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A YEAR WITH THE BIRDS

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Fox and Snow-finches.— p. 100.

A YEAR
WITH THE BIRDS

BY

W. WARDE FOWLER

AUTHOR OF "TALES OF THE BIRDS," ETC.

" L'uccello ha maggior copia di vita esteriore e interiore, che non hanno
gli altri animali. Ora, se la vita e cosa piu perfetta che il suo contrario,
almeno nelle creature viventi : e se perci6 la maggior copia di vita e maggiore
perfezione ; anche per questo modo s^guita che la natura degli uccelli sia
piu perfetta." — LEOPARDI : Elogio degli uccelli.

WITH ILL US TRA TIONS B V BR YA N HOOK

MACMILLAN AND CO., LIMITED
ST. MARTIN'S STREET, LONDON

1914

COPYRIGHT.

First two editions published elsewhtre. Third Edition, 1889.
Reprinted, 1891, 1902, I9M-

PATRI MEO

QVI CVM AVCVPIS NOMINE
AVIVM AMOREM

FILIO
TRADIDIT

357788

PREFACE.

HTHIS little book is nothing more than an attempt to
help those who love birds, but know little about
them, to realize something of the enjoyment which I
have gained, in work-time as well as in holiday, for
many years past, from the habit of watching and listening
for my favourites.

What I have to tell, such as it is, is told in close
relation to two or three localities : an English city, an
English village, and a well-known district of the Alps.
This novelty (if it be one) is not likely, I think, to cause
the ordinary reader any difficulty. Oxford is so familiar
to numbers of English people apart from its permanent
residents, that I have ventured to write of it without
stopping to describe its geography ; and I have pur-
posely confined myself to the city and its precincts, in
order to show how rich in bird-life an English town may
be. The Alps, too, are known to thousands, and the
walk I have described in Chapter III., if the reader
should be unacquainted with it, may easily be followed
by reference to the excellent maps of the Oberland in
the guide-books of Ball or Baedeker. The chapters

viii Preface.

about the midland village, which lies in ordinary English
country, will explain their own geography.

One word about the title and the arrangement of the
chapters. We Oxford tutors always reckon our year as
beginning with the October term, and ending with the
close of the Long Vacation. My chapters are arranged
on this reckoning ; to an Oxford residence from October
to June, broken only by short vacations, succeeds a brief
holiday in the Alps ; then comes a sojourn in the mid-
lands ; and of the leisurely studies which the latter
part of the Long Vacation allows, I have given an
ornithological specimen in the last chapter.

Some parts of the first, second, and fifth chapters
have appeared in the Oxford Magazine, and I have to
thank the Editors for leave to reprint them. The third
chapter, or rather the substance of it, was given as a
lecture to the energetic Natural History Society of
Marlborough College, and has already been printed in
their reports ; the sixth chapter has been developed out
of a paper lately read before the Oxford Philological
Society.

The reader will notice that I have said very little
about uncommon birds, and have tried to keep to the
habits, songs, and haunts of the commoner kinds, which
their very abundance endears to their human friends. I
have made no collection, and it will therefore be obvious
to ornithologists that I have no scientific knowledge of
structure and classification beyond that which I have
obtained at second-hand. And, indeed, if I thought I

Preface. ix

were obtruding myself on the attention of ornithologists,
I should feel as audacious as the Robin which is at this
moment, in my neighbour's outhouse, sitting on eggs for
which, with characteristic self-confidence, she has chosen
a singular resting-place in an old cage, once the prison-
house of an ill-starred Goldfinch.

There are few days, from March to July, when even
the shortest stroll may not reveal something of interest
to the careful watcher. It was pleasant, this brilliant
spring morning, to find that a Redstart, perhaps the
same individual noticed on page 120, had not forgotten
my garden during his winter sojourn in the south ; and
that a pair of Pied Flycatchers, the first of their species
which I have known to visit us here, were trying to
make up their minds to build their nest in an old gray
wall, almost within a stone's throw of our village church.

KlNGHAM, OXON.

April 24, 1886.

NOTE TO SECOND EDITION.

MY little book, which never expected to spread the
circle of its acquaintance much beyond its Oxford
friends, has been introduced by the goodwill of reviewers
to a wider society, and has been apparently welcomed
there. To enable it to present itself in the world to
better advantage, I have added to it a new chapter on
the Alpine birds, and have made a considerable number
of additions and corrections in the original chapters ;
but I hope I have left it as modest and unpretending
as I originally meant it to be.

During the process of revision, I have been aided by
valuable criticisms and suggestions from several ornitho-
logical and bird-loving friends, and particularly from
Rev. H. A. Macpherson, A. H. Macpherson, Esq., O. V.
Aplin, Esq., and W. T. Arnold, Esq., whose initials will
be found here and there in notes and appendices. I
have also to thank Archdeacon Palmer for most kindly
pointing out some blemishes in the chapter on the Birds

of Virgil.

W. WARDE FOWLER.

LINCOLN COLLEGE, OXFORD.
Nov. 19, 1886.

NOTE TO THIRD EDITION.

THOUGH my knowledge of birds has naturally grown
fast since I wrote these chapters, I have thought it
better, except in one instance, to resist the temptation
of re-writing or interpolating for this edition. The book
stands almost exactly as it was when the second edition
was issued ; but the list of Oxford birds is omitted, as
Mr. Aplin's work on the Birds of Oxfordshire, shortly
to be published by the Clarendon Press, will embody
all the information there given. I regret that the
frontispiece, drawn for the original edition by my friend
Professor W. Baldwin Spencer, can no longer be
reproduced.

I wish to express my thanks to Mr. B. H. Blackwell,
of Oxford, not only for the care and pains he bestowed
upon the issue of the former editions, but for the ready
courtesy with which he fell in with my wish to transfer
the book to the hands of Messrs. Macmillan.

W. W. F.

June 4, 1889.

CONTENTS.

CHAPTER I.
OXFORD: AUTUMN AND WINTER.

PAGE

How I came to notice birds — Oxford favourable to bird-life
— Late lingerers in October — Migration and pugnacity of
Robins — The Bullfinch and the buds — Parsons' Pleasure
and the Cherwell — Kingfishers rare in the summer term —
Colouring of the Kingfisher — The Gray Wagtail at the weir ;
its beauty — The Lesser Redpoll — An eccentric Jack-snipe —
Birds of the Park and Magdalen Walk— Lesser Spotted
Woodpecker — Christchurch meadow and the Botanic Gar-
den ; Titmice, Blackbirds, Redwings — Sea-birds in Port
Meadow I

CHAPTER II.
OXFORD : SPRING AND SUMMER.

Departure of winter birds — Warblers ; explanation of the term
—Different kinds of warblers— Tree- warblers— Chiff-chaff's
arrival— Willow- warbler's song and nest — Blackcap and
Garden-warbler ; their songs compared — The two White-
throats at Parsons' Pleasure ; how to distinguish them —
River- warblers ; comparative rarity of Reed- warbler ; his
song compared with Sedge-warbler's — The Redstart and
pollard willows — Summer habits of Oxford Sparrows — Fly-
catcher and other birds in the Parks 35

xiv Contents.

CHAPTER III.
THE ALPS IN JUNE.

PAGE

The Alpine pastures in June — Ornithologists and the Alps —
Johann Anderegg, a peasant naturalist — Number of species
in Switzerland ; abundance of food — Migration, complete and
partial — The Alps how far a barrier to migrating birds — The
three ornithological regions of Switzerland ; migrations within
them — Stanz-stadt and its reed-bed — Valley of the Aa —
White Wagtail and Black Redstart— The Swallow family—
The Alps proper and their birds ; Water-pipit, etc. — Citril
Finch at the Engstlen Alp — Snow-finches — Rock-creeper;
its habits— Birds of the pine-forests ; Woodpeckers, Tit-
mice—Crested Tit in the Gentelthal— Bonelli's Warbler at
Meiringen 68

CHAPTER IV.
A MIDLAND VILLAGE. GARDEN AND MEADOW.

Description of the vale of the Evenlode — Situation of the
village ; variety of scenery — Movements of the birds in the
district— A bird-haunted garden — Redstart ; its increase of
late years — A Black Redstart on an ugly wall — Cuckoo and
Robin's nest — Ingenious Nuthatches — Spotted Flycatcher ;
his peculiarities — Allotments and Rooks — Green Sandpiper in
the brook ; occurrence in midwinter — Habits of young birds
—Rooks hostile to intruders— Long-tailed Tits on the ice . 1 1 1

CHAPTER V.
A MIDLAND VILLAGE : RAILWAY AND WOODLAND.

Railways favourable to birds — Whinchat and Stonechat —
Peculiarities of the Buntings— Nests by the railway— Ring-

Contents. xv

ousel — Song of the Tree-pipit — Pipits, Larks, Wagtails —
Predatory birds of the woods — Interview with a Grasshopper
Warbler ; its " reel " — Beauty of the Nightingale ; its habits
and song — Song-birds of the woods — Woodpeckers — Birds
of the hills — Local migrations during the year 144

CHAPTER VI.
THE ALPS IN SEPTEMBER.

Geography of Switzerland — Bird-catching on the passes —
Birds on the Briinig Pass— The Hasli-Thal— Crossbills— The
Gadmen-Thal and Stein-alp — Migration on the Susten-pass
— Hospenthal — Departure of Swallows — Migration of insects
— Return to Meiringen — The Swiss peasant 177

CHAPTER VII.
THE BIRDS OF VIRGIL.

Virgil's haunts in Italy, in boyhood and manhood— Virgil
true to nature — Pigeons in his poems — Crane and Stork ;
their migrations — Corvus and cornix — Swans — The ' alcyon,'
in Latin and Greek ornithology— Voice of the Kingfisher—
The 'acalanthis7 ; warblers in Italy and Greece— Virgil's
sea-birds and swallows — Nightingale in Homer and Virgil —
Simile of ghosts and birds in Sixth Aeneid— Autumn migra-
tions from the north 210

NOTES 255

INDEX 263

LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS.

PAGE

Fox and Snow Finches Frontispiece

First Lesson in Flying 20

Redpoles 22

Early Ablutions 28

The Tern, or Sea Swallow 34

Fieldfares 35

Reed Warbler to face 42

Nest on College Bell 67

The Alps in June Headpiece 68

Bonelli's Warbler no

Kingham Rectory in

Feat of a Nuthatch 129

Nest of Spotted Flycatcher 131

Rooks worrying Gulls 142

Whinchat on Telegraph Wires 144

Grasshopper Warbler , 155

Outdoor Relief 175

The Alps in September Headpiece 177

Crossbills to face 189

Johann Anderegg 209

Willow Warbler's Nest 254

A YEAR WITH THE BIRDS.

CHAPTER I.

OXFORD : AUTUMN AND WINTER.

FOR several years past I have contrived, even
on the busiest or the rainiest Oxford mornings, to
steal out for twenty minutes or half an hour soon
after breakfast, and in the Broad Walk, the
Botanic Garden, or the Parks, to let my senses
exercise themselves on things outside me. This
habit dates from the time when I was an ardent
fisherman, and daily within reach of trout ; a long
spell of work in the early morning used to be
effectually counteracted by an endeavour to beguile
a trout after breakfast.

By degrees, and owing to altered circumstances,
€ B

and Winter.

the rod has given way to a field-glass, and the
passion for killing has been displaced by a desire
to see and know ; a revolution which I consider
has been beneficial, not only to the trout, but to
myself. In the peaceful study of birds I have
found an occupation which exactly falls in with
the habit I had formed — for it is in the early
morning that birds are most active and least dis-
turbed by human beings ; an occupation too which
can be carried on at all times of the day in Oxford
with much greater success than I could possibly
have imagined when I began it. Even for one
who has not often time or strength to take long
rambles in the country round us, it is astonishing
how much of the beauty, the habits, and the songs
of birds may be learnt within the city itself, or in
its immediate precincts.

The fact is, that for several obvious reasons,
Oxford is almost a Paradise of birds. All the
conditions of the neighbourhood, as it is now, are
favourable to them. The three chief requisites
of the life of most birds are food, water, and some
kind of cover. For food, be they insect-eaters,
or grub-eaters, they need never lack near Oxford.

A Paradise of Birds.

Our vast expanse of moist alluvial meadow-
unequalled at any other point in the Thames
valley — is extraordinarily productive of grubs and
flies, as it is of other things unpleasant to man.
Any one can verify this for himself who will walk
along the Isis on a warm summer evening, or
watch the Sand-martins as he crosses the meadows
to Hincksey. Snails too abound ; no less than
ninety-three species have been collected and re-
corded by a late pupil of mine. The ditches in all
the water-meadows are teeming with fresh-water
mollusks, and I have seen them dying by hundreds
when left high and dry in a sultry season. Water
of course is everywhere ; the fact that our city
was built at the confluence of Isis and Cherwell
has had a good deal of influence on its bird-life.
But after all, as far as the city itself is concerned,
it is probably the conservative tranquillity and the
comfortable cover of the gardens and parks that
has chiefly attracted the birds. I fancy there is
hardly a town in Europe of equal size where such
favourable conditions are offered them, unless it
be one of the old-fashioned well-timbered kind,

such as Wiesbaden, Bath, or Dresden. The

K 2

Oxford: Autumn and Winter.

college system, which has had so much influence
on Oxford in other ways, and the control exercised
by the University over the government of the
town, have had much to do with this, and the
only adverse element even at the present day is
the gradual but steady extension of building to
the north, south, and west. A glance at a map
of Oxford will show how large a space in the
centre of the town is occupied by college gardens,
all well-timbered and planted, and if to these are
added Christchurch Meadow, Magdalen Park, the
Botanic Garden, and the Parks, together with
the adjoining fields, it will be seen that there
must be abundant opportunity for observations, and
some real reason for an attempt to record them.

Since the appearance in the Oxford Magazine,
in May, 1884, of a list of " The Birds of Oxford
City," I have been so repeatedly questioned
about birds that have been seen or heard, that it
is evident there are plenty of possessors of eyes
and ears, ready and able to make use of them.
There are many families of children growing up
in " the Parks " who may be glad to learn that life
in a town such as Oxford is, does not exclude

A Paradise of Birds.

them from some of the pleasures of the country.
And I hold it to be an unquestioned fact, that
the direction of children's attention to natural
objects is one of the most valuable processes in
education. When these children, or at least the
boys among them, go away to their respective
public schools, they will find themselves in the
grip of a system of compulsory game-playing
which will effectually prevent any attempt at
patient observation. There is doubtless very
much to be said for this system, if it be applied,
like a strong remedy, with real discriminating
care ; but the fact is beyond question, that it is
doing a great deal to undermine and destroy
some of the Englishman's most valuable habits
and characteristics, and among others, his acute-
ness of observation, in which, in his natural state,
he excels all other nationalities. It is all the more
necessary that we should teach our children, before
they leave home, some of the simplest and most
obvious lessons of natural history.

So in the following pages it will be partly my
object to write of the Oxford birds in such a way
that any one of any age may be able to recognize

Oxford: Autumn and Winter.

some of the most interesting species that meet
the eye or ear of a stroller within the precincts
of the city. And with this object before me, it
will be convenient, I think, to separate winter
and summer, counting as winter the whole period
from October to March, and as summer the warm
season from our return to Oxford in April up to
the heart of the Long Vacation ; and we will
begin with the beginning of the University year,
by which plan we shall gain the advantage of
having to deal with a few birds only to start with,
and those obvious to the eye among leafless
branches, thus clearing the way for more difficult
observation of the summer migrants, which have
to be detected among all the luxuriousness of our
Oxford foliage.

I shall call the birds by their familiar English
names, wherever it is possible to do so without
danger of confounding species ; but for accuracy's
sake, a list of all birds noticed in these pages,
with their scientific names according to the best,
or at any rate the latest, terminology, will be given
in an appendix.

When we return to Oxford after our Long

Late Lingerers.

Vacation, the only summer migrants that have
not departed southwards are a few Swallows, to
be seen along the banks of the river, and half-a-
dozen lazy Martins that may cling for two or
three weeks longer to their favourite nooks about
the buildings of Merton and Magdalen. Last
year (1884) none of these stayed to see No-
vember, so far as I could ascertain ; but they
were arrested on the south coast by a spell of
real warm weather, where the genial sun was
deluding the Robins and Sparrows into fancying
the winter already past. In some years they may
be seen on sunny days, even up to the end of
the first week of November, hawking for flies
about the meadow-front of Merton, probably the
warmest spot in Oxford. White of Selborne saw
one as late as the 2oth of November, on a very
sunny warm morning, in one of the quadrangles
of Christchurch ; it belonged, no doubt, to a late
September brood, and had been unable to fly
when the rest departed.

It is at first rather sad to find silence reigning
in the thickets and reed -beds that were alive
with songsters during the summer term. The

Oxford: Autumn and Winter.

familiar pollards and thorn - bushes, where the
Willow -warblers and Whitethroats were every
morning to be seen or heard, are like so many
desolate College rooms in the heart of the Long
Vacation. Deserted nests, black and mouldy,
come to light as the leaves drop from the trees —
nurseries whose children have gone forth to try
their fortune in distant countries. But we soon
discover that things are not so bad as they seem.
The silence is not quite unbroken : winter visitors
arrive, and the novelty of their voices is cheering,
even if they do not break into song ; some kinds
are here in greater numbers than in the hot
weather, and others show themselves more boldly,
emerging from leafy recesses in search of food
and sunshine.

Every autumn brings us a considerable immi-
gration of birds that have been absent during
the summer, and increases the number of some
species who reside with us in greater or less
abundance all the year. Among these is the
familiar Robin. My friend the Rev. H. A. Mac-
pherson, in his recently published Birds of Cum-
berland, tells us that in that northern county the

Robins.

Robins slip quietly away southward in autumn.
And it is in September and October that every
town and village in the south of England is en-
livened by their numbers and the pathetic beauty
of their song ; a song which I have observed as
being of finer quality in England than on the
continent, very possibly owing to a greater abun-
dance of rich food. I have been even tempted
to fancy that our English Robin is a finer and
stouter bird than his continental relations. Cer-
tainly he is more numerous here at all times of
the year, and he may travel where he pleases
without fear of persecution ; while the French
and German Robins, who for the most part make
for Italy in the autumn, return in spring in
greatly diminished numbers, owing to the in-
curable passion of the Italians for " robins on
toast."

It does not seem that they come to us in great
numbers from foreign shores, as do many others
of our common birds at this time of the year ; but
they move northwards and southwards within our
island, presumably seeking always a moderately
warm climate. At Parsons' Pleasure I have seen

io Oxford: Autumn and Winter.

the bushes literally alive with them in October
and November, in a state of extreme liveliness
and pugnacity. This is the great season of their
battles. Most country-people know of the war-
fare between the old and young Robins, and will
generally tell you that the young ones kill their
parents. The truth seems to be that after their
autumnal moult, in the confidence of renewed
strength, the old ones attack their offspring, and
succeed in forcing them to seek new homes.
This combativeness is of course accompanied by
fresh vigour of song. Birds will sing, as I am
pretty well convinced, under any kind of pleasant
or exciting emotion — such as love, abundance of
food, warmth, or anger ; and the outbreak of the
Robin's song in autumn is to be ascribed, in part
at least, to the last of these. Other reasons may
be found, such as restored health after the moult,
or the arrival in a warmer climate after immi-
gration, or possibly even the delusion, already
noticed, which not uncommonly possesses them
in a warm autumn, that it is their duty to set
about pairing and nest-building already. But all
these would affect other species also, and the

Robins and Bullfinches. 1 1

only reason which seems to suit the idiosyncrasies
of the Robin is this curious rivalry between young
and old.

The Robins, I need not say, are everywhere ;
but there are certain kinds of birds for which we
must look out in particular places. I mentioned
Parsons' Pleasure just now ; and we may take it
very well as a starting-point, offering as it does,
in a space of less than a hundred yards square,
every kind of supply that a bird can possibly
want ; water, sedge, reeds, meadows, gravel, rail-
ings, hedges, and trees and bushes of many kinds
forming abundant cover. In this cover, as you
walk along the footpath towards the weir, you
will very likely see a pair of Bullfinches. They
were here the greater part of last winter, and are
occasionally seen even in college and private
gardens ; but very rarely in the breeding-season
or the summer, when they are away in the densest
woods, where their beautiful nest and eggs are
not too often found. Should they be at their
usual work of devouring buds, it is well worth
while to stop and watch the process ; at Parsons'
Pleasure they can do no serious harm, and the

12, Oxford: Autumn and Winter.

Bullfinch's bill is not an instrument to be lightly
passed over. It places him apart from all other
common English birds, and brings him into the
same sub-family as the Crossbill and the Pine-
Grosbeak. It is short, wide, round, and parrot-like
in having the upper mandible curved downwards
over the lower one, and altogether admirably
suited for snipping off and retaining those fat
young juicy buds, from which, as some believe,
the Bullfinch has come by his name.1

Parsons' Pleasure, i. e. the well-concealed bath-
ing-place which goes by this name, stands at the
narrow apex of a large island which is formed
by the river Cherwell, — itself here running in
two channels which enclose the walk known as
Mesopotamia, — and the slow and often shallow
stream by which Holy well mill is worked. The
bird-lover will never cross the rustic bridge which
brings him into the island over this latter stream,
without casting a rapid glance to right and left.
Here in the summer we used to listen to the

1 The name is sometimes said to be a corruption of bud-
finch. But Prof. Skeat (Etym. Diet., s. v. Bull} compares it
with bull-dog, the prefix in each case suggesting the stout build
of the animal.

Kingfisher -s. 13

Nightingale, or watch the Redstarts and Fly-
catchers in the willows, or feast our eyes with
the splendid deep and glossy black-blue of the
Swallow's back, as he darted up and down
beneath the bridge in doubtful weather. And
here of a winter morning you may see a pair of
Moorfowl paddling out of the large patch of
rushes that lies opposite the bathing-place on the
side of the Parks ; here they breed in the summer,
with only the little Reed-warblers as companions.
And here there is ajways in winter at least a
chance of seeing a Kingfisher. Why these beau-
tiful birds are comparatively seldom to be seen in
or about Oxford from March to July is a question
not very easy to answer. The keeper of the
bathing-place tells me that they go up to breed
in ditches which run down to the Cherwell from
the direction of Marston and Elsfield ; and this
is perhaps borne out by the discovery of a nest
by a friend of mine, then incumbent of Wood-
eaton, in a deserted quarry between that village
and Elsfield, fully a mile from the river. One
would suppose, however, that the birds would be
about the river, if only to supply their voracious

14 Oxford: Autumn and Winter.

young with food, unless we are to conclude that
they feed them principally with slugs and such
small-fry. Here is a point which needs investi-
gation. The movements of the Kingfisher seem
to be only partly understood, but that they do
migrate, whether for short or long distances, I have
no doubt whatever.1 On the Evenlode, another
Oxfordshire river, which runs from Moreton-in-
the-Marsh to join the Isis at Eynsham, they are
rarely to be seen between March and September,
or August at the earliest, while I seldom take a
walk along the stream in the winter months
without seeing one or more of them.

This bird is one of those which owe much to
the Wild Birds Act, of which a short account will
be found in Note A, at the end of this volume.
It may not be shot between March and August,
and though it may be slaughtered in the winter
with impunity, the gun-licence and its own rapid
flight give it a fair chance of escape. Formerly
it was a frequent victim :

By green Rother's reedy side

The blue Kingfisher flashed and died.

1 See Mr. Seebohm's British Birds, vol. ii. p. 345.

Kingfishers. 1 5

Blue is the prevailing tint of the bird as he flies
from you : it is seldom that you see him coming
towards you ; but should that happen, the tint
that you chiefly notice is the rich chestnut of the
throat and breast. One Sunday morning, as I
was standing on the Cherwell bank just below the
Botanic Garden, a Kingfisher, failing to see me,
flew almost into my arms, shewing this chestnut
hue ; then suddenly wheeled, and flashed away all
blue and green, towards Magdalen Bridge. I
have seen a Kingfisher hovering like a dragon-fly
or humming-bird over a little sapling almost un-
derneath the bridge by which you enter Addison's
Walk. Possibly it was about to strike a fish, but
unluckily it saw me and vanished, piping shrilly.
The sight was one of marvellous beauty, though
it lasted but a few seconds.

One story is told about the Kingfisher, which I
commend to those who study the varying effects
of colours on the eye. Thompson, the famous
Irish naturalist, was out shooting when snow was
lying on the ground, and repeatedly saw a small
brown bird in flight, which entirely puzzled him ;
at last he shot it, and found it to be a Kingfisher

1 6 Oxford: Aiitumn and Winter.

in its full natural plumage.1 Can it be that the
swift flash of varying liquid colour, as the bird
darts from its perch into the water, is specially
calculated to escape the eye of the unsuspecting
minnow ? It nearly always frequents streams of
clear water and rather gentle flow, where its in-
tense brightness would surely discover it, even as
it sits upon a stone or bough, if its hues as seen
through a liquid medium did not lose their sheen.
But I must leave these questions to the philo-
sophers, and return to Parsons' Pleasure.

The island which I have mentioned is joined
to Mesopotamia by another bridge just below the
weir ; and here is a second post of observation,
with one feature that is absent at the upper
bridge. There all is silent, unless a breeze is
stirring the trees ; here the water prattles gently
as it slides down the green slope of the weir into
the deep pool below. This motion of the water
makes the weir and this part of the Cherwell a
favourite spot of a very beautiful little bird, which

1 Mr. O. V. Aplin, of Banbury, tells me that he has heard it
stated that if you shoot a Kingfisher, and it falls on the snow,
you cannot see it.

The Gray Wagtail. 17

haunts it throughout the October term.1 All the
spring and early summer the Gray Wagtail was
among the noisy becks and burns of the north,
bringing up his young under some spray-splashed
stone, or the moist arch of a bridge ; in July he
comes southwards, and from that time till Decem-
ber or January is constantly to be seen along
Cher well and I sis. He is content with sluggish
water if he can find none that is rapid ; but the
sound of the falling water is as surely grateful to
his ear as the tiny crustaceans he finds in it are
to his palate. For some time last autumn (1884)
I saw him nearly every day, either on the stone-
work of the weir, or walking into its gentle water-
slope, or running lightly over the islands of dead
leaves in other parts of the Cherwell ; sometimes
one pair would be playing among the barges on
the I sis, and another at Clasper's boat-house
seemed quite unconcerned at the crowd of men
and boats. It is always a pleasure to watch
them ; and though all Wagtails have their charm

1 In 1885 Gray Wagtails were much less common in the
south than in 1884; at the present time (Oct. 1886) they are
again in their favourite places (see Frontispiece).

C

1 8 Oxford: Autumn and Winter.

for me, I give this one the first place, for its
matchless delicacy of form, and the gentle grace
of all its actions.

The Gray Wagtail is misnamed, both in English
and Latin ; as we might infer from the fact that
in the one case it is named from the colour of its
back, and in the other from that of its belly.1 It
should be surely called the Long-tailed Wagtail,
for its tail is nearly an inch longer than that of
any other species ; or the Brook- Wagtail, because
it so rarely leaves the bed of the stream it haunts.
All other Wagtails may be seen in meadows,
ploughed fields, and uplands ; but though I have
repeatedly seen this one within the last year in
England, Wales, Ireland, and Switzerland, I never
but once saw it away from the water, and then it
was for the moment upon a high road in Dorset-
shire, and within a few yards of a brook and pool.
Those who wish to identify it must remember its
long tail and its love of water, and must also look
out for the beautiful sulphur yellow of its under
parts ; in the spring both male and female have

1 The scientific name is Motacilla sulphurea (in Dresser's
List. M. melanope).

The Pied Wagtail. 19

a black chin and throat, like our common Pied
Wagtail. No picture, and no stuffed specimen,
can give the least idea of what the bird is like :
the specimens in our Oxford Museum look " very
sadly," as the villagers say ; you must see the
living bird in perpetual motion, the little feet
running swiftly, the long tail ever gently flicker-
ing up and down. How can you successfully
draw or stuff a bird whose most remarkable
feature is never for a moment still ?

While I am upon Wagtails, let me say a word
for our old friend the common Pied Wagtail, who
is with us in varying numbers all the year round.
It is for several reasons a most interesting bird.
We have known it from our childhood ; but
foreign bird-lovers coming to England would find
it new to them, unless they chanced to come from
Western France or Spain. Like one or two
other species of which our island is the favourite
home, it is much darker than its continental cousin
the White Wagtail, when in full adult plumage.
Young birds are indeed often quite a light gray,
and in Magdalen cloisters and garden, where the
young broods love to run and seek food on the

c 2

The mother flew repeatedly to the young one, hovered before it, chattered
and encouraged it in every possible way.— p. 21.

Lesser Redpolls. 21

beautifully - kept turf, almost every variety of
youthful plumage may be seen in June or July,
from the sombrest black to the brightest pearl-
gray. Last summer, I one day spent a long time
here watching the efforts of a parent to induce a
young bird to leave its perch and join the others
on the turf: the nest must have been placed
somewhat high up among the creepers, and the
young bird, on leaving it, had ventured no further
than a little stone statue above my head. The
mother flew repeatedly to the young one, hovered
before it, chattered and encouraged it in every
possible way ; but it was a long time before she
prevailed.

Let us now return towards the city, looking
into the Parks on our way. The Curators of the
Parks, not less generous to the birds than to man-
kind, have provided vast stores of food for the
former, in the numbers of birches and conifers
which flourish under their care. They, or their
predecessors who stocked the plantations, seem to
have had the particular object of attracting those
delightful little north-country birds the Lesser
Redpolls, for they have planted every kind of tree

22

Oxford ' : Autumn and Winter.

in whose seeds they find a winter subsistence.

Whether they come
every winter I am un-
able to say, and am
inclined to doubt it ;
but in 1884, any one
who went the round
of the Parks, keeping
an eye on the birches,
could hardly fail to see
them, and they have
been reported not only
as taking refuge here
in the winter, but even

These tiny linnets at work in the delicate birch-boughs.— p. 23.

Lesser Redpolls. 23

as nesting in the summer. A nest was taken
from the branch of a fir-tree here in 1883, and
in this present year, if I am not mistaken, another
nest was built. I failed to find it, but I several
times saw a pair of sportive Redpolls at the south-
east corner of the Parks.1

It is one of the prettiest sights that our whole
calendar of bird-life affords, to watch these tiny
linnets at work in the delicate birch-boughs. They
fear no human being, and can be approached
within a very few yards. They almost outdo the
Titmice in the amazing variety of their postures.
They prefer in a general way to be upside down,
and decidedly object to the common-place atti-
tudes of more solidly built birds. Otherwise they
are not remarkable for beauty at this time of
year ; their splendid crimson crest — the " Blut-
tropf," as the Germans aptly call it — is hardly
discernible, and the warm pink of their breasts
has altogether vanished.

1At this same south-east corner, in May 1889, I have several
times found the trees above me alive with these bold little birds.
I have also seen an egg taken from a nest in the Botanic
Garden. We may now, I think, reckon these as residents both
in summer and winter.

24 Oxford: Autumn and Winter.

Before we leave the Parks I must record the
fact that an eccentric Jack-snipe, who ought to
have considered that he is properly a winter bird
in these parts, was several times flushed here by
the Cherwell in the summer of 1884, and the
natural inference would be that a pair had bred
somewhere near. Col. Montagu, the most ac-
curate of naturalists, asserted that it has never
been known to remain and breed in England ; yet
the observer in this case, a well-known college
tutor who knows a Jack-snipe when he sees it,
has assured me positively that there was no mis-
take ; and some well-authenticated cases seem to
have occurred since Montagu wrote.1

There are plenty of common birds to be seen
even in winter on most days in the Parks, such as
the Skylark, the Yellow-hammer and its relative
the Black-headed Bunting, the Pied Wagtail, the
Hedge-sparrow, and others ; though lawn-tennis,
and cricket, and new houses and brick walls, are
slowly and surely driving them beyond the

1 A Jack-snipe picked up under the telegraph wires at Ban-
bury in July, 1885, was (Mr. Aplin tells me) in an emaciated
condition ; possibly an injured bird unable to migrate.

Niit hatch and Creeper. 25

Cherwell for food and shelter. But there are some
birds which may be seen to greater advantage
in another part of Oxford, and we will take the
short line to Christchurch Meadow, past Holy-
well Church, doubtless the abode of Owls, and
the fine elms of Magdalen Park, beloved by the
Woodpigeons.

All this lower part of the Cherwell, from Holy-
well mill to its mouth at the barges, abounds in
snug and secure retreats for the birds. In Addi-
son's Walk, as well as in the trees in Christ-
church Meadow, dwell the Nuthatch and the
Tree-creeper, both remarkable birds in all their
ways, and each representative of a family of which
no other member has ever been found in these
islands. They are tree-climbing birds, but they
climb in very different ways : the Creeper helping
himself, like the Woodpeckers, with the down-
ward-bent feathers of his strong tail ; while the
Nuthatch, having no tail to speak of, relies chiefly
on his hind claw. These birds are now placed,
on account of the structure of their feet, in a
totally different order to that of the Woodpeckers,
who rank with the Swifts and the Nightjars.

26 Oxford: Autumn and Winter.

One is apt to think of the Creeper as a silent
and very busy bird, who never finds leisure to
rest and preen his feathers, or to relieve his mind
with song. When he does sing he takes us a
little aback. One spring morning, as I was
strolling in the Broad Walk, a Creeper flew past
me and fixed himself on the thick branch of an
elm — not on a trunk, as usual — and uttered a
loud and vigorous song, something after the
manner of the Wren's. I had to turn the glass
upon him to make sure that there was no mistake.
This is the only occasion on which I have ever
heard the Creeper sing, and it seems strange that
a bird with so strong a voice should use it so
seldom.

I have never but once seen the Green Wood-
pecker in Oxford, and that was as he flew rapidly
over the Parks in the direction of the Magdalen
elms. If he lives there, he must be known to the
Magdalen men, but I have not had intelligence
of him. The fact is that he is a much wilder
bird than his near relation, the Lesser Spotted
Woodpecker, who is, or was, beyond doubt an
Oxford resident. A correspondent of the Oxford

The Woodpecker. 27

Magazine, " R. W. R.," states that this bird bred
outside his window at Trinity a few years ago,
" but has not done so lately for reasons of his own,
of which I approve." Another correspondent, how-
ever, reports him from Addison's Walk ; and Mr.
Macpherson of Oriel, whose eye is not likely to
have erred, believed that he saw one in the Broad
Walk a few years ago. I myself have not seen
the bird nearer Oxford than Kennington ; but I
am pretty sure that it is commoner and also less
shy than is generally imagined, and also that the
ornithologist who sees it is not likely to mistake
it for another bird : its very small size — it is not
so large as a sparrow — its crimson head, and its
wings, with their black and white bars, making it
a conspicuous object to a practised eye.1

Christchurch Meadow is a favourite home of the
Titmice. I believe that I have seen all the five
English species here within a space of a very few
days : English, not British, for there is one other,
the Crested Tit, of which I shall have more to
say in another chapter. A family of Longtails,

1 In May, 1886, I saw one in a pollard willow at the northern
edge of the Parks, near the new boathouse.

A blackbird proceeded calmly to take his bath in the fountain. — p. 30.

The Titmouse. 29

or Bottle-tits, flits from bush to bush, never asso-
ciating with the others, and so justifying its
scientific separation from them. Another family
is to be seen in the Parks, where they build a
nest every year. These delightful little birds are
however quite willing to live in the very centre
of a town, indifferent to noise and dust. A
Marsh- tit was once seen performing its antics on
a lamp-post in St. Giles. A Great-tit built its
nest in the stump of an old laburnum, in the little
garden of Lincoln College, within a few yards of
the Turl and High Street ; the nest was dis-
covered by my dog, who was prowling about the
garden with a view to cats. I took great interest
in this brood, which was successfully reared, and
on one occasion I watched the parents bringing
food to their young for twenty minutes, during
which time they were fed fourteen times. The
ringing note of this Great-tit or his relations is
the first to be heard in that garden in winter-time,
and is always welcome. The little Blue-tit is
also forthcoming there at times. One Sunday
morning I saw a Blue-tit climbing the walls of
my College quadrangle, almost after the manner

30 Oxford: Autumn and Winter.

of a Creeper, searching the crannies for insects,
and even breaking down the crust of weathered
stone. Among memories of the rain, mist, and
hard work of many an Oxford winter spent
among these gray walls, " haec olim meminisse
juvabit."

But I have strayed away from Christchurch
Meadow and the Botanic Garden. Here it is
more especially that the Thrush tribe makes its
presence felt throughout the autumn. In the
Gardens the thrushes and blackbirds have become
so tame from constant quiet and protection, that,
like the donkeys at Athens of which Plato tells
us, they will hardly deign to move out of your
way. A blackbird proceeded calmly to take his
bath, in the fountain at the lower end near the
meadow, one morning when I was looking on,
and seemed to be fully aware of the fact that
there was a locked gate between us. Missel-
thrushes are also to be seen here ; and all these
birds go out of a morning to breakfast on a
thickly-berried thorn-bush at the Cherwell end
of the Broad Walk, where they meet with their
relations the Redwings, and now and then with

Blackbirds and Berries. 31

a Fieldfare. The walker round the meadow in
winter will seldom fail to hear the harsh call of
the redwing, as, together with starlings innumer-
able, and abundance of blackbirds, they utter loud
sounds of disapproval. There is one bush here
whose berries must have some strange ambrosial
flavour that blackbirds dearly love. All the
blackbirds in Oxford seem to have their free
breakfast-table here, and they have grown so bold
that they will return to it again and again as I
teasingly walk up and down in front of it, merely
flying to a neighbouring tree when I scrutinize
them too closely in search of a lingering Ring-
ousel. Who ever heard of a flock of blackbirds ?
Here, however, in November, 1884, was a sight to
be seen, which might possibly throw some light on
the process of developing gregarious habits.1

Rooks, Starlings, Jackdaws, and Sparrows,
which abound here and everywhere else in

1 At Lulworth, in Dorset, when the berry-season begins, I
have noticed that the blackbirds will congregate on the hedge-
rows in considerable numbers, and abandon for a time their
skulking habits. This makes it often difficult to distinguish
them at a distance from the Ring-ousels, which are there about
the same time.

3 2, Oxford: Autumn and Winter.

Oxford, every one can observe for themselves, and
of Sparrows I shall have something to say in the
next chapter ; but let me remind my young
readers that every bird is worth noticing, whether
it be the rarest or the commonest. My sister
laughs at me, because the other day she found an
old copy of White's Selborne belonging to me,
wherein was inscribed on the page devoted to
the Rook, in puerile handwriting, the following
annotation : " Common about Bath" (where I was
then at school). But I tell her that it was a
strictly accurate scientific observation ; and I only
wish that I had followed it up with others equally
unimpeachable.

But more out-of-the-way birds will sometimes
come to Oxford, and I have seen a Kestrel trying
to hover in a high wind over Christchurch
Meadow, and a Heron sitting on the old gate-
post in the middle of the field. Herons are often
to be seen by the river-bank in Port Meadow ;
and it was here, some years ago, that Mr. W. T.
Arnold, of University College, was witness of an
extraordinary attack made by a party of three on
some small birds. Port Meadow constantly en-

Visitors from the Sea-coast. 33

tices sea-birds when it is under water, or when
the water is receding and leaving that horrible
slime which is so unpleasant to the nose of
man ; and in fact there is hardly a wader or
a scratcher (to use Mr. Ruskin's term) 1 that has
not at one time or another been taken near Ox-
ford. Sometimes they come on migration, some-
times they are driven by stress of weather. Two
Stormy Petrels were caught at Bossom's barge in
the Port Meadow not long ago, and exhibited in
Mr. Darbey the birdstuffer's window. And a
well-known Oxford physician has kindly given
me an interesting account of his discovery of a
Great Northern Diver, swimming disconsolately
in a large hole in the ice near King's Weir, one
day during the famous Crimean winter of 1854-5 >
this splendid bird he shot with a gun borrowed
from the inn at Godstow. During the spring and
early summer of 1866, our visitors from the sea-
coast were constant and numerous. Even the
beautiful and graceful little Tern (Sterna Minuta)

1 /. e. for the Rasores, in Love's Meinie ; where are some of
the most delightfully wilful thoughts about birds ever yet
published.

D

34 Oxford: Spring and Early Summer.

more than once found his way here ; and on the
second occasion saved his own life by the con-
fidence which he seemed to repose in man. ' I
intended to shoot it/ wrote a young friend of
mine, * but relented when I saw how tame and
trustful it was.'

Specimens of almost all such birds are to be
seen in the bird-cases of the Museum, and occa-
sionally they may be seen in the flesh in the
Market. Both Market and Museum will give
plenty to do on a rainy day in winter : —

Ubi jam breviorque dies et mollior aestas
Quae vigilanda viris !

CHAPTER II.

OXFORD : SPRING AND EARLY SUMMER.

r

^1 " ^"Z^*

liVif:

LL the birds

mentioned in the last chapter are
residents in Oxford, in greater or less numbers
according to the. season, except the Fieldfare?,

D 2

3 6 Oxford: Spring and Early Summer.

and Redwings, the Grey Wagtail, and the rarer
visitors : and of these the Fieldfares and Red-
wings are the only true winter birds. They
come from the north and east in September and
October, and depart again in March and April.
When we begin our Summer Term not one is to
be seen. The berries in the meadow are all
eaten up long before Lent Term is over, and
though these are not entirely or even chiefly the
Redwing's food, the birds have generally disap-
peared with them.

They do not however leave the country dis-
tricts till later. When wild birds like these come
into a town, the cause is almost certain to be
stress of weather ; when the winter's back is
broken, they return to the fields and hedges till
the approach of summer calls them northwards.
There they assemble together in immense flocks,
showing all the restlessness and excitement of
the smaller birds that leave us in the autumn ;
suddenly the whole mass rises and departs like
a cloud. Accounts are always forthcoming of the
departure of summer migrants, and especially of
the Swallows and Martins, and there are few who

Farewell Ceremonies. 37

have not seen these as they collect on the sunny
side of the house-roof, or bead the parapet of the
Radcliffe building, before they make up their
minds to the journey. But few have seen the
Fieldfares and Redwings under the same condi-
tions, and I find no account of their migration, or
at least of what actually happens when they go,
in any book within my reach as I write. But on
March 19, 1884, I was lucky enough to see some-
thing of their farewell ceremonies. I was walking
in some water-meadows adjoining a wood, on the
outskirts of which were a number of tall elms and
poplars, when I heard an extraordinary noise,
loud, harsh, and continuous, and of great volume,
proceeding from the direction of these trees, which
were at the time nearly half-a-mile distant. I
had been hearing the noise for a minute or two
without attending to it, and was gradually de-
veloping a consciousness that some strange new
agricultural instrument, or several of them, were
at work somewhere near, when some Fieldfares
flew past me to alight on the meadow not far off.
Then putting up my glass, I saw that the trees
were literally black with birds ; and as long as

38 Oxford: Spring and Early Slimmer.

I stayed, they continued there, only retreating
a little as I approached, and sending foraging
detachments into the meadow, or changing trees
in continual fits of restlessness. The noise they
made was like the deep organ-sounds of sea-birds
in the breeding-time, but harsher and less serious.
I would willingly have stayed to see them depart,
but not knowing when that might be, I was
obliged to go home : and the next day when I
went to look for them, only a few were left.

These birds do not leave us as a rule before
the first summer visitors have arrived. In the
case I have just mentioned, the spring was a
warm one, and the very next day I saw the ever-
welcome Chiff-chaff, which is the earliest to come
and the latest to go, of all the delicate warblers
which come to find a summer's shelter in our
abundant trees and herbage.

I use this word * warbler ' in a sense which
calls for a word of explanation : for not only are
the birds which are called in the natural history
books by this name often very difficult to dis-
tinguish, but the word itself has been constantly
used to denote a certain class of birds, without

Warblers. 39

any precise explanation of the species meant to
be included in it. Nor is it in itself a very exact
word ; some of the birds which are habitually
called warblers do not warble in the proper sense
of the word,1 and many others who really warble,
such as the common Hedge-sparrow, have no
near relationship to the class I am speaking of.
But as it is a term in use, and a word that pleases,
I will retain it in this chapter, with an explanation
which may at the same time help some beginner
in dealing with a difficult group of birds.

If the reader of this book who really cares to
understand the differences of the bird-life which
abounds around us, will buy for a shilling Mr.
Dresser's most useful List of European Birds?
he will find, under the great family of the Tur-
didae, three sub-families following each other on
pages 7, 8, and 9, respectively called Sylvianae,

1 What this sense is may be guessed from Milton, Paradise
Lost, Bk. v. 195 —

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

The word seems to express a kind of singing which is soft,
continuous, and 'legato/

2 Published by its author at 6 Tenterden Street, Hanover
Square.

40 Oxford: Spring and Early Summer.

or birds of woodland habits, Phylloscopinae, or
leaf-searching birds, and Acrocephalinae, or birds
belonging to a group many of the members of
which have the front of the head narrow and
depressed : and under all these three sub-families
he will find several species bearing in popular
English the name of warbler. At the same time
he will find other birds in these sub-families,
which are quite familiar to him, but not as
' warblers ' in any technical sense of the word ;
thus the Robin will be found in the first sub-
family, and the Golden-crested Wren in the
second. But, leaving out these two species, and
also the Nightingale, which is a bird of some-
what peculiar structure and habits, he will find
four birds in the first sub-family belonging to
the genus Sylvia, which are all loosely called
warblers, and will be mentioned in this chapter
as summer visitors to Oxford, viz. the White-
throat ( or Whitethroat - warbler ), the Lesser
Whitethroat, the Blackcap, and the Garden-
warbler ; he will also find two in the second,
belonging to the genus Phylloscopus, the Chiff-
chaff and the Willow-wren (or Willow-warbler),

Division of Warblers. 41

and two in the third, belonging to the genus
Acrocephalus, the Sedge- warbler and the Reed-
warbler. Let it be observed that each of these
three genera, Sylvia, Phylloscopus, and Acroce-
phalus, is the representative genus of the sub-
family in this classification, and has given it its
name ; so that we might expect to find some
decided differences of appearance or habit between
the members of these genera respectively. And
this is precisely what is the case, as any one may
prove for himself by a day or two's careful
observation.

The birds I have mentioned as belonging to
the first genus, i. e. Whitethroat, etc., are all
of a fairly substantial build, fond of perching,
singing a varied and warbling song (with the
exception of the Lesser Whitethroat, of whose
song I shall speak presently), and all preferring
to build their cup-shaped nest a little way from
the ground, in a thick bush, hedge, or patch of
thick-growing plants, such as nettles. They also
have the peculiarity of loving small fruits and
berries as food, and are all apt to come into our
gardens in search of them, where they do quite

42 Oxford: Spring and Early Summer.

as much good as harm by a large consumption
of insects and caterpillars.

Secondly, the two kinds of birds belonging to
the genus Phylloscopus, Chiff-chaff and Willow-
warbler, are alike in having slender, delicate
frames, with a slight bend forward as of creatures
given to climbing up and down, in an almost
entire absence of the steady perching habit, in
building nests upon the ground with a hole at
the side, and partly arched over by a roof of
dried grass, in feeding almost exclusively on
insects, and in singing a song which is always
the same, each new effort being undistinguishable
from the last. In fact these two birds are so
much alike in every respect but their voices
(which though unvarying are very different from
each other), that it is almost impossible for a
novice to distinguish them unless he hears them.

Thirdly, the two species belonging to the genus
Acrocephalus> the Sedge- and Reed-warblers,
differ from the other two groups in frequenting
the banks of rivers and streams much more
exclusively, where they climb up and down the
water-plants, as their name suggests, and build

Reed Warbler. — p. 42.

Division of Warblers. 43

a cup-shaped nest ; and also in the nervous
intensity and continuity of their song.

These eight species, then, are the 'warblers,'
of whom I am going to speak in the first place.
They may easily be remembered in these three
groups by any one who will take the trouble to
learn their voices, and to look out for them when
they first arrive, before the leaves have come out
and the birds are shy of approach on account of
their nests and young. But without some little
pains confusion is sure to arise, as we may well
understand when we consider that a century ago
even such a naturalist as White of Selborne had
great difficulty in distinguishing them ; he was
in fact the first to discover the Chiff-chaff (one
of our commonest and most obvious summer
migrants) as a species separate from the others
of our second group. To give an idea of the
progress Ornithology has made during the last
century, I will quote Markwick's note on White's
communication : — * This bird, which Mr. White
calls the smallest Willow-wren, or Chiff-chaff,
makes its appearance very early in the spring,
and is very common with us, but I cannot make

44 Oxford: Spring and Early Summer.

out the three different species of Willow-wrens,
which he says he has discovered' * Nothing but
a personal acquaintance — a friendship, as I must
call it in my own case — with these little birds,
as they live their every-day life among us, will
suffice to fix the individuality of each species in
the mind ; not even the best plates in a book,
or the faded and lifeless figures in a museum.
You may shoot and dissect them, and study them
as you would study and label a set of fossils : but
a bird is a living thing, and you will never really
know him till you fully understand how he lives.
Let us imagine ourselves taking a stroll into
the Parks with the object of seeing these eight
birds, not as skeletons, but as living realities.
The first to present themselves to eye and ear
will be the two species of the second group,
which may roughly be described (so far at least
as England is concerned) as containing Tree-
warblers. From the tall trees in St. John's

1 The three species were the Wood-warbler, Phylloscopus
sibilatrix (Bechst.), Willow-warbler, Ph. trochilus (Linn.), and
Chiff-chaff, Ph. colly bita (Viell.). Mark wick declares that he
could not distinguish the first of these from the other two.

Willow- Warbler and Chiff-Chaff. 45

Gardens, before we reach the Museum, we are
certain on any tolerably warm day to hear the
Willow-warbler, which has been the last few
years extremely abundant ; in Oxford alone there
must have been two or three hundred pairs in
the spring of 1885. From the same trees is also
pretty sure to come ringing the two notes of the
Chiff-chaff, which is a less abundant bird, but
one that makes its presence more obvious. Let
us pause here a moment to make our ideas clear
about these two. We may justly take them first,
as they are the earliest of their group to arrive
in England.

When the first balmy breath of spring brings
the celandines into bloom on the hedge-bank, and
when the sweet violets and primroses are begin-
ning to feel the warmth of the sun, you may
always look out for the Chiff-chaff on the sheltered
side of a wood or coppice. As a rule, I see them
before I hear them ; if they come with an east
wind, they doubtless feel chilly for a day or two,
or miss the plentiful supply of food which is abso-
lutely necessary to a bird in full song. Thus in
1884, I noted March 20 as the first day on which

46 Oxford : Spring and Early Summer.

I saw the Chiff-chaff, and March 23 as the first
on which I heard him. The next year, the month
of March being less genial, I looked and listened
in vain till the 3ist. On that day I made a cir-
cuit round a wood to its sunny side, sheltered well
from east and north, and entering for a little way
one of these grassy ' rides ' which are the delight
of all wood-haunting birds, I stood quite still and
listened. First a Robin, then a Chaffinch broke
the silence ; a Wood-pigeon broke away through
the boughs ; but no Chiff-chaff. After a while I
was just turning away, when a very faint sound
caught my ear, which I knew I had not heard
for many months. I listened still more keenly,
and caught it again ; it was the prelude, the pre-
liminary whisper, with which I have noticed that
this bird, in common with a few others, is wont to
work up his faculties to the effort of an outburst of
song. In another minute that song was resounding
through the wood.

No one who hails the approach of spring as
the real beginning of a new life for men and
plants and animals, can fail to be grateful to this
little brown bird for putting on it the stamp and

Willow- Warbler and Chiff-Chaff. 47

sanction of his clear resonant voice. We may
grow tired of his two notes — he never gets be-
yond two — for he sings almost the whole summer
through, and was in full voice on the 25th of
September in the same year in which he began
on March 23rd ; but not even the first twitter of
the Swallow, or the earliest song of the Nightin-
gale, has the same hopeful story to tell me as this
delicate traveller who dares the east wind and the
frost. They spend the greater part of the year
with us ; I have seen them still lurking in shel-
tered corners of the Dorsetshire coast, at the
beginning of October, within sound of the sea-
waves in which many of them must doubtless
perish before they reach their jonrney's end.
And now and then they will even pass the winter
with us : this was the case with one which took
up his sojourn at Bodicote, near Banbury, in a
winter of general mildness, though not unbroken,
if I recollect right, by some very sharp frosts.

The Willow-warbler follows his cousin to Eng-
land in a very few days, and remains his com-
panion in the trees all through the summer. He
has the same brownish-yellow back and yellowish-

48 Oxford: Spring and Early Summer.

white breast, but is a very little larger, and sings
a very different song, which is unique among all
British birds. Beginning with a high and toler-
ably full note, he drops it both in force and
pitch in a cadence short and sweet, as though he
were getting exhausted with the effort ; for that
it is a real effort to him and all his slim and
tender relations, no one who watches as well as
listens can have a reasonable doubt. This
cadence is often perfect, by which I mean that
it descends gradually, not of course on the notes
of our musical scale, by which no birds in their
natural state would deign to be fettered, but
through fractions of one or perhaps two of our
tones, and without returning upwards at the end ;
but still more often, and especially, as I fancy,
after they have been here a few weeks, they take
to finishing with a note nearly as high in pitch as
that with which they began.1 This singular song
is heard in summer term in every part of the
Parks, and in the grass beneath the trees there

1 The song ceases about mid-June, and is not renewed till
August : it is then usually so wanting in force as to be hardly
recognizable. See Note B. at end of Volume.

Willow-Warbler and Chiff -Chaff. 49

must be many nests ; but these we are not likely
to find except by accident, so beautifully are they
concealed by their grassy roofs. Through the
hole in the upper part of the side you see tiny
eggs, speckled with reddish brown, lying on a
warm bedding of soft feathers ; one of these was
built last May in the very middle of the lawn of
the Parsonage-house at Ferry- Hincksey, and two
others of exactly the same build, one a Chiff-
chaffs, were but a little way outside the garden-
gate, and had escaped the sharp eyes of the
village boys when I last heard of them. Though
from being on the ground they probably escape
the notice of Magpies and Jackdaws and other
egg-devouring birds, these eggs and the young
that follow must often fall a prey to stoats and
weasels, rats and hedgehogs. That such creatures
are not entirely absent from the neighbourhood of
the Parks, I can myself bear witness, having seen
one morning two fine stoats in deadly combat for
some object of prey which I could not discern,
as I was divided from them by the river. The
piping squeaks they uttered were so vehement and

loud, that at the first moment I mistook them for

E

50 Oxford : Spring and Early Summer.

the alarm-note of some bird that was strange to
me. In July, 1886, I saw a large stoat playing
in Addison's Walk, when few human beings were
about, and the young birds, newly-fledged, were
no doubt an easy prey.

One word more before we leave the Tree-
warblers. In front of my drawing-room window
in the country are always two rows of hedges of
sweet peas, and another of edible peas ; towards
the end of the summer some little pale yellow
birds come frequently and climb up and down the
pea-sticks, apparently in search of insects rather
than of the peas. These are the young Willow-
warblers, which after their first moult assume this
gently-toned yellow tint ; and very graceful and
beautiful creatures they are. I have sometimes
seen them hover, like humming-birds, over a
spray on which they could not get an easy foot-
ing, and give the stem or leaves a series of rapid
pecks.

We have to walk but a little further on to hear
or see at least two of our first group, the Sylviae,
or fruit-eating warblers. As we pass into the
Park by the entrance close to the house of the

Blackcap and Garden-Warbler. 51

Keeper of the Museum, we are almost sure, on
any sunny day, to hear both Blackcap and
Garden-warbler, and with a little pains and
patience, to see them both. These two (for a
wonder) take their scientific names from the
characteristics by which sensible English folk
have thought best to name them ; the Blackcap
being Sylvia atracapilla, and the Garden-warbler
Sylvia hortensis. Mr. Ruskin says, in that
delicious fragment of his about birds, called
Love's Meinie, that all birds should be named on
this principle ; and indeed if they had only to
discharge the duty which many of our English
names perform so well, viz. that of letting English
people know of what bird we are talking, his plan
would be an excellent one. Unluckily, Orni-
thology is a science, and a science which embraces
all the birds in the world ; and we must have some
means of knowing for certain that we shall be
understood of all the world when we mention a
bird's name. This necessity is well illustrated in
the case of the warblers. So many kinds of them
are there, belonging to all our three groups, in

Europe alone, not to speak of other parts of the

E 2

52 Oxford: Spring and Early Summer.

world, that even a scientific terminology/ and
description upon description have not been able
to save the birds from getting mixed up together,
or getting confounded with their own young, or
with the young of other birds.

If the Blackcap were not a Sylvia, he could
not well be scientifically named after his black
head, for other birds, such as Titmice, have also
black heads, and I have frequently heard the
Cole Tit described as the Blackcap. In any case
he should perhaps have been named after his
wonderful faculty of song, in which he far excels
all the other birds of our three groups. Most
people know the Blackcap's song who have ever
lived in the country, for you can hardly enter a
wood in the summer without being struck by it ;
and all I need do here is to distinguish it as well
as I can from that of the Garden-warbler, which
may easily be mistaken for it by an unpractised
ear, when the birds are keeping out of sight in
the foliage, as they often most provokingly will
do. Both are essentially warblers ; that is, they
sing a strain of music, continuous and legato,
instead of a song that is broken up into separate

Blackcap and Gar den- War bier. 53

notes or short phrases, like that of the Song-
thrush, or the Chiff-chaff. But they differ in two
points : the strain of the Blackcap is shorter,
forming in fact one lengthened phrase " in sweet-
ness long drawn out," while the Garden-warbler
will go on almost continuously for many minutes
together ; and secondly, the Blackcap's music is
played upon a mellower instrument. The most
gifted Blackcaps — for birds of the same species
differ considerably in their power of song — excel
all other birds in the soft quality of their tone,
just as a really good boy's voice, though less
brilliant and resonant, excels all women's voices
in softness and sweetness. So far as I have been
able to observe, the Blackcap's voice is almost
entirely wanting in that power of producing the
harmonics of a note which gives a musical sound
its brilliant quality ; but this very want is what
produces its unrivalled mellowness.

The other two members of our first group (we
are still in genus Sylvia) are the two White-
throats, greater and lesser, and we have not far
to go to find them. They arrive just at the
beginning of our Easter Term, but never come

54 Oxford: Spring and Early Summer.

to Oxford in great numbers, because their proper
homes, the hedge-rows, are naturally not common
objects of a town. In the country the greater
Whitethroats are swarming this year (1885), and
in most years they are the most abundant of our
eight warblers ; and the smaller bird, less seen
and less showy, makes his presence felt in almost
every lane and meadow by the brilliancy of his
note.

Where shall we find a hedge near at hand,
where we may learn to distinguish the two birds ?
We left the Blackcaps and Garden-warblers at
the upper end of the Park ; we shall still have a
chance of listening to them if we take the walk
towards Parsons' Pleasure, and here in the thorn-
hedge on the right hand of the path, we shall find
both the Whitethroats.1 As we walk along, a
rough grating sound, something like the noise
of a diminutive corn-crake, is heard on the other
side of the hedge — stopping when we stop, and

1 The spring of 1886 saw this hedge deserted by both
species; the result of an outbreak of lawn-tennis in the adjoin-
ing field. They were lucky enough to find new quarters not
far off.

The Whitethroats.

sounding ahead of us as we walk on. This is the
teasing way of the greater Whitethroat, and it
means that he is either building a nest in the
hedge, or thinking of doing so. If you give him
time, however, he will show himself, flirting up
to the top of the hedge, crooning, craking, and
popping into it again ; then flying out a little way,
cheerily singing a soft and truly warbling song,
with fluttering wings and roughened feathers, and
then perhaps perching on a twig to repeat it.
Now you see the white of his throat ; it is real
white, and it does not go below the throat. In
one book I have seen the Garden-warbler called
a Whitethroat ; but in his case the white is not
so pure, and it is continued down the breast.
The throat of both Whitethroats is real white,
and they have a pleasant way of puffing it out, as
if to assure one that there is no mistake about it.
But how to distinguish the two ? for in size
they differ hardly enough to guide an inexpe-
rienced eye. There are three points of marked
difference. The larger bird has a rufous or rusty-
coloured back,1 and his wing-coverts are of much

1 The scientific name is appropriate, viz. Sylvia rufa.

56 Oxford: Spring and Early Summer.

the same colour ; while the back of the lesser
bird is darkish or grayish brown. Secondly, the
head of the lesser Whitethroat is of a much
darker bluish-gray tint. But much the best point
of distinction in the breeding season is in the
song. As I have said, the larger bird warbles ;
but the lesser one, after a little preliminary so-
liloquy in an under-tone, bursts out into a suc-
cession of high notes, all of exactly the same
pitch. It took me some time to find out who
was the performer of this music which I heard so
constantly in the hedges, for the bird is very
restless and very modest. When I caught sight
of him he would not stop to be examined closely.
One day however he was kind enough to alight
for a moment in a poplar close by me, and as I
watched him in the loosely-leaved branches, he
poured out the song, and duly got the credit
for it.

We are now close to our old winter-station on
the bridge over the mill-stream, and leaning over
it once more on the upper side, we shall hear,
if not see, both the remaining species of the
warblers that Oxford has to show us. They are

River- Warblers. 5 7

the only species of River-warblers that are known
to visit England regularly every year ; these two,
the Sedge-warbler and the Reed-warbler, never
fail, and the Sedge-warbler comes in very large
numbers, but only a few specimens of other
River-warblers have been found out in their
venturesomeness. Still, every young bird-hunter
should acquaint himself with the characteristics of
the rarer visitors, in order to qualify himself for
helping to throw light on what is still rather a
dark corner of English ornithology. These same
species which we so seldom see are swarming in
the flat lands of Holland, close by us, and why
should they not come over to the island which
birds seem to love so dearly ?

But there is no doubt that birds have ways, and
reasons for them, which man is very unlikely ever
to be able to understand. Why, as Mr. Harting
asks,1 should the Reed-warbler be so much less
" generally distributed " than the Sedge-warbler?
That it is so, we can show well enough even from
Oxford alone. You will find Sedge-warblers all
along the Cherwell and the I sis, wherever there
1 Our Summer Migrants, p. 82.

58 Oxford : Spring and Early Summer.

is a bit of cover, and very often they will turn
up where least expected ; in a corn-field, for ex-
ample, where I have seen them running up and
down the corn-stalks as if they were their native
reeds. But you must either know where to find
the Reed-warbler, or learn by slow degrees.
Parsons' Pleasure is almost the only place known
to me where

" The Reed-warbler swung in a nest with her young,
Deep-sheltered and warm from the wind." a

There is, however, in this case, at least a plau-
sible answer to Mr. Harting's question. Owing to
the prime necessity of reeds for the building of
this deep-sheltered nest, which is swung between
several of them, kept firm by their centrifugal
tendency, yielding lovingly yet proudly to every
blast of wind or current of water — owing to this
necessity, the Reed-warbler declines to take up
his abode in any place where the reeds are not
thick enough and tall enough to give a real

1 Mr. Courthope's Paradise of Birds. No one who loves
birds or poetry should fail to read Mr. Ruskin's commentary
on the chorus from which these lines are taken, in Love's
Heinle, p. 139 and foil.

River-Warblers. 59

protection to himself and his brood. Now in the
whole length of Isis between Kennington1 and
Godstow, and of Cherwell between its mouth and
Parsons' Pleasure, there is no reed-bed which
answers all the requirements of this little bird.
Now and then, it is true, they will leave the reeds
for some other nesting-place ; one of them sang
away all the Summer Term of 1884 in the bushes
behind the Museum, nearly half a mile from the
river, and probably built a nest among the lilac-
bushes which there abound. But that year they
seemed to be more abundant than usual ; and
this, perhaps, was one for whom there was no
room in the limited space of the reeds at Parsons'
Pleasure. Thick bushes, where many lithe sap-
lings spring from a common root, would suit him
better than a scanty reed-bed.2

1 Unless it be in the westernmost branch, which runs at the
foot of the Berkshire hills. Near Godstow the nest is to be
found, as Mr. W. T. Arnold, of University Col., has kindly
informed me : for obvious reasons I will not describe the spot.

2 In the summer of 1886 this interesting bird was quite
abundant in and round Oxford. If I am not mistaken a nest
was built in the reeds of the fountain at the south end of the
Botanic Garden, a perfectly secure spot. I heard the song
there as late as the end of July.

60 Oxford: Spring and Early Summer.

There is no great difficulty in distinguishing
Sedge- and Reed-warblers, if you have an eye for
the character of birds. The two are very dif-
ferent in temperament, though both are of the
same quiet brown, with whitish breast. The
Sedge-bird is a restless, noisy, impudent little
creature, not at all modest or retiring, and much
given to mocking the voices of other birds. This
is done as a rule in the middle of one of his long
and continuous outpourings of chatter ; but I one
day heard a much more ridiculous display of im-
pertinence. I was standing at the bottom of the
Parks, looking at a pair or two of Sedge-warblers
on a bush, and wondering whether they were going
to build a nest there, when a Blackbird emerged
from the thicket behind me, and seeing a human
being, set up that absurd cackle that we all know
so well. Instantly, out of the bush I was looking
at, there came an echo of this cackle, uttered by
a small voice in such ludicrous tones of mockery,
as fairly to upset my gravity. It seemed to say,
"You awkward idiot of a bird, I can make that
noise as well as you : only listen ! " —

The Reed-warbler, on the other hand, is quieter

River- Warblers. 6 1

and gentler, and utters, by way of song, a long
crooning soliloquy, in accents not sweet, but much
less harsh and declamatory than those of his
cousin. I have listened to him for half-an-hour
together among the bushes that border the reed-
bed, and have fancied that his warble suits well
with the gentle flow of the water, and the low
hum of the insects around me. He will sit for a
long time singing on the same twig, while his
partner is on her nest in the reeds below ; but the
Sedge-warbler, in this and other respects like a
fidgety and ill-trained child, is never in one place,
or in the same vein of song, for more than a
minute at a time.

It is amusing to stand and listen to the two
voices going on at the same time ; the Sedge-bird
rattling along in a state of the intensest excite-
ment, pitching up his voice into a series of loud
squeaks, and then dropping it into a long-drawn
grating noise, like the winding-up of an old-
fashioned watch, while the Reed-warbler, unaf-
fected by all this volubility, takes his own line in
a continued prattle of gentle content and self-
sufficiency.

6 2 Oxford: Spring and Early Summer.

These eight birds, then, are the warblers which
at present visit Oxford. Longer walks and care-
ful observation may no doubt bring us across at
least two others, the Wood-warbler and the Grass-
hopper-warbler : the nest of the Wood-warbler
has been found within three miles. Another bird,
too, which is often called a warbler, has of late
become very common both in and about Oxford —
the Redstart. Four or five years ago they were
getting quite rare ; but this year (1885) the flicker
of the red tail is to be seen all along the Cherwell,
in the Broad Walk, where they build in holes of
the elms, in Port Meadow, where I have heard
the gentle warbling song from the telegraph wires,
and doubtless in most gardens. The Redstart is
so extremely beautiful in summer, his song so
tender and sweet, and all his ways so gentle and
trustful, that if he were as common, and stayed
with us all the year, he would certainly put our
Robin's popularity to the proof. Nesting in our
garden, or even on the very wall of our house,
and making his presence there obvious by his
brilliant colouring and his fearless domesticity,
he might become, like his plainer cousin of the

Redstarts. 63

continent, the favourite of the peasant, who looks
to his arrival in spring as the sign of a better time
approaching. " I hardly hoped," writes my old
Oberland guide to me, after an illness in the
winter, "to see the flowers again, or hear the
little Rothel (Black Redstart) under my eaves."
The Oxford Redstarts find convenient holes
for their nests in the pollard willows which line
the banks of the Cherwell and the many arms of
the I sis. The same unvaried and unnatural form
of tree, which looks so dreary and ghastly in the
waste of winter flood, is .full of comfort and
adaptability for the bird in summer. The works
of man, though not always beautiful, are almost
always turned to account by the birds, and by
many kinds preferred to the solitude of wilder
haunts. Whether he builds houses, or constructs
railways, or digs ditches, or forces trees into an
unnatural shape, they are ready to take advantage
of every chance he gives them. Only when the
air is poisoned by smoke and drainage, and vege-
tation retreats before the approach of slums, do
they leave their natural friends to live without
the charm of their voices — all but that strange

64 Oxford: Spring and Early Summer.

parasite of mankind, the Sparrow. He, growing
sootier every year, and doing his useful dirty
work with untiring diligence and appetite, lives
on his noisy and quarrelsome life even in the
very heart of London.

Whether the surroundings of the Oxford
Sparrows have given them a sense of higher
things, I cannot say ; but they have ways which
have suggested to me that the Sparrow must at
some period of his existence have fallen from a
higher state, of which some individuals have a
Platonic ava|u,v7j<n£ which prompts them to purer
walks of life. No sooner does the summer begin
to bring out the flies among our pollard willows,
than they become alive with Sparrows. There
you may see them, as you repose on one of the
comfortable seats on the brink of the Cherwell
in the Parks, catching flies in the air with a
vigour and address which in the course of a few
hundred years might almost develop into ele-
gance. Again and again I have had to turn
my glass upon a bird to see if it could really be
a Sparrow that was fluttering in the air over the
water with an activity apparently meant to rival

Common objects by the Cherwell. 65

that of the little Fly-catcher, who sits on a bough
at hand, and occasionally performs the same feat
with native lightness and deftness. But these
are for the most part young Sparrows of the year,
who have been brought here perhaps by their
parents to be out of the way of cats, and for the
benefit of country air and an easily-digested
insect diet. How long they stay here I do not
know ; but before our Autumn Term begins they
must have migrated back to the city, for I seldom
or never see them in the willows except in the
Summer Term.

These seats by the Cherwell are excellent
stations for observation. Swallows, Martins, and
Sand-martins flit over the water ; Swifts scream
overhead towards evening ; Greenfinches trill
gently in the trees, or utter that curious lengthened
sound which is something between the bleat of a
lamb and the snore of a light sleeper ; the Yellow
Wagtail, lately arrived, walks before you on the
path, looking for materials for a nest near the
water's edge ; the Fly-catcher, latest arrival of all,
is perched in silence on the railing, darting now and

then into the air for flies ; the Corn-crake sounds

F

66 Oxford: Spring and Early Summer.

from his security beyond the Cherwell, and a
solitary Nightingale, soon to be driven away by
dogs and boats and bathers, may startle you with
a burst of song from the neighbouring thicket.

Of the birds just mentioned, the Swifts, Swal-
lows, and Martins build, I need hardly say, in
human habitations, the Sand-martins in some
sand- or gravel-pit, occasionally far away from the
river. The largest colony of these little brown
birds, so characteristic of our Oxford summer, is
in a large sand-pit on Foxcombe Hill : there,
last July, I chanced to see the fledgelings peep-
ing out of their holes into the wide world, like
children gazing from a nursery window. The
destruction all these species cause among the flies
which swarm round Oxford must be enormous.
One day a Martin dropped a cargo of flies out
of its mouth on to my hat, just as it was about
to be distributed to the nestlings ; a magnifying
glass revealed a countless mass of tiny insects,
some still alive and struggling. One little wasp-
like creature disengaged himself from the rest,
and crawled down my hand, escaping literally
from the very jaws of death.

A noisy Situation.

Before I leave these birds of summer, let me
record the fact that last June (1886) a pair of
swallows built their nest on the circular spring of
a bell just over a doorway behind the University
Museum ; the bell was constantly being rung,
and the nest was not unfrequently examined, but
they brought up their young successfully. This
should be reassuring to those who believe that
the Museum and its authorities are a terror to
living animals.

Nest on College Bell.

F 2

CHAPTER III.

THE ALPS IN JUNE.

the University
year is over, usually
about mid-June, responsi-
bilities cease almost entirely
for a few weeks ; and it is sometimes possible to
leave the lowlands of England and their familiar
birds without delay, and to seek new hunting-

Attractions of the Alps. 69

grounds on the Continent before the freshness
of early summer has faded, and before the
world of tourists has begun to swarm into
every picturesque hole and corner of Europe.
An old-standing love for the Alpine region usually
draws me there, sooner or later, wherever I may
chance to turn my steps immediately after leaving
England. He who has once seen the mountain
pastures in June will find their spell too strong
to be resisted.

At that early time the herdsmen have not yet
reached the higher pastures, and cows and goats
have not cropped away the flowers which scent
the pure cool breeze. The birds are undisturbed
and trustful, and still busy with their young. The
excellent mountain-inns are comparatively empty,
the Marmots whistle near at hand, and the snow
lies often so deep upon footpaths where a few
weeks later even the feeblest mountaineer would
be at home, that a fox, a badger, or even a little
troop of chamois, may occasionally be seen with-
out much climbing. If bad weather assails us on
the heights, which are liable even in June to
sudden snow-storms and bitter cold, we can

Jo The Alps in June.

descend rapidly into the valleys, to find warmth
and a new stratum of bird-life awaiting us. And
if persistent wet or cold drives us for a day or
two to one of the larger towns, Bern, or Zurich,
or Geneva, we can spend many pleasant hours
in the museums with which they are provided,
studying specimens at leisure, and verifying or
correcting the notes we have made in the
mountains.

It is a singular fact that I do not remember to
have ever seen an Englishman in these museums,
nor have I met with one in my mountain walks
who had a special interest in the birds of the
Alps. Something is done in the way of butterfly-
hunting ; botanists, or at least botanical tins, are
not uncommon. The guide-books have some-
thing to say of the geology and the botany of the
mountains, but little or nothing of their fauna.
I have searched in vain through all the volumes
of the Jahrbuch of the Swiss Alpine Club for a
single article or paragraph on the birds, and the
oracles of the English Alpine Club are no less
dumb.

Not that ornithologists are entirely wanting for

Ornithologists and the Alps. 71

this tempting region ; Switzerland has many, both
amateur and scientific. A journal of Swiss ornith-
ology is published periodically. Professor Fatio, of
Geneva, one of the most distinguished of European
naturalists, has given much time and pains to the
birds of the Alpine world, and published many
valuable papers on the subject, the results of
which have been embodied in Mr. Dresser's Birds
of Europe. But what with the all-engrossing
passion for climbing, and the natural indisposition
of the young Englishman to loiter in that ex-
hilarating air, it has come to pass that the Anglo-
Saxon race has for long past invaded and occupied
these mountains for three months in each year, with-
out discovering how remarkable the region is in
the movements and characteristics of its animal life.
I myself have been fortunate in having as a
companion an old friend, a native of the Oberland,
who has all his life been attentive to the plants
and animals of his beloved mountains. Johann
Anderegg will be frequently mentioned in this
chapter, and I will at once explain who he is. A
peasant of the lower Hasli-thal, in the canton of
Bern, born before the present excellent system of

7 a The Alps in June.

education had penetrated into the mountains, was
not likely to have much chance of developing his
native intelligence ; but I have never yet found
his equal among the younger generation of guides,
either in variety of knowledge, or in brightness of
mental faculty. He taught himself to read and
write, and picked up knowledge wherever he
found a chance. When his term of military
service was over, he took to the congenial life of
a guide and " jager," in close fellowship with his
first cousin and namesake, the famous Melchior,
the prince of guides. But a long illness, which
sent him for many months to the waters of Leu-
kerbad, incapacitated him for severe climbing,
and at the same time gave him leisure for think-
ing and observing : Melchior outstripped him as
a guide, and their companionship, always con-
genial to both as men possessed of lively minds
as well as muscular bodies, has long been limited
to an occasional chat over a pipe in winter-time.

But he remained an ardent hunter, and has
always been an excellent shot : and it was in this
capacity, I believe, that he first became useful to
the Professor Fatio whom I mentioned just now.

A Peasant Naturalist. 73

He did much collecting for him, and in the course
of their expeditions together, contrived to learn a
great deal about plants, insects, and birds, most
of which he retains in his old age. There is
nothing scientific in his knowledge, unless it be a
smattering of Latin names, which he brings out
with great relish if with some inaccuracy ; but it
is of a very useful kind, and is aided by a power
of eyesight which is even now astonishing in its
keenness. I first made his acquaintance in 1868,
and for several years he accompanied my brother
and myself in glacier-expeditions in all parts of
the Alps ; but it has been of late years, since we
have been less inclined for strenuous exertion,
that I have found his knowledge of natural history
more especially useful to me. He is now between
sixty and seventy, but on a bracing alp, with a
gun on his shoulder, his step is as firm and his
enjoyment as intense, as on the day when he took
us for our first walk on a glacier, eighteen years
ago.

The mention of his gun reminds me, that
though my old friend's eyes and my own field-
glasses were of the greatest help to me, I could

74 The Alps in June.

not always satisfy myself as to the identity of a
species ; and two years ago I was forced to
sacrifice the lives of some six or seven individuals.
This, it is worth knowing, is illegal in all parts of
Switzerland, and illegal at all times of the year ;
and I had to obtain a license from the Cantonal
Government at Bern, kindly procured for me by
another old acquaintance, Herr Immer of Meirin-
gen and the Engstlen-alp, to shoot birds ' in the
cause of science.' This delighted Anderegg ; but
at my earnest request he suppressed his sporting
instincts, or only gave them rein in fruitless
scrambles over rock and snow in search of
Ptarmigan and Marmots.

I propose to occupy the latter part of this
chapter in taking my readers a short expedition,
in company with Anderegg, in search of Alpine
birds ; but let me first say something of the
general conditions and characteristics of bird-life
in Switzerland.

And first of the number of species, and abun-
dance of individuals. People sometimes tell me
that they never see any birds in the Alps. An
elderly German, whose bodily exertions were

Scarcity of Birds on the Continent. 75

limited, and whose faculties seemed to turn in-
wards on himself instead of radiating outwards,
could not understand why I should go to Switzer-
land to study birds — for he could see none. And
it is indeed true that they do not swarm there, as
with us ; in this respect Switzerland is like the rest
of the Continent. It is a curious fact, that though
we have only lately begun to preserve our small
birds by law in the breeding-season, they are far
more abundant here than they are in any part of
the Continent known to me : and this is the case
even with the little delicate migrants, many of
which seem to have a preference for England in
spite of the risk of the sea-crossing. I remember
taking up a position one afternoon by the side of
a rushing stream, dividing beautiful hay-meadows,
and edged with dwarf willows ; and during the
half-hour I sat there, I neither saw nor heard a
single bird. In such a spot in England there
would have been plenty. But this is an exception :
the rule is, that you may read wherever you
run, if you will keep your eyes and ears open,
and learn by experience where chiefly to be on
the look-out. Variety is more interesting than

The Alps in June.

numbers ; the birds are more obvious from their
comparative rarity ; and their voices are not lost,
as is sometimes the case with us, in a general
and unceasing chorus. As regards the number of
species in the country, I have never seen an
accurate computation of it. But looking over
Mr. Dresser's very useful catalogue of the Birds
of Europe, I calculate roughly that it would
amount to about three hundred in all ; i. e. less
by some seventy or eighty than the avi-fauna of
the British Islands. This is, however, a remark-
ably large number for a country that possesses
no sea-board and very few of those sea-birds
which form so large a contingent in our wonder-
ful British list ; and it suggests a few remarks on
the causes which bring some birds to the Alps
periodically, and have tempted others to make
them their permanent home.

The greatest attractions for birds, and therefore
the chief agents — as far as our present knowledge
reaches — in inducing birds to move from place to
place are food and variety of temperature. Now
in the Alps we find these conditions of bird-life
everywhere present, except, of course, in the very

Great quantities of Bird Food. 77

highest levels of snow and ice. The seed-eating
birds find sufficient food in the rich hay, thick and
sweet with flowers, which covers the whole of the
Alpine pastures from May to July, and abundance
of corn, flax, and fruit in the valleys : in the steep
pine-woods that usually separate these valleys
from the pastures, the larger seed-eaters enjoy an
endless supply of fir-cones. The insect-eating
birds are still more fortunate. Nothing is more
striking in the Alps than the extraordinary abun-
dance in the summer of insects of all kinds, as we
know to our cost in the sun-baked valleys ; and
on the mountains it is equally wonderful though
less annoying. There it is that the beetles have
their paradise. In loose heaps of stone, often
collected to clear a stony pasture ; in the wooden
palings used to separate alp from alp ; in the
decaying lumber of the pine-forests, beetles both
small and great are absolutely swarming. A
clergyman, pastor of a valley near Meiringen, who
collected them, found more than eight hundred
different species in his parish alone. All the birds
shot for me at the Engstlen-alp had been living
on a diet of minute beetles as their principal food.

78 The Alps in June.

It is indeed wonderful to notice the strange dispro-
portion between the abundance of food provided
and the numbers of the birds who avail themselves
of the repast : there is so much more to eat than
can ever possibly be eaten.

But we must remember that this is the case
only during the warm months. During the
greater part of the year the snow is on the
ground in the regions of which I am speaking,
and hardly any birds are to be found there. A
great and general migration takes place, either to
the valleys below, or out of the mountain region
altogether, southward, or in a very few cases,
northward. Switzerland is, in fact, an admirable
centre for the study of migration ; migration, that
is, on a large scale, where the birds leave the
country entirely, and also on that limited scale
which we call in England ' partial ' migration. I
believe that the Alps will some day win the
attention of the ornithologists as being one of the
best of all positions as a centre of observation.
We will pause for a moment to glance at it in this
light.

We need hardly look at the map to see that the

Migration. 79

huge mass of the Alps lies directly in the path of
the great yearly migration of birds from south and
east to northern Europe. The question arises at
once, does this immense mountain-range, with
its icy peaks and wind-swept passes, act as an
obstacle to the travelling birds, or do they rise
to it and cross it, without going round, into the
plains of North Switzerland and Germany ? I
confess that I should like to be able to answer
this question with greater certainty ; but I believe
the right answer, in the rough, to be as follows.
In the first place, a large number of species never
attempt to cross the mountains, but remain in the
great basin of the Po, and in southern France,
the whole summer, thus making the avi-fauna of
Lombardy distinct in many points from that of
Switzerland. If we look through the works of
Dresser, Gould, or Bree, on European birds, with
the object of learning something on this point, we
find that bird after bird, especially among the
tenderer kinds of warblers, gets no further than
North Italy and the southern slopes of the Alps,
seldom straggling into Switzerland proper. On
the other hand, some migrating birds, such as the

8o The Alps in June.

Black Redstart, the Citril Finch, and some of the
hardier warblers, seem to desire a cool climate to
breed in, and doubtless come across the passes to
inhabit the Alpine pastures during the whole of
the summer. How far this is also the case with
the vast number of more delicate birds, such as
the various Reed- and Willow-warblers, who live
by the rivers and lakes during the summer, I
cannot undertake to say ; and it is a mere guess
on my part if I hazard an opinion that many of
these must come into Switzerland by way of
France and Austria. Anderegg sent me word
last autumn that he had noticed the Swallows
leaving Meiringen, not southwards over the
Grimsel pass towards Italy, but westwards, as if
they were seeking to turn the vast mountain
barrier. Yet it is a known fact that on some of
the passes birds are watched and killed in their
passage.

But I have still to speak of partial or internal
migration in Switzerland ; and this is what, if I
am not mistaken, will prove a very fertile source
of ornithological knowledge when thoroughly
understood. As I said before, the agents which

Internal Migration. 81

chiefly cause birds to move from one place to
another (so far as we know), are food-supply and
temperature. Now we have only to look at a
raised map of Switzerland to see at once how
subject the birds must be to such incitements
towards change of place. Any one who has been
to Switzerland will have noticed that the scenery
falls into three great divisions — that of the lakes
and valleys, that of the Alpine pastures and
forests, and lastly, that of the regions on the
border-line of perpetual snow, running upwards
to the higher snow-fields. The professional
mountaineer pays little attention to any but the
last of these ; the botanist and ornithologist have,
fortunately, much reason to pause and reap a
harvest in the lower levels, which are incom-
parably more beautiful. For convenience' sake
I will call the lowest, No. i ; the second — that of
the Alpine pastures, No. 2 ; and the highest,
No. 3. The distribution of birds in these three
regions is continually changing. No. 3, in the
winter, is entirely devoid of life and food. The
Eagles and the great bearded Vultures, now very-
rare, can find not even a marmot to prey upon,

8 2 The Alps in June.

for they are all asleep in their burrows. The
Snow-finches and the Ptarmigan, which in the
summer delight in the cool air of an altitude of
8000 to 10,000 feet, have descended to No. 2,
or even lower, compelled by want of food and
water : and so too the red-winged Rock-creeper,
the Alpine-pipit and others, which may be seen in
summer close to the great glaciers. In the same
way the birds which haunt No. 2 in the summer
— I am speaking of those which do not leave the
country altogether — descend in the autumn to
No. i, and there remain till the following spring:
among these are the Ring-ousel and Blackbird,
the Nutcrackers, the Titmice, the Alpine Choughs,
the Alpine Accentor, and others. Then in the
spring the reverse process takes place. As the
spring advances up the mountain-slopes, which it
gains slowly, not reaching the highest region of
vegetation till June or even July, the birds follow
it. Region No. i, now peopled by the immigra-
tions from Africa and the Mediterranean, sends
on large numbers of its winter birds to region No.
2, where, like the cows and the herdsmen who
ascend about the 'same time, they enjoy cool

Internal Migration. 83

air and abundance of food in the well-watered
pastures. Meanwhile the Snow-finches, the Ptar-
migan, and the birds of prey, who have been
living during the winter in the lower slopes and
woods of region No. 2, retire upwards to breed
in the rocks and snowy crevices of No. 3. We
can hardly help believing that with all these
wonderful provisions of nature for their change of
scene and temperature, these partial migrants of
Switzerland must lead a life supremely happy.
Man himself and his cattle are partial migrants
in the Alps ; and no day is so welcome to the
herdsman as that on which the authorities of his
commune fix for the first movement of the cows
upwards. Bitter indeed has been the disappoint-
ment of my old guide, now the happy possessor
of two cows, when he has not been able to follow
them in their annual migration to the cooler
pastures. He could realize the feelings of a
caged bird, unable to follow its fellows in seeking
the southern lands for which its heart yearns.

Before leaving this subject I should, perhaps,
note that these three regions are not divided from

each other by any definite- line ; and in respect

G 2

84 The Alps in June.

of their bird-life I need hardly say they slide
insensibly into each other. But I think it will
be found that the division is a fair one for our
purposes, and is a useful one to bear in mind
in all dealings with the natural history of the
country.

I will now ask my readers to follow me mentally
in an expedition which will bring us into actual
contact with many of the birds I have noticed
in Switzerland. We will choose a route which
from its great beauty, comparative quiet, and
good inns, has always been a favourite of mine,
and will carry us over parts of all the three
regions I have just described, enabling us to
compare their avi-fauna with that of our own
country. Starting from the village of Stanz-stadt,
famous in Swiss history, which stands on that arm
of the lake of Lucerne which lies immediately
beneath Mount Pilatus, we will pass up the
luxuriant valley of the Aa, in canton Unter-
walden, to Engelberg, where most of the land
and forest is owned by the monks of a great
monastery, whose care for their possessions has
doubtless helped to make them a pleasant home

Reed-bed at Stanz-stadt. 85

for the birds ; then we will mount to the pastures
of the Gerstni-alp, in region No. 2, and so
upwards to the Joch-pass, which in early summer
is covered with snow, and introduces us to region
No. 3. Descending for an hour to the Engstlen-
alp, loveliest of Swiss pastures, we find ourselves
here, at the excellent inn, again in No. 2, but
still within very easy reach of No. 3 ; and then
we can pass downwards through the Gentelthal,
or along the pastures that look down on it from
the north — for there are three different ways, all
of them of the rarest beauty — to the deep valley
of the Aar, or Hasli-thal, where we arrive once
more in region No. i.

On reaching Stanz-stadt, I always take a turn
along the road that here forms a narrow causeway
between two divisions of the lake, and is bordered
on one side for some distance by a broad bed of
reeds. Any ornithologist would see at once that
something is in store for him here, and if I had
had time or patience to stay here in the heat, I
might probably have seen more than I did see.
The Bittern occasionally visits these reeds, for
the landlord of the inn showed me a very fine

86 The Alps in June.

specimen which he himself had shot. They are
also the summer residence of those Warblers
which love reeds, and which abound much more
on the reedier lakes of Biel and Neuchatel. On
my last visit to Stanz-stadt, my companion being
in a hurry to get into cooler climes, I had only
a quarter of an hour to spend on this bit of road ;
but my ear instantly caught the song of our Reed-
warbler, to which I had been listening for many
weeks at Oxford, while learning to distinguish it
from that of its near relation the Sedge-warbler.
It was pleasant to hear the familiar strain the
very instant my long journey was over. The
Marsh-warbler, the Aquatic-warbler, and others
of their kind, are all to be seen by the rivers and
lakes of our lowest region (No. i), rarely ascend-
ing higher ; and he who has the courage to spend
a few days in the baking and biting valley of the
Rhone, for example, will find them all among the
desolate reed- and willow-beds of that, to man,
most inhospitable river.

Here also, at Stanz-stadt, and all up the valley
to Engelberg, and at Engelberg itself in abun-
dance, may be seen the White Wagtail of the

Valley of Engelberg. 87

continent, which is as comparatively rare in
England as our common Pied Wagtail is abroad.
The two forms are very closely allied, our Pied
Wagtail in winter very closely resembling the
White bird in its summer dress. The difficulty
of distinguishing the two caused me to pay great
attention to these White Wagtails whenever I
saw them. If you see a bird in summer which
has a uniform pearl-gray back, set off sharply
against a black head, the black coming no further
down than the nape of the neck, it is the White
Wagtail. You must look at his back chiefly ; it
is far the most telling character. The male Pied
Wagtail has at this season a black back, and the
female has hers darker and less uniform in colour
than the genuine White bird. I shall have some-
thing more to say of Wagtails in the course of
our walk ; but let me take this opportunity of
asking the special attention of travellers on the
continent to these most beautiful and puzzling
birds, whose varieties of plumage at different
seasons of the year seem almost endless, and
whose classification is still by no means finally
settled.

88 The Alps in June.

As we travel up the valley to Engelberg, and
in the higher portion of it in which Engelberg
stands, a considerable variety of birds may be
seen which are familiar to us as British species.
The Whin-chat is nestling in the meadows, and
swaying itself on the tops of the long grasses ;
our common English Redstart is seen here and
there, but not often, on the walls and palings ; the
Creeper runs up the stems of the fruit-trees, and
the Nuthatch has its nest in holes in the maple-
trees, which in these valleys are of great size and
beauty. In the woods and undergrowth you may
see the Chiff-chaff, and Willow-wren, and Garden-
warbler, and here and there a Buzzard : the Robin
and Blackbird are about, but not nearly so common
as with us, and we are at first surprised at the
absence of Song-thrushes,1 and the comparative
rarity of Sparrows, Skylarks, and Yellowhammers.
The commonest bird of all in the Engelberg

1 This bird cannot really be wholly missing in summer, but
it is strange how seldom I have seen or heard it. It is wanting
also from a list sent me by Mr. A. H. Macpherson, of birds
noticed by him in Switzerland last summer (1886). But
Anderegg tells me that its song is often heard near his house
at Meiringen. The Missel-thrush is certainly more abundant.

Valley of Engelberg. 89

valley, is one which we seldom see in England,
and never in the summer. This is the Black-
redstart, a bird which has a wide summer distri-
bution all over Europe, and is found in Switzerland
at all altitudes, suiting itself to all temperatures.
Wherever there is a chalet under the eaves of
which it can build, there it is to be found as soon
as spring has begun to appear, even though the
snow is lying all around. I have found it myself
nesting in chalets before the herdsmen and cows
had arrived there, and at a height of 6000 feet or
more, it has woke me at dawn with its song : yet
at the same time it is abounding in the plains of
France and Germany, and nowhere have I seen
greater numbers than in the park at Luxembourg.
It is one of the puzzles of ornithology, that in
spite of this, the bird never comes to England in
the summer ; and that the stragglers that do visit
us always appear as winter visitants ; straying to
our foggy shores as if by mistake, when they
ought to be on their way to the sunny south.

The little ' Rothel,' as they call him, is a great
favourite with the Swiss peasantry ; he is trustful
and musical, and will sing sometimes when you

90 The Alps in June.

are within a few feet of him. They are sorry to
part with him in autumn, and cannot make out
what becomes of him. One of them told me that
twenty-two of these birds were once found in the
winter fast asleep in a cluster, like swarming bees,
in the hollow-trunk of a cherry-tree ; how far the
story was mythical, I will not venture to say.

The Swallow tribe have been with us all the
way along the valley, but they will follow us no
further. Even at Engelberg (3500 feet) they
seem to be a little chilly in the early summer.
When I first arrived there, in cold weather, there
was not a Swift to be seen ; but one morning
when I woke I heard them screaming, and after-
wards I always knew a fine morning by the sound
of their voices. Higher up, when we leave the
highest limits of region No. i, we shall see neither
Swift, Martin, nor Swallow, and nothing is more
striking on the 'Alps,' than the sense that you
have left these birds of summer behind you.
The highest point at which I saw a swallow last
summer was at the glacier of the Rhone, where
Anderegg pointed me out a single straggler as a
curiosity : but later in the year they are probably

Valley of Engelberg. 91

bolder. Their place is taken in regions Nos. 2
and 3 by two other species, by no means common,
and of great interest — the Alpine Swift and the
Crag-martin. I have not found the latter in the
district of which we are speaking, but he is always
to be seen in a place well-known to most travellers
in Switzerland — the steep descent of the Gemmi,
to Leukerbad. As you wind down those tre-
mendous precipices, you will see a little ghostly
bird flitting up and down them, something after
the manner of a bat, and reminding you of our
Sand-martin — this is the Crag-martin, which spends
the summer here, and builds in the crevices of the
rocks. In the same place and others of the kind,
you may see the Alpine Swift, whose flight is
probably faster than that of any European bird ;
a splendid sight it is to watch him wheeling in the
sunshine, borne along on wings that expand to a
width of nearly two feet.

I have already strayed away from the valley
to speak of these birds, and it is time that we
should ascend to region No. 2, by the well-known
path to the south of Engelberg. Just at the foot
of the hill, where the path begins to mount, you

92 The Alps in June.

may hear an unfamiliar note ; it is that of the
Pied Flycatcher, a bird not unfrequently seen in
England, but welcome under all circumstances.
As we go upwards through the wood, we hear
very few birds : but as we suddenly emerge on a
grassy slope between the pines, a large bird
comes sailing high over us, with large brown
outstretched wings, which we may believe is a
Golden Eagle, so grave and silent its flight, so
huge its outline against the sky. After half-an-
hour's walk we come out upon the Alps proper,
i. e. the flowery pastures which form the bulk of
region No. 2. Here the bird-life begins very
sensibly to change. The Swallows, as I have
said, do not venture so high : of the warblers, the
only one left is the Chiff-chaff, which sings its
familiar two notes in the underwood far up on
the steep slopes above us. We are now on the
' Pfaffenwand,' a very steep and stony ascent
separating the lower from the higher pastures ;
and here each year this tiny little bird seems to
choose for his haunt, and perhaps for his nesting-
place, the very highest bit of real cover, con-
sisting only of stunted bushes, that he can find

Water Pipit. 93

in all this district. Here, too, we are not unlikely
to find a flock of Alpine Choughs ; noisy chatter-
ing birds, with yellow beaks, strong and stout
and with a downward curve ; their legs are bright
red and their plumage a bright and glossy black.
The Cornish Chough (Pyrrhocorax graculus,
Linn.), is also found in the Alps, but it is much
less common ; it is a larger bird, and its bill,
which is long and red, is very different from the
shorter and stouter yellow beak of the smaller
species. The Alpine Chough is the characteristic
corvus of the Alps, as it is also of the Apennines,
and its lively chatter, breaking suddenly on vast
and silent solitudes, recalls to memory the familiar
jackdaw we left behind us in the Broad Walk at
Oxford, or in the tower of our old village church.
But as I think of those delicious pastures,
nestling under the solemn precipices, and studded
in June with gentians, primulas, anemones, where
each breath of crystal air is laden with the aro-
matic scent of Alpine herbage, I seem to hear
one favourite song resounding far and near — a
song given high in air, and often by an invisible
singer ; for so huge is the mass of mountain

94 The Alps in June.

around us, that he seldom projects himself against
the sky in his flight, and may well escape the
quickest eye. But he is never many minutes
together on the wing, and will soon descend to
perch on some prominent object, the very top
twig of a pine, or a bit of rock amid the Alpine
roses —

Those quivering wings composed, that music still.

His nest is not far off, and may sometimes be
stumbled on in the grass and fern. This blithe
spirit of the flowery pastures is the Water Pipit
(Anthus spinoletta, Linn.), a little gray and brown
bird somewhat more distinctly marked than our
English Pipits, having a lightish stripe over the
eye, whitish breast, and black legs ; but in other
respects much like his relations, both in habits
and in his song, which is a long succession of
clear bell-like notes, slackening somewhat in
rapidity and force as he descends. He has very
rarely been found in England, but may possibly
be commoner than we fancy. Should I ever
meet with him, he will surely carry me back in
fancy to his true home among the Alps, where

Water Pipit. 95

in the common speech of the peasants he is no
longer a prosaic Pipit, but as he may well be
called, the Alpine Lark.1

Another bird which haunts this region, though
not in such numbers, and whose habits are much
like those of the Water Pipit, is the Alpine Ac-
centor. This belongs to a family (Accentoridae)
which has only one other representative in
Western Europe — our own familiar little Dun-
nock or Hedge-sparrow. In plumage and song
the two are not unlike, though the Alpine bird
is rather larger and of a more variegated warm
brown colouring : but I cannot help pausing for
one moment to point out the remarkable instance
that we have here of two very closely allied birds
developing habits of life so entirely distinct, —
the one being stationary, the other migratory ;
the one breeding in the road- side hedge where
it lives all the year, and the other retreating to
the highest limits of the Alpine pastures and
making its nest in the holes of the rocks. In the

1 This name (Alpenlerche) seems to be applied by the
peasantry both to this species and to the Alpine Accentor.
Mr. Seebohm, in his British Birds, calls the former, very
appropriately, the Alpine Pipit.

96 The Alps in June.

winter however the Alpine bird descends to the
valleys, and there finds it convenient to associate
more closely with man and his works ; in the
Hasli-thal it is known as the ' Bliem-trittel,' a
term which Anderegg explained to me as meaning
that it regales itself on the seeds of the flowers
and grass which escape through the timbers of
the chalet-built hay-barns. Thus it lives on two
distinct diets in summer and winter ; for in
summer it feeds chiefly on the innumerable small
beetles of the pastures, while in winter it is
driven to become a vegetarian.

As our time is running short, we will now cross
the snow-covered Joch, a pass barely high enough
to bring us well into region No. 3, and drop down
on the exquisite Engstlen-alp with its comfortable
inn (6000 feet), whence we can climb to the
highest region at any time with ease : this well-
watered and well-timbered Alp being so placed
that it stands nearly at the top of region No. 2,
with easy access to No. 3, and affords us another
glimpse at the former before we finally leave it.

As we sit at lunch after our walk, there faces
us exactly opposite the window of the salle-a-

The Engstlen-Alp. 97

manger, at a distance of a few yards, a little
dark-brown hay-chalet ; always a picturesque
object, whether it stands out on a clear day
against the mighty distant mass of the Wetter-
horner, or looms huge and uncertain in the swirls
of a mountain mist. This old friend of fourteen
years' standing gained a new interest for me on
my last visit. Every now and then a pair of
little greenish-yellow birds would come and twitter
on its roof, or pick up seeds and insects from
beneath its raised floor. I took these at first
for the Serin-finch, the well-known favourite cage-
bird of the continent, and the near relation of
the Canary and of our English Siskin. I had
no wish to shoot such trustful and beautiful
creatures, and therefore remained in ignorance
of their true nature till I returned to England,
when I found from Dresser's work that they must
have been not the Serin but the Citril-finch. The
two are closely allied, but the Serin seems to con-
tent itself with the valleys and plains of region No.
i, while its place is taken in the mountains by its
cousin. Mr. Dresser has an interesting account

of a successful search for it on the highest summit

H

98 The Alps in Jime.

of the Black Forest. It builds its nest in the
pine branches, but may always be looked out for
near chalets or palings at a considerable height,
which it ransacks for food ; and an elaborate
search for its nest which I made in the chalet
was a wild-goose chase into which I find that
more distinguished ornithologists have been misled
before me.

If we now stroll out across this beautiful alp
to the lake which bounds and waters it, we shall
find it alive with birds. Besides the Pipits and
the Accentors, there are families of young Ring-
ousels and Missel-thrushes, which have evidently
been born and brought up near at hand ; Wheat-
ears, of our English species, are perched on the
big stones that lie about, and in the ancient pines
above them you may now and then see a Crossbill
or a Redpoll. In the broad stream that issues
from the lake you will always see the Dipper,
and associated with it is the Grey Wagtail, seem-
ingly the only bird of its kind that affects the
higher Alps ; for the White Wagtail seems to
stay in the valleys even in the summer, and to
love the larger streams and the farmyard pool ;

The Engstlen-Alp. 99

and the other species which I might have ex-
pected to meet, the Blue-headed Wagtail (Mota-
cilla flava. Linn.), did not once offer himself to
my field-glass, nor did his near relative, our
common Yellow Wagtail of spring and summer.
But it is time that we should leave the pastures
and make an expedition into the higher region
of rock and snow. There is of course but little
bird-life there, but that little is interesting. The
best way is to go straight up the steep grass-
slopes to the north-west of the inn, which are
carpeted in June with millions of fragrant pansies
and gentians, until we arrive, after a climb of
some 1500 feet, at a little hollow filled with snow
and limestone boulders, and having on one side
a precipitous wall of rock, and on the other a
series of upward-sloping stretches of snow, inter-
spersed with patches of rock and short grass.
Early in the season, when this desolate region
is still quite undisturbed, you may find occupation
if you lie in wait awhile. In my first walk here,
no sooner did I reach this hollow, than a badger
got up about ten yards from me and shuffled
away behind some boulders ; and while following

H 2

ioo The Alps in June.

up his tracks over the snow, I found them cross-
ing and recrossing the ' spur ' of chamois. A
little further on, I saw the Ptarmigan creeping
about among the rocks, and very soon I heard
the call of the Snow-finches. These birds, who
thus live and breed almost within the limits of
perpetual snow, might be supposed, as Gould
says of them, to ' dwell in unmolested security.'
I was soon able to judge of the accuracy of his
statement, for as soon as I had caught sight of
them with the field-glass, I saw that something
was causing anxiety to the little family. It was
their alarm-call that I had heard ; and as I was
cautiously watching them fluttering on or close
to the ground, I suddenly saw a small red fox
make a hungry dash upon them, startling me
and causing me for the moment unwittingly to
move the glass and lose the whole scene. When
I found them again the fox was gone, the finches
were greatly troubled, and I fear there is no
doubt that he secured a dinner.

The Snow-finch is a beautiful bird, rather larger
than a Green-finch or Sparrow, with long wings in
which the primary quill-feathers are much longer

Snow- Finches. ' ' "' : " ' ' * ' ' '"i 6 1

than the rest, as in some other birds, of airy and
graceful flight. The strong contrast of jet-black
and purest white in the plumage, e.g. in the tail,
which has two black feathers in the middle while
the rest are as white as snow, makes the bird con-
spicuous at a long distance, and a more striking
object than the browner Snow-bunting, which
occasionally strays from the north to the Alps.
Seldom have I seen a more beautiful sight,
unless it be a flight of Plover on English water-
meadows, than the wavings and whirlings of a
flock of Snow-finches, with their white feathers
glistening in the sun one moment, while the
next their black ones will show clear against the
snow.

One other bird, which loves these great heights
in the summer, may occasionally be seen within a
few minutes' walk of the place where the Snow-
finch fell a victim. This is the red-winged Rock-
or Wall-creeper, a bird so beautiful and so unique
that it demands at least a passing notice. Wher-
ever there is a steep wall or rock which is in
shadow during part at least of the day, this bird
may be looked for and occasionally seen, even in

102 ' 'The* Alps in June.

the midst of a snow-field or a glacier ; * for when
the rock is exposed to the sun, the heat generated
is too great either to allow the bird to work, or
the insects it seeks to remain in the crevices. To
those who have not seen it, it may best be
described as in shape almost exactly like our com-
mon little Tree-creeper, the only other European
representative of the family, but larger, and instead
of its cousin's sober brown plumage, presenting
such an exquisite contrast of colour as is hardly
to be found even among the fauna of the tropics.
Its head, neck, and back, are soft ash-gray, and
when its wings are closed you would hardly dis-
tinguish it from the gray rock to which it clings ;
but in an instant, as it begins half to climb and
half to flutter from crevice to crevice, you will
see the brilliant crimson of its lesser quill-feathers
standing out, not unlike the underwings of a well-
known moth, against that delicate gray. Its bill
is long and slender, but strange to say, it is with-
out the long tongue, that wonderful far-darter,
with which the wood-peckers are provided ; so

1 E.g. on the rocks about the Devil's Bridge near Ander-
matt, or on those of the Gemmi-pass.

Pine- Forests. 103

the insects which it seeks in the crevices have to
be rummaged for with the bill itself, and conveyed
in some mysterious manner to the tongue, which
does not reach much more than half way down it.
Perhaps this may partly account for a statement
made to me by Anderegg, and positively insisted
on by him, that the bird loses the end of its bill
every autumn, regaining it in the course of the
winter. I am not in a position either to accept or
refute this story. Anderegg declared that he had
sent Professor Fatio specimens in order to prove
it ; but the Professor, who has studied the bird
carefully, has not, so far as I know, drawn atten-
tion to any such peculiarity. I am inclined to
think the truth may lie in the liability of the bird
to wear away or even break the tip of its bill in
the course of its indefatigable efforts to obtain
food, and I have seen a specimen in the Bern
Museum whose broken bill may possibly be a
confirmation of this explanation. The peasant
mind is apt enough to elevate an accidental cir-
cumstance into a law of nature.

We must now leave region No. 3 altogether,
and descend from the Engstlen-alp westwards

IO4 The Alps in June.

towards the Hasli-thal, passing through long
stretches of the pine-forests which so often separ-
ate the upper pastures from the valleys. There
are two families of birds to be met with in these
forests, of which I must say a very few words, —
the Woodpeckers and the Titmice. The former
are not abundant, and it needs much patience
to find them. I was to have visited a nesting-
place of the Great Black Woodpecker (that awe-
inspiring bird, which has borne its name of Picus
Martins ever since it was the prophetic bird of
Mars1), but fate decreed that I should have to
go that day in an opposite direction. The three
Spotted Woodpeckers — great, middle, and lesser
— all occur, but our familiar green bird, which
does not seem at home among the pines, is less
common. Rarest of all is the Three-toed Wood-
pecker, with yellow head, which dwells — so An-

1 In common with other Woodpeckers, as Mr. H. Wharton
has reminded me in the Academy. It is indeed very doubtful
whether this striking bird was known either to Aristotle or
Pliny ; it is now an uncommon bird in Italy, and is properly
an inhabitant of northern Europe. But when Italy was covered
with forest (cp. Theophrastus, Hist. Plant, v. 8. 2) it must have
been known to the country people.

The Crested-Tit. 105

deregg told me, and I find from the books that
he was right — only among the highest and most
solitary pine-woods.

At intervals, as in an English wood, the trees
will be astir with Titmice. The Cole-tit and the
Marsh-tit, the Blue-tit and the Great-tit, are all
to be seen here, the last two undistinguishable
from the British form, while the Cole- tit has a
bluer back than ours, and the Marsh-tit in these
higher levels differs, according to Professor Fatio,
even from the same bird when found lower down,
and approaches rather to the Scandinavian form.
This single fact is enough to show how interest-
ing would be a persevering study of this par-
ticular family. I will not venture to say whether
these slight differences in plumage are enough to
justify a specific separation of the forms. In the
case of the continental Long-tailed Tit, which is
decidedly different in colouring from ours, even
amateurs may perhaps see a sufficient reason ;
but will prefer to suspend their judgment as to
the other two.

There is yet a Titmouse, nearly always to be
heard and seen between the Engstlen-alp and the

106 The Alps in June.

Gentelthal, which is even more attractive to the
ornithologist than any of its cousins. This is the
Crested-tit (Lophophanes cristatus. Linn.), now so
rare even in Scotland, and, according to Anderegg,
not too common even in these pine-forests. It
needs a vigilant eye and ear to detect it, so
closely does it resemble its relatives (and espe-
cially the Blue species) both in voice and appear-
ance, until you catch the well-marked crest on
the head, and the additional shade of melancholy
in the note. So close indeed are this bird and
the Blue-tit in form, habits, and note, that I am
astonished that the crest by itself (a few feathers
raised on the head) should have been thought a
sufficiently strong character to raise it into a
separate genus — Lophophanes. If we notice the
Blue-tit carefully, we shall find that he also often
elevates his head-feathers into something like a
crest ; imagine this a little larger, and the bright
colouring of the Blue-tit sobered into a soft bluish
gray, and you will get a very good idea of the
appearance of the male Crested-tit. His lady is
brown rather than gray, causing Anderegg to
make one of those mistakes to which the peasant-

The Hasli-Thal. 107

naturalist is liable ; he assured me that there were
two species, answering to the two prevailing
tints.

I never can forget the spot where my old
friend's sharp ear first caught for me the quiet
note of these little birds. If any bird-lover should
chance to walk from Engstlen down to the Hasli-
thal, he should stop near the foot of the first rapid
descent among the pines, where the stream which
he has lately crossed tumbles over a ledge of rock
into a deep dark pool. At the very edge of this
pool stand a few black pine-trees, and among the
thick branches of these the Tits were playing.
Above us were vast mountain walls, and at our
feet was the mossy grass, damp with the spray of
the fall ; among the gray boulders the alpine
rhododendron was coming into bloom. At a little
distance a robin was singing its ever-welcome
song, mingling its English music with the sound
of alpine cow-bells from the pasture further down
the valley. Such scenes linger for ever in the
memory, and are endeared to us by the thought
of the blithe creatures who live and sport among
them during a long golden summer, long after we

io8 The Alps in June.

have returned to the land of misty meadows and
miry ways.

But we must now leave these woods and
pastures, and descend to the deep valley of the
Hasli-thal, where we shall end our journey at
Meiringen. If, instead of following the ordinary
path, we skirt along the heights to the north
towards Hasliberg, and so keep in cooler air,
enjoying endless views, we shall finally descend
by a very steep winding path, which is the only
means of communication between the population
of the valley and that of the higher slopes. In
the willows and hazels among which this path
winds, and also on the opposite side of the valley
on the way to Rosenlaui, I have always heard a
little warbler whose voice was quite strange to
me. More than once I have done all I could to
obtain a good sight of it ; but the restless caprice
of these little birds, who flit rapidly in and out of
the bushes while the ornithologist waits with his
head in a burning sun, only to lose sight of the
tiny creature the moment the glass is upon him,
defeated my purpose of finding out his species
beyond the possibility of error ; and Anderegg

The Hasli-Thal. 109

was as unwilling to use his gun so near the village,
as I should have been to sacrifice a joyous life to
the spirit of curiosity. But I have every reason
to believe that my little tormentors belonged to a
species with which I shall hope some day to make
a closer acquaintance ; it bears the name of the
Italian naturalist Bonelli, and is a very near
relation of our friends the Chiff-chaff and Willow-
wren (Phylloscopus Bonnellii, Vieill.).1

Our walk is now ended, and this chapter is
already quite long enough. Were we to take
another, we might see many other species not less
interesting than those we have met with on the
way from Stanz-stadt ; we might find Hawks of
several species, Nutcrackers in the pine-woods,
the Golden Oriole, the Hoopoe, or the beautiful
Blue-breast. But I have thought it better to be
content, for the most part, with the birds I have

1 The closer acquaintance has been made, and I have learnt
the song of this bird, which is not unlike that of the Lesser
White-throat described in Chapter II. Of all the warblers I
know, this is the most restless and difficult to observe when
once the leaves are fully out. It is the only bird, I think, which
has completely baffled me during a whole morning spent in
pursuing the song without once getting a fair look at the singer.
(June, 1889.)

no

The Alps in June.

actually met with in the walk we have chosen to
take, rather than to furnish a catalogue of all
those we might be lucky enough to meet with if
we stayed some weeks in the country. And thus
I hope I may have given my readers some little
idea of the impression left by the birds of a well-
known alpine district on the memory of a rather
hurried traveller, who has not been always able
to go or to stay as his own inclination would
prompt him.

Bonelli's Warbler.

CHAPTER IV.

A MIDLAND VILLAGE : GARDEN AND MEADOW.

is a curious fact that, when I return
from Switzerland, I am at first unable
to discover anything in our English
midlands but a dead level of fertile plain. The
eye has accustomed itself in the course of two
or three weeks to expect an overshadowing
horizon of rock and snow, and when that is

ii2 A Midland Village: Garden and Meadow.

removed, it fails to perceive the lesser differ-
ences of height. This fact is an excellent
illustration of the abnormal condition of things
in the Alps, affecting the life both of the plants
and animals which inhabit them ; and it also
shows us how very slight are the differences
of elevation in most parts of our own island. In
ordinary weather, the temperature does not greatly
differ in an English valley and on an English
ridge of hill, and the question whether their fauna
and flora vary, is one rather of soil than of
temperature. Still, there are manifest differences
to be observed as we proceed from river-valleys
to rising wooded ground, and from this again to
a bare hill-side ; and it may be interesting, after
our walk in the Alps, to note the bird-life of an
English rural district which is provided with all
three, recalling dimly and perhaps fancifully the
three regions of the Alpine world.

The traveller by railway from Oxford to
Worcester leaves the broad meadows of the
I sis about three miles above Oxford, and after
crossing a spur of higher land, strikes the little
river Evenlode at Handborough Station, not far

A Varied Country-side. 113

from its junction with the Isis at Cassington.
This Evenlode is the next considerable stream
westward of the Cherwell, and just as the line of
the latter is followed by the Birmingham railway,
so the line to Worcester keeps closely to the
Evenlode for nearly twenty miles, only leaving
it at last in its cradle in the uplands of Worcester-
shire. Westward again of the Evenlode, the
Windrush comes down from the northern Cots-
wolds, to join the Isis at Witney, and further still
come Leach, and Coin, and others, bringing the
clear cold water in which trout delight, from the
abundant springs at Northleach and Andoversford.
But the Evenlode is not a Cotswold stream,
though trout may still be caught in it where
it has not been polluted ; it skirts for many miles
the north-eastern slope of the Cotswolds, which
may be seen from the train-windows closing in
the horizon all the way from Shipton-under-
Wychwood to Evesham and Worcester, but it
has the slow current and muddy bottom of a
lowland stream, and runs throughout its course
among water-meadows liable to flood.

For the first few miles of its course it is little

I

H4 A Midland Village: Garden and Meadow.

more than a ditch ; but shortly after passing the
historic lawns of Daylesford, it is joined by two
other streams, one descending from the slope of
the Cotswolds, and the other from the high ground
of Chipping Norton eastwards. These two join the
Evenlode exactly at the point where it enters
Oxfordshire, and the combination produces a
little river of some pretension, which enjoys a
somewhat more rapid descent for some miles from
this junction, and almost prattles as it passes the
ancient abbey-lands of Bruerne and the picturesque
spire of Shipton church.

Close to the point of junction, on a long tongue
of land which is a spur of Daylesford hill, and
forms a kind of promontory bounded by the
meadows of the Evenlode and the easternmost of
its two tributaries, lies the village where much of
my time is spent in vacations. It is more than
four hundred feet above the sea, and the hills
around it rise to double that height ; but it lies
in an open country, abounding in corn, amply
provided with hay-meadows by the alluvial deposit
of the streams already mentioned, and also within
easy reach of long stretches of wild woodland.

A Varied Country-side. 115

For all along the valley the observant passenger
will have been struck with the long lines of wood
which flank the Evenlode at intervals throughout
its course ; he passes beneath what remains of the
ancient forest of Wychwood, and again after a
considerable gap he has the abbey-woods of
Bruerne on his left, and once more after an
interval of cultivation his view is shut in by the
dense fox-covers of Bledington and Oddington,
the border villages of Gloucestershire. It is just
at this interval between Bruerne and Bledington
that the junction of the two streams with the
Evenlode takes place ; so that from this point, or
from the village already spoken of, it is but a short
distance to an ample and solitary woodland either
up or down the valley. Beyond that woodland
lies a stretch of pasture land which brings you to
the foot of the long ridge of hill forming the
north-eastern boundary and bulwark of the Cots-
wolds, and hiding from us the little old-world
towns of Burford and Northleach. We have
therefore within a radius of five or six miles
almost every kind of country in which birds

rejoice to live. We have water-meadow, corn-

i 2

n6 A Midland Village: Garden and Meadow.

land, woods, and hills, and also here and there a
few acres of scrubby heath and gorse ; and the
only requisite we lack is a large sheet of water or
marshy ground, which might attract the waders
and sea-birds so commonly found near Oxford.
We are neither too far north to miss the southern
birds, nor too far south to see the northern ones
occasionally ; we might with advantage be a little
farther east, but we are not too far west to miss
the Nightingale from our coverts.

Such a position and variety would be sure to
produce a long list of birds, both residents and
visitors ; not only because there are localities at
hand suited to be their dwelling-places during the
whole or a part of the year, but because they offer
the change of scene and food which is essential to
the welfare of many species. An open country of
heath and common will not abound in birds of
more than a very few species, unless it is varied
with fertile oases, with garden, orchard, or
meadow ; for many of the birds that delight to
play about in the open, and rove from place to
place during the first few months of their exist-
ence, will need for their nests and young the

Birds and their Food. 117

shelter of trees and shrubs. While the young
are growing, they require incessant feeding, and
the food must be at hand which they can best
assimilate and digest ; and it does not follow that
this is the same as that which the parents habitu-
ally eat, or which the young themselves will most
profit by when they are fledged. The relation
between the movements of birds and their food
is a problem which has not, so far as I know,
been fully investigated as yet. Other problems
of absorbing interest at present occupy the
attention of men of science. The sure foothold
which has been gained by the theory of develop-
ment has placed the great questions of classifi-
cation in a new light, and brought the structure
of animals into the foreground ; the micro-
scope each year discovers new wonders in the
development of that structure from the earliest
visible germ of life, and the habits of the living
animal,1 and the relations of animals to each
other, have consequently fallen a little into the
background. No ornithological researches, so far

1 Mr. Seebohm's British Birds is a remarkable exception to
this tendency.

n8 A Midland Village: Garden and Meadow.

as I am aware, have been lately published in
this country, which can compare with those of
Sir J. Lubbock on the intelligence of insects.
Birds are in fact an extremely difficult subject
for minute study ; abundant leisure at the proper
season, indefatigable perseverance, and the means
and opportunity of travel, are its necessary con-
ditions, which are denied to most men. And, it
must be added, a considerable sacrifice of the life
and happiness of birds is another sine qua non of
investigations of this kind ; and thus the growing
sensitiveness of cultivated men is brought into
conflict with the ardour of the enthusiastic savant.
But to return to my village ; it is astonishing
how many birds, in spite of the presence of their
deadliest enemies, boys and cats, will come into
our gardens to build their nests, if only fair oppor-
tunities are offered them. In a garden close to
my own, whose owner has used every means in
his power to attract them,1 there were last May
fifty-three nests, exclusive of those of swallows

1 This kindly patron of birds is E. D. Lockwood, Esq., late
of the Bengal Civil Service, and author of Natural History,
Sporty and Travel in India.

A Favourite Garden. 119

and martins. The garden is not more than two
or three acres in extent, including the little orchard
which adjoins it ; but by planting great numbers
of thick bushes and coniferous trees, and by
placing flower-pots, old wooden boxes, and other
such odds and ends, in the forks of the branches
at a considerable height from the ground, he has
inspired them with perfect confidence in his good-
will and ' philornithic ' intentions. The fact that
a pair of Missel-thrushes reared their young here
only a few feet from the ground, and close to
a stable and a much-frequented walk, shows that
even birds of wild habits of life may be brought
to repose trust in man by attention to their wants
and wishes. The Blackcap, which almost always
nests in woods, had here found it possible to take
up its quarters close to the fruit it loves ; and of
all the commoner kinds the nests were legion.
Three Greenfinches built in the same tree one
over another, the nests being little more than a
foot apart ; a Wren had so closely fitted a little
box with the usual materials of its nest, that the
door corresponded with the only opening in the
box ; a Robin had found an ample basis of

1 20 A Midland Village : Garden and Meadow.

construction in the deserted* nest oT*a Blackbird.
The only bird that had been forbidden access to
this Eden was the Bullfinch ; he duly made his
appearance, but was judged to be too dangerous
to the buds of the fruit-trees. Siskins and Haw-
finches have occasionally looked into this garden ;
but the Hawfinch has never bred here, and for
some unexplained reason the same is the case with
the Redstart.

In my own garden, within a few feet of the
house, this last-mentioned friend found a very
convenient abode in a hole in my largest apple-
tree. The parents became very tame, and when
they knew their young were discovered, made
very little scruple about exposing themselves in
going in and out. The food they brought their
young, whenever we happened to see it, was a
small green caterpillar ; and I sincerely hope we
may have them again next year, both for the
benefit to my garden and for the pleasure they
give me.1 May the sad loss of one fledgling

1 They came, but found the hole occupied by the ubiquitous
Starling. He again gave way to a pair of bold Blue-tits, who
brought up their young here, flitting about the garden like large
blue butterflies,

An Untimely End. 121

depart from their memory before next summer !
It was just launched into the world when it fell a
victim to my dog, for I had seen it in the nest
only an hour or two before ; I had left strict
injunctions for the confinement of all domestic
animals as soon as the young were seen to leave
the nest, but had not expected them to face the
world so soon. This was a beautiful little bird,
showing already the rich russet colour in what he
had of tail ; his legs and claws were of extreme
slightness and delicacy, and his whole colouring
and framework was far more engaging than is the
case with most young birds of his age. He had
already picked up, or had been given by his
mother, a pebble or two to assist his digestion.

The Redstart was not a very common bird
about us until about three years ago, but now its
gentle song is heard in May in almost every
garden and well-hedged field. In August and
September the young birds are everywhere seen
showing their conspicuous fire-tails as they flit
in and out of the already fast-browning hedges ;
yet three or four years ago my daily walks did not
discover more than a few dozen in a summer.

122 A Midland Village: Garden and Meadow.

What can be the cause of this surprising increase
of population ? If it is anything that has hap-
pened in this country, such as the passing of the
Wild Birds' Protection Act, we must suppose that
the same individuals which breed and are born
here in one spring, return here the next year ;
i. e. our supply of this summer migrant depends
on the treatment it receives here, and not upon
the number of Redstarts available in the world
generally. I am inclined indeed to think, though
it is difficult to prove it, that the wholesale
slaughter of young birds in our neighbourhood is
less horrible than it used to be before the passing
of the Act ; but when we remember that other
creatures, certain butterflies, for example, whose
relations to man never greatly differ from year to
year, are found to be much more abundant in
some years than others, the more rational conclu-
sion seems to be, that an increase or decrease of
numbers depends, in the case of migrating birds,
on certain causes which are beyond the reach of
mankind to regulate. What these may be it is
possible only to guess. A famine in the winter
quarters would rapidly decimate the numbers of

Variation of Numbers. 1 2,3

those individuals which were with us last summer,
and we cannot tell whether the deficiency would
be supplied from other sources. Even a severe
storm in the spring or autumn journey would
destroy an immense number of birds so tender
and fragile ; and we must not forget that these
journeys take place at the very seasons when
storms are especially frequent and violent. Any
very serious alteration in the methods of dealing
with the land in this country, such as the substi-
tution of railings or ditches for hedges, or the
wholesale felling of woods and copses, would also
most certainly affect the numbers of this and most
other birds ; but in the course of the last few
years no such change of any magnitude has taken
place, and the increase of the Redstarts must be
put down, I think, to causes taking effect beyond
the sea.

The only really annoying destruction of hedges
in our immediate neighbourhood within my recol-
lection is one for which I ought always to be
grateful, for it brought me a sight of the only
Black Redstart I have ever seen in England. I
mentioned in the last chapter that this little bird,

124 A Midland Village: Garden and Meadow.

which is so abundant on the Continent all through
the summer, never comes to this country except
in the autumn, and then only in very small num-
bers, chiefly along the south-west coast. It is
generally seen in Dorset, Devon, and Cornwall
in November, but never breeds there, and it is
seldom that a straggler finds his way further
north. On the 6th of November, 1884, I was
returning from a morning walk, and about a mile
from the village came to a spot which a few years
ago was one of the prettiest in the country-side.
Here one road crosses another, and formerly the
crossing was enclosed by high hedges and banks,
forming a comfortable nook where the hounds
used to meet, and where the Sand-martins bored
their way into the light and sandy soil. A land-
agent descended here one day, like a bird of ill
omen, and swept the hedges away, filling their
place with long lines of bare and ugly wall ; the
martins sought a lodging elsewhere, for they
could no longer feed their young with the insect-
life of the hedgerows ; the hounds followed their
example, and all my associations with the spot
were broken. But it was upon this very wall,

The Cuckoo. 12,5

new, useful, straight, and intensely human, that
this rare little bird chose to sun himself that
bright November morning. A thousand times
have I seen him on the old gray fern-covered
walls of the Alpine passes, but never did I expect
to see him on this hideous ' improvement ' of
civilization. Except that he was silent and alone,
he seemed as much at home here as on the flowery
slopes of the Engstlen-alp. There is nothing that
man can erect that is too uncomely for the birds.1
I have digressed for a moment to tell this tale
of the Black Redstart, but I have hardly yet
done with the village itself. We have of course
plenty of Robins and Hedge-sparrows breeding
in our gardens, and in the nests of these the
Cuckoo is fond of depositing its egg. It would
not be always true to say that the Cuckoo lays
its egg in its victim's nest, for in some instances
at least the egg is dropped from the bill. A

1 For exactly four years I saw no other Black Redstart in
Oxfordshire. But on November 5, 1888, another caught my
eye within half a mile of the spot described in the text. This
time it was another new and ugly wall that he patronized, trans-
ferring his attention now and then to the cabbages in a cottage
garden hard by.

126 A Midland Village: Garden and Meadow.

Robin built its nest in a hole in the wall of my
garden, several inches deep, and with a rather
narrow entrance ; several eggs were laid and all
was going well. It was three or four days from
my first knowledge of the nest to my second
visit, when I was greatly annoyed to find all the
eggs but one on the ground at the foot of the
wall, broken to fragments. I accused the boy
who filled the office of boot-cleaner ; he was
more or less of a pickle, but he positively denied
all complicity. Meanwhile in my indignation I
had forgotten to examine the remaining egg ;
but the mystery was soon solved. Noticing that
the Robins had not deserted, I looked again
after awhile, and found a young Cuckoo. The
ugly wretch grew rapidly, and soon became too
big for the nest, so we hung him up in a basket
on a branch, where the Robins continued to feed
him. His aspect and temper were those of a
young fiend. If you looked at him he would
swell with passion, and if you put your finger
towards him, he would rise up in the basket and
'go for it.' One fine morning he disappeared,
and was never heard of more.

The Cuckoo. 127

In this case the egg was unquestionably de-
posited with the bill, while the same instrument
must have been used to eject the Robin's eggs,
thus saving the young Cuckoo when hatched the
trouble of getting rid of the young Robins by
muscular exertions. Next year a Cuckoo's egg
was laid in a Hedge-sparrow's nest in an adjoining
garden ; but the intended foster-parents wisely
deserted, and I was able to take possession of
the nest and eggs. Every year in June we are
sure to notice a persistent cuckooing close by us,
and nearly every year an egg is found in some
nest in the village. Once (I think it was at the
time when the Robin was the victim) boys re-
ported that they saw a cuckoo sitting on a bough
hard by, with an egg in its bill. There is no
doubt whatever that the bill can hold the egg,
which is hardly as large as a starling's.

We have another much smaller bird in the
village which can hold large objects between its
mandibles — objects almost as large, and some-

1The discovery in Germany (see the Ibis for April, 1889) of
a Cuckoo hatching its own egg should put all English observers
on the look-out. We have taken it too much for granted that
such a thing could not happen.

128 A Midland Village: Garden and Meadow.

times more bulky, than the egg of the Cuckoo.
This is the Nuthatch, which will carry away from
a window any number of hard dessert nuts, and
store them up in all sorts of holes and corners,
where they are sometimes found still unbroken.
These plump and neat little birds, whose bills
and heads and necks seem all of a piece, while
their bodies and tails are not of much account,
have been for years accustomed to come for their
dinners to my neighbour's windows.1 One day
while sitting with my friend, Col. Barrow, F.R.S.
(to whom the Oxford Museum is indebted for a
most valuable present of Arctic Birds), we set
the Nuthatches a task which at first puzzled them.
After letting them carry off a number of nuts
in the usual way, we put the nuts into a glass
tumbler. The birds arrived, they saw the nuts,
and tried to get at them, but in vain. Some
invisible obstacle was in the way ; they must have
thought it most uncanny. They poked and
prodded, and departed aTrpaxro). Again they

1 Col. Barrow tells me that now (August, 1886) they have
come to prefer bread to nuts, and will leave the latter so long
as they can get the former.

A Puzzled Nuthatch.

129

came, and a third time, with the like result. At
last one of them took his station on a bit of wood
erected for perching purposes just over the lintel ;
he saw the nuts below him, down he came upon

the tumbler's edge, and in a moment his long
neck was stretched downwards and the prize won.
The muscular power of the bird is as well shown
by this feat, as his perseverance and sagacity by

1 30 A Midland Village : Garden and Meadow.

the discovery of the trick ; for holding on by his
prehensile claws to the edge of the tumbler, he
contrived to seize with his bill a large nut placed
in the bottom of it, without any assistance from
his wings ; the length of the tumbler being little
less than that of the bird. But after all, this was
no more than a momentary use of the same
posture in which he is often to be seen, as he
runs down the trunks of trees in search of
insects.

The Spotted Flycatcher is another little bird
which abounds in our gardens and orchards ; it
is always pleasant to watch, and its nest is easy
to find. One pair had the audacity to build on
the wall of the village school : it was much as
if a human being should take up his residence in
a tiger's jungle, but if I recollect right, the eggs
and young escaped harm. Another pair placed
their nest on a sun-dial in Col. Barrow's garden,
as late as mid-July. This Flycatcher is the latest
of all the summer migrants to arrive on our
shores ; a the males and females seem to come

1 When does he leave us? On Aug. 23, 1886, I saw an
astonishing number of Flycatchers all on the same side of an

Flycatchers.

together, and begin the work of nesting at once,

Nest on sun-dial. — p. 130.

i.e. in the middle of May ; if the nest is taken,

orchard, and felt sure, from their restlessness, that they had
assembled, as swallows do, in view of migration. On the 24th
I went to S. Wales, where, during a whole week, I only saw

K 2

132 A Midland Village: Garden and Meadow.

as was probably the case with this pair, the
second brood would not be hatched till July.
The bird is singularly silent, never getting (within
my experience) beyond an oft-repeated and half-
whispered phrase, which consists of three notes,
or rather sounds, and no more ; the first is higher
and louder than the others, which are to my mind
much like that curious sound of disappointment
or anxiety which we produce by applying the
tongue to the roof of the mouth, and then sud-
denly withdrawing it. But is the Flycatcher
always and everywhere a silent bird ? x It is
most singular that he should be unattractive in
colour also — gray and brown and insignificant ;
but perhaps in the eyes of his wife even his quiet
voice and gray figure may have weight.

one, though they were abundant up to that time. Letters from
ornithological friends led me to believe that the birds have
almost entirely disappeared from South and East England by
about Sept. 1 2 ; and Mr. Seebohm is probably right in giving
the first week of September as the usual date of their departure.
How much less we know of the departure than of the arrival of
birds, so quietly do they slip away 1

1 Mr. Seebohm (Brit. Birds, i. 325) tells us of a quiet little
warble, so low as to be scarcely heard at a few yards' distance ;
but this I have never yet succeeded in catching.

Flycatchers. 133

This Flycatcher is an excellent study for a
young ornithologist. He is easily seen, perching
almost always on a leafless bough or railing,
whence he may have a clear view, and be able
to pick and choose his flies ; and he will let you
come quite close, without losing his presence of
mind. His attitude is so unique, that I can dis-
tinguish his tiny form at the whole length of the
orchard ; he sits quietly, silently, with just a shade
of tristesse about him, the tail slightly drooped
and still, the head, with longish narrow bill, bent
a little downwards, for his prey is almost always
below him ; suddenly this expectant repose is
changed into quick and airy action, the little
wings hover here and there so quickly that you
cannot follow them, the fly is caught, and he
returns with it in his bill to his perch, to await
a safe moment for carrying it to its young. All
this is done so unobtrusively by a little grayish-
brown bird with grayish-white breast, that hun-
dreds of his human neighbours never know of
his existence in their gardens. He is wholly
unlike his handsomer and livelier namesake, the
Pied Flycatcher, in all those outward character-

134 A Midland Village: Garden and Meadow.

istics which attract the inexperienced eye ; but
the essential features are alike in both, the long
wing, the bill flat at the base, and the gape of the
mouth furnished with strong hairs, which act like
the backward-bent teeth of the pike in preventing
the escape of the prey.

Our village is so placed, that all the birds that
nest in our gardens and orchards have easy and
immediate access to a variety of feeding-grounds.
From my window, as I write, I look over the
village allotments, where all kinds of birds can be
supplied with what they need, whether they be
grain-eating or grub-eating ; here come the
Rooks, from the rookery close by, and quite
unconscious of my presence behind the window,
and regardless of the carcases of former comrades
which swing on some of the allotments, they turn
out the grubs with those featherless white bills
which are still as great a mystery as the serrated
claw of the Nightjar.

Here also come the Wood-pigeons, and in late
summer the Turtle-doves — far worse enemies
to the cottager than the rooks ; here all the
common herd of Blackbirds, Thrushes, Sparrows,

Birds Insect-destroyers. 135

Chaffinches, and Greenfinches, help to clear the
growing vegetables of crawling pests at the
rate of hundreds and thousands a day, yet the
owners of the allotments have been accustomed
since their childhood to destroy every winged
thing that comes within their cruel reach. Short-
sighted, unobservant as they are, they decline to
be instructed on matters of which they know very
little, but stick to what they know like limpets.
For my part, I decline to protect my gooseberries
and currants from the birds ; their ravages are
grossly exaggerated, and what they get I do not
grudge them, considering their services during
the rest of the year.1

Beyond the allotments the ground falls to the
brook which I mentioned as descending from
Chipping Norton to join the Evenlode. This
brook is dammed up just below to supply an old
flour-mill, and has been so used for centuries ; its
bed is therefore well lined with mud, and when
the water is let out, which often happens (for the

1 This year (1886) I took all the sparrows' nests on my
house, and examined the young birds. Only one or two young
peas and grains had been given them : they had been fed largely
on insects.

136 A Midland Village: Garden and Meadow •

mill is on its last legs, and supports itself by aid
of a beer-license which is the plague of the
village), this mud appears in little banks under the
shelving rat-riddled lip of the meadow. Here is
a chance for some of the more unusual birds, as
every ornithologist would say if he saw the stream ;
but both water and mud are often thick with the
dye from the Chipping Norton tweed-mill, and
no trout will live below the point at which the
poisoned water comes in. Strange to say, the
poisoning does not seem to affect the birds. Two
pairs of Gray Wagtails, which I seldom see in the
Evenlode, passed a happy time here from July to
December last year, preferring some turn of the
brook where the water broke over a few stones
or a miniature weir ; and through August and
September they were joined by several Green
Sandpipers. These beautiful birds, whose de-
parture I always regret, are on their way from
their breeding-places in the North to some winter
residence ; they stay only a few weeks in England,
and little is known about them. Many a time
have I stalked them, looking far along the stream
with a powerful glass in hopes of catching them

The Green Sandpiper. 137

at work with their long bills ; each effort comes
to the same provoking conclusion, the bird sud-
denly shooting up from beneath your feet, just at
a place which you fancied you had most carefully
scanned. When they first arrive they will fly
only to a short distance, and the bright white of
their upper tail-feathers enables you to mark them
down easily for a second attempt ; but after a few
days they will rise high in the air, like a snipe,
when disturbed, and uttering their shrill pipe,
circle round and round, and finally vanish.

It should be noted that this species is called
the Green Sandpiper because its legs are green ;
such are the wilful ways of English terminology.1
It is the only Sandpiper we have, beside the
common species, which invariably prefers the
Evenlode, where it may every now and then be
seen working its rapid way along the edge of the
water, quite unconcerned at a spectator, and
declining to go off like a champagne cork. Both
kinds come in spring and late summer, but the

1 Mr. Aplin tells me, however, that the upper parts, in
summer at least, " have a decided wash or gloss of green " :
Mr. Seebohm calls it " dull olive-brown."

138 A Midland Village: Garden and Meadow.

Green Sandpiper is much more regular in his
visits, and stays with us, in autumn at least, much
longer. A stray pair found their way here last
winter in a hard frost, and rose from beneath my
feet as I walked along the Evenlode on December
24th. This is the only time I have ever seen
them here except in the other brook ; and I have
very little doubt that they were total strangers to
the locality. Had they ever been here before, I
make bold to say that they would have gone to
their old haunts.

Beyond the brook lies a magnificent meadow
nearly a mile long, called the Yantle, in which, a
century and a half ago, the little Warren Hastings
used to lie and look up with ambitious hopes and
fears at the hills and woods of Daylesford. This
meadow was once doubtless the common pasture
ground of the parish : it now serves as ager
publicus for great numbers of winged families
bred in our gardens and orchards. Goldfinches,
linnets, starlings, redstarts, pipits, wagtails, white-
throats, and a dozen or two of other kinds, spend
their whole day here when the broods are reared.
The Yellow Wagtails are always conspicuous

Habits of Young Birds. 139

objects ; not that they are brilliantly coloured, for
the young ones are mostly brown on the back,
and would hardly catch an inexperienced eye, but
because of the playfulness of their ways and their
graceful, wavy flight. Young birds play just like
kittens, or like the fox-cubs I once caught playing
in Daylesford wood at the mouth of their earth,
and watched for a long time as they rolled and
tumbled over each other. Only yesterday (July
15, 1885) I watched a host of young willow-wrens,
whitethroats, titmice, and others, sporting with
each other in a willow-coppice, and mixing together
without much reserve. Once I was taken aback
by the sight of two young buntings at play ; for
a time they quite deceived me by their agility,
fluttering in the air like linnets, unconscious that
a single winter was to turn them into burly and
melancholy buntings. The student of birds who
sighs when the breeding season is over and the
familiar voices are mute, is consoled by the sight
of all these bright young families, happy in youth,
liberty, and abundance. His knowledge, too, is
immensely increased by the study of their habits
and appearance. His sense of the ludicrous is

140 A Midland Village: Garden and Meadow.

also sometimes touched, as mine was yesterday
when I went to see how my young swallows were
getting on under the roof of an outhouse, and
found them all sitting in a row on a rafter, like
school-children ; or when the young goldfinches
in the chestnut tree grew too big for their nest,
but would persist in sitting in it till they sat it all
out of shape, and no one could make out how
they contrived to hold on by it any longer.
Young birds too, like young trout, are much less
suspicious than old ones, and will often let you
come quite close to them. In Magdalen Walk at
Oxford the young birds delight to hop about on
the gravel path, supplying themselves, I suppose,
with the pebbles which they need for digestion ;
and here one day in July a young Robin repeat-
edly let me come within two yards of him, at
which distance from me he picked up a fat green
caterpillar, swallowed it with great gusto, and
literally smacked his bill afterwards. The very
close examination thus afforded me of this living
young Robin disclosed a strong rufous tint on
the tail-coverts, of which I can find nothing in
descriptions of the bird; if this is usually the

The Yantle. 141

case, it should indicate a close connection with the
Redstarts, the young of which resemble the young
Robin also in the mottled brown of the rest of
their plumage.

Our meadows are liable to flood occasionally in
the winter, and also in a summer wetter than
usual. One stormy day in July, some years ago,
I espied two common Gulls standing in the water
of a slight flood, apparently quite at home. But
our Rooks found them out, and considering the
Yantle sacred to themselves and such small birds
as they might be graciously pleased to allow there,
proceeded to worry them by flying round and
round above them incessantly until the poor birds
were fain to depart. Rooks are very hostile to
intruders, and quite capable of continued teasing ;
I have watched them for a whole morning per-
secuting a Kestrel. No sooner did the Kestrel
alight on the ground than the Rooks 'went for
it,' and drove it away ; and wherever it went they
pursued it, backwards and forwards, over a space
of two or three miles.

In winter the floods will sometimes freeze.
One very cold day, as I was about to cross the

142 A Midland Village: Garden and Meadow.

ice-bound meadow, I saw some little things in
motion at the further end, like feathers dancing
about on the ice, which my glass discovered to
be the tails of a family of Long-tailed Tits.

But our Rooks found them out, and . . . proceeded to worry them.— p. 141.

They were pecking away at the ice, with their
tails high in the air. As I neared them they flew
away, and marking the place where they were at
work, I knelt down on the ice and examined it

The Yantle. 143

with the greatest care. Not a trace of anything
eatable was to be found. Were they trying to
substitute ice for water ? Not a drop of water
was to be found anywhere near. I have seen
Fieldfares and Redwings doing the same thing in
Christ Church meadow at Oxford, but the un-
frozen Cherwell was within a few yards of them.1
Whether or no the Long-tails were trying to
appease their thirst, I may suggest to those who
feed the starving birds in winter, that they should
remember that water as well as food is necessary
to support life.

The Yantle is a great favourite with Plovers,
Turtle-doves, and Wood-pigeons, and in the
winter it is much patronized by Fieldfares and
Redwings. And a day or two ago I surprised
four Curlew here (March 21), on their way from
the sea to their inland breeding-places. But
enough of the village and its gardens and out-
lying meadows ; in the next chapter we will stroll
further afield.

1 Stone-chats have been observed busy in this way near
Oxford.— A. H. M.

CHAPTER V.

A MIDLAND VILLAGE : RAILWAY AND WOODLAND.

EYOND the Yantle we
come upon a line of railway,
running down from Chipping Norton to join
the main line to Worcester. Just as the waters
of the Evenlode are reinforced at this point
in its course by the two contingent streams
I described in the last chapter, so the main rail-

The Whin-chat. 145

way is here joined by two subsidiary lines, the
one coming from Chipping Norton and the other
from Cheltenham over the Cotswolds. Para-
doxical as it may seem, I do not hesitate to say
that this large mileage of railway within a small
radius acts beneficially upon our bird-life. Let
us see how this is.

In the first place, both cuttings and embank-
ments, as soon as they are well overgrown with
grass, afford secure and sunny nesting-places to
a number of birds which build their nests on
the ground. The Whin-chat for example, an
abundant bird here every summer, gives the rail-
way-banks its especial patronage. The predatory
village-boys cannot prowl about these banks with
impunity except on Sundays, and even then are
very apt to miss a Whin-chat's nest. You may
see the cock-bird sitting on the telegraph wires,
singing his peaceful little song, but unless you
disturb his wife from her beautiful blue eggs you
are very unlikely to find them in the thickening
grass of May or June. And even if she is on
the nest, she will sit very close ; I have seen an
express train fly past without disturbing her, when

146 Midland Village: Railway and Woodland.

the nest was but six or eight feet from the rails.
The young, when reared, will often haunt the
railway for the rest of the summer, undismayed
by the rattle and vibration which must have
shaken them even when they were still within
the egg. Occasionally a Wheatear will make its
appearance about the railway, but I have no
evidence of its breeding there ; nor is the Stone-
chat often to be seen here, though it is a summer
visitor not far off among the hills.

Let me say incidentally that no one who has
either good eyes or a good glass ought ever to
confound the two Chats together. In the breed-
ing season the fine black head of the cock Stone-
chat distinguishes him at once ; but even the
female should never be the subject of a blunder,
if the observer has been at all used to attend to
the attitudes of birds. The Stone-chat sits up-
right and almost defiant, and is a shorter and
stouter bird than the Whin-chat, which perches
in an attitude of greater humility, and always
seems to me to deprecate your interference rather
than to defy it. And it is quite in keeping with
this that the ' chat ' of the latter is not so loud

The Chats. 147

and resonant as that of the former, as I have
satisfied myself after careful observation of both ;
the Stone-chat penetrating to my dull ears at a
greater distance than his cousin.1 This really
means that the bill of the one, and in fact his
whole muscular system, is stronger than the same
in the other, and the TO Qvposibes of his constitu-
tion is more largely developed.

If I walk alongside of the railway, as it passes
between the water-meadows and the corn-fields
which lie above them, divided on each side from
these by a low-lying withy-bed, I always keep an
eye upon the telegraph-wires ahead, knowing by
long experience that they will tell me what birds
are breeding or have bred about here. As
autumn approaches, great numbers indeed of
visitors, Swallows, Martins, Linnets, and others,
will come and sun themselves here, and even
tempt a Sparrow-hawk or Kestrel to beat up and
down the line ; but in early summer, beside the
Whin -chats, and the Whitethroats nesting in
great numbers in the thick quickset hedges which

1 The chat of the Whin-chat is a dissyllable, ' u-tic ' ; that of
the Stone-chat a monosyllable, 'chat.' (O. V. A.)

L 2

148 Midland Village: Railway and Woodland.

border the line, it is chiefly the melancholy tribe
of Buntings that will attract my notice.

I trust my friends the Buntings will not take
offence at being called melancholy ; I cannot
retract the word, except in what is now called
"a parliamentary sense." I have just been look-
ing through a series of plates and descriptions of
all the Buntings of Europe, and in almost every
one of them I see the same deflected tail and
listless attitude,1 and read of the same monotonous
and continually repeated note. The Buntings
form in fact, though apt to be confused with one
another owing to their very strong family like-
ness, perhaps the most clearly-marked and idio-
syncratic genus among the whole range of our
smaller birds. This may be very easily illustrated
from our three common English species. Look
at the common Corn Bunting, as he sits on the
wires or the hedge -top ; he is lumpy, loose-
feathered, spiritless, and flies off with his legs
hanging down, and without a trace of agility or

1 The Meadow Bunting (Emberiza da) seemed to me, when
I met with it in Switzerland this summer, to be more lively
and restless than other Buntings.

The Buntings. 149

vivacity ; he is a dull bird, and seems to know it.
Even his voice is half-hearted ; it reminds me
often of an old man in our village who used to
tell us that he had "a wheezing in his pipes."
Near him sits a Yellow Bunting (Yellowhammer),
a beautiful bird when in full adult plumage of
yellow head, orange-brown back, white outer tail-
feathers, and pink legs ; yet even this valued old
friend is apt to be untidy in the sit of his feathers,
to perch in a melancholy brown study with de-
flected tail, and to utter the same old song all
the spring and summer through. This song,
however (if indeed it can be called one), is a
much better one than that of the Corn Bunting,
and is occasionally even a little varied.1

Just below, on an alder branch or withy-sapling,
sits a fine cock Reed Bunting, whose jet-black
head and white neck make him a conspicuous
object in spite of the sparrow-like brown of his
back and wings. Except in plumage, he is
exactly like his relations. He will sit there, as
long as you like to stay, and shuffling his feathers
give out his odd tentative and half-hearted song.
1 See Note B at the end of the volume.

150 Midland Village: Railway and Woodland.

Like the others he builds on or close to the
ground, in this case but a few yards from the
rails, and his wife, like theirs, lays eggs streaked
and lined in that curious way that is peculiar to
Buntings alone. I have not had personal experi-
ence of our rarer Buntings, the Ortolan, the Snow
Bunting, or even the Cirl Bunting, as living
birds ; but all the members of this curious race
seem to have the characteristics mentioned above
in a greater or less degree, and also a certain
hard knob in the upper mandible of the bill,
which is said to be used as a grindstone for the
grain and seeds which are the food of them all
in the adult state.

Keeping yet awhile to the railway, let us
notice that even the station itself meets with
some patronage from the birds. In the stacks
of coal which are built up close to the siding,
the Pied Wagtails occasionally make their nests,
fitting them into some hospitable hole or crevice.
These, like all other nests found in or about the
station, are carefully protected by the employes
of the company. In a deep hole in the masonry
of the bridge which crosses the line a few yards

Preference for Railways. 151

below the station, a pair of Great Titmice built
their nest two years ago, and successfully brought
up their young, regardless of the puffing and
rattling of the trains, for the hole was in the
inside of the bridge, and only some six feet from
the rails of the down line. A little coppice,
remnant of a larger wood cut down to make
room for the railway, still harbours immense
numbers of birds ; here for example I always
hear the ringing note of the Lesser Whitethroat ;
and here, until a few years ago, a Nightingale
rejoiced in the density of the overgrown
underwood.

A Ring-ousel, the only specimen, alive or dead,
which I have seen or heard of in these parts, was
found dead here one morning some years ago,
having come into collision with the telegraph
wires in the course of its nocturnal migration.
It was preserved and stuffed by the station-
master, who showed it to me as a piebald
Blackbird.

A little further down the line is another bridge,
in which a Blue-tit found a hole for its nest last
year ; this also was in the inside of the bridge,

152 Midland Village: Railway and Woodland.

and close to the up-line. This bridge is a good
place from which to watch the Tree-pipit, and
listen to its charming song. All down the line,
wherever it passes a wood or a succession of
tall elms and ashes, these little grayish-brown
birds build their nest on or close to the grassy
banks, and take their station on the trees or the
telegraph-wires to watch, to sing, and to enjoy
themselves. A favourite plan of theirs is to utter
their bright canary-like song from the very top
twig of an elm, then to rise in the air, higher
and higher, keeping up their energies by a quick
succession of sweet shrill notes, till they begin to
descend in a beautiful curve, the legs hanging
down, the tail expanded and inclined upwards,
and the notes getting quicker and quicker as they
near the telegraph-wires or the next tree-top.
When they reach the perching-place, it ceases
altogether. So far as I have noticed, the one
part of the song is given when the bird is on
the tree, the other when it is on the wing. The
perching-song, if I may call it so, is possessed by
no other kind of Pipit ; but the notes uttered on
the wing are much the same with all the species.

The Pipits. 153

The young student of birds may do well to
concentrate his attention for awhile on the Pipits,
and on their near relations, the Larks and the
Wagtails. These three seemed to form a clearly-
defined group ; and though in the latest scientific
classification the Larks have been removed to
some distance from the other two (which form
a single family of Motacillidae), it must be borne
in mind that this is in consequence only of a
single though remarkable point of difference.
Apart from definite structural characters, a very
little observation will show that their habits are
in most respects alike. They all place their nests
on the ground ; and they all walk, instead of
hopping ; the Larks and the Pipits sing in the
air, while the Pipits and the Wagtails move their
tails up and down in a peculiar manner. All are
earth-loving birds, except the Tree-pipit and the
Woodlark.

We may now leave the railway, and enter the
woodland. Most of the birds that dwell here
have been already mentioned ; and I shall only
mention in passing the Jays, the Magpies, and
the Crows, those mischievous and predatory birds,

154 Midland Village: Railway and Woodland.

which probably do more harm to the game in a
single week of April or May, than the beautiful
mice-eating Kestrel does during the whole year.
They all rob the nests of the pheasants and
partridges, both of eggs and young ; and when I
saw one day in the wood the bodies of some
twenty robbers hung up on a branch, all belong-
ing to these three species, I could not but feel
that justice had been done, for it is not only
game birds who are their victims. A large
increase of these three species would probably
have a serious result on the smaller winged
population of a wood.

Among the more interesting inhabitants of the
wood, there are two species which have not as
yet been spoken of in these chapters — the Grass-
hopper Warbler and the Nightingale. The former
has no right to be called a warbler, except in so
far as it belongs to one of those three families
mentioned in a former chapter, in which all our
British ' warblers ' are now included. It has no
song, properly so called ; but no one who has the
luck to watch it alive, even without a detailed
examination of its structure, will doubt its true

A Grasshopper Warbler.

155

relationship to the Sedge-warbler and the Reed-
warbler. It is not a water-haunting bird, but still

Grasshopper Warbler.

rather recalls the ways of its relations, by choosing
deep ditches thickly grown with grass and reeds,

156 Midland Village: Railway and Woodland.

and sheltered by bramble-bushes ; it seems to
need something to climb up and down, and to
creep about in ; like the sedge-birds, it seldom
flies any distance, and one is tempted to fancy
that all these species would gradually lose the
use of their wings as genuine organs of flight,
if it were not for the yearly necessities of
migration.

I once had a remarkable opportunity of watch-
ing this very curious bird. It was about the
beginning of May, before the leaves had fully
come out ; a time which is very far the best
in the year for observing the smaller and
shyer birds. Intent on pairing or nest-build-
ing, they have little fear, if you keep quite
quiet, and you can follow their movements with
a glass without danger of losing sight of them
in the foliage. I was returning from a delicious
morning ramble through Bruerne wood, and
was just rounding the last corner of it, where
a small plantation of baby saplings was just be-
ginning to put on leaf, when my ear caught the
unmistakable ' reel ' of this bird. Some other
birds of the warbler kind, Wren, Robin, Sedge-

A Grasshopper Warbler. 157

bird, can produce a noise like the winding-up of
a watch, but none of these winds it up with such
rapidity, or keeps it going so long as the Grass-
hopper Warbler, nor does any cricket or grass-
hopper perform the feat in exactly the same way.
Our bird's noise — we cannot call it a voice — is
like that of a very well-oiled fisherman's reel,1
made to run at a very rapid rate, and its local
name of the ' reel-bird ' is a perfectly just and
good one.

I was on the outside of a little hedge, and the
noise proceeded from the saplings on its further
side. In order to see the bird I must get over
the hedge, which could not be done without a
scrunching and crackling of branches sufficient to
frighten away a much less wary bird than this.
There seemed, however, to be no other chance of
getting a sight of the bird, so through the hedge
I went ; and tumbled down on the other side with
such a disturbance of the branches that I gave up
all hope of attaining my object.

1 Or like a delicate electric bell, heard at some
while the door of your room is slowly opened and again
closed.

158 Midland Village: Railway and Woodland.

Great was my astonishment when I saw only a
few yards from me a little olive-brown bird creep-
ing through the saplings, which I knew at once
to be the Grasshopper Warbler. I then took up
a fixed position, the little bird after a minute or
two proceeded to do the same, and for some time
I watched it with my glass, as it sat on a twig
and continued to utter its reel. It was only about
ten paces from me, and the field-glass which I
carried placed it before me as completely as if it
had been in my hands. What struck me most
about it was its long supple olive-green neck,
which was thrust out and again contracted as the
reel was being produced ; this being possibly, as
I fancy, the cause of the strange ventriloquistic
power which the bird seems to possess ; for even
while I watched it, as the neck was turned from
side to side, the noise seemed to be projected first
in one direction and then in another.1 The reel
was uttered at intervals, and as a general rule did
not continue for more than a quarter of a minute,

1 Another cause is doubtless the crescendo and diminuendo
which the bird uses : see a valuable note in The Birds of Cum-
berland, by the Rev. H. A. Macpherson and W. Duckworth.

A Grasshopper Warbler. 159

but one spell of it lasted for forty seconds by my
watch. It is said to continue sometimes for as
much as twenty minutes, but I have never been
fortunate enough to hear it for anything approach-
ing to that length of time.

Our interview was not to last very long. It
unluckily happened that my little terrier, who ac-
companies me in all my walks, and is trained to
come to heel when anything special is to be ob-
served, had been out of sight when I broke the
hedge ; and now he must needs come poking and
snuffing through the saplings just as if a Grass-
hopper Warbler were as fair game as a mole or a
water rat. Nevertheless, so astonishing was the
boldness of this bird that he allowed the dog to
hunt about for some time around him without
being in the least disconcerted.1 When at last he
made off he retreated in excellent order, merely
half flying, half creeping with his fan-like tail dis-
tended, until he disappeared in the thick under-
wood. I would have taken the dog under my

1 In May this year (1886) I nearly trod upon a pair of these
birds, near the same wood : yet they showed no fear, allowed
me to approach them within six paces, and continued to reel
close at hand.

160 Midland Village: Railway and Woodland.

arm and tried for another interview, which no
doubt he would have given me, if I had not been
obliged to depart in order to catch a train to
Oxford. This bird was undoubtedly a male who
was awaiting the arrival of the females : just at
this time they not only betray themselves more
easily by the loudness of their reel, but also are
well known to be less shy of showing themselves
than at any other period of their stay with us.
This is the case with most of our summer
migrants. Only a few minutes before I found
this bird, I had been watching a newly-arrived
cock Nightingale, who had not yet found his
mate, and was content to sing to me from the
still leafless bough of an oak-tree, without any
of the shyness he would have shown two or three
weeks later.

We have every spring a few pairs of Nightin-
gales in our woods. Except when a wood has
been cleared of its undergrowth, they may always
be found in the same places, and if the accus-
tomed pair is missing in one it is almost sure to
be found in another. The edge of a wood is the
favourite place, because the bird constantly seeks

The Nightingale. 161

its food in the open ; also perhaps because the
best places for the nest are often in the depth
of an overgrown hedge, where the cover is thicker
than inside a wood. Sitting on the sunny side
of such a wood, I have often had ample oppor-
tunity of hearing and watching a pair : for though
always somewhat shy, they are not frightened at
a motionless figure, and will generally show them-
selves if you wait for them, on some prominent
bough or bit of railing, or as they descend on
the meadow in quest of food.

I am always surprised that writers on birds
have so little to say of the beauty of the Nightin-
gale's form and colouring. It is of the ideal
size for a bird, neither too small to be noticed
readily, nor so large as the somewhat awkwardly
built Blackbird or Starling. All its parts are in
exquisite proportion ; its length of leg gives it
a peculiarly sprightly mien, and tail and neck
are formed to a perfect balance. Its plumage,
as seen, not in an ornithologist's cabinet, but in
the living and moving bird a little distance from
you, is of three hues, all sober, but all possessing
that reality of colour which is so satisfying to the

M

1 62 Midland Village: Railway and Woodland.

eye on a sunny day. The uniform brown of the
head, the wings, and the upper part of the back,
is much like the brown of the Robin, a bird which
in some other respects strangely resembles the
Nightingale; but either it is a little brighter, or
the larger surface gives it a richer tone. In both
birds the brown is set off against a beautiful red ;
but this in the Nightingale is only distinct when
it flies or jerks the tail, the upper feathers of
which, as well as the longer quills, and especially
the innermost ones, are of that deep but bright
russet that one associates with an autumn morning.
And throat and breast are white ; not pure white,
but of the gentle tone of a cloud where the gray
begins to meet the sunshine.

In habit the Nightingale is peculiarly alert and
quick, not restless in a petty way, like the fidgety
Titmice or the lesser warblers, but putting a
certain seriousness and intensity into all it does.
Its activity is neither grotesque nor playful, but
seems to arise from a kind of nervous zeal, which
is also characteristic of its song. If it perches for
an instant on the gorse-bush beneath the hedge-
row which borders the wood, it jerks its tail up,

The Nightingale. 163

expands its wings, and is off in another moment.
If it alights on the ground, it rears up head and
neck like a thrush, hops a few paces, listens, darts
upon some morsel of food, and does not dally
with it. As it sings, its whole body vibrates, and
the soft neck feathers ripple to the quivering of
the throat.

I need not attempt to describe that wonderful
song, if song it is, and not rather an impassioned
recitative. The poets are often sadly to seek about
it ; Wordsworth at least seems to have caught its

spirit : —

" O Nightingale, thou surely art
A creature of a fiery heart."

And Wordsworth, as he tells us in the next stanza,
found the cooing of the stock-dove more agreeable
to his pensive mind. I never yet heard a Night-
ingale singing dolefully, as the poets will have it
sing;1 its varied phrases are all given out con brio,
and even that marvellous crescendo on a single

1 As in Milton's " most musical, most melancholy/' But as
Coleridge remarks in a note to his own poem of the Night-
ingale, in Sibylline Leaves, these words of Milton are spoken
in the character of the melancholy man, and have therefore
a dramatic rather than a descriptive propriety. Coleridge's own
conception of the song is the true one and most happily expressed.

M 2

164 Midland Village: Railway and Woodland.

note, which no other bird attempts, conveys to
the mind of the listener the fiery intensity of the
high-strung singer. It is a pity to compare the
songs of birds ; our best singers, Thrush, Black-
bird, Blackcap, Robin, and Garden-warbler, all
have a vocal beauty of their own ; but it may
safely be said that none approaches the Night-
ingale in fire and fervour of song, or in the
combination of extraordinary power with variety
of phrase. He seems to do what he pleases with
his voice, yet never to play with it ; so earnest
is he in every utterance — and these come at
intervals, sometimes even a long silence making
the performance still more mysterious — that if I
were asked how to distinguish his song from the
rest, I should be inclined to tell my questioner to
wait by a wood side till he is fairly startled by a
bird that puts his whole ardent soul into his song.
But if he will have a description, let him go to
old Pliny's tenth book, or rather to Philemon
Holland's translation of it, which is much better
reading than the original ; and there he will find
the most enthusiastic of the many futile attempts
to describe the indescribable.

Bird Life in July. 165

The Nightingale's voice is heard no more after
mid-June ; and from this time onwards the woods
begin to grow silent, especially after early morning.
For a while the Blackcap breaks the stillness, and
his soft sweet warble is in perfect keeping with
the quiet solitude. But as the heat increases, the
birds begin to feel, as man does, that the shade of
a thick wood is more oppressive than the bright
sunshine of the meadows ; and on a hot afternoon
in July you may walk through the woodland and
hardly catch a single note.

But on the outskirts of a wood, or in a grassy
'ride,' you may meet with life again. The Tit-
mice will come crooning around you, appearing
suddenly, and vanishing you hardly know how or
whither ; Wood-pigeons will dash out of the trees
with that curious impetuosity of theirs, as if they
were suddenly sent for on most pressing business.
A Robin will perch on a branch hard by, and startle
you with that pathetic soliloquy which calls up
instantly to your memory the damp mist and de-
caying leaves of last November. The Green
Woodpecker may be there, laughing at you from
an elm, or possibly (as I have sometimes seen him)

1 66 Midland Village: Railway and Woodland.

feeding on the ground, and looking like a gorgeous
bird of the tropics.

Other birds of the Woodpecker kind are not
common in our woods. The Greater Spotted
Woodpecker has only once fairly shown himself
to me ; the Lesser Spotted Woodpecker, which I
have heard country folk call the French Heckle,
seldom catches the eye,1 though to judge by the
number of stuffed specimens which adorn the
parlours of inns and farm-houses, it can by no
means be very rare. For this name ' heckle/
and all its curious local variants, I may refer
the reader to Professor Skeat's most valuable
etymological contribution to Newton's Edition of
Yarrell's Birds;'2' but why, one may ask, should it
be called the French Heckle ? A very old game-
keeper, who described to me by this name a bird
which was certainly the Lesser Spotted Wood-
pecker, also used the expression English Heckle

1 A Woodpecker on a railway bridge is a curiosity. But a
Lesser Spotted bird was once seen on the stonework of the
bridge which spans the Chipping Norton branch line, by the
Rev. S. D. Lockwood, Rector of my parish, who knows the
bird well.

2 Vol. ii. pp. 461-463. Hickwall seems to be the recognized
orthography ; but I spell the word as it was pronounced.

The Wood-warbler. 167

for the Wryneck — a bird (he said) much plainer
than the French Heckle, and apt to hiss at you if
you try to take its eggs. I imagine that French
is here contrasted with English to indicate superior
brightness and dapperness of plumage.

There is yet one bird of our woods — or rather
of one wood, thickly planted with oaks — of which
I have as yet said nothing. I had long suspected
his presence in that wood, but my search for him
was always in vain. One day in May, 1888, I
luckily turned down a little by-path which led me
through a forest of young ashes, and brought me
out into a wide clearing carpeted'' with blue-bells
and overshadowed by tall oaks. Here I heard a
sibilant noise, which in the distance I had taken
for the Grasshopper Warbler ; though I had had
doubts of it, as it was not prolonged for more
than two or three seconds. Now also I heard,
from the thick wood beyond the clearing, a series
of plaintive notes, something like those of the
Tree Pipit, and this stopped me again as I was
turning away. I listened, and heard these notes
repeated several times, feeling more and more
certain each time that I had heard them before in

1 68 Midland Village: Railway and Woodland.

this very wood, and suspected them to be the
call-notes of the Wood-warbler, a bird with which,
strangely enough, I had never had any personal
acquaintance.

The sibilant noise was all this time going on
close at hand. The wood was comparatively
silent owing to the east wind, and I could con-
centrate my attention on these new voices without
distraction. I noticed that the sibilation was pre-
ceded by three or four slightly longer and more
distinct notes, and as this answered to my book-
knowledge of the Wood-warbler, I became more
and more anxious to see the bird. But he would
not let me see him. And then came the puzzling
plaintive notes again, as different as possible from
the sibilant ones, and it became absolutely neces-
sary to discover whether they were uttered by the
same creature.

At last I thought I had made sure of the bird
in one particular little thicket not more than ten
or twelve yards from me, and crept on as softly as
possible out of the clearing into the underwood.
Of course the dead twigs crackled under my feet
and the branches had to be put forcibly aside, and

The Wood-warbler. 169

the voice retreated as I neared it. I thought of
a certain morning in the Alps, and of a provoking
and futile hunt after Bonelli's Warbler ; but push-
ing on a little further into a small open space, I
stopped once more, and then firmly resolved not
to move again.

I had a long time to wait. Sometimes the
plaintive voice, but oftener the sibilant notes,
would be uttered quite close to me, and the singer
would stay for some time in the same bush, hidden
from my sight, but near at hand. And at last, as
a fisherman sees the surface of the smooth black
pool in an instant broken, and then feels his fish, I
caught sight of a momentary motion in the leaves
not ten yards away from me. A minute later I
saw the bird, and knew at once that I had the
Wood-warbler before me. There was nothing now
to do but to stand motionless and see more of it.

By degrees it seemed to grow used to my
presence, and showed itself to me without any
sign of alarm. What can be more delightful than
to watch in perfect solitude and security the bird
you have been looking for so long ? There was
the yellow throat, the delicate white breast, the

1 70 Midland Village : Railway and Woodland.

characteristic streak over the eye — all plainly
visible as he sat facing me ; and when he kindly
turned his tail to me and preened his feathers,
I could see the greenish-brown back, and note
the unusual length of wing. Several times, when
close to me, he gave utterance to that curious
* shivering' sibilation (to use Gilbert White's apt
word), his bill opening wide to give the last shake,
his head lifted upwards, the long wings quivering
slightly, and the whole body vibrating under the
effort. One thing more was needed — a visible
proof that the long-drawn plaintive notes were
his notes too, and this I had the pleasure of
securing by a little more patience. But when
my little warbler uttered these notes, his bill was
not opened wide, nor did his frame vibrate with
any apparent effort ; they seemed rather an inward
soliloquy or a secret signal (as indeed they were),
and always ended up with a short note and a
sudden closing of the bill, as if to say, " All's right,
that's well over."

Then behind me I heard the undoubted double
call-note of a warbler, which probably I myself
caused the little bird's wife to utter, trespassing

The Haunts of Linnet and Goldfinch. 171

as I surely was in the neighbourhood of the nest.
It did just cross my mind that I ought to search
for that nest, but I gave up the idea almost at
once, and bade adieu in peace to my new friends.
They had shown themselves to me without fear,
and they should have no reason to dislike me.

Beyond the woods where these birds live, we
come out on scrubby fields, often full of thistles,
and spotted with furze-bushes. These fields are
the special favourites of the Linnets and Gold-
finches ; the Linnets are in great abundance, the
latter, since the Wild Birds' Act came into
operation, by no means uncommon in autumn.

We cannot but pause again and again as we
make our way through the gorse and brushwood,
for the little Linnet in his full summer dress is
hardly less beautiful than the Goldfinch, and all
his ways and actions are no less cheering and
attractive. The male birds differ much, perhaps
according to age, in brilliancy of plumage ; but
a fine cock Linnet in full dress of crimson breast
and crown, white wing-bars and tail-feathers, and
chestnut back, is to my thinking as splendid a
little bird as these islands can show. I can never

172 Midland Village: Railway and Woodland.

forget the astonishment of a companion who
hardly knew the bird, when I pointed him out a
Linnet in this splendid costume one July day on
a Radnorshire hill.

The ground now rises towards the hills which
form the limit of our western horizon. On these
hills may now and then be seen a few birds which
we seldom meet with in the lower grounds, such
as the Stone-chat, the Brambling, the Wheatear ;
but as the hills are for the most part cultivated,
and abound in woods and brooks, the difference
between the bird life of the uplands and the low-
lands is not remarkable at any time of the year.

It may be worth while, however, to note down
in outline the chief movements of the birds in our
district in the course of a single year. In Janu-
ary, which is usually the coldest month in the
year, the greater number of our birds are collected
in flocks in the open country, the villages only
retaining the ordinary Blackbirds, Thrushes,
Robins, &c. The winter migrants are in great
numbers in the fields, but they and almost all
other birds will come into villages and even into
towns in very severe weather. In February,

Local Migration. 173

villages, orchards, and gardens are beginning to
receive more of the bird population, while the
great flocks are beginning to break up under the
influence of the approach of spring. In March
the same process goes on more rapidly ; the fields
are becoming deserted and the gardens fuller.
But meanwhile hedges,* woods, thickets and
streams are filling with a population from beyond
the seas, some part of which penetrates even into
the gardens, sharing the fruit-trees with the resi-
dents, or modestly building their nests on the
ground. As a rule, though one of a very general
kind, it may be laid down that our resident birds
prefer the neighbourhood of mankind for nesting
purposes, while the summer migrants build chiefly
in the thickets and hedges of the open country ;
so that just at the time when Chaffinches, Green-
finches, Goldfinches, and a host of other birds are
leaving the open country for the precincts of the
village, their places are being taken by the new
arrivals of the spring. Or if this rule be too
imperfect to be worth calling a rule at all (for all
the Swallow kind but one British species build in
human habitations), it is at least true that if a

1 74 Midland Village : Railway and Woodland.

garden offers ample security for nesting, the pro-
portion of residents to migrants taking advantage
of it will be much greater than in a wood or on a
heath.

Just as the population of the open country
begins to decrease in numbers in early spring, so
it increases rapidly in the first weeks of summer.
The young broods that have spent their infancy
in or near the village now seek more extended
space and richer supplies of food, and when the
hay is cut, they may be found swarming in all
adjacent hedges and on the prostrate swathes,
while the gardens are comparatively empty. But
before July is over an attentive watcher will find
that his garden is visited by birds which were not
born and bred there ; while the residents are
away in the fields, the migrants begin to be
attracted to the gardens by the ripening fruits
of all kinds. White-throats, Willow-warblers,
Chiff-chaffs, haunt the kitchen-garden for a while,
then leave it on their departure for the coast and
their journey southwards. After this last little
migration, the villages and gardens remain almost
deserted except by the Blackbirds and Thrushes,

Local Migration.

the Robins and the Wrens, until the winter drives
the wilder birds to seek the neighbourhood of
man once more. Even then, unless the garden
be well timbered, they will be limited to a very

Out-door relief.

few species, except in the hardest weather ; and
it is remarkable how little variety will be found
among our winter pensioners — those recipients
of out-door relief, who spoil their digestions by

j 76 Midland Village : Railway and Woodland.

becoming greedy over a food which is not natural
to them.

This rough attempt to sketch the local migra-
tions of birds must be understood as applying to
my own village only, and to gardens which are
not surrounded with extensive parks.

CHAPTER VI.

THE ALPS IN SEPTEMBER.

S I observed in a former
chapter, the movements
of the birds of the Alps
are, or ought to be, of very great interest to the
ornithologist, owing partly to the wonderful variety
of food and climate afforded by the gigantic

N

178 The Alps in September.

structure of this mountain district, and partly to
its geographical position, lying as it does in the
very centre of the various routes of migration in
spring and autumn.

I had long been anxious to obtain some more
reliable information about these movements than
I had acquired when my third chapter was written,
and to obtain it as far as possible at first hand ;
and I eagerly seized the opportunity, in September
of the present year (1886), of a visit to relations
in Germany, to make a rapid dttour to the Alps,
about the time when the more delicate birds would
be beginning to leave the higher valleys and
pastures, now fast becoming too cold at night to
suit their tender frames. I was able to remain
only a very few days, but I saw and heard enough
to occupy my attention fully during that short
time, and am disposed to hope that by setting
down my experiences I may attract the attention
of autumn travellers to a matter which lends new
interest to a hackneyed region, after the flowers
have disappeared, and when the days are getting
too short for ambitious mountain-climbing.

I arrived at Lucerne on the morning of

Swiss Geography. 179

September 16, and went on at once to Alpnacht,
at the extreme end of the south-western arm of
the lake, having on my left the starting-point of
our former walk. I did not expect to see any-
thing of autumn migration quite so early as this,
or I should have taken the St. Gotthard line
direct to the great tunnel, and then have estab-
lished myself at once at or near the head of the
Reuss valley which the railway follows ; but I
wished to see what birds were still to be found
in the lower levels, and determined to spend a
day or two in the great valley of Hasli, where I
left my reader at the end of my third chapter.
Before I take him further on this second round of
exploration, I must ask him to look with me at a
map of Switzerland, in order that we may under-
stand the geographical conditions of the problem
about which I was now going to try and learn
a little.

A little study of a good map will show that the
true alpine region of Switzerland proper consists
of two enormous mountain barriers, fencing in, to
north and south, a deep trench, nearly a hundred
miles in length. This trench represents the

N 2

180 The Alps in September.

valleys of the Rhine and Rhone, which start
within a short distance of each other, and are
only interrupted for a few miles, in the very
centre of the region, by the upper part of the
valley of the river Reuss, which here forms a
kind of elevated plain, enclosed, like the trench
itself, between vast mountains ; this plain is the
bed of an ancient lake, which once escaped from
its prison through a narrow opening at the eastern
end, where the Devils' Bridge now stands. On
the northern side of the trench, throughout its
whole length, the mountain barrier is pierced by
ordinary summer routes at three points only :
beginning from the west, at the Gemmi Pass,
north of the Rhone, where the opening is artificial
rather than natural ; at the Grimsel Pass, which
debouches upon the source of the Rhone in its
Glacier ; and at the point mentioned just now,
where the lake made its escape, and where a
tunnel driven through the rock has taken the
place of an ancient hanging bridge. Nothing can
be more striking to a geographical eye than the
fact that from the point where it abuts upon the
Jake of Geneva (where communication is of course

Bird-catching on the Alps. 181

easier) to the point where the Rhine curves round
to the north at Chur, the northern barrier of the
trench offers only these three passages to the
ordinary human traveller. The southern rampart,
though for the most part broader, and including
the highest European peaks, admits the traveller
southward at several points, and is pierced by two
excellent carriage roads, those of the Simplon and
the St. Gotthard.

During the summer, the parts of Switzerland
north of the trench and its two barriers, are
occupied by countless fragile birds, which have
come from Africa over Italy, and must return
there in the autumn. How do they come, and
how do they return ? Of their arrival I have had
no personal experience, and shall therefore say
nothing ; for it does not follow that birds always
come and go in exactly the same manner and by
exactly the same route. But of the departure of
some of them I can now tell something, having
had the evidence of my own eyes that a double
barrier such as I have described is not a fatal
obstacle to their progress. The main facts of the
migration have indeed been long known, and only

1 82 The Alps in September.

too well known, to the inhabitants of the district ;
for the people of Canton Tessin, which consists of
the valleys to the south of the central part of the
Alps, sharing the tastes of their neighbours the
Italians, were until a few years ago in the habit of
lying in wait for the birds, and snaring them in
vast numbers. When the hold of the Central
Federal Government over the individual Cantons
was made stronger a few years ago, the same
absolute prohibition of wanton slaughter was
extended to this canton, which had long been
respected in the others ; and in spite of a cantonal
appeal to be allowed to revert to the old licence,
the " Bund " held its own, and succeeded in pro-
tecting the migrants. No bird may now be killed
at any time of the year in any part of Switzerland,
without either a game licence, of which the cost is
considerable, or a permission to procure specimens
for a scientific object.

We took no gun with us on this occasion,
being more anxious to observe movements than
to identify species. My plan was, after noting
the bird-population of the lower levels, which we
called Region No. i, to pass through the northern

In search of Summer Migrants. 183

barrier by the Grimsel or the St. Gotthard, and
take my station at the head of one of these passes,
in the highest ground of the great trench, and
there to look about me, and also to make inquiries
about the 'Vogelzug.' Accordingly, after leaving
the lake of Lucerne, I turned in the direction of
the great valley of the Aar, or Haslithal, which
leads up to the Grimsel Pass, knowing that at
Meiringen, which lies in the flat of it, not far from
its issue into the lake of Brienz, I should be
able to see almost in a single walk what summer
migrants were still to be found in it. But I halted
for the night at the beautiful village of Lungern,
in order to enjoy the walk over to the Haslithal
in the early morning of the next day ; and here
I was met by my old friend Anderegg, who
was as eager as myself for a week of diligent
observation.

The next morning was one of those which seem
to stir the hearts of all living creatures, urging
them to the enjoyment of autumn warmth while it
lasts, and to the pursuit of food while it is still
abundant. We had hardly entered the first pine-
wood when Anderegg detected the querulous

184 The Alps in September.

sibilation of the Crested Tit, and two minutes
later we had a little family around us, searching
the fir-branches without showing any anxiety at
our presence. Shortly afterwards a pair of Ravens
passed over us, twisting themselves round as they
flew through the morning mist, in a peculiar way,
and without any object as far as I could see ; and
at the same moment a small party of Crossbills
on the very top of a pine began to chatter with
indignation at the appearance of a possible enemy.
A few minutes later my sharp-eared companion
heard the voices of the Great Black Woodpecker
and of the Greater Spotted Woodpecker (Schild-
specht) ; but the forest was here so large and
dense that we were obliged to move on without
seeing either. Passing slowly upwards, and en-
livened by the close neighbourhood of Jays,
Nutcrackers, Missel-thrushes, and by the occa-
sional song of both Robin and Wren, we arrived
near the highest point of the Brlinig carriage-road,
where it runs for some distance almost at a level,
and is carried along the side of a steep ascent,
the hollow below it being covered with under-
growth stretching down to sunny meadows, while

Birds on the Brunig Pass. 185

the pine-forest rises above it sharp and dense.
A better position for an ornithologist could hardly
be desired ; for as he stands at the edge of the
road his eye must catch every movement in the
bushes below him, while his ear commands for a
considerable distance the pine-wood above him.
Here I walked up and down for some time,
scanning the multitudinous Cole-tits and Marsh-
tits which were playing in the cover below the
road, and mentally comparing their plumage with
that of our British forms of the same species ; and
while thus occupied, a Great Black Woodpecker,
the first I had ever seen alive, hove in sight and
fixed himself on a pine at no great distance, en-
abling me to watch him for some time with my
strongest glass, as he went to work on the bark,
now and again twisting his head round watchfully,
like a Wryneck, and giving me an excellent view
of his powerful bill. Presently, with rapid wing-
strokes, like those of the Green Woodpecker, he
flew over our heads, and was lost in the forest
above us. As he flies, he utters a series of laugh-
ing notes, and often gives out a prolonged call
after settling on a tree. He is a very fine and

1 86 The Alps in September.

remarkable bird ; as large, said Anderegg, as a
fowl, using precisely the same comparison which
occurred to Aristotle two thousand years ago.

We then descended rapidly into the Haslithal,
where I spent one whole day in noting such of its
feathered inhabitants as had not already deserted
it, or were likely to stay in it during the winter.
The most remarkable feature of this broad and
flat hollow in the hills, is the river Aar, which has
been artificially confined for several miles within
a strong stone embankment. On this particular
day the stonework on each side was literally alive
with Wagtails ; the left bank seemed almost ex-
clusively occupied by the gray species, and the
right bank by the white. All these were con-
tinually flying out over the swift glacier water,
hovering for a few moments as they sought for
flies, and then retiring to their station on the bank;
and this was going on for the length of a full mile
between the two bridges, so that the whole number
of Wagtails must have been enormous. I could
hardly avoid the conclusion that these birds had
collected in view of migration. The Gray Wag-
tail, Anderegg tells me, is never to be seen here

Carrion Crows. 187

in the winter, and the white species seldom ; but
as to what becomes of them I am unable as yet to
be sure. Perhaps they simply move down the
river into the lower and warmer districts of western
and northern Switzerland ; just as in England
also there is a general movement of Wagtails
in the autumn from the more mountainous dis-
tricts into the regions of plain and meadow.

Another unusual sight was the vast assembly of
Carrion Crows, which gathered in the evening,
first to drink (not in the rushing Aar, but in a
stream quiet enough to give me a momentary view
of a Kingfisher) ; then to perch on a number of
small fruit-trees, and finally to wheel round and
round among the pines and precipices, until they
settled down to roost for the night. But for their
voices and their black bills, it was hard to believe
that they were not rooks ; but no rook was visible,
and this bird seems almost unknown in the valley.
After seeing this strange sight, I find it hard to
assent to the universally accepted proposition, that
the Crow is never, strictly speaking, a gregarious
bird. So constant is their habit here of roosting
together, that Anderegg told me that he had more

1 88 The Alps in September

than once, when out hunting at night, been almost
deafened with the noise they made when threatened
by the gigantic Eagle-owl.

Of the ordinary summer birds there were few to
be seen, though the weather was warm for Sep-
tember. The Chiff-Chaffsang now and then from
the hotel garden, and a certain number of Willow-
warblers were still about the beans and flax in the
fields ; Bonelli's Warbler (see p. 109) I was quite
unable to detect. There were a few Swallows,
House-martins, and Crag-martins ; Goldfinches in
fair abundance, very busy with seeds in the
cultivated land ; a few Robins, and a solitary
Whinchat. I began to fear that I had come too
late to witness any considerable migration ; for
even the Black Redstart, the representative bird
of these valleys in summer, was in much smaller
numbers than usual. Even the Starlings had all
departed to a bird, not to return till March. On
the other hand, the birds of the higher regions
were already showing a disposition to come down
to lower levels ; among these the most interesting
were the Nutcrackers (often in company with Jays)
and the Crossbills. These last-mentioned birds,

Crossbills on top of pine. —p. 189.

Crossbills at Breakfast. 189

which are so seldom to be seen in England, were
now to be found in the lowest instead of the
highest pinewoods, in pairs or in small companies,
giving warning of their presence by a rapidly
repeated alarm-note. Generally they were on the
very top twigs of a pine, where it was difficult to
obtain a good sight of them ; but one morning
Anderegg's son, who is beginning to pick up his
father's powers of observation, detected a pair on
a pine below us, which both his elders had passed
by unheeding. They were breakfasting each on
the seeds of a cone, and I was able to observe
with the glass how admirably the crossed man-
dibles are adapted for cutting into the heart of the
fruit. The plumage of the male was a sober red,
less brilliant than it will be next spring ; and the
female's dull greenish colouring was hardly re-
cognizable against the pines. The presence of
these birds close down to the valleys denoted the
rapid approach of a cold season, and it became
plain that if I were to catch the southward migrants
I must hasten upwards towards St. Gotthard.
This I determined to do by the shortest possible
route, crossing the Susten Pass eastwards into the

The Alps in September.

Reuss valley at Wasen, and so getting easily to
the highest point of the great trench.

The Alps have a beauty of their own in Sep-
tember, even when there are few flowers left, and
the snow has long disappeared in all the highest
pastures. This is the time when the second crop
of grass is cut ; and the mowing leaves a short
and beautiful mossy golden turf, which shines
brightly in the sun, and lies softly and smoothly
where a pine or a boulder casts its shadow on the
ground. The walk through the Gadmenthal up
to the Susten Pass was one to be remembered for
beauty, though not ornithologically productive.
The only curiosity that I saw was a Creeper
running up a house ; a very natural proceeding on
the part of the bird, where the houses are of
wood, containing abundance of insects in the
crannies.1 The great curiosity of the valley, the

1 They will often build their nests in holes in the timber of
the houses. Anderegg tells me that this was the case in his
own house two years ago. Nor is this the only instance of the
habits of birds being affected by the nature of the house-
architecture in these parts ; for the House-martins, being unable
(I suppose) to make their nests adhere securely against timber,
or disliking the large projecting eaves, build in the Haslithal

The Gadmenthal. 191

three-toed Woodpecker, whose ' fatherland ' (as
Anderegg called it) is among the highest pine-
woods at the head of the valley, would not show
himself ; though in the village of Gadmen we were
told by an inhabitant that he had lately seen no
less than seven of this species — a whole family,
I suppose — on a single tree. Perhaps they too
had come downwards in expectation of the winter.
Alpine autumn was indeed around us, and at
Gadmen we saw the first signs of the general
migration of man, beast, and bird, which takes
place at this time of year. A flock of sheep,
which had been all the summer on the elevated
Wendenalp, had just come down, and was being
penned in front of the inn as we arrived. Great
part of the population of the valley had assembled
to claim their own, and when the penning was
done all plunged into the living mass, men, women,
boys, and sheep being mixed up in one confused
struggle. Anxiety sat upon their faces, for no

under ledges of rock, and are known there as the Rock-martin,
as distinct from the Rock-swallow (Felsenschwalbe), which is
the name there given to the Crag-martin. It is well-known that
there are places even in England where this bird prefers rocks
to houses.

192 The Alps in September.

man knows whether he shall find his own sheep ;
some wander away and are lost, and some few — a
fact of interest to me — are not too big to be carried
off by the Golden Eagles that dwell in the vast
precipices of the Titlis above the valley.

Above Gadmen the valley rapidly narrows, soon
becoming little more than a cleft in the mountains,
until it opens out into a pleasant little basin of
uneven rocky pasture, much of which has been
eaten away by a great mass of glacier which has
descended into it within the present century, and
is now again rapidly retreating. In this little
basin — the Stein-alp, as it is appropriately called —
is an excellent little inn ; and here is the very
place to catch the migrants of the Hasli and Gad-
men valleys, if they should be passing this way ;
for the narrowing of the glen below must bring
them all into this little basin, before they rise to
the final ascent immediately above the inn. On
the morning of September 1 7, as I was greeting
Anderegg, and suggesting to him that we should
make a second attempt to find the rare Wood-
pecker, he informed me with animation that he
had seen, first a large collection of small Finches

Migration at the Stein-alp. 193

flying overhead, and secondly, a great number of
Pipits assembled on the Alp a few minutes' walk
from the house. We at once went to look for
these, but they had all disappeared ; and we con-
tinued our walk downwards in search of the Wood-
pecker. But we had not gone far when our
attention was attracted by a flock of Redstarts,
working slowly upwards a little above the path ;
and turning back again, we followed these for
some distance, assuring ourselves that they were
no accidental assembly, but must be on their way
to the head of the pass, and so onwards to the line
of St. Gotthard into Italy. As we arrived again
at the inn, we saw the flock of little birds which
Anderegg had described in the morning ; they
were still about the inn, but so restless and so
playful that even with a strong glass I could not
be certain of their species. My own impression
was that they were Redpolls ; Anderegg, however,
positively asserted that he had caught the voice of
Citril and Serin Finches.

I now proposed that we should mount to the
top of the pass, in order to observe whether the
birds we had noticed in flocks lower down were

o

*94 The Alps in September.

still making way upwards. The result of this
movement was that we found the Pipits — all
Alpine-pipits (see p. 93), as far as I could ascertain
— in a sunny hollow just above the glacier ; they
were there in great numbers, but did not mount
further so long as we remained. The Redstarts
too we found still slowly working upwards on the
same side of the valley on which we had seen
them in the morning ; they were now just opposite
to the glacier. But on the top of the pass, where
it was too cold to stay long, we saw no signs of
migrants ; it was occupied only by a few Alpine
Accentors, while high above, at a height of full
9000 feet above the sea, the Alpine Choughs were
enjoying the sunshine. As we were descending,
I caught sight of a tiny little tarn on the opposite
side of the glacier, on the rocky alp high up above
the inn, which struck me as a likely place for
birds, especially as it was sheltered by a little crest
of stunted trees of some kind. Here, after the
mid-day meal, we made our way, and finding
nothing at all, lay down on the grass to enjoy a
splendid view of the craggy defile below us. But
we had not been lying long before a twittering was

Redpolls. 195

heard, and the little flock which had puzzled us in
the morning came dancing overhead, and settled
so deep in the stunted pines I had noticed from
the top of the pass, that though we could see the
movements of the branches, we could not once get
a clear sight of a single individual. This was too
provoking, and I at once proceeded to crawl slowly
towards the bushes, getting round to the flank of
the birds on a rising bit of ground, until I was
within a few yards of them. All that I saw were
Redpolls,1 and all of the ' Mealy ' form known
to ornithologists ; the autumn moult had left
them very white on breast and belly, and very
mealy on wings and back. They were, as far as
I could judge, a little larger than our British
Lesser Redpoll. Were they too migrating, or
were they going to spend the winter in the Gad-
menthal ? I suspect that they stay all their lives
in the Alps, and instead of moving southward to a
warmer climate when under stress of weather, have
but to make a short journey to a lower station in

1 I afterwards sa*w three of the same species about some
stunted thistles on the Furka-pass, at a height of 8000 feet, and
on a bitter cold day. See Note D. at end of Volume.

O 2

196 The Alps in September.

the valley, to find at once a warmer temperature
and abundance of the food they seek.

The next day, September 20, we packed up our
baggage, and left this health-giving spot with its
iced air and scented breezes, and again climbed
the pass on our way to Wasen, being anxious to
get to the head of the St. Gotthard before the fine
weather should desert us. I was not unwilling to
see my fellow-creatures again, as I had been quite
alone on the Stein-alp, except for a single hour
which an Englishman of education and intelligence
had made very enjoyable as he took his ' Mitta-
gessen ' and smoked his cigarette with me. As
it happened, we left just in time to enable us, as
the reader will learn shortly, to see things worth
recording at Hospenthal the following day.

On going up the ascent from the inn, I noticed
that the Pipits were now in great numbers at a
lower level than yesterday, and this suggested the
conclusion that a fresh instalment had arrived from
below, while those of yesterday had gone still
higher or descended on the other side. This idea
was fully confirmed by what I saw afterwards ; for
a good many more were at or about the top, and

On the Susten Pass. 197

as we sat there for a few minutes, one flew right
over us and disappeared in the depths of the
valley in the direction of Wasen. All the way
down too on the other side little parties were
making their way in the same direction ; and thus
it became clear that these birds at least do not
take flight all at once, but move in a continuous
stream of parties smaller or greater, much as the
late Mr. A. E. Knox described the migration of
the Pied Wagtails from west to east in the south
coast of England, in his admirable Ornithological
Rambles in Sussex} But we may well ask the
question, Do they arrive in the same manner ?
The Susten Pass is 7000 feet above the sea, and
is covered with snow from October to June. I
myself once crossed it on June 29, when its deep
snow bore no trace of human footsteps, and it was
possible to make glissades over slopes where now
not a vestige of snow was to be seen. Are we
to suppose that the Pipits and their friends pass it
in spring in spite of the snow, and travel in the

1 It is worth noting that Knox observed that the progress of
the Pied Wagtail is chiefly observable between daybreak and
10 a.m. All the movements I noticed in the Alps were
observed during the earlier morning hours.

198 The Alps in September.

same gradual manner ? I cannot yet answer this
question, nor is it likely that I shall ever be able
to witness the arrival of the Susten Pipits as I
witnessed their departure ; but I contrived in the
course of a week in these regions to set a few
intelligent natives in an inquiring mood with
regard to these matters, and it is possible that
next spring may bring me some scraps of useful
information. At present I am content to remem-
ber that Mr. Knox, in the passage just now
referred to, was the first . to discover that the
arrival and departure of our English species are
not performed in exactly the same manner.

We saw nothing of special ornithological interest
in the melancholy Meienthal, which leads down
from the Susten to the St. Gotthard railway at
Wasen ; but I was reminded of a passage in my
third chapter (p. 83) when we arrived at the first
considerable pasture, and found a whole commu-
nity of men, women, children, cows, and goats, on
the very point of migrating from their cool and
healthy summer home. The cows were all gathered
in front of the * Sennhiitten,' and when doors and
windows had been made fast for the winter, all the

A General Migration. 199

human migrants stood for a few minutes in prayer,
doubtless thanking God for the provision He had
made for them and their cattle, and asking for a
blessing on the pasture for the summers yet to
come. Then all these Catholics of Uri streamed
downwards with their cows in long procession, the
head ' Senner ' walking in front followed by one
fine animal ; and to-day the pasture is as still and
desolate as it will be all the coming winter. Even
the very stream that washes it will be less voice-
ful, when the first frosts have bound once more
the snow that feeds and fills it through all the
warm season. It was indeed most curious and
interesting to find man, beast, and bird all leaving
it on the same day.

On arriving at Wasen, being still alarmed lest
I should be too late to see much on this side of
the great double barrier — for it now became
evident that the birds were taking advantage of
the last fine weather — I had half a mind to go
through the tunnel to Airolo, and catch them on
the southern side. My second thoughts, how-
ever, were in this expedition unusually lucky, and
I fortunately decided to stay for a night or two at

2OO

The Alps in September.

Hospenthal, which lies just at the northern mouth
of the St. Gotthard Pass proper, in that curious
elevated valley mentioned at the beginning of
this chapter, which lies just between the two
halves of the great trench formed by the valleys
of the Rhine and Rhone. Any birds crossing
the St. Gotthard into Italy must necessarily pass
Hospenthal, and I had heard enough already of
migration in this district to make me pretty con-
fident of getting information here, even if I were
not lucky enough to see anything myself.

When we issued from the ' Urner-loch ' into
this broad and grassy valley, it was just beginning
to grow dark ; but we could see great numbers of
swallows and martins on the church steeples both
of Andermatt and Hospenthal, which are about a
mile apart. As I came down the next morning
at 7 a.m., I was met by Anderegg, who informed
me that the gathering on the Hospenthal steeple
had left their station in a body at 6 a.m., had
circled high into* the air for a few minutes, and
then taken a directly southward course, not by
the St. Gotthard road, but over the shoulder of
the mountain which separates that road from a

Migration at Hospenthal. 201

parallel valley to the east of it. That this ac-
count was true I was able to prove to my own
satisfaction, for on the morning of the next day I
was up in time to see a new party depart in
precisely the same manner and the same direction.
Like the Pipits, these Swallows and Martins
migrate in considerable flocks coming one behind
the other ; and so far as we could ascertain from
walks taken during the day, these flocks occupy
successively the steeples of Andermatt and Hos-
penthal, coming up from the lower valley and
settling first on the former, then leaving it when
the other is free, and so eventually leaving that
also to rise for their last flight over the great
barrier. How long this process goes on I could
not very clearly ascertain. But there were still
young martins in the nests at Hospenthal, which
would hardly be ready to fly for some days, and
as we subsequently found a certain number of
martins (though very few swallows) when we
returned to the Haslithal, I am inclined to think
that it occupies a considerable time, and differs in
length according to the weather. On the occa-
sion of my visit, though it was fine and warm,

2O2 The Alps in September.

the barometer was falling, and the very next day
a continuous rain and snow-fall set in, lasting
nearly three days ; so that it seemed as if the
birds were making haste to escape from a climate
which might very well be dangerous to them.
In Meiringen I was told that great numbers of
them were caught and killed by severe weather
in September last year. And the waiter in the
hotel at Hospenthal, who most fortunately has
some interest in these matters, and keeps his eyes
open in his idle autumn hours, declared that he
had seen the martins so eager to induce their
young to leave the nest before it was too late,
that at last they pulled them out by main force
and compelled them to join the general assembly
on the steeple.

This same man had also noticed a migration of
another kind, which it may be worth while to
record here. Sitting in front of the hotel, with
nothing to do, he had observed a constant stream
of dragon-flies making their way up the valley ;
and during my walks that day I was able fully to
verify his statement. All the way from Hos-
penthal to Andermatt these creatures were to be

Movements of Insects. 203

seen coming up against the wind, which was now
blowing from the west. Doubtless I should never
have noticed them, if my attention had not been
drawn to them by this most fortunately situated
observer. There was no mistake about it ; count-
less numbers were steadily passing up the valley,
but whither they were going it was hopeless to
ascertain ; they did not seem to turn up the St.
Gotthard road, for I remarked them the whole
way up the valley to the foot of the Furka Pass
westwards. Frau Meyer, landlady of the hotel,
told me that she had once witnessed an extra-
ordinary flight of countless butterflies at Hos-
penthal ; but could not tell me the species. I
had myself previously noticed the tendency of
the Apollo butterfly at the Stein-alp to fly up the
pass — every individual I saw being apparently
on his way upwards. And this was against an
east wind, close to a glacier, and on the iQth of
September !

The migrating birds, however, did not seem to
get any further up the valley than Hospenthal ;
and indeed at no point further up would they have
found a route into Italy so comparatively free from

204 The Alps in September.

difficulty. We took a walk in the afternoon in
order to ascertain whether this were so, and the
result was interesting. Let it be understood that
at Hospenthal the St. Gotthard road turns sharp to
the south up a narrow valley, while the elevated
valley or plain in which Hospenthal lies extends
for several miles further to the foot of the Furka
Pass, which leads, not into Italy, but into the
Rhone valley westwards. Exagtly as the human
traveller into Italy follows the road up the narrow
defile, leaving the broad plain behind him, so do
the birds change their direction at this point, and
prepare to leave food and comfort until they are
on the southern side of the barrier. All day long
a little tract of broken ground lying between the
hotel and the river had been alive with Pipits ; but
when we walked further up the main valley west-
wards not a bird was to be seen, except here and
there a lingering Redstart. The desolation was
complete ; yet no sooner had we returned to Hos-
penthal, than we were greeted again by Pipits,
Wagtails, Martins, and even by a solitary Wheat-
ear, who seemed left behind by his relations.
This was the only bird of its kind which I saw

Rettirn to Meiringen. 205

during my stay in the Alps. The Wheatears are,
as in England, the first migrants which arrive in
the spring, and doubtless they are also among the
first to depart. The only other bird which was
common here at this time was the Kestrel — the
Thurmfalk (tower-falcon) as he is here called ;
they nest in the Alps in old towers or rocks, and
several were always to be seen about the old
Lombard tower which overlooks the village, and
once overawed its inhabitants.

The next day I resolved to try whether the
Grimsel Pass, the second principal opening from
the north through the great barrier, would show
us anything new ; but in this project I was dis-
appointed, for rain and intense cold came on,
which drove me down to Meiringen and deprived
me of any opportunity of further observation.
And here, as I write, the sun has once more
broken through the clouds, a bracing north wind
blows, the mountains above us are covered with
fresh snow, the trees are beginning to lose their
summer green, the cow-bells are ringing in the
valley instead of upon the alps, and alpine autumn
is here in all its health and beauty. The hotel is

206 The Alps in September.

empty, and my only companions are the faithful
Anderegg and my host, Herr Willi, now Cabinet
Minister of his Canton, who entertains me with
discourse of the history of the Haslithal, the
antiquities of which he has been the first to
explore. Some summer birds are still here ; the
Chiffchaff for a single moment uttered its voice
outside the window by which I write. The
Robins are in fair abundance, and a few will stay
in the valley, where the cold is not greater than
in our own climate, throughout the winter. A
walk this morning showed us the House-martin,
the Crag-martin, and a single individual of the
numerous Alpine Swifts, which in the summer
haunt the gigantic precipices that frown upon the
valley.

We have seen how the Swallow-tribe departs
from the Alps, and have also learnt something of
the movements and migration of other birds ; but
I have still to discover in which direction the
tenderer birds, the various members of the tribe
of warblers, find a way to their southern winter
home. I can hardly believe that they can traverse
the wild and shelterless mountain passes with their

Migration of Warblers. 207

short wings and fragile bodies ; yet in the long sea
voyages which they make they are no less at the
mercy of the elements than they would be when
in the jaws of the most savage defile of the St.
Gotthard.

While I have been fortunate in seeing so much
in the course of a very few days, it is obvious that
much remains to be discovered, and that future
visits to Switzerland, whether in spring or autumn,
may not be without their reward ; for I have little
doubt that there is no European region where the
peculiar conditions of temperature, and the extra-
ordinary variety of food, are so likely to produce
abnormal effects on the living population — effects
which as yet are perhaps comparatively little
understood. I feel that my hastily collected in-
formation is but a single item in the vast repertory
of material which stands ready to the hand of any
one whose fortune may send him here at the right
time, and with the requisite qualifications. Many
Englishmen now pass the Alps in spring by way
of the St. Gotthard railway on their return from
Italy and the Riviera ; if among these there be

208 The Alps in September.

any that are curious about birds, let them halt for
a day or two on each side of the pass, and learn
what they can of the arrival of migrants from the
south. And let me add, that any occupation which
brings a foreigner into close contact with the more
intelligent Swiss, especially at a time when they
are not hard driven by the touring world of all
nations, will give new life and interest to even the
shortest visit to a country whose history and in-
stitutions are as wonderful as its scenery, or as its
animal and vegetable life. We are apt to think
of the Swiss as a self-seeking people, whose only
object is to make capital out of the natural beauties
of the extraordinary land they live in. But this
is not a happy impeachment in the mouth of
Englishmen, who know so well how to make the
best of their own resources, and who have con-
tributed not a little to stimulate the ardour of the
Swiss for gain and speculation. He who would
really know the peasant of the Alps must see
him in his natural state, struggling hard against
adversity, heavily taxed for education and im-
provements, loving labour and doing it cheerfully ;

The Peasant of the Alps.

209

a human being wrestling hard with Nature, who
yields her wealth for him with a very sparing
hand, while she lavishes upon the birds that
live around him untold abundance and endless
resource.

JOHANN ANDEREGG.

CHAPTER VII.

THE BIRDS OF VIRGIL.

IT might naturally be supposed, that an Oxford
tutor, who finds his vocation in the classics and
his amusement in the birds, would be in the way
of noticing what ancient authors have to say
about their feathered friends and enemies. One
Christmas vacation, when there was compara-
tively little to observe out-of-doors, I made a tour
through the poems of Virgil, keeping a sharp
look-out for all mention of birds, and compiled a
complete collection of his ornithological passages.
I chose a Latin poet because in Latin it happens
to be easier to identify a genus or species than it
is in Greek ; and I chose Virgil partly because
the ability to read and understand him is to me
one of the things which make life most worth
living, and partly because I know that there is no

Virgil's Early Life. 211

other Latin poet who felt in the same degree the
beauty and the mystery of animals.

I believe there are still people who think of
Virgil as a court-poet, writing to order, and
drawing conventional ideas of nature from Greek
authors of an earlier age. This is, of course,
absolutely untrue. Virgil's connection with Au-
gustus was accidental, and was probably no more
to the poet's taste than any other result of an
education and an occasional residence in the huge
city of Rome. If we compare what is known of
his life with the general character of his poetry,
we get a very different result.

The first sixteen years of his life were spent in
his native country of Cisalpine Gaul, almost under
the shadow of the Alps, three hundred miles away
from Rome. His parents were ' rustic/ and he
himself was brought up among the woods and
rushy meads of Mantua and Cremona. " Doubt-
less there is many a reminiscence of his early
years in the Georgics, where his love of the
woods, in which he must have wandered as a
boy, meets us in every page." * In that day it is

1 Ancient Lives of Virgil (Prof. Mettleship), p. 33.

P 2

212 The Birds of Virgil.

probable enough that the great plain of the Po
was still largely occupied by those dense forests,
the destruction of which is said to be the chief
cause of the floods to which the river is liable.
Much land must also have been still undrained
and marshy : and we can still trace in the neigh-
bourhood of Mantua the remains of those ancient
lake-dwellings which an ancient people had built
there long before the Gauls, from whom our poet
was perhaps descended, had taken possession of
the plain. These woods and marshes, as well as
the land which Roman settlers had tilled for vine
or olive, must have been alive with birds in
Virgil's day. There would be all the birds of
the woods, the pigeons and their enemies the
owls and hawks ; there would be cranes and
storks in their yearly migrations, and all manner
of water- fowl from the two rivers Po and Mincio,
and from the Lacus Benacus (Lago di Garda)
which is only about twenty miles distant. It
would be strange indeed, if, even when following
the tracks of a Greek poet, Virgil had not in his
mind some of the familiar sights on the banks of
Mincius.

Virgil's Italian Homes. 213

But later in life he was at least as much in
Southern as in Northern Italy. That the first
three Georgics were written, or at least thought
out, on the lovely bay of Naples, is certain from
the lines at the end of the fourth Georgic : —

Illo Virgilium me tempore dulcis alebat
Parthenope, studiis florentem ignobilis oti.1

Here were all the sea-birds, and the wild-fowl
that haunt the sea ; here, as we shall see, the
summer visitors might land on their way from
Africa. Here, from the sea and all its varying
life, the poet's mind would enrich itself with sights
unknown to him in the flat-lands of the Padus,
and grow to understand more fully day by day
the impressions — often dull ones — which Nature
had made on the poets who had sung before him.
Rome he never loved, though he had a house
there : perhaps he had seen enough of the huge
city during the years given to the dreary rhetorical
education of the day, after first leaving his home.

1 I Virgil then, of sweet Parthenope
The nursling, woo'd the flowery walks of peace
Inglorious, &c.

214 The Birds of Virgil.

He loved Campania, and he loved Sicily 1 ; at
Tarentum also he is found, probably visiting the
friendly and jovial Horace. The hill-country of
the peninsula, and of the island that belongs to
it, became a part of his poetical soul ; and as he
probably spent much of his time at his own
Cisalpine farm, after he was restored to it by
his patron's kindly influence, he must have been
constantly moving among all the phases of Italian
landscape — in the plain, on the hills, by the sea.

Everything, then, in Virgil's history, shows him
a genuine poet of the country, and at the same
time no one who really knows his poems can deny
that they fully bear out the evidence of his life.
It is true that he drew very largely on other
poets, and could not " disengage himself from the
antecedents of his art." From Homer, Hesiod,
Aratus, or Theocritus, for example, come nearly
all the passages in his works in which birds are
mentioned. But though they descend from these
poets, and bear the features of their ancestors,

1 " Habuit domum Romae Esquiliis juxta hortos Maecena-
tianos, quamquam secessu Campaniae Siciliaeque plurimum
uteretur." (Life by Suetonius, ch. 13.)

Dehisions of Virgil's Time. 215

they are yet a new and living generation, not
lifeless copies modelled by a mere imitator ; and
their beauty and their truth is not that of Greek,
but of Italian poetry. Let any one compare the
translations of Aratus by other Roman hands, by
Cicero, Festus, and Germanicus, with Virgil's first
Georgic, and he will not fail to mark the differ-
ence between the mere translator and the poet
who breathes into the work of his predecessors a
new life and an immortal one. There is hardly
to be found, in the whole of Virgil's poems, a
single allusion to the habits of birds or any other
animals which is untrue to fact as we know it
from Italian naturalists. Here and there, of
course, there are delusions which were the com-
mon property of the age. If, for example, he
tells us in the fourth Georgic that bees

oft weigh up tiny stones
As light craft ballast in the tossing tide,
Wherewith they poise them through the cloudy vast :

let us remember that the true history of bees has
been matter of quite recent discovery. And we
may note at the same time that Pliny, a professed
naturalist, living at least a generation after Virgil,

216 The Birds of Virgil.

has actually asserted that cranes, when flying
against the wind, will take up stones with their
feet, and stuff their long throats full of gravel,
which they discharge when they alight safely on
the ground ! *

Virgil mentions about twenty kinds of birds,
most of them several times. These twenty kinds
do not correspond so much to our species as to
our genera ; for the Greeks and Romans, I need
hardly say, had only very rough-and-ready methods
of classification, just as is the case with uneducated
people at the present day. When they found
birds tolerably like each other, they readily put
them down as of the same kind, rarely marking
minor differences. Thus coruus appears to stand
for both crow and rook ; picus stands for all the
woodpeckers inhabiting Italy ; by accipiter may
be understood any kind of hawk. But in spite of
this difficulty, it is sometimes possible to make
out the particular species which is alluded to,
partly by getting information as to those which

1 Plin., N. H. x. 60. Aristotle refutes the fable, which is
alluded to by Aristophanes in the Birds (1137). See Arist,
H. N. viii. 14. 5.

Virgil's Bird- Knowledge. 217

are found in Italy at the present day, partly by
comparing Virgil with Pliny and other Roman
writers, and where Virgil is using a Greek original,
by trying to discover, chiefly through Aristotle's
admirable book on natural history, what bird is
indicated by the Greek word translated, and
whether that bird is an Italian bird as well as
Greek, and therefore likely to be known to Virgil
at first hand.

I am not going to trouble my readers with
much of the uninteresting detail of an inquiry
like this (in which indeed the game might seem
to be hardly worth the candle), but merely to give
them some idea of the bird-knowledge on which
this greatest of Roman poets drew, whether at
first or second-hand, for description or illustration ;
and in so doing to make clear to them, so far as I
can, the particular kinds of birds which he had in
his mind. I shall quote him in the original, but
shall add translations in footnotes : in the Georgics,
his poem of husbandry, I take advantage of a
poet's translation, that of my friend Mr. James
Rhoades, which cannot easily be outdone either in
exactness of scholarship or in beauty of diction ;

218 The Birds of Virgil.

and in the Aeneid I make use of Mr. Mackail's
prose translation, which I prefer on the whole to
any poetical version I know. One passage from
the Eclogues I have translated myself.

The first birds we find mentioned in the poems
are the Pigeons, and we may as well begin with
them as with any other. Meliboeus tells Tityrus
that the farm to which he is returned after a long
exile — the same farm which the poet himself lost
and found again — shall yield him much true com-
fort and delight, even though he find it overgrown
with reeds, and spoilt with the stones and mud of
overflowing Mincius : —

Nee tamen interea raucae, tua cura, palumbes,
Nee gemere aeria cessabit turtur ab ulmo.1

Here two distinct species are clearly meant by
the words palumbes and turtur. About the latter
of these there is no difficulty ; from all that is told
us of it we gather that it is the same bird which
the French still call tourterelle and the Italians
tortorella, and which we know as the Turtle-

1 And all the while, with hollow voice, thine own
Loved wood-pigeon shall soothe thee, nor alone,
For from the lofty elm the dove shall ever moan.

Pigeons of Ancient Italy. 219

dove ; it is still found in small numbers passing
the summer and breeding in Italy, and is most
frequent in the sub-alpine region of which Virgil
is here writing. But what bird is here meant by
palumbes ? Both this word and its near relative
columba must be translated by pigeon, but can we
distinguish them as different species ? Here the
commentaries and dictionaries give us no sub-
stantial help, and I may be pardoned for pausing
a moment to consider a question of some interest
to historical ornithologists.

There are at the present day three kinds of
pigeons beside the turtle-dove just mentioned,
which are found in Italy ; they are the same three
which we know in England as the Wood-pigeon
or Ring-dove, the Stock-dove, and the Rock-dove
or Blue-rock. Of these the last, which with us
is the rarest, only found on certain parts of our
coast, is by far the most abundant in Italy, and is
the only one which habitually breeds there. The
other two species pass over Italy in spring and
autumn regularly, but seldom or never stay there ;
they go northwards in the spring from Africa and
the East, and return again in the autumn after

22O

The Birds of Virgil.

breeding in cooler climes. But it is fairly certain
that in ancient times two species of pigeons bred
in Italy : (i) the bird meant by palumbes, of which
Virgil makes the shepherd Damoetas say in the
third Eclogue that he has " marked the place
where they have gathered materials for nesting," 3
and of which Pliny tells his readers that when
they see this bird upon her nest they may know
that midsummer is past (Pliny, Nat. Hist, xviii.
267) ; (2) the bird named columba, which word,
though etymologically the same as palumbes, is
used by Pliny, and also by the Roman agricultural
writers, to represent a bird which is certainly to
be distinguished from palumbes." The columba
was in fact the tame pigeon of the Romans : it
was also their carrier-pigeon ; for in the siege of
Mutina, B.C. 43, the besieged general commurfi-
cated with the relieving force by means of columbae,
to the feet of which letters were attached (Plin. x.
no). The words may here and there be used
loosely, and it is possible that attempts may have
been made to domesticate the palumbes as well as

1 Eclogue iii. 68.

2 Columella viii. 8. Cato de Re Rustica, 90.

Columba and Palumbes. 221

the columba ; but in the vast majority of passages
the columba is certainly either the domestic bird or
a wild bird of the same species, while palumbes is
some other kind of pigeon.

Even in Virgil the distinction is maintained ;
for while palumbes breeds in the elm in the first
Eclogue, already quoted (which poem, it should
be noted, is genuinely north- Italian, and inde-
pendent of a Greek original), columba on the
other hand has her nest in a rock, as the follow-
ing well-known and beautiful passage will plainly
show —

Qualis spelunca subito commota columba,
Cui domus et dulces latebroso in pumice nidi,
Fertur in arva volans, plausumque exterrita pennis
Dat tecto ingentem, mox acre lapsa quieto
Radit iter liquidum, celeres neque commovet alas.

And in the same fifth Aeneid, the bird which
served as a target in the archery contest — a
domestic bird, we may suppose — was a columba,
not a palumbes.

Now it is a fact almost universally recognized
by modern ornithologists that our domestic pigeon
is in all its varieties descended from the wild
Rock-dove ; and thus when we find that the

222 The Birds of Virgil.

Romans used columba to denote their domestic
bird, and also a wild bird which made its nest in
rocks, the conclusion is almost certain that by that
word we are to understand our Blue-rock pigeon
(Columba livia) ; and if this is so, by palumbes
must be meant one of the other two Italian
pigeons, the Wood-pigeon (Columba palumbus,
Linn.) or the Stock-dove (Columba aenas, Linn.).
Both species, as I have said, are now birds of
passage in Italy, while the Blue-rock is resident ;
and Pliny tells us of the palumbes that it arrived
every year in great numbers from the sea — he
does not say at what season. Perhaps the Stock-
dove * is the more likely of the two to have been
the bird generally meant by palumbes ; but it is
quite possible that, like the unskilled of the present
day, the Romans confounded the two species, and
wrote of them as one.

But there is still a difficulty. The palumbes in
the time of Virgil and Pliny seems to have bred
in Italy ; Pliny knew all about their breeding (x.
147 and 153), and Virgil makes Damoetas mark

1 Philemon Holland so translates palumbes in his version of
Pliny.

Passion of Italians for Birds. 223

the place where their nesting is going on. But
it is now very rarely, if we may trust Italian
naturalists, that either Ring-dove or Stock-dove
passes a summer in Italy. Birds seek a cool
climate for their breeding-places ; probably be-
cause in very hot countries the food suitable to
their nestlings will not be found in the breeding-
season. Has the climate of Italy become hotter
in the last two thousand years, discouraging these
birds from lingering south of the Alps ?

This is an old question which has been well
thrashed out by the learned, and the general con-
clusion seems to be in the affirmative. The last
eminent writer on the subject takes this view,1 and
his argument would receive a decided clinch if it
could be proved that certain kinds of birds, which
formerly bred in the country, do so no longer, and
that this is not due to other causes, such as the
well-known passion of the Italians for killing and
eating all the birds on which they can lay their
hands.

If we now turn to the first Georgic, in which,
following the Greek poet Aratus with freedom
1 Nissen, Italische Landeskunde, p. 374.

224 The Birds of Virgil.

and discretion, Virgil has told us more of animal
life than in all the rest of his poems, we find
frequent mention of the long-legged and long-
billed birds with which he must have been very
familiar in his boyhood at Mantua. The first of
these we meet with is the Crane (Latin grus).
About the meaning of the word grus there can
be no doubt ; it would seem that the Crane was a
bird accurately distinguished by the forefathers
of our modern Aryan peoples even before they
separated from each other. The Greek word
yspavos, the Latin grus, the German Kranich, and
the Welsh garan are all identical, and point to a
period when the bird was known by the same
name to the whole race. Probably it was much
more abundant both in Europe and Asia, at a
time when the face of the country was covered
by vast tracts of swamp and forest. Even now,
at the period of migration, they swarm in the
East ; " the whooping and trumpeting of the crane,"
says a great authority (Canon Tristram), " rings
through the night air in spring, and the vast flocks
we noticed passing north near Beersheba were a
wonderful sight."

The Crane. 225

Virgil mentions the Crane in two passages as
doing damage to the crops : and this is fully borne
out by modern accounts from Asia Minor and
Scinde, quoted by Mr. Dresser in his Birds of
Europe. The poet says of them (Georgic i. 1 18) —

Nee tamen haec cum sint hominumque boumque labores
Versando terram experti, nihil improbus anser
Strymoniaeque grues et amaris intuba fibris
Officiunt aut umbra nocet.1

And in line 307 of the same book he tells the
husbandman that the winter is the time to catch
them : —

Turn gruibus pedicas, et retia ponere cervis
Auritosque sequi lepores ; 2

a passage from which it might appear as if the
Crane were snared as an article of food, not only
as an enemy to the agriculturist. And indeed in
Pliny's time the epicure's taste was all in favour

1 But no whit the more
For all expedients tried and travail borne
By man and beast in turning oft the soil,
Do greedy goose and Strymon-haunting cranes
And succory's bitter fibres not molest
Or shade not injure —

2 Time it is to set

Snares for the crane, and meshes for the stag,
And hunt the long-eared hares.

Q

226 The Birds of Virgil.

of cranes against storks ; but when Virgil wrote,
the reverse was the case. This little fact, so
characteristic of the sway of fashion over the
gourmand of that luxurious age, was recorded by
Cornelius Nepos, and is quoted from him by
Pliny (Nat. Hist. x. 60).

The Crane is now a bird of passage in Italy,
and the Stork also ; they appear in spring on
their way to northern breeding-places, and in
autumn reappear with their numbers reinforced
by the young broods of the year. These habits
seem to have been the same in Virgil's day.
In the passage just quoted (Georgic i. 120) it is
evidently in the spring that the bird was hurtful
to the crops, as the seed was to be sown in the
spring (line 43, etc.).

On the other hand, in line 307, the Crane is to
be snared in the winter ; yet I can hardly believe
that any number could have stayed in Italy during
winter, if the climate was then colder than it is
now. Moreover, Pliny speaks of the Crane as
' aestatis ad vena,' that is, a summer visitor, as
opposed to the Stork, who was a winter visitor.
But these Latin words ' aestas ' and ' hiems ' are

Migration of Cranes. 227

to be understood loosely for the whole warm
season, and the whole cold or stormy season ; and
if cranes came on their passage northwards, when
warm weather began, they must also have ap-
peared, on their return journey, when cold weather
was beginning ; so that both crane and stork might
equally be styled ' aestatis ad vena,' or ' hiemis
ad vena.' Pliny was surely making one of his
many blunders when he distinguished the two
birds by these two expressions.

The migration of such great birds as these,
unlike those of our tiny visitors to England, could
hardly escape the notice even of men who knew
nothing of scientific observation. Virgil has given
us a momentary glimpse of the Crane's migration
in spring ; he is following in the tracks of Homer,
but as a Mantuan he must have seen the phe-
nomenon himself also.

Clamorem ad sidera tollunt
Dardanidae e muris ; spes addita suscitat iras ;
Tela manu jaciunt; quales sub nubibus atris
Strymoniae dant signa grues, atque aethera tranant
Cum sonitu, fugiuntque Notos clamore secundo.1

1 The Dardanians on the walls raise a shout to the sky.
Hope comes to kindle wrath ; they hurl their missiles strongly ;

Q 2

228 The Birds of Virgil.

Here, as they fly before a southern wind, they are
on their way to the north in the spring. But in
another passage he seems rather to be thinking of
autumn ; it is where he is telling the husbandman
how to presage an approaching storm, such a
storm as descends in autumn from the Alps upon
the plains of Lombardy : —

Nunquam imprudentibus imber
Obfuit ; aut ilium surgentem vallibus imis
Aeriae fugere grues, aut bucula coelum
Suspiciens patulis captavit naribus auras,
Aut arguta lacus circumvolitavit hirundo.1

The general tenor of the whole passage of which
these lines are a fragment, as well as their original
in the Diosemeia of Aratus, points to the approach
of ' hiems,' the stormy season, as the event in-
dicated ; the falling leaves dance in air, the feathers

even as under black clouds cranes from the Strymon utter
their signal notes and sail clamouring across the sky, and
noisily stream down the gale. — Aen. x. 262 foil.
1 Never at unawares did showers annoy :
Or, as it rises, the high-soaring cranes
Flee to the hills before it, or, with face
Upturned to heaven, the heifer snuffs the gale
Through gaping nostrils, or about the meres
Shrill-twittering flits the swallow. — Georgic i. 373.

The Stork. 229

of the moulting birds float on the water, but the
swallow is not yet gone. The deep Alpine valleys
seethe with swirling mist, which rises into gathering
cloud, and soon becomes stormy rain beating upon
the plains, as we may see it in any ' Loamshire '
of our own, that lies below the stony hills of a
wilder and wetter country-side. In this striking
and truthful passage, Virgil has not followed his
model too closely, but was evidently thinking of
what he must often have witnessed himself.

The Stork is only mentioned by Virgil in a
single passage —

Cum vere rubenti
Candida venit avis longis invisa colubris.1

Doubtless the bird arrived in great numbers
in spring on the Mantuan marshes, and found
abundance of food there in the way of frogs and
snakes. Its snake-eating propensity was con-
sidered so valuable in Thessaly, that the bird was
preserved there by law, says Aristotle.2 But did
it remain to breed in Italy ? It is remarkable

1 In blushing spring

Comes the white bird long-bodied snakes abhor. — Georg. ii. 320.
2 Mirabilia 23.

230 The Birds of Virgil.

that both Aristotle and Pliny have very little to
say of its habits, and hardly anything as to its
breeding ; and if the Stork had been a bird
familiar to them, they could hardly have failed
to give it a prominent place in their books. At
the present time it seems to pass over Italy and
Greece on its passage northwards, never staying
to breed in the former country and rarely in the
latter ; yet this can hardly be owing to temper-
ature, as it breeds freely in the parallel latitudes
of Spain and Asia Minor.

As regards ancient Italy, however, the question
seems to be set at rest by a very curious passage
from the Satyricon of Petronius, which has been
kindly pointed out to me by Mr. Robinson Ellis.
It is remarkable not only for its Latin, but for its
concise and admirable description of the charac-
teristic ways of the Stork : —

Ciconia etiam grata, peregrina, hospita,
Pietaticultrix, gracilipes, crotalistria,
Avis exsul hiemis, titulus tepidi temporis,
Nequitiae nidum in cacabo fecit meo.1

1 See Petronius, Satyr. 55. Cp. also/wp. Sat. i, line 1 16, and
Mayor's note. In the London Zoological Gardens, in March

The Stork. 231

" A Stork too, that welcome guest from foreign
lands, that devotee of filial duty, with its long
thin legs and rattling bill, the bird that is banished
by the winter and announces the coming of the
warm season, has made his accursed nest in my
boiler." I am reminded also of a story, which
has the authority both of Jornandes and Pro-
copius, that at the siege of Aquileia in A.D. 452,
Attila was encouraged to persist by the sight of
a Stork and her young leaving the beleaguered
city. " Such a domestic bird would never have
abandoned her ancient seats unless those towers
had been devoted to impending ruin and soli-
tude." l Here then we seem to have another
example of a bird abandoning its ancient practice
of breeding, occasionally at least, in Italy. If
this is due to persecution, the persecutors have
made a great mistake. The Stork does no harm
to man, but rather rids his fields of vermin ; the
Crane, which belongs to a different order of birds,
may do serious damage, as we have seen, to

1889, a pair of Storks were illustrating Petronius' lines admir-
ably— except in that they were captives.
1 Gibbon, vol. iv. p. 240, ed. Milman.

232 The Birds of Virgil.

cultivated land, like the ' improbus anser,' and
other birds which Virgil in the first Georgic in-
structs the husbandman to catch with lime or net,
or to frighten away from the fields.1

Let us now turn to the big black birds of the
race of the Crows, which are always so difficult to
distinguish from one another : for the Roman
savant not less difficult than for our own un-
learned. There are to be found in Italy at the
present day the Raven, the Crow, the Rook, the
Jackdaw, the Chough, and the Alpine Chough ;
all of these seem to be fairly common and resident
in one or other part of the country, except our
familiar friends the Crow and the Rook, the
former of which is very rare, and the latter hardly
more than a bird of passage. We cannot of
course expect to find these accurately distin-
guished by the ancient Italians ; and there is in
fact still some uncertainty as to the identification
of certain birds of this kind mentioned by Virgil.

The two commonest of these are the corvus and
the comix — words which undoubtedly represent
two different species. The Roman augurs, who
1 Georg. i. 120, 139, 156, 271.

Corvus and Cornix. 233

were always busily engaged in observing birds
(and it were to be wished that they had observed
them to some better purpose), clearly distinguished
corvus and comix.1 So also did Pliny,2 in the
following curious passage: "The corvus lays its
eggs before midsummer, and is then in bad con-
dition for sixty days, up to the ripening of the
figs in autumn : but the comix begins to be dis-
ordered after that time." Virgil also uses the
words for two distinct species ; his cornix is
solitary —

Turn cornix plena pluviam vocat improba voce
Et sola in sicca secum spatiatur arena ; 3

while corvus is gregarious, as is shown in the
following memorable description of Nature and
of the birds taking heart after the storm has
passed : —

Turn liquidas corvi presso ter gutture voces
Aut quater ingeminant, et saepe cubilibus altis,
Nescio qua praeter solitum dulcedine laeti,

1 Cic. de Div. i. 29. 2 N. H. x. 32.

3 Then the crow

With full voice, good-for-nought, inviting rain,
Stalks on the dry sand mateless and alone. — Georg. i. 388.

234 The Birds of Virgil.

Inter se in foliis strepitant ; juvat imbribus actis,
Progeniem parvam dulcesque revisere natos.1

That in these last beautiful lines corvus means a
Rook, no Englishman is likely to deny ; yet there
are two difficulties to be put aside before we can
make the assertion with entire confidence. The
first is, that Virgil, here following Aratus, trans-
lated by corvus the Greek word xo'pa§, which is
not generally accepted as meaning a Rook. This
is the word which the Greek historian Polybius
uses for those naval machines invented by the
Romans, in the first war with Carthage, for
grappling with a hooked projecting beak the
galleys of the enemy; and the rook's bill is
hardly so well suited to give a name to such an
engine as that of the crow or raven,2 which has
the tip of the upper mandible sharply bent down-

1 Soft then the voice of rooks from indrawn throat
Thrice, four times, o'er repeated, and full oft
On their high cradles, by some hidden joy
Gladdened beyond their wont, in bustling throngs
Among the leaves they riot ; so sweet it is
When showers are spent, their own loved nests again
And tender brood to visit. — Georg. i. 410.
2 Sundevall (Thierarten des Aristoteles^ p. 123) pronounces
to have been our Raven.

Corvus and Comix. 235

wards, like that of most flesh-eating birds. Still
I must hold it probable that Aratus here used the
word for the rook, as he makes it gregarious, and
so, I think, did the Alexandrian scholar Theon,
who wrote a commentary on his poem. The
only other possibility is that he was thinking of
the Alpine Chough, a bird which he might possibly
have known, and one of thoroughly social habits.
But that Virgil, though he too probably knew
this bird, was not thinking of it when he wrote
the lines just quoted, I feel tolerably sure ; he
would most likely have used the word graculus
rather than corvus, which would seem never to
have been applied, like monedida and graculus t to
the smaller birds of the group, such as the Alpine
Chough and the Jackdaw.

The second difficulty lies in the fact that the
Rook is now only a bird of passage in Italy,
never stopping to breed in the southern part of
the peninsula, and very rarely in the northern ;
while Virgil speaks of the corvi in the last-quoted
passage as loving to revisit their nests. But this
difficulty has been overcome by the delightful
discovery that the Rooks still stay and breed in

236 The Birds of Virgil.

the sub-alpine neighbourhood where Virgil passed
his early life.1 As I have remarked about the
pigeons and the stork, the climate may have been
such as would induce some birds to stop south of
the great Alpine barrier, which now find there no
climate cool enough for breeding ; and the Rook
was perhaps a more regular resident and breeder
then than he is now.

We may conclude then that Virgil's corvus is
our old friend the Rook, even if some Latin
authors use the word equally for Rook, Crow,
and Raven. Pliny for example tells us (N. H. x.
124) that the corvus can be taught to speak (fancy
a bird talking Latin, that stiff and solemn speech!),
that he eats flesh for the most part, and that he
sometimes makes his nest in elevated buildings ;
feats which we are not used to associate with
Rooks. In fact it is plain that Pliny, who was
more of a learned book-reader than a careful
observer of the minutiae of nature, was not quite
clear in his notions about the big black birds.
But if we can be pretty sure about corvus, what
is Virgil's comix, stalking on the shore in solitary
1 See Newton's Yarrell, ii. 290.

Corvus and Comix. 237

state, and uttering admonitory croaks from the
hollow holm-oak ? If we consult dictionaries we
shall learn that comix is the Crow or Rook, " a
smaller bird than corvus" Where did the diction-
aries get this authority for making confusion
worse confounded ? If Virgil distinguished corvus
and comix, and if corvus is the rook, then comix
must be the crow or the raven, and in fact the
word probably stands for both. I should incline
on the whole to the raven, seeing that at the
present day it is much the commoner bird of the
two in Italy. Alpine choughs and jackdaws are
not wont to stalk about alone ; and though the
larger chough (our Cornish chough) might do so?
and is to be found in the mountain districts of
Italy, he cannot well be the bird generally under-
stood by comix. Could a chough learn to talk
with his long thin red bill ? But Pliny knew of
a talking comix; "while I was engaged upon this
book," he says, " there was in Rome a comix from
the south-west of Spain, belonging to a Roman
knight, which was of an amazingly pure black,
and could say certain strings of words, to which it
frequently added new ones."

238 The Birds of Virgil.

Swans are frequently mentioned by Virgil, as
by other Latin and Greek poets. This splendid
bird must have been much commoner then
throughout Europe than it is now, and accord-
ingly attracted much attention. It doubtless
abounded in the swampy localities of the north
of Italy, and at the mouths of the great rivers
of Thrace and Asia Minor, as well as in the
north of Europe, where it came to be woven
into many a Teutonic fable. Homer has frequent
and beautiful allusions to it ; and the town of
Clazomenae, at the mouth of the river Hermus,
has a swan stamped upon its coins.

This Swan of the old poets is without any
doubt the whooper (Cycnus musicus), whose voice
and presence are still well known in Italy and
Greece. Virgil had seen it at Mantua, on the
watery plain of the Mincius :

Pascentem niveos herboso flumine cycnos.1

And in an admirable simile in the eleventh book
of the Aeneid, he likens the stir and dissension in

1 Whose weedy water feeds the snow-white swan.

Georg. ii. 199.

Swans. 239

the camp of Turnus, when the news suddenly
arrives that Aeneas is marching upon them, to
the loud calls of this bird :

Hie undique clamor

Dissensu vario magnus se tollit ad auras :
Haud secus atque alto in luco cum forte catervae
Consedere avium, piscosove amne Padusae
Dant sonitum rauci per stagna loquacia cycni.1

We now come to two birds mentioned in the
same line of the third Georgic. The poet is
telling the farmer to water his flocks in the cool
evening of a hot day :

Cum frigidus aera vesper
Temperat, et saltus reficit jam roscida luna,
Litoraque alcyonen resonant, acalanthida dumi.2

The first of these birds is also mentioned in a line
of the first Georgic, which is mainly taken from
Aratus ; but it is significant that Aratus does not
mention the ' alcyon ' either here or anywhere else.

1 With that a great noise rises aloft in diverse contention,
even as when flocks of birds haply settle on a lofty grove, and
swans utter their hoarse cry among the vocal pools in the fish-
filled river of Padusa. — Aen. xi. 456; cp. vii. 700.

2 When cool eve

Allays the air, and dewy moonbeams slake
The forest glades, with halcyon's voice the shore
And every thicket with the goldfinch rings. — Georg. iii. 338.

240 The Birds of Virgil.

Non tepidum ad solem pennas in littore pandunt
Dilectae Thetidi alcyones.1

That the ' alcyon ' of these two passages is to be
identified with our Kingfisher, which is still an
Italian bird, and the only one of its kind, I can
have no reasonable doubt ; for Pliny's description
of the bird is too exact to be mistaken. "It is,"
he says, " a little larger than a sparrow, of a blue-
green colour (colore cyaneo), red in the under
parts, having some white feathers close to its
neck, and a long thin bill." This description, it
is true, is copied almost word for word from Aris-
totle, the only exception being the allusion to the
white feathers on the side of the neck, which are
a well-known feature in the Kingfisher.2 Whether
both were thinking of the same bird it is im-
possible to decide ; but that Pliny was describing

1 Not to the Sun's warmth there upon the shore

Do halcyons dear to Thetis ope their wings. — Georg. i. 398.

2 This exception is singular, as Pliny seems to depend on
Aristotle for everything else which he tells about the bird. I
am inclined to think that in this case Pliny must have supple-
mented his master's account from his own observation. He
had a villa on the bay of Naples, which bay was probably the
' littus ' referred to by Virgil ; and both may here have seen the
bird on the shore.

A Icy on and Acalanthis. 241

our Kingfisher, and believed Aristotle to have
done so in the passage he copied, it is almost
unreasonable to doubt.

It is, however, an open question whether the
bird ordinarily known to the Greeks as ahxutuv is
to be identified with the Kingfisher. The greatest
living authority on the birds of the Levant, Canon
Tristram of Durham, tells me that he has con-
vinced himself that it is not the Kingfisher, but
the Tern or Sea-swallow : a rare coin of Eretria
led him to this conclusion, on which a Tern is
figured, sitting on the back of a cow.1 And it
must be allowed that the Greeks seem to have
thought of their aXxucov as a sea bird no less than
as a river bird. Aristotle remarks that it goes
up rivers, but he seems to have thought of it
mainly as a sea bird, and a well-known passage
in the seventh Idyll of Theocritus appears to bear
him out. But I am not here specially concerned
with Greek ornithology, and what Virgil says of

1 I have seen a photograph of this coin, and satisfied myself
that the bird was meant for a Tern. But I have so far been
unable to discover any connection between Eretria and the
a\Kva>v. Sundevall is confident that Aristotle's bird is the
Kingfisher.

242 The Birds of Virgil.

the alcyon piping and pluming himself on the
shore is perfectly consistent with the habits of
the bird. I have myself seen it on the coast of
Dorset, "pennas in littore pandens," and taking
flight over a bay full half a mile in width. A
greater difficulty lies in the alleged vocal powers
of the bird ; they sing, Pliny tells us, in the reeds,
and Virgil's alcyon makes the shore echo with his
voice. The Kingfisher, so far as I know, is a
silent bird except when disturbed ; he will then
utter a shrill pipe as he flies away. But I am
quite at a loss to explain his singing, except by
supposing that this was one of several curious
delusions that had gathered round a curious
bird.1

The other bird mentioned in the lines last
quoted is, and perhaps will remain, a puzzle.
Mr. Rhoades makes it the Goldfinch, following
the commentators, who themselves follow an old
tradition which will not bear criticism, and in
favour of which I can find nothing more con-

1 E. g. Aristotle gives, and Pliny copies from him, an extra-
ordinary account of the nest and eggs. N. H. ix. 14. See
Note C, at end of volume.

The Goldfinch. 243

vincing than the argument that acantha ] means
in Greek a thorny or prickly tree, while the Gold-
finch's favourite food is the seed of the thistle.
Let us notice, however, first, that it is not the way
of the Goldfinch to sit in a thicket and sing, as
Virgil describes the Acalanthis ; it is a restless,
lively, aerial bird, fond of singing on the wing,
and by no means disposed to lurk under cover ;
and secondly, that the word axavQa. does not
necessarily mean a thistle, but is equally applied
to all kinds of thorny trees and shrubs,2 such as
the dumi in which Virgil makes the voice of the
bird resound.

Where did Virgil get this Greek word acanthis*
or acalanthis, which he thus appropriated to ex-
press some bird familiar to himself? Probably
from a very beautiful passage in Theocritus'
seventh Idyll, where, lying on the vine-leaves,

1 For the connection between aKavda and aKaXavdiQ see
Conington's note on Georg. iii. 338.

2 Theophrastus, for example, applies it to the Egyptian
mimosa, the thorns of which lately proved so damaging to
our troops in the Soudan. (Lenz, Botanik der Griechen,

P- 735-)

3 There is another reading, ' et acanthida.'

R 2

244 The Birds of Virgil.

Damoetas and Daphnis hear the birds singing,
and the murmur of the bees : —

"AeiSov Kopvfiol KCU dravdtifteg, e'arfve rpvywv,

"the larks and the acanthides were singing, and
the turtle-dove was moaning." But what kind of
bird was Theocritus himself thinking of? Here
we must have recourse to Aristotle, who in his
book on birds describes the bird known to the
Greeks as acanthis as being "of poor colouring
and habits, but having a clear shrill voice."1 This
cannot possibly be the Goldfinch, the happiest
and most brightly coloured of our smaller English
birds ; one too whose song would hardly be picked
out to be described as Tuyupa, which word denotes
a sustained high and shrill sound, and would not
well express a twitter or a quiet warble. Sun-
devall, the Swedish scholar-naturalist, has pro-
nounced this acanthis of Aristotle to be the linnet ;
a conclusion with which no one would be likely to
agree who is fresh from a sight of that lively bird
in its splendid summer plumage, or who knows
its gentle twittering song. Let us remember that

1 Kaico/3iot rat Kaico-xpooi, tyutvr\v /xcVroi XiyupaV tyovviv. — Hist.
Anim. ix. 17.

Warblers in Italy and Greece. 245

Aristotle is of all naturalists, down to the time of
Willoughby and Ray, the most exact and trust-
worthy, and that when he uses an adjective to
describe a bird or its voice, he means something
exact and definite, and is not talking loosely.

Before we try to come to a conclusion about
the axav$/£, let us note that Aristotle mentions
another small bird, the axavfluXTuV, which, from
the name, we may guess to have been one of the
same kind as the acanthis. This bird builds a
nest which is round and made of flax, and has
a small hole by way of entrance. Now let us
observe that Italy and Greece are swarming for
the greater part of the year with a variety of
those small brown or dusky-coloured birds which
naturalists roughly call 'warblers' — birds for the
most part apt to creep and lurk about in thickets
or small trees, and having voices more or less
shrill, which may very well indeed be called
X/yupa/. In England we have some species of
this order which are abundant in the summer ;
e.g. in Oxford, the chiffchaff, willow-wren, sedge-
warbler, and reed-warbler — the two former of
which build spherical nests on the ground with

246 The Birds of VirgiL

a small entrance-hole. These birds correspond
with both of Aristotle's birds in being xaxo'|3*oi—
i. e. leading a poor lurking life ; xaxo%pooi, as being
all very sober-coloured and difficult to distinguish
from one another, even by a modern expert ; in
having a clear, sustained, or sibilant song,1 and
lastly in building — some of them, that is — round
nests with small holes for ingress and egress.

Now in Italy and Greece the number of species
of these little birds is much larger than in Eng-
land, and it is hardly possible that they could have
escaped the notice of either poet or naturalist. It
is with these that I think we are to identify the
acantkis and acanthyllis of Aristotle, the acanthis
of Theocritus, and the acalanthis of Virgil, with
which we started this too lengthy discussion.
Towards the evening of a hot summer day, when
the flocks have to be watered, as he enjoins the
shepherd, these little warblers would begin their
song afresh, and sing, as does our own Sedge-

1 A sibilant trill is probably what is meant in a passage of
the Greek Anthology (i. 175), Xtyvpoy /3o^/3evertv d/cav&'Sce;
suggesting the Grasshopper Warbler (see p. 154), or the Sedge-
warbler.

Warblers in Italy and Greece. 247

warbler, far on into the night. Neither Goldfinch
nor Linnet would be likely to sing at that time in
a thicket of thorn-bushes : those fairy creatures
would be playing in the cool air, or seeking the
water for a refreshing bath or draught.

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

Continue, ventis surgentibus, aut freta ponti
Incipiunt agitata tumescere et aridus altis
Montibus audiri fragor, aut resonantia longe
Litora misceri et nemorum increbrescere murmur.
Jam sibi turn curvis male temperat unda carinis,
Cum medio celeres revolant ex aequore mergi
Clamoremque ferunt ad litora, cumque marinae
In sicco ludunt fulicae, notasque paludes
Deserit atque altam supra volat ardea nubem.1

1 Georg. i. 356 foil. I quote this time Mr. R. D. Black-
mo re's admirable rhyming version.

Ere yet the lowering storm breaks o'er the land
A sullen groundswell heaves along the strand,
On mountain heights dry snapping sounds are heard,
The booming shores bedrizzled are and blurred,
And soughs of wind sigh through the forest stirred.

248 The Birds of Virgil.

The words mergi and fulicae in these lines have
been the subject of much discussion among com-
mentators. That Virgil meant by mergus some
particular bird known to himself, there can be little
doubt ; for he has transferred to the mergus what
Aratus (here his original) says of the Heron
(tptt&lf). And rightly so ; for the Heron never
goes out to sea to fish, as it needs standing ground
and is no swimmer. This mergus stands probably
for the Gull in a generic sense ; Virgil had doubt-
less seen them flying to the Campanian coast
before a coming storm, and altered Aratus accord-
ingly. The fulica marina is translated by Mr.
Blackmore ' sea-coot,' which is correct but mean-
ingless, and by Mr. Rhoades1 'cormorant'; but
in this case we have no means of determining the
species of which the poet was thinking. He used

The wave already scarce foregoes the hull
When homeward from the offing flies the gull,
With screams borne inland by the blast ; and when
Sea-coots play round the margin of the fen ;
The heron quits the marsh where she was bred
And soars upon a cloud far overhead.

1 Following Keightley's Commentary, which is the best we
possess on Georg. i. 351-423.

Simile of the Swallow. 249

the worAfulica, a coot, to help him out in naming
a bird which was something like a coot, but a bird
of the sea, and one for which he had no word
ready, or none that would suit his metre.

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

Nigra velut magnas domini cum divitis aedes
Pervolat et pennis alta atria lustrat hirundo,
Pabula parva legens, nidisque loquacibus escas ;
Et nunc porticibus vacuis, nunc humida circum
Stagna sonat : similis medios Juturna per hostes
Fertur equis, rapidoque volans obit omnia curru.1

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

1 Aen. xii. 473. Mr. Mackail translates : "As when a black
swallow flits through some rich lord's spacious house, and
circles in flight in the lofty halls, gathering her tiny food for
sustenance to her twittering nestlings, and now swoops down
the spacious colonnades, now round the wet ponds," &c.

250 The Birds of Virgil.

passage about the Swallow that I have ever met
with in poetry.

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

I shall not trouble my readers with any of
Virgil's passages1 about the Hawks and Eagles,
in all of which he follows Homer more or less
closely. Nor need we pause to dwell on the
single passage in which he has mentioned the
Nightingale ; for, beautiful as it is, it is not only
based on Homer, but is inferior in truth to
Homer's lines. The older poet sings truthfully
of the Nightingale " sitting in the thick foliage
1 Aen. ix. 564; xi. 721, 751 ; xii. 247.

The Nightingale in Virgil. 251

of the trees," and " pouring a many-toned music
with many a varied turn ; " but Virgil has neither
of these touches. Still his lines have a beauty of
their own : —

Qualis populea moerens philomela sub umbra
Amissos queritur foetus, quos durus arator
Observans nido implumes detraxit ; at ilia
Flet noctem, ramoque sedens miserabile carmen
Integrat, et moestis late loca questibus implet.1

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

Quam multa in silvis autumni frigore primo
Lapsa cadunt folia, aut ad terram gurgite ab alto

1 As in the poplar-shade a nightingale
Mourns her lost young, which some relentless swain,
Spying, from the nest has torn unfledged, but she
Wails the long night, and perched upon a spray
With sad insistence pipes her dolorous strain,
Till all the region with her wrongs overflows.

Georg. iv. 511.

252 The Birds of Virgil.

Quam multae glomerantur aves, ubi frigidus annus,
Trans pontum fugat, et terris immittit apricis.1

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

1 Aen. vi. 309. "Multitudinous as leaves fall dropping in
the forests at autumn's earliest frost, or birds swarm landward
from the deep gulf, when the chill of the year routs them over
seas and drives them to sunny lands."

Virgil in Campania and Sicily. 2,53

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

Willow-Warbler's nest.— See p. 26.

NOTES.

NOTE A. (p. 14.)

I ORIGINALLY intended to have added a short chapter to
the book upon the Wild Birds Act and the results obtainable
from it ; but as other chapters have grown to greater length
than I expected, I confine myself to giving in this note, for the
convenience of those who are kindly disposed towards the
birds, the substance of the Act of 1880, with a few words of
explanation. Those who wish for more complete information
should send for 'The Wild Birds Protection Acts 1880 and
1 88 1, with Explanatory Notes ' (published by Horace Cox, The
Field Office, 346 Strand, W.C., price is.).

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

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

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

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

256 Notes.

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

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

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

Notes. 257

NOTE B. On the Songs of Birds, (pp. 48 and 149.)

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

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

s

258 Notes.

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

Notes. 2,59

were all singing at about the same pitch and in much the same
manner.

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

NOTE C. Fables of the Kingfisher, (p. 242.)

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

s 2

260 Notes.

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

If this be so, I think we have not far to seek for the origin
of the two fables. Nothing being known of its nesting, it was
assumed that it nested at or about the time when it appeared ;
and the not unfrequent calm and fine weather of mid-December
would confirm the fancy, and give it a new mythical colouring.
(The matter-of-fact philosopher does not of course allow that
these fine days always occurred in his own experience ; they
are not always met, he says (v. 8. 3), in this country at the time
of the solstice, " but they always occur in the Sicilian Sea.")
When this fable of the nesting-time had once established itself,

Notes. 261

it would be not very difficult to find a nest among the curiosities
of the sea. So the little blue bird came to suffer " a sea-change,
into something rich and strange," through the careless fancy of
the imaginative Greek.

NOTE D. Redpolls in the Alps. (p. 195.)

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

The form, however, of the Redpoll which is usually found
in the Alps is that which is usually called ' Mealy ' (Linota
linaria) ; this has been reported by Mr. Seebohm as pretty
frequent in the Engadine, and by Prof. Newton, on the authority
of Colonel Ward, as having been abundant in Canton Vaud in
the winter of 1874-5. All the Redpolls I saw last September
were, to judge from size and colouring, of this form : so also
were all that I have seen in Swiss museums marked as having
been shot in the Alps. Believing therefore, on these grounds,
and in deference to the arguments of the Rev. H. A. Mac-
pherson, that both Mr. Scott Wilson and myself had made a
mistake, I struck out the paragraph in question from my second
edition.

Since doing so, however, I have paid a visit to Cambridge,
where Prof. Newton pointed out to me a passage in Prof.
Giglioli's recently published catalogue of Italian birds bearing

262 Notes.

on the point. He writes without hesitation of Linota rufescens
as occasionally breeding in the Italian Alps. This induces me
to add this note to the present edition ; for if it could be dis-
tinctly proved that L. rufescens is found breeding in the Alpine
region, new light would be thrown, not only on the curious
geographical distribution of this form, but on the abnormal
character of the ornithology of the Alps. Prof. Giglioli may
be himself mistaken, and as Anderegg and I failed to skin our
bird, we cannot produce it as evidence ; but my notes made
while examining it point decidedly to L. rufescens rather than
L. linaria, the length, for example, appearing as only four
inches.

INDEX OF BIRDS MENTIONED IN THE VOLUME.

(The scientific names are those used in Dresser's
List of European Birds?)

Accentor, Alpine. Accentor col-
laris (Scop.), 95, 196.

Accentor, Hedge. Accentor

modularis (Linn.), 95.
Aquatic Warbler. Acrocephalus

aquaticus (GmeL), 86.

Bittern. Botaurus stellaris

(Linn.), 85.
Blackbird. Turdus merula

(Linn.), 31, 60, 82, 88.
Blackcap. Sylvia atricapilla

(Linn.), 51 foil., 119, 164.
Bonelli's Warbler. Phylloscopus

Bonellii (Vieill.), 109.
Brambling. Frangilla monti-

fringilla (Linn.), 172.
Bullfinch. Pyrrhula europaea

(Vietll.) t 12, 1 20.
Bunting, Corn. Emberiza mi-

liaria (Linn.), 139, 149.
Bunting, Reed. Emberiza

schoeniclus (Linn.), 149.
Buzzard. Buteo vulgaris (Leach),

88.

Chiffchaff. Phylloscopus colly-
bita (Vieill.), 38, 42 foil., 88,
92. Note B.

Chough, Alpine. Pyrrhocorax
alpinus (Koch.), 82, 93, 194,

235-
Chough, Cornish. Pyrrhocorax

graculus (Linn.), 93.
Citril Finch. Chrysomitris ci-
trinella (Linn.), 80, 97.

Corncrake. Crex pratensis

(Bechst.), 65.
Crane. Grus communis (Bechst.),

224 foil.
Creeper. Certhia familiaris

(Linn.), 25, 190.
Crossbill. Loscia curvirostra

(Linn.), 188.
Crow. Corvus corone (Linn.),

153, 187, 236, 237.
Cuckoo. Cuculus canorus

(Linn), 125 — 128.
Curlew. Numenius arquata

(Linn.), 143.

Dipper. Cinclus aquaticus

(Bechst.), 98.
Diver, Great northern. Colym-

bus glacialis (Linn.), 33.

Eagle, Golden. Aquila chry-
saetus (Linn.), 92.

Fieldfare. Turdus pilaris

(Linn.), 35, 143.
Flycatcher, Pied. Muscicapa

atricapilla (Linn.), 92, 133.
Flycatcher, Spotted. Muscicapa

grisola (Linn.), 65, 130—134.

Garden-warbler. Sylvia salicari

(Linn.), 51 foil., 88.
Goldfinch. Carduelis elegans

(Steph.), 138, 171, 242.
Grasshopper-warbler. Locus-

tella naevia (Bodd.), 154 foil

264

Index of Birds.

Greenfinch. Ligurinus chloris

(Linn.), 65, 119.
Gull, Common. Larus canus

(Linn.), 141.

Hawfinch. Coccothraustes vul-

garis (Pall.), 120.
Heron. Ardea cinerea (Linn.),

248.

Jackdaw. Corvus monedula

(Linn.), 232.
Jay. Garrulusglandarius (Linn.),

153-

Kestrel. Falco tinnunculus

(Linn.), 32, 141, 154.
Kingfisher. Alcedo ispida

(Linn.), 13, 14, 187, 240, 241,

260.

Lark, Sky. Alauda arvensis
(Linn.), 88.

Linnet. Linota cannabina
(Linn.), 171, 172, 244.

Magpie. Pica rustica (Scop.),

153-
Marsh Warbler. Acrocephalus

palustris (Bechst.), 86.
Martin, Crag. Chelidon rupes-

tris (Scop.), 91, 190.
Martin, House. Chelidon urbica

(Linn.), 7, 190, 250.
Missel-thrush. Turdus visci-

vorus (Linn.), 98, 119.
Moorhen. Gallinula chloropus

(Linn.), 13.

Nightingale. Daulias luscinia
(Linn.), 66, 161 foil., 250.

Nightjar. Caprimulgus euro-
paeus (Linn.), 134.

Nuthatch. Sitta caesia ( Wolf),
25, 128.

Petrel, Stormy. Procellaria pe-
lagica (Linn), 33.

Pipit, Tree. Anthus trivialis
(Linn.), 153.

Pipit, Water (or Alpine). An-
thus spinoletta (Linn.), 94,
194, 196.

Plover, Common. Vanellus
vulgaris (Bechst), 101, 143.

Ptarmigan. Lagopus mutus
(Leach), 82, 100.

Raven. Corvus corax (Linn.),

232, 234.
Redpoll, Lesser. Linota rufes-

cens (Vieill), 21, 193, 262.
Redstart. Ruticilla phoenicurus

(Linn.), 62, 63, 88, 121.
Redstart, Black. Ruticylla

tithys (5^/.),8o,89, 123 foil.,

!93-
Redwing. Turdus iliacus (Linn),

30, 142.
Reed-warbler. Acrocephalus

streperus (Vieill), 41, 56, 57,

86.
Ring-dove. Columba palumbus

(Linn), 219 foil.
Ring-Ousel. Turdus torquatus

(Linn), 82,98, 151.
Robin. Erithacus rubecula

(Linn), 9, 88, 119, 125—127,

140, 206.
Rock-dove. Columba livia

(Bonnat), 219, 221.
Rook. Corvus frugilegus (Linn.),

134, 141, 142.

Sandpiper, Common. Totanus

hypoleucus (Linn.), 137.
Sandpiper, Green. Totanus

ochropus (Linn,), 136, 137.
Sedge-warbler. Acrocephalus

schoenobaenus (Linn.), 41,

42, 57-

Index of Birds.

265

Serin Finch. Serinus hortu-

lanus (Koch.), 97.
Siskin. Chrysomitris spinus

(Linn.), 120.
S n i pe, J ack. Gallinago gallinula

(Linn.), 24.
Snow-Finch. Montifringilla ni-

valis (Linn.), 82, 100, 101.
Sparrow. Passer domesticus

(Linn.), 64, 88.
Stonechat. Pratincola rubicola

(Linn.), 147.
Swallow. Hirundo rustica

(Linn.), 7, 90, 201, 250.
Swan. Cygnus musicus (Linn. ),

237, 238.
Swift. Cypselus apus (Linn.),

65,90.
Swift, Alpine. Cypselus melba

(Linn.), 91.

Teal. Querquedula crecca

(Linn), 241.
Tern. Sterna fluviatilis(Afo##/.),

33-
Thrush, Song. Turdus musicus

(Linn.), 30.
Tit, Blue. Parus caeruleus

(Linn.), 29, 105, 151.
Tit, Cole. Parus ater (Linn.),

52, 105.
Tit, Created. Lophophanes

cristatus (Linn.}, 106, 184.
Tit, Great. Parus major (Linn. ),

29, 105,151.
Tit, Long-tailed. Acredula cau-

data (Linn.), 29, 105, 142.
Tit, Marsh. Parus palustris

(Linn.), 29, 105.
Turtle-dove. Turtur communis

(Selby), 133, 143,219.

Wagtail, Gray. Motacilla me-
lanope (Pall.), 17, 98, 186.

Wagtail, Pied. Motacilla lugu-
bris (Temm.), 87, 148, 186.

Wagtail, White. Motacilla alba
(Linn.), 87, 98.

Wagtail, Yellow. Motacilla raii

(^.),64, 138-
Wall Creeper. Tichodroma

muraria (Linn.), 82, 101.
Wheatear. Saxicola oenanthe

(Linn.), 98, 172, 204.
Whinchat. Pratincola rubetra

(Linn.), 88, 145, 146.
Whitethroat. Sylvia rufa

(Bodd), 41, 54 foil.
Whitethroat, Lesser. Sylvia

curruca (Linn), 40, 53 foil.
Willow-warbler. Phylloscopus

trochilus (Linn.), 40 — 42, 47,

88.
Wood-pecker, Great Black.

Dryocopus martius (Linn.)y

104, 184, 185.
Wood-pecker, Green. Gecinus

Viridis (Linn), 26, 165.
Wood-pecker, Lesser-Spotted.

Dendrocopus minor (Linn),

26, 1 66.
Wood-pecker, Greater- Spotted.

Dendrocopus major (Linn.),

181.
Wood-pecker, Three-toed. Pi-

coides tridactylus (Linn.}, 104,

191.
Wryneck. Yunx torquilla

(Linn.)t 167.

Yellow-hammer. Emberiza ci-
trinella (Linn.), 88.

THE END.

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TIMES. — "Readers of Mr. Warde Fowler's delightful Year with
the Birds do not need to to told what a dainty feast he has pro-
vided for them in his new volume. . . . The volume will be
treasured by all lovers of birds and their haunts."

DAILY NEWS.— "Most of the book is filled with the most
pleasant talk about wandering in the Alps, among the Welsh hills,
about marsh warblers, wagtails, bird songs, and the sights and
sounds of the country."

PALL MALL BUDGET.— " Mr. Fowler has a style of his own,
and a humour which is gentle and unobtrusive."

GLOBE. — "Those who read A Year with the Birds do not need
to be told that Mr. Fowler is a master of the special topic on
which he there discoursed, and here discourses, with so much
charm of manner."

DAILY TELEGRAPH.— "Mr. Fowler is a born student of
natural history, and possesses the happy faculty of being able to
describe what he sees."

BRITISH WEEKLY.— "Mr. Fowler has the faculty of interest-
ing the uninitiated ; he never bores, never mars his description
with details which none but an expert can follow. His book is
literature, and is an excellent specimen of the charm with which
the best naturalists invest their theme, and of the possibility of
seeing more through the eyes of an instructed observer than we
can see with our own."

SCIENCE-GOSSIP.—" Every line of the chapters on birds shows
the author's intense love and appreciation of his feathered friends.
He does not write only as a critic, but as one who has lived with
them and loved them."

NATURE. — "It would be difficult to find a worthier disciple of
Gilbert White than Mr. Warde Fowler. . . . He is gifted with the
nice observation and discernment required by every student of
nature ; and he can express himself in attractive language —
attractive because it is unaffected, and because it is devoid of
thin sentiment and gush. The result is that the papers reprinted
in this volume are really valuable contributions to ornithology.
To remark that there is not a dull page in the book may be a trite
saying ; nevertheless, so far as we are concerned, it is a true one
in this case."

MORNING POST. — "Has decidedly added to his reputation by
writing Summer Studies of Birds and Books."

MACMILLAN AND CO., LTD., LONDON.

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