen that, except the penguins,
all the different types of diving birds I have
been talking of are represented in this country,
and the north is very well off for birds of this

BIRDS UNDER WATER 159

kind, while there are very few sorts of divers
in hot countries. All through the warm seas
there are hardly any diving birds ; perhaps
the sharks, which are so common there, have
something to do with this, for a bird that goes
down deep for its food would certainly run a
great risk from these ravenous fish. And then
so many of the fish population which are of a
nice size for birds to eat are flying fish, in the
tropics ; and how are the birds to get on
when, after they have invaded the fishes'
home to chase them there, the fish turn the
tables on them by rising up and flying off into
the air like the birds themselves ?

CHAPTER XI

BIRDS ABOUT TOWNS

WHEN I was a boy I used to wonder a great
deal as to what were the commonest birds to
be seen in different countries — what corre-
sponded, in fact, to the sparrows at home ;
and I found it was very hard to get at this
from books, which told one a great deal about
the strange and wonderful birds of the various
countries, but did not give one much idea of
the everyday kinds. It is easier to get this
sort of information nowadays, but even yet
the common street birds of the world are often
very much neglected, for naturalists do not
think them worth notice, and forget that there
must be something very interesting about
birds which have the wits to pick up a living
and look after themselves amongst our houses
and streets.

Of course the common house-sparrow is the

160

BIRDS ABOUT TOWNS 161

chief town bird over a very large part of the
world, and indeed you do not often find him
far away from houses of some sort. But how
he got this position is not so easy to under-
stand. We know how he got to North
America and Australia and New Zealand,
because he was taken there less than half a
century ago ; and now they wish they had not
got him ! But where did the sparrow start
on his travels ? He is not a bird of passage,
and does not care about colonizing a country
until we have made it comfortable for him by
cultivating it and building houses, and so we
find that he does not explore much for himself,
but follows our roads. In this way he is
spreading across Siberia as the Russians
colonize that country ; and as our European
civilization came from the east, he is most
likely an Eastern bird which has travelled
west with us. At any rate, there he is in
India, as lively as here and even tamer and
more cheeky, for he simply will not be kept
out of the rooms. He finds it safer to have
his nest indoors, for everywhere outside prowls
the house-crow, another bird who loves town

life as much as the sparrow, and likes nothing

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162 TALKS ABOUT BIRDS

better than to snap up an unwary young
sparrow who is out on his first trip into the
wide world. But this crow does not spread
away from India, and even there he keeps
mostly to the hot plains, so that you very
rarely see him in the mountains ; I only did
so once, at Darjeeling. At Darjeeling I found
there was a different sort of sparrow about the
houses, the bird we call the tree-sparrow
here, and see very little of, as with us it is a
shy and not very common bird, and does not
often come near buildings.

When you do see one, you can tell it from
the cock house-sparrow by its having a choco-
late instead of grey cap, and by the black spot
on each of its cheeks ; it is also a smaller and
neater-looking bird, and the hen is not so
plain as the hen house-sparrow, being just like
her mate. Perhaps this was the original
sparrow in Europe and the house-sparrow
when it came in, if it did, from the East, drove
it out to the fields and woods. At any rate,
I found it very much at home under the eaves
and in the streets in Darjeeling, and so you
may find it in many Eastern towns where the
house-sparrow is not in possession ; for in-

BIRDS ABOUT TOWNS 163

stance, it is the ordinary sparrow in Japan,
and if you look at the sparrows in any Japanese
drawing, you will see that they differ from the
sparrows you usually see in just the points
that I have mentioned.

Then there is a bird which is called a
sparrow, but not very closely related to the
real sparrows, although, like them, it is a
finch — the pretty lavender - coloured, pink-
billed Java sparrow. This, I found, was the
common sparrow of the town of Zanzibar
when I was there nearly twenty years ago,
and very pretty these birds looked flying
about the houses ; I never saw them come
down into the streets for food, as our
sparrows do, so I suppose they flew out into
the country for it. The Java sparrow looks
a heavy, clumsy bird in a cage, but he flies
very fast and straight, and is a much better
traveller than one would think. Of course in
Zanzibar he is not a native bird, his real home
being in Java, according to his name, but he
has been introduced into many other countries
in the East. In India I once heard of a case
which shows very well how this might happen
almost accidentally ; in an aviary in Bombay,

164 TALKS ABOUT BIRDS

I was told, the Java sparrows reared so many
young ones that presently it was " all Javas " ;
then the owners would catch up a lot of
them and turn them loose. Then after a
time the Javas would be " over-represented "
again, and out would go another batch, and
so on. But in India the Java sparrow has
not had much chance of getting a settlement
in the towns, as every hole and crevice is
likely to be " booked " already by the house-
sparrow, as it is here.

Although in the northern part of the
United States they had no common little
town bird, which is why they brought our
sparrow over, this was not so in California
and Mexico, where there is a bird which lives
about houses and is called the house -finch
or linnet. It is, indeed, nearly related to our
linnet, and is a streaky-brown bird of about
a sparrow's size ; the cock is a prettier bird
than a sparrow, as he has a bright crimson
forehead and throat, and he is also a singer.
Americans have taken this bird to the Sand-
wich Islands, so, like the house-sparrow and
the Java sparrow, he has got a lift in the
world from his human friends.

BIRDS ABOUT TOWNS 165

So has the house -mynah, which is an
Indian bird of the starling kind, with the same
habits as our starling. This is not the glossy-
black mynah with yellow flaps of skin on its
head, which is such an attraction to visitors
at the Zoo because of its talking powers.
The house-mynah is a more slender bird, and
mostly brown in colour, with yellow legs and
a little yellow bare skin about its eyes. It is
even tamer than our starling, because it not
only builds in holes in buildings as the starling
does, but also runs about in the streets as well
as in the gardens. It is a bold, plucky bird,
and stands no nonsense from the crows, but
" goes for " them if it thinks itself aggrieved ;
and it is, I think, about the most popular
bird in India with Europeans and natives.
So it is not surprising that it has been taken
into various other countries, and is now found
in Australia and some other places in the
Pacific, and also as far away as Mauritius and
St. Helena.

The swallow tribe, as every one knows from
our birds here, are great lovers of houses,
and nearly everywhere you will find some kind
of swallow about towns; but in India the

166 TALKS ABOUT BIRDS

place of swallows is taken very much by the
house-swift, which is very common there and
often drives the swallows out, as our swift,
which is one of our best-known town birds,
does at times with house-martins here. The
house -swift is very common in Calcutta,
much more so than any swallow-like bird I
have seen anywhere; it is smaller than our
swift, and much blacker, but it has a big white
patch on its back like the house-martin,
which makes it a prettier bird than ours. As
this swift is found in Africa as well as Asia,
it is one of man's lodgers over a very large
part of the world.

Although swifts belong to a different family
from swallows, they are so much like them
that they are often called by the same name,
and so it is not surprising that the house-
swift of America is called the chimney-swallow
because it builds in chimneys as our common
swallow sometimes does.

This bird also is smaller than our swift, and
of a blackish colour all over ; its tail is short
and not forked, but the quills of it end in sharp
horny spikes, which help the bird to support
itself against the wall to which it clings with

BIRDS ABOUT TOWNS 167

its sharp claws. It builds a curious nest of
little bits of twigs, which it snaps off from the
trees as it flies past, and these are stuck to-
gether and to the wall with the sticky saliva
which all swifts have. You find the same
stuff gumming together the feathers and
straws with which our swift and the Indian
swift make their nests in holes and crannies.
Sometimes, in a very wet season, this natural
glue will melt, and down the chimney falls
the nest, but if the young birds are at all well
grown they will save themselves by clinging
to the wall and crawl up to the top into safety.
In some of the West Indian Islands we find
several sorts of what are there called black-
birds— they are really troupials, birds which
have more of the starling about them — living
about the towns like sparrows; and in
Demerara the place of sparrows is taken by
the kiskadee, or sulphury tyrant, a relative
of the king-bird I was speaking about in a
previous chapter. The kiskadee is a bird
about as big as a thrush, with a brown
back, yellow breast, and black and white
head ; it has a strong crow-like beak, and
has no objection to making a meal of

168 TALKS ABOUT BIRDS

young birds, mice, or fruit, as well as on
its ordinary diet of insects ; but it seems
not to be a scavenger and hunter after scraps,
like so many of the birds that live in towns,
and it does not build its nest on houses.

What seems the strangest, however, to
any one used to this country, is to find large
birds living in towns, as nearly all big wild
birds are now scarce and shy in Britain,
especially birds of prey. Yet kites were once
so common in London that foreigners took
particular notice of them, and they are still
as familiar as sparrows in Indian towns. The
Indian kite is smaller and duller in colour than
the European red kite which used to be so
common here, but their habits are much the
same.

Kites are most wonderful and beautiful
fliers, and you cannot look up in India without
seeing one or more wheeling and sailing over-
head, "waiting for things to die," as Mr.
Kipling says in the Jungle Book. But in
case there are not any creatures obliging
enough to die for his benefit, the kite has no
objection to killing them himself, if they are
small and weak and slow enough, for he is

BIRDS ABOUT TOWNS 169

not a swift or fierce hawk. But at a sudden
sweep and pick-up he is unrivalled, and his
feats in this way are something astonishing.
He is always on the look-out for scraps, and
has learnt to eat bread and cooked food of
any sort as well as meat, so that nothing eat-
able is safe if kites are in a position to make
a swoop. The position they need is room to
pass at a rush without drawing in their yard-
wide wings ; then, if the person who has the
eatables happens to look another way, the
rush is pretty certain to come, and very
startling it is. As the kite only needs to
guess at the chance of food, he will strike at
anything wrapped up in paper, and I have
even once had a cup of tea knocked away from
my very lips as I was drinking it on the
verandah, and never even saw the kite that
did it, only felt a light switch from his wings
on my nose. The reason why kites manage
this kind of robbery so securely is that, like
other hawks, they seize and carry off anything
with their claws, and do not have to check
an instant to seize with their beak, as a gull
has to do; and so, after one has watched
kites, gulls, graceful and clever as they are,

22

170 TALKS ABOUT BIRDS

seem absolute " butter-fingers " by comparison
with them.

In fact, I so much admired the skill of these
bold robbers that in Calcutta I often used to
feed them with scraps after breakfast, and
never remember seeing them miss anything
I threw up for them. As I said in speaking
about crows, kites often lose their booty to
these cunning rivals, and " battles of kites
and crows " must have been well known to
our ancestors, as they are mentioned as the
types of little petty wars. In Egypt the
yellow-billed kite has for a rival scavenger in
the towns our well-known hooded crow, which
is quite a familiar bird there, though a bird of
the wilds with us. What particular crow used
to haunt English towns does not seem to be
mentioned — the carrion crow, I suppose ;
certainly the raven was a town scavenger in
some places, and where he was common the
kites had no chance for any pickings.

The bird called " carrion crow " in many
towns in warm parts of America, and pro-
tected by law as a street scavenger, is not
really a crow at all, but a small kind of vulture,
about as big as a fowl ; as it is all black, and

BIRDS ABOUT TOWNS 171

has a flight more like a crow's than like the
stately gliding of most vultures, the mistake
in its name is easily understood. A small
white vulture is also a common town bird in
the drier parts of India and in Egypt ; but
people often mistake kites for vultures, and
kites are certainly the commonest scavengers
in all parts of India I have been in. The
strangest of these prowlers after pickings,
however, was the great adjutant stork, a huge
bald-headed bird about four feet high and
eight across the wings, which used to be
quite a common street bird in Calcutta during
the rainy season, which corresponds to our
summer months; indeed, it used to be said
that the rains never " broke " till a dozen of
these great birds were to be seen on the top of
Government House. As some one humorously
put it, "Jupiter Pluvius would not sit till
they formed a quorum." But that was a
score of years ago, in the days when all sorts
of carrion and refuse were thrown into the
streets, resulting in what was known as the
Calcutta smell, which never left one's nose
all the while one stayed there. In my time
things had been so much improved that only

172 TALKS ABOUT BIRDS

one adjutant still found it worth his while to
call ; he was a well-known character both to
men and to the crows, and might have been
there still if some one fresh out from home
had not shot him, not knowing that adjutants
were protected by law, as is the case with
scavenging birds in several countries.

The last town bird I shall mention is also a
stork — the stork, in fact, for it is the well-
known white, red-legged bird we all make the
acquaintance of so early from tales and pictures.
In fact, if you notice, most people call any long-
legged bird a stork, though the stork was
never a common British bird as the heron is
and the crane was. But it is the best-known
of all big birds in many parts of the Continent,
especially in Holland, Germany, and Turkey,
because it comes into towns to build on the
roofs, and is a welcome visitor in spring, and
one that cannot be overlooked.

So it comes that it is as familiar as a tame
bird, and has got into all the legends and fairy-
tales ; in fact, it may claim to be the most
popular as well as the most handsome of all
birds which come to live with us. Let us hope
that some day some enterprising storks may

BIRDS ABOUT TOWNS 173

seriously make up their mind to colonize on
this side of the North Sea, but not too soon ;
they must give time for people to get over
the silly craze for shooting all unusual birds
on sight.

CHAPTER XII

SOME STRANGE NESTS

NOTHING that birds do has ever been more
attractive than the making of the cradles for
their eggs and young, and some of these are
so extraordinary that one could hardly be-
lieve them to be the work of creatures with
only bills and claws unless one really knew
this was the case. In this country we have
not any nest-builders which can compare for
skill with the birds I shall be speaking of
presently, but there are one or two here
which can challenge the world for energy in
getting work done, which, after all, is what one
ought to expect from a British bird. The
wren, for instance, has been known to put
its big domed nest together in a day, which
means very quick and hard work indeed ; and
then there is the sand-martin, which is the
most wonderful of all burrowing creatures.

174

SOME STRANGE NESTS 175

No one, to look at this little delicate bird,
smaller than a sparrow, with such a tiny bill
and feet so small also, could imagine that it
could drive a tunnel a couple of yards deep
into a sand-bank, or that it would take all
this trouble simply to make a simple little bed
of a nest in the chamber at the end. It seems
such a lot of work compared to what the
swallow and house-martin undertake with
their mud masonry ; and yet perhaps the sand-
martin is the wisest of the three, for there
is another wonderful point about it — it is
the most widely-spread of all our small birds.
It is as well known in America, where it is
called the bank-swallow, as it is in Europe and
Asia, and goes as far south as Brazil in winter.
But the feats of the wren and sand-martin
are more a matter of perseverance than re-
markable skill ; the hanging nests of the gold-
crest and the golden oriole are cleverer per-
formances, and these are nothing compared
to the wonderful nests which are made by the
weaver-birds which are so common in Africa
and India. Fortunately, weaver-birds, being
finches, are easy to keep, and are always to
be seen at the Zoo and in many private

176 TALKS ABOUT BIRDS

aviaries, so that it is possible to watch them
at the task of making their wonderful woven
nests without going to their native countries.
These nests are generally on much the same
plan ; they are begun from the top, and built
downwards, sometimes being suspended by a
long stalk. Then a strong loop is made across
the bottom, on one side of which the cup is
made which holds the eggs, while the hole at
the other is either left as it is, or has its edges
built down so as to form a long spout, up
which the bird shoots when it goes into the
nest. As the top is entirely covered in, this
opening underneath is the only way of getting
into the inside ; and as such nests are built at
the ends of slender twigs and palm-leaves,
there are very few enemies that can manage
to invade the weaver's little home. Besides,
a number of the birds build together, and
although they are quarrelsome and very much
inclined to steal each other's materials, no
doubt they find that union is strength when
an enemy attacks the colony. At any rate,
the nests are always easy to see, although in
the tropics most small birds hide their homes
very carefully ; the nests of the common

STORK. Page 171.

SOME STRANGE NESTS 177

Indian weaver are common objects to be
noticed even on a railway journey. So
common are they, and so well woven, that
the natives sometimes collect them, after the
birds have done with them, to use for stuffing
mattresses, for they are so springy and tough
that they can be squashed flat without damage.
One African weaver-bird even goes in for
what one may call a " tenement nest," and
has long been well known as the " republi-
can " because of this. The colony all unite
to make a great roof of thatch among the
boughs of a tree, and then the pairs each
build their separate nests under the shelter.
This interesting bird has never been brought
here so far as I know, which is a pity, as an
aviary of them would be a most interesting
sight, although they are not pretty-coloured
birds, unlike most of the weavers, of which
the cocks in the nesting-season are generally
gaily decked out in yellow or red, though the
hens are plain and look much like sparrows.
It is a curious thing that the only other bird
which builds a tenement nest is a parrot,
because as a rule parrots do not build nests at
all, but just gnaw and scratch out a hole in a

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178 TALKS ABOUT BIRDS

rotten tree or a bank, if they do not find one
ready made. This republican parrot is the
quaker parrakeet of South America, which is
often to be seen caged over here. It is about
as big as a tame dove, green with a grey
breast, and is an amusing pet if it can be made
tame. Its nests are made of sticks in trees,
and a whole flock make their abodes one
against another, so that they form a sort of
block of twiggy buildings divided up into
separate rooms. Each room has a porch over
the entrance, so that it is hard for an enemy
to get in ; but if one room is taken up it does
not matter to the birds, as there is no com-
munication, and an opossum — one of the worst
enemies to bird-life in America — has been
found living in one of the rooms of these
mansions of the quakers, without making them
desert the rest. A more harmless guest is a
kind of teal, which, like so many ducks in the
warmer climates, likes to nest in trees.

Another South American bird which builds
a clever nest and is likely to have it stolen, or
at any rate taken as soon as it is " to let,"
is the oven-bird, a creature something like a
thrush, but with no spots on the breast and

SOME STRANGE NESTS 179

CtTT SECTION.

NEST OF OVEN-BIRD.

180 TALKS ABOUT BIRDS

a shorter tail. Also it does not hop like a
thrush, but struts like a bantam-cock, and has
a harsh hawk-like scream instead of a song.
It is a common garden bird, and often builds
its nest on posts or on beams of houses, and
from what Mr. Hudson tells us in his book on
South American birds, seems to be a general
favourite, just as the robin is here. The nest
is made of mud and fibre, and is as big as a
man's head, domed over, with two com-
partments, the entrance being shut off from
the egg-room by a partition which goes half
across the inside. This, of course, makes it
very safe, and it is not surprising that it is
looked upon with envious eyes by other birds,
especially as it is durable as well. The most
pushing of the would-be tenants are some large
swallows ; in other countries the swallow
tribe are too often robbed of their mud nests
by other birds, but here we have a swallow
which itself would rather be a robber than a
mason, and a sad time, Mr. Hudson tells us,
the poor oven-birds have in kicking these
unscrupulous birds off their doorstep. Some-
times they do not succeed, and have to give
up their little mud hut to the invaders alto-

SOME STRANGE NESTS 181

gether. Another bird which also makes a
bold bid for this nest is a yellow finch, but it
is not so impudent as the swallows, and has
the decency to wait till the oven-builders
have done with it.

Among the Australian birds there are two
kinds which may be seen at the Zoo which also
build very remarkable mud nests; these are
round mud cups, standing up on a branch on
which they are plastered. They are made so
truly that they look more like the work of
human hands than any other bird's nest,
and are very like the earthenware nest-pans
which fanciers so often use for their pigeons.
The builders of these nests, so very much alike
in style, are quite different birds ; one of them,
the grey struthidea, called " apostle bird "
in Australia, is something between a jackdaw
and a thrush in appearance, and has a grey
plumage with glossy black tail. The name
" apostle bird," which is given because the
birds go about in flocks of about a dozen or
so, is inappropriate as well as irreverent, for
they are most rowdy, quarrelsome creatures.
This bird is generally on view, but the other
feathered potter is much rarer in captivity,

182 TALKS ABOUT BIRDS

as well as much prettier. It is known in books
as the pied grallina, and by Australians as
the magpie-lark or mudlark, and is about as
big as a missel-thrush, handsomely pied with
coal-black and snow-white. As it likes to
run about on lawns and in shallow water, it
is very like a giant edition of our common
pied wagtail.

All who take an interest in our home birds
know of the nuthatch's skill in mud-work,
which it uses in plastering up the entrance of
the tree-hole in which it makes its nest, so as
only just to have room to slip in and out ;
and one of the foreign nuthatches, which nests
in holes in rocks, improves on this idea and
makes a cone of plaster surrounding the
entrance and sticking out from the rock.
The same exaggeration of a British bird's
idea is seen in the nests of some Indian and
Australian swallows, which are not content
with plastering a mud nest on to a wall or
rock like our house-martin, but build a sort of
mud bottle with a neck, fastened against the
support by the bottom. These birds often
build in colonies, and a collection of their
home-made mud jars is a very curious sight.

SOME STRANGE NESTS 183

The so-called edible-nest swallows — which
are really swifts — have long been celebrated
for building perhaps the strangest nests of all,
nests that are at any rate the only ones used
for human food ! Every one has heard of the
" bird's nest soup " which is so well known as
a Chinese delicacy ; and a great delicacy it is,
for first-quality nests sell in China for about
their weight in silver. It is thus a special
treat, like turtle soup in England, and the
average poor Chinaman, no doubt, knows no
more about its taste than an Englishman does.
The taste is not much, if it comes to that,
for the nests, which are shaped like half-
saucers, and stuck to the rock by the flat
side, are of a substance much like isinglass and
just as tasteless, so that the chief point of the
soup is the flavouring that is added and the
expense !

How the birds got the stuff to make these
queer nests with was long a great puzzle ;
they build in caves by the seashore in the
East Indies, and it used to be thought that
they got the material from the sea, in the shape
of floating fish-spawn or sea-weed, which they
prepared somehow. It is now known that

184 TALKS ABOUT BIRDS

they secrete the gummy nest-material them-
selves ; in fact, it is only their saliva. All
swifts have very gummy mouths, and glue
the materials of their nests together, and this
particular kind simply makes the nest entirely
of this mouth-gum. It is a little bird, of dark
dull colour, and not so big as our sand-
martin ; but as the product it gives is so
esteemed, the places where it breeds are
reckoned good property, and the nests are
carefully collected. Care is taken not to
work the birds too hard, and exhaust them,
for, of course, to get a clean first-quality nest,
the first one they make must be taken, so that
the birds have to make another in which to
rear their brood. Fortunately they are very
common where they do nest, inhabiting caves
in many thousands. A nearly related kind
has taken to building in European houses in
the Andaman Islands, and I have seen them
there gumming their nests on the wall ; but
unfortunately this sort mixes the saliva with
moss, so that the nest is of no use for soup-
making !

Some other East Indian swifts, the tree-
swifts, also build a very curious nest. The

SOME STRANGE NESTS 185

birds themselves are different in their habits
from ordinary swifts in often perching, like
swallows, on trees ; other swifts, as can be
noticed with our kind, never perch, but only
cling to things or creep into holes. Tree-swifts
build their nests on the branch of a tree, and
the nest is about the smallest any bird does
build, in proportion to the size of the builder ;
it is only about the size of the bowl of a tea-
spoon, and is stuck to the bough in such a
way that the bird sits on the branch and can
cover the egg with its breast at the same
time. There is only room for the single egg,
and the nest is quite too small to be sat in.
It is made of saliva like that of the edible-nest
swift.

The last strange style of nest I shall mention
here is not so much a nest as a prison-cell ;
there is no " building " about it, as it is simply
a hole in a tree with the entrance walled up,
and the hen bird is shut up inside it. This
strange performance is the queerest habit of
the hornbills, those strange top-heavy looking
birds with short legs which seem out of all
proportion to their huge beaks and heads.
They always have them at the Zoo, and

24

186 TALKS ABOUT BIRDS

every one notices their strange appearance
and their tameness, which reminds one of the
friendly ways of a dog rather than of a bird.

The hen bird, when she has settled in the
hole she means to lay in, plasters herself in
with the dirt that accumulates in her cell,
only leaving a slit like that of a letter-box,
where she can put out her bill to receive the
food which her mate brings her. She is in
no danger of starving while he is alive, for
he works hard to feed her and the young, and
she is quite safe from the attacks of monkeys
and other nest-robbing animals, having such
a small opening to defend ; any monkey
putting his hand in the nest of the larger
kinds of hornbills would get such a gripe and
wrench from the great bill that he would
most likely be crippled for life, even if he did
not find the enraged cock hornbill helping to
attend to him outside. Of course the hen
gets rather cramped in such a small space,
but as she moults very hard at the time, she
would not be in a condition to fly if she were
out.

In the case of the smaller sorts of hornbills,
which are not so able to fight off enemies as

SOME STRANGE NESTS

187

the big ones, the advantage must be still
greater ; you can see the nest of one of these,

HORNBIIX. (After Tickell.)

with the bird in it, in the South Kensington
Museum. When it is time for the hen to
come out into the world again, the plaster

188 TALKS ABOUT BIRDS

is broken away and the family go off to-
gether. Hornbills are found both in Africa
and in India, and have the same habit in both
countries ; yet there are many different kinds
in each. No doubt the first of the hornbills
thought of the idea and they handed it down
to their descendants, who kept it up through
all their history and travels. Very clever
birds they must have been, for there are no
other birds which have invented such a plan
for keeping the wife and family safe, though
the tropical bird world is full of ingenious
dodges which our birds have never needed
to use, because there the great trouble is for
birds to escape enemies, while here it is mostly
the question of getting food in the winter.
Tropical birds have had to develop their wits,
while those of our climates have to trust to
their strong wings to enable them to find food
at all times of the year ; this is why long
journeys are the strong point of most of our
birds, and cleverly-made nests are chiefly to
be found in the warm parts of the world.

CHAPTER XIII

BIRDS AT NIGHT

WE generally think of birds as creatures of
the day, and so they are for the most part ;
night is the time of the beasts, which use their
noses more than the birds — indeed, most birds
behave as if they could not smell at all, and
so they would have a difficulty in finding their
way where a beast could scent it out without
any trouble. So it comes about that night-
time is bed-time with most birds, and it is very
interesting to see how they go about putting
themselves to bed. Generally they " tuck
their heads under their wings " as we say,
but this does not mean that they lift up their
wing and put their head under it ; what
happens is that they tuck their head in
between the first joint of the wing, close to
the body, and the body itself, using the wing

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190 TALKS ABOUT BIRDS

as a pillow, while the long shoulder-feathers
cover the head like a counterpane.

Some birds, as you all know, sleep on the
ground, sitting flat down, but many roost on
a perch, and many must have wondered how
the perching bird holds on in its sleep, especi-
ally when the wind is blowing through the
trees. You know if you fall asleep in a chair
with something in your hand, you are soon
waked by the thing dropping out of the hand,
which has relaxed itself as soon as you lost
consciousness; and it seems as if the bird,
when he drops off to sleep, ought to drop off
his perch as well. The reason why he does
not is quite simple — the muscles and sinews
in his legs are so arranged that when the leg
is bent up towards the body the toes are
pulled together, and so they hold on to the
perch without any effort or thought at all.
You can easily test this with a dead chicken,
if it is not stiff, and you can watch it in a live
one walking — as the leg is bent the toes close.
It needs very little bending of the leg to close
the toes, and so a great many birds sleep
standing on their perches, with the leg only
slightly bent, and generally these tuck up one

BIRDS AT NIGHT 191

foot into their feathers to keep it warm ; no
doubt during the night they " change legs "
every now and then, so as to keep the toes
warm on both feet.

People often talk as if birds used their nests
as bed-rooms, and it certainly seems a reason-
able thing to do, but really very few of them
do sleep in their nests ; no doubt the idea
has got about because most of those that
do so are house-birds, like our tame pigeons,
which roost in the cote, and house-martins
and swifts, which roost in their nests and
holes ; sparrows also, in winter at any rate,
and wrens, too, will roost in nests.

Water-birds very often sleep on the water,
especially the diving sorts, and those that
live very far out at sea can hardly do any-
thing else ; but, generally speaking, they like
to come ashore to sleep if they can do so
conveniently, for then they know where they
are, while if they go to sleep on the water,
except on the wide ocean, they may easily be
drifted ashore in their sleep by the wind or
current, and fall a prey to their enemies.
Long ago it was said that water-fowl could
not roost on trees because of their clumsy

192 TALKS ABOUT BIRDS

webbed feet, but this is quite a mistake, and
many kinds do roost in trees, especially in
hot climates, where sharks in the sea and
crocodiles in the fresh water make a waterside
bed a very unsafe one.

There is a great deal of difference among
birds as to their powers of looking after
themselves at night, even among nearly-
related kinds. Fowls, as many of you most
likely know, are very stupid and helpless in
the dark ; no matter how hard to catch one
may be in the daytime, you are pretty sure of
it if you go to take it on the roost. Pheasants
are not much better ; but peafowl seem to be
able to look after themselves very well in the
night-time. They go to roost quite late, after
all the other day-birds are gone to bed, and on
one occasion not long ago a peahen got away
from a dealer's in Covent Garden, and was
living in freedom there for months, for she used
to roost on the roofs, and was always wide-
awake enough to fly across the street if there
was any attempt made at a night surprise —
and she was only caught at last quite by
accident. Until I knew of this case I could
not imagine how a big bird like the peacock

BIRDS AT NIGHT 193

managed to live in the Indian forests among
all sorts of enemies, but evidently he is not
easily caught napping.

The little quail, although a bird of the
fowl kind, is quite lively at night ; in fact,
I think it is more of a night than a day bird,
for one I once kept loose in a room was always
more lively at night, and would come then
inside the fender and enjoy itself by rolling
in the hot ashes under the grate, though a
hot cinder falling on its back would now and
then make it shoot out in a great hurry. It
is known, besides, that quails, when on their
passage in spring and autumn, generally fly
at night, and so do most of the small helpless
birds, such as the various warblers, which
visit us in the summer-time; the small birds
which are seen migrating by day are mostly
those which have been delayed or have mis-
calculated their time, and so have to finish
the journey in the light.

It was for a long time a great puzzle to
naturalists why the little travellers should
be on their journey at the time when they
would be snugly at roost if they were at home,
and it is only of late years that the reason

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194 TALKS ABOUT BIRDS

has been found out. The reason simply is —
gulls ; these greedy birds are prowling about
along the coasts in numbers everywhere,
and though they are not swift fliers and
cannot in the ordinary way catch an active
little bird as a hawk can, they are quite able
to snap one up if it is tired by a long flight
or a struggle against the wind, and they do
get many victims in this way when daylight
surprises the travelling birds. But most of
the pilgrims, by getting across the water
at night, escape these ravenous pirates, which
are then asleep on the cliffs or shore.

Some birds seem to make little difference
between day and night, like wild ducks, which
fly about at any time, and feed either in the
daylight or dark ; indeed, where they are
likely to be persecuted they are often very
much of night-birds, and keep very quiet
during the day. But there is no reason to
suppose that ducks see particularly well at
night ; they do not need much light for grub-
bing for food in the mud with their peculiar
bills, which are so well suited for sifting out
of it any food it may contain.

Woodcocks and snipes are also night-

BIRDS AT NIGHT

195

feeders, but they grope in mud for worms
with their long soft tender bills, and do not
use their eyes to find their food. The most
thorough night-birds of all feed in this way,

the curious kiwis or apteryxes of New Zealand ;
these have their nostrils placed at the end of
their long beaks, just as a beast's are placed
at the end of its snout, and so we find that
they behave more like beasts than like birds,
nosing and sniffing their way about, and it
has been proved that they have a keen scent.

196 TALKS ABOUT BIRDS

They also have long hair-like feathers on
their faces, like the whiskers of cats, so that
they most likely feel their way as well. On
the other hand, they see worse than any other
birds ; it is not so surprising, perhaps, that
they do not seem able to see much by day,
but even at night their little eyes do not appear
of very much use to them. I have found that
you can wave a handkerchief before a captive
one and that it will take no notice, but will
start if you make a noise ; and even a wild one
will walk close up to a man even at night.
Kiwis are not able to fly ; indeed, they have
the smallest wings of any birds, but it is funny
to see that when they are asleep in the day-
time, they tuck their long bill away behind
their tiny wing, just as if it were big enough
to cover their heads. I have never seen the
other birds which do not fly, such as emus
and rheas, tuck their heads away at all, but
I cannot say if they never do it. I think
the kiwis are the most thorough night-birds
of any because they are the sleepiest in the
daytime ; you can pick one up without making
it wake and turn its head round. After the
kiwis, owls seem quite bright and lively

BIRDS AT NIGHT 197

creatures, even in the daytime, though people
have an idea that they are particularly drowsy,
and that they cannot bear the light. That
is quite a mistake, as you will soon find out
if you ever keep a tame owl, and tame owls

WHITE OWL. (After Well.)

make very nice pets, especially the brown or
tawny owl, which is one of the commonest
in our country. If your owl is of this kind,
you will find not only that it can see quite
well in the day, but that it really likes the sun ;
and so do most owls. The only kind of owl
which really does seem to like to hide in

198 TALKS ABOUT BIRDS

the dark and sleep all day is the barn-owl
or white owl, which certainly does look terribly
sleepy in the daytime ; but even this bird
can see quite well in the light. While this
book was being written I met a gentleman
who told me he had reared a barn-owl which
would follow him about in the daytime ; and
he used to take it away from home and let it
go and it would fly home like a pigeon, so that
it had no difficulty in finding its way about.

The fact is, that owls stay at home, in holes
or thickly-foliaged trees, in the daytime, for
reasons of their own ; no doubt they are tired
after they have been sitting up all night to
hunt and feed, for they really can see well at
night and live their lives then as a matter of
course ; and then, if they are found out by
the other birds in the daytime, they get so
much bothered by the abuse and chattering
which is dinned into their ears that it is no
wonder that they hide as much as they can.
All other birds have a great dislike to owls ;
they do not see them very often, and evidently
think they are awful guys to look at, and they
know just enough about them to understand
that owls are suspicious characters, and likely

BIRDS AT NIGHT 199

to snap up any one who is not careful to roost
in a safe place. Very likely they have seen
some friend made away with like this ; for
owls, though they feed mostly on mice and
other small beasts, since they find these
running about at night, are always ready to
seize on any bird that comes in their way.
The brown owl, which is a wood bird, catches
more birds than the barn-owl, which hunts
over the open country and does not catch many
birds except the sparrows, which roost in big
noisy companies in trees and ivy where the
owl can easily find them, without having to
search in the woods.

Many owls even hunt in the daytime ; one
of these is the little owl, which is now the
commonest owl in many places in England,
although it is not naturally an English bird,
but has been brought over from the Continent
and let out by naturalists who like this quaint
little fellow. For the little owl is a very
comical-looking little bird, only about a black-
bird's size, with pale yellow eyes which give it
a very fierce look. This is the owl which was
sacred to the goddess of learning, Minerva,
or Athena as the Greeks called her, and it is

200 TALKS ABOUT BIRDS

still very common in her favourite city of
Athens ; and this must also have been so in
ancient times, because the Greeks used to have
a proverb about " taking owls to Athens,"
just as we say " sending coals to Newcastle."
Little owls come out in the afternoon, so that
it is quite easy to see them and watch their
habits. In India there is a small owl almost
exactly like this kind, and from watching its
ways I learned how it was that owls have to
stay at home in the day. In India the crows
hang mostly about the big towns, and are not
so common in the country, and so one finds
that in Calcutta, for instance, the owls do not
come out till the crows have gone to bed ;
indeed, I have seen a crow on his way home
to roost make a swoop at an owl which had
come out a little too soon, no doubt being in a
hurry for supper. But in country places the
same small owls might be seen at tea-time,
as they had matters there more their own
way.

When you get a chance of watching an owl
in the dusk, you will notice that he blinks
and screws his head about and bobs it up and
down just as much as he does in the daytime ;

BIRDS AT NIGHT 201

it is simply a way he has got, and does not
mean that he cannot see properly in the day-
light. It is true he does not fly away very
readily in the day, but that simply means he
is afraid of the mobbing he will get from the
other birds if he does fly, and when he is on
the wing he can steer himself quite easily.
Some owls have " horns " or " ears " of
feathers sticking up from their heads, and
this helps them to look like a broken stump
when they are perched upright on a bough
with their feathers drawn close and their
great eyes nearly shut; and very likely in
this way they often escape even the sharp
eyes of their enemies the day-birds. It is a
real danger for an owl to be driven out in the
day, for the hawks hate him as much as the
other birds do, though very likely the owl turns
the tables on the hawk at night, for the owls
are quite as fierce as the hawks are, at the
proper time.

Owls seem to be wiser than hawks in one
way at least ; they have a great idea of pro-
viding for a rainy day. When hunting is good
they will catch as many birds and mice as
they can and store them up in their homes,

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202 TALKS ABOUT BIRDS

for owls really have homes, and generally live
in the same place in which they lay their eggs
and rear their young. Once in America an
owl was found in possession of sixteen fresh
fish, in mid-winter, when all the water in the
neighbourhood was frozen, and it turned out
that half a mile from the owl's home some
boys had broken the ice on a pond, and the
practical bird had found this out and been
working hard to get in his supplies while he
had the chance. After this it is rather hard
on owls that they should be abused for being
stupid !

After the kiwis, the stupidest-looking and
the sleepiest night-birds are the moreporks,
queer Australian birds which you can gener-
ally see at the Zoo. They are about as big as
rooks, with mottled grey plumage, very small
feet, and big flat heads with enormous mouths,
like frogs. They snap up their food with
their bills, and do not catch it in their claws
like owls, and they can swallow a sparrow
whole.

They are some of the laziest birds in exist-
ence, and in the daytime are so sleepy that
they can sometimes be touched, even in the

BIRDS AT NIGHT 203

wild state ; but they have splendid digestions.
When an owl eats a mouse or a bird, it after-
wards throws up the bones and the fur or
feathers in a quid or pellet, but the morepork
digests everything together. Yet it can go
for a long time without food, for one at the
Zoo once ate only one mouse and one sparrow
in ten days ; then I suggested that the bird
wanted a change, and that they might
try it with fish. The morepork liked them,
and started taking his meals again. I do not
suppose they often get hold of a fish in the
wild state, but it struck me that fish might
be a good substitute for some of the gecko-
lizards, which are night reptiles, or for frogs ;
but the usual food of moreporks in the wild
state seems to be large insects. However,
birds which eat these are ready to eat any sort
of small animals ; I have even seen our common
thrush once catch and eat a small fish from
a stream.

Moreporks are close relatives of nightjars,
which are found all over the world, one of them
being quite a common summer visitor to our
own country. This bird, although one does
not see it very often, is well known in the

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TALKS ABOUT BIRDS

country by the noise it makes, which is a loud
purring, and sounds something like some sort
of machinery at work. Nightjars make all
sorts of queer noises, and the commonest
kind in India has a note which sounds exactly
like the noise a stone makes when you throw

NIGHTJAR.

it on ice and it skips and bounces along ;
and the bird in America which says " whip-
poor-will " is a nightjar. Nightjars live on
insects, which they catch on the wing like
swallows, and they must have very tough
insides to digest the big hard beetles with
which they stuff their stomachs, for though

BIRDS AT NIGHT 205

their mouths are wide, their beaks are very
tiny and weak, not at all like the strong
beaks of the moreporks, and quite unfitted
for crunching a beetle's hard shell.

The nightjar was the bird which the Romans
and Greeks called the goatsucker, because
they had an idea that it sucked the milk
from their goats at night, and you will find
the name goatsucker used for it in the older
English books on birds. Of course, though, it
does nothing of the kind ; when it is seen
near animals it is after the insects which are
attracted by them.

Speaking of the curious cries of the night-
jars reminds one of the bird which has made
such a great reputation by singing at night
— the nightingale. There are really three
kinds of nightingales, all very much alike :
the one we know, the nightingale of Eastern
Europe, which bird-fanciers in Germany call
the sprosser, and the Persian nightingale,
which is the bird which Eastern poets call
the bulbul. It is often mentioned by them,
because there is a pretty legend that the
bulbul is in love with the rose, and that the
queen of flowers does not open until she

206 TALKS ABOUT BIRDS

hears the bird sing. But all nightingales do
not sing only at night, and it is quite common
to hear them in the daytime, where there are
many of them. And there are plenty of other
birds which sing in the night, such as the
chattering little sedge-warbler in our country,
and the mocking-bird in America. But both
of these mix up their songs with the notes of
other birds, while the nightingale is original
and like nothing else. Shakespeare is not at
all fair to it when he says :

The nightingale, if she should sing by day,
When every goose is cackling, would be thought
No better a musician than the wren ;

for whatever other bird may sing near the
nightingale, its notes seem very thin and harsh
beside those of the celebrated singer. Our
western nightingale has the sweetest voice
of the three, but the two eastern ones sing
more loudly and strongly. You can judge
that the nightingale's song must be far better
than any other birds by the fact that the
Greeks and Romans noticed it and wrote
about it in their poetry, even as far back as
Homer's time, when they thought thrushes

BIRDS AT NIGHT 207

and blackbirds were very nice to eat, but did
not think their songs were worth mentioning ;
so it is quite plain that the nightingale does
not need the stage all to itself to be the chief
performer in Nature's orchestra.

CHAPTER XIV

BIRD ADVENTURERS

PEOPLE are rather inclined to get hold of the
idea that certain birds are proper for certain
countries, and that any strange new kind
which comes in from oversea will never be able
to settle down in a new home, and this is a
very unfortunate notion, for it is often made
an excuse for the shooting of rare visitors
which is still constantly going on, although
more and more people nowadays object to it.
It is a wrong notion, too, for it is impossible to
suppose that all the various kinds of birds have
always lived in the countries one finds them in
now ; many must have sent out colonies and
occupied fresh countries, and in a few cases
we have had a chance of seeing this happen.

For instance, the magpie is such a striking
fellow, with his pied plumage and long tail, to
say nothing of his noisy chattering, that he is

208

BIRD ADVENTURERS 209

a bird that can never have been overlooked
anywhere ; and yet up to the time of the
Stuarts people who went to Ireland were aston-
ished at finding no magpies there, though now
they are commoner in Ireland than they are
in Great Britain.

It was about 1676 when the first colonists
arrived, and they were supposed to have been
blown over from Wales. There were only a
few pairs, and it was lucky for them that there
were no people about at the time who collected
any bird which was new to a place, or all the
emigrants would have fallen victims. As it was
they increased and multiplied, and have shown
plainly how a bird nation, like a human one,
can spread and colonize when it has the chance.

The magpie is a strong cunning bird, and
can look after himself well, but a much bigger
deed in colonizing has been done at the
opposite end of the world by a weak and tiny
creature, the silver-eye or blight-bird of New
Zealand. This is a delicate little greenish
bird much like our willow-wren, but dis-
tinguished by white rings round its eyes ; it
had long been known as an Australian bird,
but in 1856 it began to appear in New Zealand,

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210 TALKS ABOUT BIRDS

to the great surprise of every one. Even the
native Maoris, who were good naturalists,
and had a name for every native bird, called
this one simply " the stranger," and thought it
came from some other country.

It was most noticed in the North Island of
New Zealand, but disappeared from there for
a couple of years; then for four years the
little birds travelled between the north and
south islands, nesting in the southern island,
and going to the northern one, which, of course,
according to the rule in the southern half of
the world, has a warmer climate, for the
winter. It then occurred to some of them
that they might as well stay in the north island
altogether, and since then they have spread
all over both islands, and are now the com-
monest of birds in New Zealand, except our
old friend the sparrow, which, however, only
got there by our assistance.

There seems to be good reason for thinking
that the little silver-eyes did not come all
the hundreds of miles from Australia, but
that they had been living in parts of the
South Island in small numbers all along ; but
even if this is so, they have been wonderful

BIRD ADVENTURERS

211

colonists to have spread over so large a
country in only about thirty years, as they
have done.

In our own country, during the last fifty

SAND-GHOUSE. (From Yarrell's Britixh Birds.)

years, we have seen the sand-grouse bravely
attempting to colonize, but in this case un-
fortunately without success. These strange
birds belong to a family of their own, and are

212 TALKS ABOUT BIRDS

not really grouse at all, but more nearly re-
lated to plovers and pigeons. As the picture
shows, they have very long wings and very
small feet ; in fact, they look as if they ought
to feed on insects in the air, like swallows,
instead of on seeds on the ground, as they
really do. The only use they make of their
long wings is in travelling, and in escaping
from hawks, which they generally do success-
fully, as they are so swift that only the very
fastest falcons can catch them.

In size sand -grouse are about as big as
turtle-doves, and their plumage is of a sandy-
colour speckled with black ; they fly in
flocks, calling out duck, duck-cluck, as they
go. The real home of these birds is in the dry
plains of eastern Asia, but for many years
they have been trying to push westwards and
invade Europe. The first colonists that
arrived here came in 1859, and other expe-
ditions went out in 1863, 1872, 1876 and 1888.
Often there were hundreds and even thousands
of birds in these invading armies, and they
spread all over Europe. That they meant to
settle down and colonize is plain, because both
in this country and in Denmark they bred.

BIRD ADVENTURERS 213

With us eggs were found in Yorkshire and
young birds in Morayshire, on open barren
ground, and if you live near such country you
may any year have the luck to come across a
young sand-grouse. If you do, you will know
it from a young partridge by the feet, which
have only three toes, and those so short and
wide, and so covered with down, that the foot
looks more like the paw of some little beast
than the foot of a bird. But for all their
persevering attempts to settle in unknown
countries, the sand-grouse have not succeeded
in living anywhere in Europe further west
than Russia. In our part of the world no
doubt the wet climate was what they could
not stand ; even in summer we get so much
wet, that short-legged birds like these, always
living and looking for food on the ground,
cannot help getting draggled and chilled.
Perhaps, later on, they may succeed better,
and get used to the climate by degrees, for in
all kinds of creatures you will find some which
will bear heat or cold or damp better than
others ; and any sand-grouse which are found
to be able to live on a damp soil will soon
increase and multiply, for fortunately a law

214 TALKS ABOUT BIRDS

has been passed to stop the shooting of these
interesting birds and give them a chance to
settle down among us if they can ever bear
our climate.

It seems strange that all the sand-grouse
expeditions went west ; but, after all, what
else could they have done ? East of them
was the Pacific Ocean, and there was no one
to tell them that across the waste of water
there were the thousands of miles of beautiful
dry open prairies in America, with no sand-
grouse or any other birds at all like them
living there. If they tried to spread south in
Asia they would find the country in the
possession of other nations of sand-grouse
wherever it was fit for such birds to live in,
so that there was nothing left for them but to
go west, and west they went accordingly.

When I was living in India I got some view
of a bird invasion myself. Thousands of
water-fowl of all sorts are netted by the natives
to supply the Calcutta market, and in
one winter, 1896, I found some ducks were
being brought in which I did not know. In
looks they were between the common wild
duck and the little diving tufted duck ; they

BIRD ADVENTURERS 215

had the squatty shape of the diver, but they
were not so small, and they had dark green
heads and chocolate breasts, though the green
was not nearly so bright as in the wild drake,
and there was no white collar. I soon found
out from books that they were of a species
known as Baer's white -eyed duck, and that
very little was known about them except
that they lived in the very far east of Asia ;
and they certainly were not known to come to
India. That winter I only saw eleven of them,
but next winter there must have been an in-
vasion in force, for I saw at least fifty of the
unfortunate captives in the market ; in fact,
for a few days they were quite one of the
commonest kinds of ducks there, and, of course,
where so many were caught, there must have
been many more that no one noticed. In
the following winter these unfortunate ducks
still came in, though they were not quite so
common in the market as they had been the
year before, but even yet no sportsman had
shot any, though later on they had more luck.
But after this the birds got scarcer, and when
I left India in 1902 they had ceased their
visits as far as one could see.

216 TALKS ABOUT BIRDS

But meanwhile they had strayed farther
west still, for one turned up in England ; it
was not an escaped bird, for the few that had
reached England alive had all been through
my hands, and were safe in the London Zoo.
One of these has only lately died ; he lived in
the pond close by the Fellows' Refreshment
Room for more than ten years, and I looked
on him as quite an old friend.

I found that most of these emigrants were
young birds, and I suppose that they had
simply lost their way ; but perhaps they have
founded a new colony in Siberia further west
than where they used to live. They could
not very well settle down in India altogether,
because India swarms with tree-ducks — queer
birds which roost and make their nests in trees,
and whistle instead of quacking. These tree-
ducks are very quarrelsome and jealous of
strangers, and any new duck which wanted to
settle in Indian waters would have a bad
time of it in the summer, when the heat of the
fierce Indian sun has dried up so much of the
water, and these quarrelsome whistlers want
all the ponds that are left for themselves. So
it is difficult to say whether this invasion was

WAXWIXG. Paijr -19, ADVLT licit)- YOUNG {right).

BIRD ADVENTURERS 217

a failure or not ; it certainly was if the stranger
ducks wanted to find new winter quarters.

India is the winter home of one of the
greatest of bird adventurers, the beautiful
starling which is called in our bird books the
rosy pastor, and sometimes comes to Britain
and gets shot and stuffed as usual. Many of
you may have seen it in a museum or collection
of British birds ; it is like no other bird either
here or anywhere else — about the size of our
starling, but with a long silky crest, and
plumage pied like a magpie's, only the light
parts, instead of being white, are a lovely
salmon pink. Sometimes the bird is brought
over alive and kept in aviaries ; but in con-
finement the lovely rosy tint of the feathers
changes to a dirty cream-colour, although the
bird remains healthy and jolly. He is really
one of the j oiliest birds in the world ; always
on the move, fighting and squabbling with his
companions and singing his song, which is a
most unmusical chattering. Rosy pastors,
although they are always quarrelling, are
sociable all the same, and always go about in
flocks ; and if one gets separated from his
companions he chums up with a flock of

218 TALKS ABOUT BIRDS

common starlings, though he finds even these
lively birds dull and slow compared with his
own kind. In the winter months these pink
starlings have a very merry time ; they eat
all sorts of food — insects, fruit, and even corn,
and often do a great deal of harm to the
farmers. But they do a great deal of good as
well, for if there is one thing they like more
than another it is locusts, and they devour
any number of these great destructive grass-
hoppers. In the spring they go off, still in
flocks, to settle their nesting affairs ; and
their nesting colonies may be found almost
anywhere in Western Asia and south-eastern
Europe. Generally they fix on a place where
there is a plague of locusts, and so they have
been known for centuries as useful birds and
man's allies against some of his worst enemies.
The furthest west one of their nesting colonies
has reached was in Verona in Italy ; a few
came to reconnoitre the ruins of an old castle
there, and a few days later the main army
arrived in their thousands. All the birds that
had lodgings in that castle then had notice
to quit ; the rosy pastors wanted all the room
there was, and even then some of them had

BIRD ADVENTURERS 219

to make their nests on the ground. They did
not stay long, for the eggs were soon hatched,
and the young fledged very quickly ; and then
these useful and beautiful visitors all went off,
and have never nested there since, for it is a
peculiarity of these birds that they are always
changing their nesting-places, although they
keep to India as their winter home. In this,
of course, they are different from most birds,
who cling to their nesting-place before every-
thing ; but perhaps such hordes of greedy
birds, all needing insect food for their young,
would not find enough in the same district
two years running.

But the greatest gipsy of the bird world is
that lovely creature known as the waxwing ;
this is also one of the rare visitors to our
country, but when it does come it is seen in
far greater numbers than the rosy pastor,
which only comes to us in ones and twos.
Although it has not such a very striking plum-
age as that bird, it is very different in shape
and plumage from any other bird we have,
and if you come across any and see them at
rest you cannot very well mistake them for
any other bird here. On the wing, however,

220 TALKS ABOUT BIRDS

if the colours are not to be seen, you could
easily mistake waxwings for starlings ; but
their habits are very different, for they hardly
ever come to the ground, preferring to keep to
the trees, where they feed on any berries they
can get, and they are not at all noisy birds,
though they often utter their soft gentle note.
They have got their name of waxwings from
the curious red spot on the wing, which is
formed by little horny tips to the feathers in
that part, just like tiny drops of red sealing-
wax ; some extra fine birds may even have
waxy tips to their tails as well. No one
knows where these pretty birds will turn up ;
their summer home is in the Arctic forests all
round the world, but they cannot be absolutely
depended on to nest in the same district, and
in winter they stray far and wide. Some-
times not one is seen here for years, then
flocks of hundreds may be found ; in Russia
they are commoner than in most places, and
many are caught for food, while others are
sent away as cage -birds, for they are very
much admired by bird-fanciers, and soon settle
down to life in a cage. Indeed, they are rather
too contented, for they are very much inclined

BIRD ADVENTURERS 221

to sit and stuff until they get so fat that they
die in fits. However, there is not so much
danger of this when they are in an aviary as
there is when they are kept in cages, and some
fanciers who have aviaries have even got these
beautiful birds to lay and hatch their eggs
during the last few years, though no young ones
have been reared so far. But even getting
eggs from waxwings would have been a great
triumph half a century ago, for then no one
knew what they were like, as no waxwings
had ever been found nesting. However, the
great egg - collector Mr. Wolley went to the
trouble of spending a whole winter in Lap-
land, in the hope of taking these eggs in the
spring, and he was not disappointed. It
turned out that the eggs and nest were nothing
so very remarkable, as one might have ex-
pected from the old birds being so different
from other birds in Europe ; the nest is simply
an ordinary cup-shaped one made in a tree,
with a foundation of twigs and a lining of
lichen, and the eggs are not unlike an ordinary
thrush's eggs, but not so pretty, for the
ground-colour is only bluish-grey instead of
bright blue. Still, it was considered a great

222 TALKS ABOUT BIRDS

feat of Mr. Wolley's to have got them at
all, and there is something appropriate in a
naturalist having taken more trouble than has
ever been taken before or since over bird's
eggs, when the eggs to be got were those of a
bird which, as I have said, is the greatest of
bird adventurers itself.

CHAPTER XV

SOME BIRD NOTABILITIES

SOME of the nobility of the bird world are well-
known to every one ; the eagle has for ages
been considered the king of birds, and he
deserves the title for his strength and majesty ;
the peacock and the swan can claim the rank
of princes for their beauty ; the nightingale
is the prince of singers, and the parrot tribe
are the jesters. The raven also has always
claimed a high rank for his wisdom. Our
Saxon ancestors believed that Odin, their
chief god, had two ravens, Thought and
Memory, who flew about the world all day
and came back at evening, to sit one on each
of his shoulders, and tell him all that they
had seen going on.

But there are other notable birds which are
not so well known to most people as these,
but have nevertheless got such reputations

223

224 TALKS ABOUT BIRDS

that stories are told about them, or they hold
important positions in their own countries.
It is not necessary for a bird to be big to be
a notability ; one of the most celebrated of
European birds is the little wren, and very
likely he has won his celebrity because he is
so small and at the same time so self-assertive,
with his loud song and cocked-up tail. So
we find all sorts of fairy stories told about this
tiny bird, and queer names given to him ;
in Yarkand they call him " the mouthful "
and in Iceland " the mouse's brother " ; the
Highlanders say that he said " it's the less
for that " when he took a drink out of the
sea, showing that he is supposed to think a lot
of himself although he is so small ; and there
is a very well-known tale of how he tried to
cheat the eagle out of his position as king of
the birds. The birds, so the story goes, were,
naturally enough, determined to take as their
king the bird who flew highest, and when the
competition took place it was soon seen that
the eagle was going to win. But when he had
soared so high that even he could get not a
stroke higher, and hung on his wings, consider-
ing, no doubt, which of his loyal subjects he

WEEN. Lower figure, ST. KILDA VARIETY.

SOME BIRD NOTABILITIES 225

would select to dine upon when he came down,
he was startled to hear a piping squeak a few
yards above him ; this came from the wren,
who had been sitting on his majesty's back
all the time, and was now taking his unfair
advantage and trying to break the record.
Of course, says the tale, neither the eagle nor
the other birds would admit the claim of
this impudent little rascal, but the wren has
gone about proclaiming himself as king of
the birds ever since, and several European
languages give him the title of king at the
present day.

But of all the European birds the one which
seems most suitable to have fairy-tales told
about it is the lovely hoopoe, which looks as
if it were some magic bird, with its beautiful
cinnamon crest, and the black and white
wings, which make it look like a butterfly
as it flies. It is a bird that no one can help
noticing, and I find that at the Zoo people
are more interested in it even than in the
gorgeous birds of paradise, even though few
of them know that the hoopoe is really an
English bird, coming to us every year, and even
sometimes rearing a brood here, when a stray

29

226 TALKS ABOUT BIRDS

pair have the luck to settle down in a place
where they are protected from the stupid
people who shoot at everything rare and
beautiful. The hoopoe is particularly a bird
of dry countries, and is very common in North
Africa and India; and Mohammedans, who
have a great respect for Solomon, who, they
think, was a great magician as well as a great
king, and knew the language of all birds and
beasts, believe that the hoopoe was a special
favourite of his. When it goes about prodding
in the ground for grubs with its long bill
they think that this is searching for hidden
treasure, or finding out where there is water
for a well ; and there is a pretty story of how
the hoopoe came to have its fan-like crest.
Once, it is said, Solomon was travelling and
suffered from the heat of the sun, and a flock
of hoopoes came and flew over his head and
shaded him with their wings. He was so
grateful that he promised them whatever
they should ask, and the silly birds asked
to have golden crowns on their heads. It is
not surprising that before long they were
sorry that they had chosen such a dangerous
ornament, for of course all the bird-catchers

SOME BIRD NOTABILITIES 227

were after them for their valuable head-dresses,
and soon there were only a few left to come back
to the wise king and beg him to take back
his gift. Solomon said that it would not be
the part of a king to do that ; crowns they

asked for and crowns they must always wear,
but he changed the crown of gold for a crown
of orange feathers, and the hoopoes have
carried this ever since. A very absurd tale,
perhaps you will say ; but, after all, it is not

228 TALKS ABOUT BIRDS

so bad to believe in fairy-tales about beautiful
birds, as the ignorant Indian natives do, as to
shoot them for museums, as we do in Europe.

The kingfisher is another of our birds
which every one has noticed — when they have
had the luck to get a look at a bird which is
so swift and shy — and so we find it is one of
the birds of legend, in Europe at all events ;
I never heard of any tales of it in India, where
it is common and tame, and only one among
many brilliant birds. It used to puzzle the
ancient Greeks very much ; at least, so one
would think from the story they told about
its nest. They thought that it was specially
favoured by the gods, who kept the sea calm
for the birds for a fortnight in winter, because
their nests floated on the water ; and as the
Greek name for the kingfisher is halcyon, we
even now speak of very beautiful weather,
or an unusually peaceful time, as " halcyon
days." Centuries later, even up to the time
of Shakespeare, people still had the idea that
kingfishers had so much to do with the weather
that even a preserved specimen hung up in
a room, would show the way the wind was
blowing by turning its beak in that direction ;

SOME BIRD NOTABILITIES 229

in fact, that a dead kingfisher indoors was just
as good as a weathercock outside. Another
story told how the kingfisher was supposed to
have got its beautiful colours, so much more
brilliant than those of any other bird in our
climate. This tale said that when the dove
which Noah sent out from the ark returned
without finding land, Noah sent out the king-
fisher, which was then an ordinary-looking
grey bird, no doubt thinking that being so
used to water it would find its way about
better. But the kingfisher, which was very
tired of the ark, did not trouble itself with
looking for land, but flew up high, so high
that its back was dyed deep with the blue of
heaven, and its breast scorched to a chestnut
colour by the glare of the sun. Then it began
to think of coming back ; but it had been
away so long that the dove had been sent out
and returned again, the flood had gone down,
Noah had sent out all the beasts and birds,
and had left the ark and broken it up. So
the kingfisher could not find its home again,
and to this day it follows the brooks and
rivers and shore, trying to find Noah's ark !
So much for the wav a beautiful bird is

230 TALKS ABOUT BIRDS

supposed to have got its plumage ; the
Ceylonese tell another tale of how another
lost it. This is the pitta, a very pretty bird,
much like a thrush in size and shape and
habits, but very beautifully coloured, green
and blue, red and buff, black and white, all
showing on its plumage. But when you look
at it you cannot help thinking that it wants
one thing to make it really smart, and that is
a proper tail ; it has only a ridiculous little
stump, and you would not notice that if the
bird were not always moving it up and down.
But, says the old tale, the pitta did have a
fine train once, but the peacock, which then
had none, borrowed it for a wedding costume,
and never gave it back again to the owner.

To turn from birds celebrated in ancient
fairy-tales and fiction, we come to two strange
ones which have been honoured by being put
on postage-stamps and crests. Of course all
of you who collect have seen eagles and swans
on such designs, but it is not every one who
knows what is the bird on the Guatemala
stamps ; it has a long tail, and is sometimes
called a parrot in stamp-catalogues. But it
is a far more splendid bird than any parrot

232 TALKS ABOUT BIRDS

—the quezal or resplendent trogon. This
lovely bird is only found in Central America,
and in ancient times the native kings used
to allow no one else to wear its plumage
but themselves. And this plumage is more
splendid than that of any other bird, being of
the most brilliant golden green, with scarlet
on the breast, and as the quezal is as big as a
pigeon it is large enough to be very striking,
and is certainly finer than any of the birds of
paradise. It is only the male quezal that has
the long streaming feathers, but the hen is
just as brilliant in colour. Quezals are not
very energetic birds ; they sit on the boughs
and fly out to pluck berries now and then ;
in the forests they live in food is abundant
enough to be got in this very lazy way.

Although there are many other sorts of
trogons, none are nearly so splendid as the
quezal ; but the bird I am mentioning as
figuring in a coat of arms is even more extra-
ordinary in its way. This is the secretary-
bird of Africa, which figures in the coat of
arms of Cape Colony, and is protected by law
for its services in killing snakes there. It
looks, as the picture shows, more like an eagle

STABLING. Page 2«. ADULT (right). YOUNG (left).

SOME BIRD NOTABILITIES 233

on stilts than anything else, and it really is
a sort of running eagle ; it is very active on its
legs, but although it has large wings like an
ordinary eagle's, it has but little power of

v

SECRETARY-BIRD.

flight, and cannot go far at a time on the wing.
No doubt it has let its wing - muscles get
weak for want of practice, as it finds it can do
all its business on foot. They generally have
the secretary-bird on view at the Zoo, and the

234 TALKS ABOUT BIRDS

keepers teach it to show how it kills the snakes
by throwing it a dead rat tied to a string ; it
is astonishing to see how quickly it strikes with
its foot on the prey, but anything that lives on
poisonous snakes has to be quick, or it will not
live to have many fights with them.

The last bird I shall say anything about is
one which has never figured as one of the
world's famous birds ; it is nothing more or
less than our common starling, about which
there are no legends or stories so far as I know,
though it has been known at least since the
time of Homer, who speaks of starlings flying
in a cloud. No doubt it is because starlings
go so much in flocks that they have not
become notable birds, for birds with reputa-
tions do not go in crowds ; but still the starling
is one of the most wonderful birds in the
world. He lives anywhere, on the wild cliffs
among the sea-birds, or in the middle of our
big towns ; he can do almost anything — fly
well, run fast, and hop about quickly in trees ;
he can eat anything, though he likes insects
best, and he can imitate almost any bird's
note, and does so, not only when he is tamed,
but in his wild state, just for the fun of the

SOME BIRD NOTABILITIES 235

thing. In this he is very different from the
parrot tribe, which never, so far as I have
seen or heard, exercise their mocking powers
when they are wild ; they have to be put in
prison to make them use their abilities. Then
the starling, with our help, has been a most
successful colonist ; he is really a bird of
Europe and the temperate parts of Asia, but
he has been taken to Australia, New Zealand,
and North America, and got on well every-
where.

It is fortunate that he is generally a useful
bird, perhaps the most useful wild bird in the
world ; but at any rate, with our help or
without it, he can make his way, and is already,
most likely, • the commonest bird in Britain,
and very likely to be the commonest bird in
the world. There is always something new to
be found out about his notes and habits, and
so we have in him a bird notability who is
always with us, and not the least worthy of
study of all the many birds of which I have
tried to say something in these few chapters.

INDEX

Africa, great bustard of, 83

Call-ducks, 82

America, house-swift of, 166

Canaries, 95, 102, 103, 121

" Apostle bird," 181

Canvas-back duck, 45

Apteryxes, 195

Cariama, 125

Auks, 142, 143

Carrion-crow, 170

Australian Magpie, 128

Carrion-hawk, 64

Cassowaries, 82

Baer's white-eyed duck, 215
Bank-swallow, 175

Chimney-swallow, 166
Cock, Brahma, 92

Barbets, 63
Barn-Owl, 198

fighting, 1
Cockatoos, 67

Baya, 23

Common gull, 137

Bee humming-bird, 84

Coot, 158

" Bird's nest soup," 183

Cormorants, 26, 152

Birds about towns, 160

Cow-bird, brown, 62

at night, 189

common, 61

at play, 66
at school, 110

glossy, 62
Cow-birds, 61, 62

boarded out, 48

Crane, 127

in the nursery, 94

Sarus, 91

that keep order, 123

white-necked, 68

trained, 21

Crested Grebe, 101

under water, 138

Crow, the, 71

Blight-bird, 209
Boobies, 41

carrion, 170
house, 118

Brahma cock, 92

king, 131

Brush-turkey, 108
Bulbul, 205

piping, 128
" Crow-pheasant," 58

Bumble-bee hummer, 85

Crows, 72

Bustard, great, 83

Cuckoo, American, 59

Butcher-bird, 35, 51

black, 56

Buzzard, 119

common, 48

237

238

TALKS ABOUT BIRDS

Dabchick, 75, 101, 112, 129, 149

Grey struthidea, 181

Darter, 154

Guillemot, 142

Darwin's Rhea, 82

Guinea-fowls, 15

Dippers, 145

Gull, black-headed, 39

Divers, 147

common, 137

Duck, Baer's white-eyed, 215

greater, black-backed, 126

canvas-back, 45

herring, 39

eider, 156

pirate, 40

Muscovy, 17

Scoresby's, 76

Ducks, 1 1

skua, 137

call, 82

Gulls, 39

tree, 216

tufted, 138, 155
Dwarfs, 79

Halcyon, 228
Hawaii, wild goose in, 8

Hawk, carrion, 64

Eagle, harpy, 36

pigmy, 90

tawny, 44

sparrow, 90

white-headed, 43, 135

Hawks, 30

Eagles, 119, 223

wild, still caught at Valkens-

trained for hunting, 36

waard, 34

Emu, 82

Hedge-sparrow, 49, 54

Heron, 97

Fagging, 39

Herring-Gulls, 39

Falcon, peregrine, 31, 73
Falconets, 90

Hoatzin, 106
Hoopoe, 225

Finch, house, 164
Fish-hawk, 136

Honey-guide, 45
Hornbills, 185

Flamingoes, 11, 12
Frigate-bird, 41

House-crows, 118
-finch, 164
-martin, 175

" Galahs," 67

-mynah, 165

Geese, Chinese, 10

-sparrow, 160
-swift, 166

wild, 7
Giants, 79

Humming-birds in confinement,

OlT

Goatsucker, 205

o<

Gold-crest, 175

Golden oriole, 175

Ibis, 91

plover, 97
Goose, 7

Jackdaw, 128

Goshawk, 31

Java sparrow, 163

Great auk, 143
bustard, 83

Jay, 128
Jungle-fowl, 2

of Africa, 83

Grebe, great crested, 101, 151

Keas, 69

Grebes, 147

King-bird, 134

INDEX

239

King-crow, 131

" Parasitic" birds, 47, 48

Kingfishers, 105, 228

Parrakeets, green, 24

Kiskadee,or sulphury tyrant, 167
Kite, the, 71, 119, 130, 168

Parrots, young, 104
Partridge, 116

yellow-billed, 170

Peacocks, 11, 74, 226

Kiwis, 195

Peahen, in Covent Garden, 192

Koel, 56

Penguins, 99, 138

Peregrine Falcon, 31, 73

Linnet, 121

Pheasant, 113

Pied Grallina, 182

Macaws, 68
Magpie, 208

Pigeon, sparrow chasing, 73
Pigeons, 10, 66, 95, 102

Australian, 128

" squatter," 95

-lark, 182

wood, 126

Martin, 121
Mergansers, 156

Pigmy Hawks, 90
Owls, 91

Merlin, 32

Piping crow, 128

Missel-thrush, 136

Pirate-Gulls, 40

Moas, 82

Pitta, 230

Moorhens, 100

Plover, golden, 97

Moreporks, 202

Poultry, 1

" Moselikatze's bird," 133

Puffin, 142

Mound-birds, 108

Mudlark, 182

Quail, 193

Muscovy Duck, 98
Mynah, house, 165

Quaker parrakeet or Republican
parrot, 178

Quezal, 232

Nests, strange, 174

Nightingale, 120, 205, 223

Razorbill, 142

Nightjar, 55, 203
Nursery, birds in the, 94

Raven, the, 71, 223
Redpoll, 21

Nuthatch, 182

Republican parrot or quaker

parrakeet, 178

Osprey, 43, 136
Oven-bird, 178

" Republican " weaver-bird, 177
Resplendent trogon, 232

Owl, brown, 197

Rhea, Darwin's, 82

little, 199

Rheas, 80

pigmy, 91

Robin, 54

tawny, 197

Rollers, 133

white, 198

Rosy pastors, 217

young, 104

Owls, 196

Sand-grouse, 211

Sand-martin, 174

Paauw, great bustard of Africa,

Sarus Crane, 91

83

Saw-bills, 156

240

TALKS ABOUT BIRDS

School, birds at, 110
Scoresby's gull, 75
Secretary-bird, 232
Shag, 153
Shrike, 35
Silver-eye, 209
Skua, 40, 137
Skylark, 53
Snake-bird, 154
Snipes, 194
Sparrow, 115

chasing pigeon, 73

hedge, 49, 54

house, 160

Java, 163

tree, 162

Sparrow-hawk, 90
Sprosser, 205
"Squatter" pigeons, 95
Squirrel and crows, 72
Starlings, 111, 234
Stork, 172

adjutant, 171
Strange nests, 174
Sulphury tyrant (Kiskadee),

167
Swallow, 67, 175

bank, 175

tribe, 165
Swans, 44, 83, 223
Swifts, edible-nest, 183

Tauager, black, 53
Thrush, Missel, 136
Tinamou, 76
Titlark, 51

Towns, birds about, 160
Tree-ducks, 216
Tree-sparrow, 162
Tree-swifts, 185
Trogon, resplendent, 232
Troupials, 167
Tufted ducks, 153
Turkey, 16
brush, 108

Valkenswaard, wild hawks still

caught at, 34
Vulture, 170

Wagtail, 54

Water, birds under, 138
Water-ouzels, 145
Waxwing, 219
Weaver-birds, 23, 175
Weaver-bird, " republican," 177
Widgeon, 45
Wild fowls, 1
Woodcocks, 101, 194
Wood-pigeons, 126
Wren, 84, 112, 174, 191, 224
golden-crested, 83, 84

Printed by R. & R. CLARK, LIMITED, Edinburgh.

BIRDS OF BRITAIN

BY J. LEWIS BONHOTE, M.A., F.L.S., F.Z.S.

(Member of the British Ornithologists' Union)

CONTAINING 100 FULL- PAGE ILLUSTRATIONS IN COLOUR
SELECTED BY

H. E. DRESSER

FROM HIS "BIRDS OF EUROPE"
SQUARE DEMY 8vo (9 x 6£ INCHES), BOUND IN CLOTH, GILT TOP

(Post free 201 6) PRICE 2O/" NET (Post free 20 [ 6)

NOTE

THE growth in the number of bird lovers in this country during the
last few years has been enormous, and the present volume is written
in popular style to assist those who wish to read from Nature herself,
and to learn more of the ways and habits of the wild birds they may
come across in their rambles.

Shorter notices are also given of all the rarer birds, with notes to
assist in identification, so that, as well as learning more fully about the
commoner birds, the reader will have a complete account of every
species he is likely to meet with in Great Britain. Mr. Bonhote is an
ornithologist of considerable experience, and most of the information
has been gleaned first-hand from Nature herself.

The i oo full-page coloured plates have been carefully chosen, so as to
show examples of almost all the different types of birds that are dealt with.

SOME PRESS OPINIONS

' ' The subject is treated in an exhaustive way, and the information conveyed is
both detailed and exact. The descriptions, whether by the external appearance of
the birds or by their habits and modes of life, are obviously based on personal
observations conducted at close quarters by the artifices known to the enthusiastic
student of animal life. Mr. Dresser's remarkably good illustrations, in which the
colouring — a very difficult matter to attain exactly — is specially worthy of commenda-
tion, add another charm to what is a most attractive volume." — Scotsman.

" By all lovers of birds the book is sure of a hearty welcome." — Daily Telegraph.

PUBLISHED BY
ADAM AND CHARLES BLACK, 4, 5, & 6 SOHO SQUARE, LONDON, W.

PEEPS AT NATURE

EDITED BY THE REV. CHARLES A. HALL

Large Crown 81/0, Cloth,
Each volume containing 16 Full-page Illustrations (8 in Colour)

(By Post 1/10) PRICE 1/6 NET EACH (By Post If 10)

WILD FLOWERS
AND THEIR WONDERFUL WAYS

BY THE REV. CHARLES A. HALL

BRITISH LAND MAMMALS

BY A. NICOL SIMPSON, F.G.S.

BIRD LIFE OF THE SEASONS

BY PERCIVAL WESTELL, F.L.S.

NOTE

THE purpose of this series of books is to provide young people and uninitiated
grown-up persons with inexpensive but reliable introductions to the study of the
various departments of Nature. The series is being issued under the editorship
of the Rev. Charles A. Hall, whose Open Book of Nature, recently published, has
been received with a chorus of acclamation. Each Volume is written in simple
terms, but scientific accuracy is not sacrificed to popularity. As the title of the
series indicates, the books are simple " Peeps" ; they are not intended to be dry
compendiums. It is hoped that they will be the means of winning their readers
to detailed study and accurate out-door observation. The wealth of coloured and
photographic illustrations, good typography, and reliable authorship, render the
series a marvel of cheapness. Any one of the volumes will make an excellent
school reader, and they are eminently suitable as gift-books or prizes.

OTHER VOLUMES IN PREPARATION

PUBLISHED BY ADAM AND CHARLES BLACK, 4, 5, AND 6 SOHO SQUARE, LONDON, W.

BEAUTIFULLY ILLUSTRATED IN COLOUR

BEASTS & BIRDS

A Nature Book for Boys and Girls

BY C. VON WYSS

CROWN QUARTO, CONTAINING 55 ILLUSTRATIONS,

31 OF WHICH ARE IN COLOUR, WITH A PICTURE

IN COLOUR ON THE COVER

PRICE

/6

PRESS OPINION

" This is described as a Nature Book for boys and girls, and would make a
charming and welcome gift for children who are just old enough to learn about, and
be interested in, animals. A short account of animals and their haunts and customs
is given in simple straightforward language, and the profuse illustrations, both plain
and coloured, with which the book is furnished, help to make the subject additionally
clear and attractive." — Sunday Times,

LIFE=STORIES OF ANIMALS

A cheap edition of the " Animal Autobiographies " Series. Each

containing 8 full-page illustrations in colour. Large crown 8vo,

cloth. Price 35. 6d. each.

Title. Author.

THE BLACK BEAR. H. PERRY ROBINSON.
THE CAT. VIOLET HUNT.

THE DOG. G. E. MITTON.

THE FOWL. J. \V. HURST.

THE RAT.
THE SQUIRREL.
THE TIGER.

G. M. A. HEWETT.
T. C. BRIDGES.

Illustrator.
J. VAN OORT.
ADOLPH BIRKENRUTH.
JOHN WILLIAMSON.
ALLAN STEWART and
MAUDE SCRIVENER.
S. BAGHOT DE LA BERE.
ALLAN STEWART.

A. F. MOCKLER-FERRYMAN. HARRY DIXON.

Each volume deals entirely with the life-story of some one animal, and is not
merely a collection of animal stories. It is necessary to emphasize this, as the idea
of the series has sometimes been misunderstood. Children who have outgrown
fairy-tales undoubtedly prefer this form of story to any other, and a more wholesome
way of stimulating their interest in the living things around them could hardly be
found. Though the books are designed for boys and girls of all ages, many adults
have been attracted by their freshness, and have found in them much that ihey did
not know before.

PUBLISHED BY ADAM AND CHARLES BLACK, 4, 5 AND 6 SOHO SQUARE, LONDON, W.

THE

OPEN BOOK OF NATURE

A BOOK OF NATURE-STUDY FOR YOUNG PEOPLE
BY THE REV. CHARLES A. HALL

CONTAINING 1 6 FULL-PAGE ILLUSTRATIONS IN COLOUR, 114 REPRO-
DUCTIONS FROM PHOTOGRAPHS, AND 96 DIAGRAMS IN THE TEXT

Large Crown 8vo. PRICE NET Bound in Cloth

(Post free, price js. lod.)

EXTRACTS FROM EARLY PRESS NOTICES

" This pleasantly written book is well fitted to arouse in young people an
interest in the study of Nature, while many of older growth will probably find in
its pages much that is not unprofitable reading. . . . The chief difference
between this book and most others on Nature-study is the prominence which it
gives to geological subjects. . . . Copiously illustrated." — Athenczum.

" Comprehensive though it is, it has been planned on clear and simple lines.
The terms used are, to begin with, non-scientific, though leading by natural,
simple process to the proper scientific words. . . . The author writes in a free,
bright, and fascinating style ; the book is equally fitted for use by teachers, or for
study by the young people themselves." — Aberdeen Free Press.

" An ideal natural history book. . . . Ought to be in every school library
in the three kingdoms. . . . No one can read it without feeling the lure of
Nature-study." — Review of Reviews.

" Mr. Hall's excellent volume introduces readers to practically every branch
of Nature-study. . . . His descriptions are invariably clear, and the various
subjects raised are well managed. . . . The volume is good value in every way."
— The Bookman.

" Mr. Hall's agreeable, interesting, and instructive volume. ... It should
attract not only young people, but anyone looking for an easy introduction to
Nature-study. " — Scotsman.

" Impossible for any boy or girl to read the book without being stimulated to
some love of Nature." — York Observer.

PUBLISHED BY
ADAM AND CHARLES BLACK, 4, 5 & 6 SOHO SQUARE, LONDON, W.

A 000 029 685 5