Birds and man

FOR THE PEOPLE

FOR EDVCATION

FOR SCIENCE

LIBRARY

OF

THE AMERICAN MUSEUM

OF

NATURAL HISTORY

BIRDS AND MAN

BY THE SAAfE AUTHOR

Birds in a Village
Adventures among Birds
Nature in Downland
Hampshire Days
The Land's End
A Shepherd's Life
Afoot in England
The Purple Land
Grern Mansions
A Crystal Age
South American Sketches
The Naturalist in

La Plata.
A Little Boy Lost

BIRDS AND MAN

Sq.Ra :0^

BY

'\A

W. H. HUDSON

LONDON

DUCKWORTH & CO.

3 HENRIETTA STREET, COVENT GARDEN. W.C.

New EdiUon frubtishid byl Duclrworth b' Co. igr^
Re- is sued ig2o

This book has been out of print for several years
and has been somewhat altered for this new edition.
The order in which the chapters originally appeared
is changed. One chapter dealing mainly with bird
Ufe in the Metropohs, a subject treated fully in
another work, has been omitted ; two new chapters
are added, and some fresh matter introduced
throughout the work.

CONTENTS

CHAP.

I. Birds at their Best
II. Birds and Man ....

III. Daws in the West Country .

IV. Early Spring in Savernake Forest
V. A Wood Wren at Wells

VI. The Secret of the Willow Wren

VII. Secret of the Charm of Flowers

VIII. Kavens in Somerset

IX. Owls in a Village

X. The Strange and Beautiful Sheldrake

XI. Geese : an Appreciation and a Memory

XII. The Dartford Warbler

XIII. Vert — Vert ; or Parrot Gossip

XIV. Something Pretty in a Glass Case
XV. Sblborne .....

Index ......

PAGE
1

37

58
79
101
117
133
159
173
187
199
222
249
269
283
303

BIRDS AND MAN

CHAPTER I

BIRDS AT THEIR BEST

By Way of Introduction

Years ago, in a chapter concerning eyes in a book
of Patagonian memories, I spoke of the unpleasant
sensations produced in me by the sight of stuffed
birds. Not bird skins in the drawers of a cabinet,
it will be understood, these being indispensable to
the ornithologist, and very useful to the larger class
of persons who without being ornithologists yet
take an intelligent interest in birds. The unpleasant-
ness was at the sight of skins stuffed with wool and
set up on their legs in imitation of the living bird,
sometimes (oh, mockery !) in their " natural sur-
roundings." These " surroundings " are as a rule
constructed or composed of a few handfuls of earth
to form the floor of the glass case — sand, rock, clay,
chalk, or gravel ; whatever the material may be it
invariably has, like all " matter out of place," a

A 1

2 BIRDS AND MAN

grimy and depressing appearance. On the floor
are planted grasses, sedges, and miniature bushes,
made of tin or zinc and then dipped in a bucket of
green paint. In the chapter referred to it was said,
" When the eye closes in death, the bird, except to
the naturalist, becomes a mere bundle of dead
feathers ; crystal globes may be put into the empty
sockets, and a bold life-imitating attitude given to
the stuffed specimen, but the vitreous orbs shoot
forth no lifelike glances : the ' passion and the life
whose fountains are within ' have vanished, and
the best work of the taxidermist, who has given a
life to his bastard art, produces in the mind only
sensations of irritation and disgust."

That, in the last clause, was wrongly writ. It
should have been my mind, and the minds of those
who, knowing living birds intimately as I do, have
the same feeling about them.

This, then, being my feeling about stuffed birds,
set up in their " natural surroundings," I very natur-
ally avoid the places where they are exhibited. At
Brighton, for instance, on many occasions when I
have visited and stayed in that town, there was no
inclination to see the Booth Collection, which is
supposed to be an ideal collection of British birds ;
and we know it was the life-work of a zealous orni-

BIRDS AT THEIR BEST 3

thologist who was also a wealthy man, and who
spared no pains to make it perfect of its kind. About
eighteen months ago I passed a night in the house
of a friend close to the Dyke Road, and next morn-
ing, having a couple of hours to get rid of, I strolled
into the museum. It was painfully disappointing,
for though no actual pleasure had been expected,
the distress experienced was more than I had bar-
gained for. It happened that a short time before,
I had been watching the hving Dartford warbler,
at a time when the sight of this small elusive creature
is loveliest, for not only was the bird in his brightest
feathers, but his surroundings were then most
perfect —

The whin was frankincense and flame.
His appearance, as I saw him then and on many
other occasions in the furze-flowering season, is fully
described in a chapter in this book; but on this
particular occasion while watching my bird I saw it
in a new and unexpected aspect, and in my surprise
and delight I exclaimed mentally, " Now I have seen
the furze wren at his very best ! "

It was perhaps a very rare thing— one of those
effects of light on plumage which we are accustomed
to see in birds that have glossed metallic feathers,
and, more rarely, in other kinds. Thus the turtle-

4 BIRDS AND MAN

dove when flying from the spectator with a strong
sunhght on its upper plumage, sometimes at a dis-
tance of two to three hundred yards, appears of a
shining whiteness.

I had been watching the birds for a couple of
hours, sitting quite still on a tuft of heather among
the furze-bushes, and at intervals they came to me,
impelled by curiosity and solicitude, their nests
being near, but, ever restless, they would never
remain more than a few seconds at a time in sight.
The prettiest and the boldest was a male, and it was
this bird that in the end flew to a bush within twelve
yards of where I sat, and perching on a spray about
on a level with my eyes exhibited himself to me in
his characteristic manner, the long tail raised, crest
erect, crimson eye sparkling, and throat puffed out
with his little scolding notes. But his colour was
no longer that of the furze wren : seen at a distance
the upper plumage always appears slaty-black ;
near at hand it is of a deep slaty- brown ; now it
was dark, sprinkled or frosted over with a delicate
greyish- white, the wliite of oxidised silver ; and
this rare and beautiful appearance continued for
a space of about twenty seconds ; but no sooner did
he flit to another spray than it vanished, and he was

BIRDS AT THEIR BEST 5

once more the slaty-brown little bird with a chestnut-
red breast.

It is unlikely that I shall ever again see the
furze wren in this aspect, with a curious splendour
wrought by the sunlight in the dark but semi-
translucent delicate feathers of his mantle ; but its
image is in the mind, and, with a thousand others
equally beautiful, remains to me a permanent
possession.

As I went in to see the famous Booth Collection,
a thought of the bird I have just described came
into my mind ; and glancing round the big long
room with shelves crowded with stuffed birds, like
the crowded shelves of a shop, to see where the Dart-
ford warblers were, I went straight to the case and
saw a group of them fastened to a furze-bush, the
specimens twisted by the stuffer into a variety of
attitudes — ancient, dusty, dead little birds, painful
to look at — a libel on nature and an insult to a man's
intelligence.

It was a relief to go from this case to the others,
which were not of the same degree of badness, but
all, like the furze wrens, were in their natural sur-
roundings— the pebbles, bit of turf, painted leaves,
and what not, and, finally, a view of the wide world
beyond, the green earth and the blue sky, all painted

6 BIRDS AND MAN

on the little square of deal or canvas which formed
the back of the glass case.

Listening to the talk of other visitors who were
making the round of the room, I heard many sincere
expressions of admiration ; they were really pleased
and thought it all very wonderful. That is, in fact,
the common feeling which most persons express in
such places, and, assuming that it is sincere, the
obvious explanation is that they know no better.
They have never properly seen anything in nature,
but have looked always with mind and the inner
vision preoccupied with other and familiar things —
indoor scenes and objects, and scenes described
in books. If they had ever looked at wild birds
properly — that is to say, emotionally — the images of
such sights would have remained in their minds ;
and, with such a standard for comparison, these
dreary remnants of dead things set before them as
restorations and as semblances of life would have
only produced a profoundly depressing effect.

We hear of the educational value of such exhibi-
tions, and it may be conceded that they might be
made useful to young students of zoology, by dis-
tributing the specimens over a large area, arranged
in scattered groups so as to give a rough idea of the
relationship existing among its members, and of all

BIRDS AT THEIR BEST 7

together to other neighbouring groups, and to others
still further removed. The one advantage of such
a plan to the young student would be, that it would
help him to get rid of the false notion, which classi-
fication studied in books invariably produces, that
nature marshals her species in a line or row, or
her genera in a chain. But no such plan is ever
attempted, probably because it would only be for the
benefit of about one person in five hundred visitors,
and the expense would be too great.

As things are, these collections help no one, and
their effect is confusing and in many ways injurious
to the mind, especially to the young. A multitude
of specimens are brought before the sight, each and
every one a falsification and degradation of nature,
and the impression left is of an assemblage, or mob,
of incongruous forms, and of a confusion of colours.
The one comfort is that nature, wiser than our
masters, sets herself against this rude system of over-
loading the brain. She is kind to her wild children
in their intemperance, and is able to relieve the
congested mind, too, from this burden. These
objects in a museum are not and cannot be viewed
emotionally, as we view living forms and all nature ;
hence they do not, and we being what we are, can-
not, register lasting impressions.

8 BIRDS AND IVIAN

It needed a long walk on the downs to get myself
once more in tune with the outdoor world after that
distuning experience ; but just before quitting the
house in the Dyke Road an old memory came to me
and gave me some relief, inasmuch as it caused me
to smile. It was a memory of a tale of the Age of
Fools, which I heard long years ago in the days of
my youth.

I was at a small riverine port of the Plata river,
called Ensenada de Barragan, assisting a friend to
ship a number of sheep which he had purchased in
Buenos Ayres and was sending to the Banda Oriental
— the little republic on the east side of the great sea-
like river. The sheep, numbering about six thou-
sand, were penned at the side of the creek where the
small sailing ships were lying close to the bank, and
a gang of eight men were engaged in carrying the
animals on board, taking them one by one on their
backs over a narrow plank, while I stood by keeping
count. The men were gauchos, all but one — a
short, rather grotesque-looking Portuguese with
one eye. This fellow was the life and soul of the
gang, and with his jokes and antics kept the others
in a merry humour. It was an excessively hot day,
and at intervals of about an hour the men would
knock off work, and, squatting on the muddy bank,

BIRDS AT THEIR BEST 9

rest and smoke their cigarettes ; and on each occa-
sion the funny one-eyed Portuguese would relate
some entertaining history. One of these histories
was about the Age of Fools, and amused me so much
that I remember it to this day. It was the history
of a man of that remote age, who was born out of
his time, and who grew tired of the monotony of his
life, even of the society of his wife, who was no whit
wiser than the other inhabitants of the village they
lived in. And at last he resolved to go forth and
see the world, and bidding his wife and friends fare-
well he set out on his travels. He travelled far and
met with many strange and entertaining adventures,
which I must be pardoned for not relating, as this
is not a story-book. In the end he returned safe and
sound to his home, a much richer man than when he
started ; and opening his pack he spread out before
his wife an immense number of gold coins, with
scores of precious stones, and trinkets of the greatest
value. At the sight of this glittering treasure she
uttered a great scream of joy and jumping up rushed
from the room. Seeing that she did not return, he
went to look for her, and after some searching dis-
covered that she had rushed down to the wine-cellar
and knocking open a large cask of wine had jumped
into it and drowned herself for pure joy.

10 BIRDS AND MAN

" Thus happily ended his adventures," concluded
the one-eyed cynic, and they all got up and resumed
their work of carrying sheep to the boat.

It was one of the adventures met with by the man
of the tale in his travels that came into my mind
when I was in the Booth Museum, and caused me
to smile. In his wanderings in a thinly settled
district, he arrived at a village where, passing by
the church, his attention was attracted by a curious
spectacle. The church was a big building with a
rounded roof, and great blank windowless walls, and
the only door he could see was no larger than the
door of a cottage. From this door as he looked a
small old man came out with a large empty sack in
his hands. He was very old, bowed and bent with
infirmities, and his long hair and beard were white
as snow. Toddling out to the middle of the church-
yard he stood still, and grasping the empty sack by
its top, held it open between his outstretched arms
for a space of about five minutes ; then with a
sudden movement of his hands he closed the sack's
mouth, and still grasping it tightly, hurried back
to the church as fast as his stiff joints would let him,
and disappeared within the door. By and by he
came forth again and repeated the performance,
and then again, until the traveller approached and

BIRDS AT THEIR BEST 11

asked him what he was doing. " I am lighting the
chm'ch," said the old man ; and he then went on
to explain that it was a large and a fine church, full
of rich ornaments, but very dark inside — so dark
that when people came to service the greatest con-
fusion prevailed, and they could not see each other
or the priest, nor the priest them. It had always
been so, he continued, and it was a great mystery ;
he had been engaged by the fathers of the village a
long time back, when he was a young man, to carry
sunlight in to light the interior ; but though he had
grown old at his task, and had carried in many,
many thousands of sackfuls of sunlight every year,
it still remained dark, and no one could say why it
was so.

It is not necessary to relate the sequel : the reader
knows by now that in the end the dark church was
filled with light, that the traveller was feasted and
honoured by all the people of the village, and that
he left them loaded with gifts.

Parables of this kind as a rule can have no moral
or hidden meaning in an age so enlightened as this ;
yet oddly enough we do find among us a delusion
resembling that of the villagers who thought they
could convey sunshine in a sack to light their dark
church. It is one of a group or family of indoor

12 BIRDS AND IVIAN

delusions and illusions, which Mr Sully has not
mentioned in his book on that fascinating subject.
One example of the particular delusion I have been
speaking of, in which it is seen in its crudest form,
may be given here.

A man walking by the water- side sees by chance
a kingfisher fly past, its colom- a wonderful blue, far
surpassing in beauty and brilliancy any blue he has
ever seen in sky or water, or in flower or stone, or
any other thing. No sooner has he seen than he
wishes to become the possessor of that rare loveli-
ness, that shining object which, he fondly imagines,
will be a continual delight to him and to all in his
house, — an ornament comparable to that splendid
stone which the poor fisherman found in a fish's
belly, which was his children's plaything by day and
his candle by night. Forthwith he gets his gun and
shoots it, and has it stuffed and put in a glass case.
But it is no longer the same thing : the image of
the living sunlit bird flashing past him is in his mind
and creates a kind of illusion when he looks at his
feathered mummy, but the lustre is not visible to
others.

It is because of the commonness of this delusion
that stuffed kingfishers, and other brilliant species,
are to be seen in the parlours of tens of thousands

BIRDS AT THEIR BEST 13

of cottages all over the land. Nor is it only those
who live in cottages that make this mistake ; those
who care to look for it will find that it exists in some
degree in most minds — the cm^ious delusion that the
lustre which we see and admire is in the case, the
coil, the substance which may be grasped, and not
in the spirit of life which is within and the atmosphere
and miracle-working sunlight which are without.

To return to my own taste and feelings, since in
the present chapter I must be allowed to write on
Man (myself to wit) and Birds, the other chapters
being occupied with the subject of Birds and Man.
It has always, or since I can remember, been my
ambition and principal delight to see and hear every
bird at its best. This is here a comparative term,
and simply means an unusually attractive aspect of
the bird, or a very much better than the ordinary
one. This may result from a fortunate conjunction
of circumstances, or may be due to a peculiar
harmony between the creature and its surround-
ings ; or in some instances, as in that given above
of the Dartford warbler, to a rare effect of the sun.
In still other cases, motions and antics, rarely seen,
singularly graceful, or even grotesque, may give the
best impression. After one such impression has
been received, another equally excellent may follow

14 BIRDS AND MAN

at a later date : in that case the second impression
does not obHterate, or is not superimposed upon the
former one ; both remain as permanent possessions
of the mind, and we may thus have several mental
pictures of the same species.

It is the same with all minds with regard to the
objects and scenes which happen to be of special
interest. The following illustration will serve to
make the matter clearer to readers who are not
accustomed to pay attention to their own mental
procesess. When any common object, such as a
chair, or spade, or apple, is thought of or spoken of,
an image of a picture of it instantly comes before the
mind's eye ; not of a particular spade or apple, but
of a type representing the object which exists in the
mind ready for use on all occasions. With the
question of the origin of this type, this spade or
apple of the mind, we need not concern ourselves
here. If the object thought or spoken of be an
animal — a horse let us say, the image seen in the
mind will in most cases be as in the foregoing case
a type existing in the mind and not of an individual.
But if a person is keenly interested in horses generally,
and is a rider and has owned and loved many horses,
the image of some particular one which he has known
or has looked at with appreciative eyes will come to

BIRDS AT THEIR BEST 15

mind ; and he will also be able to call up the images
of dozens or of scores of horses he has known or seen
in the same way. If on the other hand we think of
a rat, we see not any individual but a type, because
we have no interest in or no special feeling with
regard to such a creature, and all the successive
images we receive of it become merged in one — the
type which already existed in the mind and was
probably formed very early in life. With the dog
for subject the case is different : dogs are more with
us — we know them intimately and have perhaps
regarded many individuals with affection ; hence
the image that rises in the mind is as a rule of some
dog we have known.

The important point to be noted is, that while
each and everything we see registers an impression
in the brain, and may be recalled several minutes, or
hours, or even days afterwards, the only permanent
impressions are of the sights which we have viewed
emotionally. We may remember that we have seen
a thousand things in which at some later period an
interest has been born in the mind, when it would
be greatly to our pleasure and even profit to recover
their images, and we strive and ransack our brains
to do so, but all in vain : they have been lo st for
ever because we happened not to be interested in

16 BIRDS AND MAN

the originals, but viewed them with indifference, or
unemotionally.

With regard to birds, I see them mentally in two
ways : each species which I have known and ob-
served in its wild state has its type in the mind —
an image w^hich I invariably see when I think of the
species ; and, in addition, one or two or several, in
some cases as many as fifty, images of the same
species of bird as it appeared at some exceptionally
favourable moment and was viewed with peculiar
interest and pleasure.

Of hundreds of such enduring images of our com-
monest species I will here describe one before con-
cluding w^th this part of the subject.

The long-tailed or bottle-tit is one of the most
delicately pretty of our small woodland birds, and
among my treasures, in my invisible and intangible
album, there were several pictures of him which 1
had thought unsurpassable, until on a day two years
ago when a new and better one was garnered. I
was walking a few miles from Bath by the Avon
where it is not more than thirty or forty yards wide,
on a cold, wdndy, very bright day in February. The
opposite bank was lined with bushes growing close
to the water, the roots and lower trunks of many of
them being submerged, as the river was very full ;

BIRDS AT THEIR BEST 17

and behind this low growth the ground rose abruptly,
forming a long green hill crowned with tall beeches.
I stopped to admire one of the bushes across the
stream, and I wish I could now say what its species
was : it was low with widespread branches close to
the surface of the water, and its leafless twigs were
adorned with catkins resembling those of the black
poplar, as long as a man's little finger, of a rich dark-
red or maroon colour. A party of about a dozen
long-tailed tits were travelling, or drifting, in their
usual desultory way, through the line of bushes
towards this point, and in due time they arrived,
one by one, at the bush I was watching, and finding
it sheltered from the wind they elected to remain
at that spot. For a space of fifteen minutes I looked
on with delight, rejoicing at the rare chance which
had brought that exquisite bird- and plant- scene
before me. The long deep-red pendent catkins and
the little pale birdlings among them in their grey
and rose-colom-ed plumage, with long graceful tails
and minute round, parroty heads ; some quietly
perched just above the water, others moving
about here and there, occasionally suspending
themselves back downwards from the slender
terminal twigs — the whole mirrored below. That
magical effect of water and sunlight gave to the

18 BIRDS AND MAN

scene a somewhat fairy-like, an almost illusory,
character.

Such scenes live in their loveliness only for him
who has seen and harvested them : they cannot be
pictured forth to another by words, nor with the
painter's brush, though it be charged with tintas
orientales ; least of all by photography, which brings
all things down to one flat, monotonous, colourless
shadow of things, weary to look at.

From sights we pass to the consideration of
sounds, and it is unfortunate that the two subjects
have to be treated consecutively instead of together,
since with birds they are more intimately joined
than in any other order of beings ; and in images
of bird life at its best they sometimes cannot be dis-
sociated ; — the aerial form of the creature, its
harmonious, delicate tints, and its grace of motion ;
and the voice, which, loud or low, is aerial too, in
harmony with the form.

We know that as with sights so it is with sounds :
those to which we listen attentively, appreciatively,
or in any way emotionally, live in the mind, to be
recalled and reheard at will. There is no doubt that
in a large majority of persons this retentive power
is far less strong with regard to sounds than sights,
but we are all supposed to have it in some degree.

BIRDS AT THEIR BEST 19

So far, I have met with but one person, a lady, who
is without it : sounds, in her case, do not register
an impression in the brain, so that with regard to
this sense she is in the condition of civihsed man
generally with regard to smells. I say of civilised
man, being convinced that this power has becomes
obsolete in us, although it appears to exist in savages
and in the lower animals. The most common
sounds, natural or artificial, the most familiar bird-
notes, the lowing of a cow, the voices of her nearest
and dearest friends, and simplest melodies sung or
played, cannot be reproduced in her brain : she
remembers them as agreeable sounds, just as we all
remember that certain flowers and herbs have agree-
able odours ; but she does not hear them. Probably
there are not many persons in the same case ; but
in such matters it is hard to know what the real con-
dition of another's mind may be. Our acquaint-
ances refuse to analyse or turn themselves inside
out merely to gratify a curiosity which they may
think idle. In some cases they perhaps have a kind
of superstition about such things : the secret pro-
cesses of their mind are their secret, or " business,"
and, like the secret and real name of a person among
some savage tribes, not to be revealed but at the
risk of giving to another a mysterious power over

20 BIRDS AND MAN

their lives and fortunes. Even worse than the re-
ticent, the superstitious, and the simply unintelligent,
is the highly imaginative person who is only too
ready to answer all inquiries, who catches at what
you say in explanation, divines what you want, and
instantly (and unconsciously) invents something
to tell you.

But we may, I think, take it for granted that the
faculty of retaining sounds is as universal as that of
retaining sights, although, speaking generally, the
impressions of sounds are less perfect and lasting
than those which relate to the higher, more intel-
lectual sense of vision ; also that this power varies
greatly in different persons. Furthermore, we see
in the case of musical composers, and probably of
most musicians who are devoted to their art, that
this faculty is capable of being trained and developed
to an extraordinary degree of efficiency. The com-
poser sitting pen in hand to write his score in his
silent room hears the voices and the various instru-
ments, the solos and orchestral sounds, which are
in his thoughts. It is true that he is a creator, and
listens mentally to compositions that have never
been previously heard ; but he cannot imagine, or
cannot hear mentally, any note or combination of
notes wliich he has never heard with his physical

BIRDS AT THEIR BEST 21

sense. In creating he selects from the infinite
variety of sounds whose images exist in his mind,
and, rearranging them, produces new effects.

The difference in the brains, with regard to their
sound-storing power, of the accomphshed musician
and the ordinary person who does not know one tune
from another and has but fleeting impressions of
sounds in general, is no doubt enormous ; probably
it is as great as that which exists in the logical
faculty between a professor of that science in one of
the Universities and a native of the Andaman
Islands or of Tierra del Fuego. It is, we see, a ques-
tion of training : any person with a normal brain
who is accustomed to listen appreciatively to certain
sounds, natural or artificial, must store his mind
with the images of such sounds. And the open-air
naturalist, who is keenly interested in the language
of birds, and has listened with delight to a great
variety of species, should be as rich in such impres-
sions as the musician is with regard to musical
sounds. Unconsciously he has all his life been
training the faculty.

With regard to the durability of the images, it
may be thought by some that, speaking of birds,
only those which are revived and restored, so to
speak, from time to time by fresh sense-impressions

22 BIRDS AND MAN

remain permanently distinct. Tliat would natm-ally
be the first conclusion most persons would arrive
at, considering that the sound-images which exist
in their minds are of the species found in their own
country, which they are able to hear occasionally,
even if at very long intervals in some cases. My
own experience proves that it is not so ; that a man
may cut himself off from the bird life he knows, to
make his home in another region of the globe thou-
sands of miles away, and after a period exceeding
a quarter of a century, during which he has become
intimate with a wholly different bird life, to find
that the old sound-images, which have never been
refreshed with new sense-impressions, are as distinct
as they ever were, and seem indeed imperishable.

I confess that, when I think of it, I am astonished
myself at such an experience, and to some it must
seem almost incredible. It will be said, perhaps,
that in the infinite variety of bird-sounds heard
anywhere there must be innumerable notes which
closely resemble, or are similar to, those of other
species in other lands, and> although heard in a
different order, the old images of cries and calls and
songs are thus indirectly refreshed and kept alive.
I do not think that has been any real help to me.
Thus, I think of some species which has not been

BIRDS AT THEIR BEST 23

thought of for years, and its language comes back
at call to my mind. I listen mentally to its various
notes, and there is not one in the least like the
notes of any British species. These images have
therefore never received refreshment. Again, where
there is a resemblance, as in the trisyllabic cry of
the common sandpiper and another species, I listen
mentally to one, then to the other, heard so long
ago, and hear both distinctly, and comparing the
two, find a considerable difference, one being a
thinner, shriller, and less musical sound than the
other. Still again, in the case of the blackbird,
which has a considerable variety in its language,
there is one little chirp familiar to every one — a
small round drop of sound of a musical, bell-like
character. Now it happens that one of the true
thrushes of South America, a bird resembling our
song-thrush, has an almost identical bell-like chirp,
and so far as that small drop of sound is concerned
the old image may be refreshed by new sense-im-
pressions. Or I might even say that the original
image has been covered by the later one, as in the
case of the laughter-like cries of the Dominican and
the black-backed gulls. But with regard to the
thrushes, excepting that small drop of sound, the
language of the two species is utterly different.

24 BIRDS AND MAN

Each has a melody perfect of its kind : the song of
the foreign bird is not fluty nor mellow nor placid
like that of the blackbird, but has in a high degree
that quality of plaintiveness and gladness com-
mingled which we admire in some fresh and very
beautiful human voices, like that described in
Lowell's lines " To Perdita Singing " : —

It hath caught a touch of sadness,

Yet it is not sad ;
It hath tones of clearest gladness,

Yet it is not glad.

Again, that foreign song is composed of many
notes, and is poured out in a stream, as a sky-lark
sings ; and it is also singular on account of the con-
trast between these notes which suggest human
feeling and a purely metallic, bell-like sound, which,
coming in at intervals, has the effect of the triangle
in a band of wind instruments. Tlie image of this
beautiful song is as distinct in my mind as that of
the blackbird which I heard every day last summer
from every green place.

Doubtless there are some and perhaps a good
many ornithologists among us who have been abroad
to observe the bird life of distant countries, and who
when at home find that the sound-impressions they
have received are not persistent, or, if not wholly

BIRDS AT THEIR BEST 25

lost, that they grow faint and indistinct, and become
increasingly difficult to recall. They can no longer
listen to those over- sea notes and songs as they can,
mentally, to the cuckoo's call in spring, the wood-
owl's hoot, to the song of the skylark and of the tree-
pipit, the reeling of the night- jar and the startling
scream of the woodland jay, the deep human-like
tones of the raven, the inflected wild cry of the
curlew, and the beautiful wild whistle of the widgeon,
heard in the silence of the night on some lonely mere.

The reason is that these, and numberless more,
are the sounds of the bird life of their own home and
country ; the living voices to which they listened
when they were young and the senses keener than
now, and their enthusiasm greater ; they were in
fact heard with an emotion which the foreign species
never inspired in them, and thus heard, the images
of the sounds were made imperishable.

In my case the foreign were the home birds, and
on that account alone more to me than all others ;
yet I escaped that prejudice which the British
naturahst is never wholly without — the notion that
the home bird is, intrinsically, better worth listening
to than the bird abroad. Finally, on coming to this
country, I could not listen to the birds coldly, as an
English naturalist would to those of, let us say.

26 BIRDS AND MAN

Queensland, or Burma, or Canada, or Patagonia,
but with an intense interest ; for these were the
birds which my forbears had known and Ustened
to all their lives long ; and my imagination was fired
by all that had been said of their charm, not indeed
by frigid ornithologists, but by a long succession of
great poets, from Chaucer down to those of our own
time. Hearing them thus emotionally their notes
became permanently impressed on my mind, and I
found myself the happy possessor of a large nui^nber
of sound-images representing the bird language of
two widely separated regions.

To return to the main point — the durability of
the impressions both of sight and sound.

In order to get a more satisfactory idea of the
number and comparative strength or vividness of
the images of twenty- six years ago remaining to me
after so long a time than I could by merely thinking
about the subject, I drew up a list of the species
of birds observed by me in the two adjoining dis-
tricts of La Plata and Patagonia. Against the
name of each species the surviving sight- and sound-
impressions were set down ; but on going over this
first list and analysis, fresh details came to mind, and
some images which had become dimmed all at once
grew bright again, and to bring these in, the work

BIRDS AT THEIR BEST 27

had to be redone ; then it was put away and the
subject left for a few days to the " subhminal con-
sciousness," after which I took it up once more and
rewrote it all — list and analysis ; and I think it
now gives a fairly accurate account of the state
of these old impressions as they exist in memory.

This has not been done solely for my own gratifica-
tion. I confess to a very strong feeling of curiosity
as to the mental experience on this point of other
field naturalists ; and as these, or some of them,
may have the same wish to look into their neighbours'
minds that I have, it may be that the example given
here will be followed.

My list comprises 226 species — a large number
to remember when we consider that it exceeds by
about 16 or 18 the number of British species ; that
is to say, those which may truly be described as
belonging to these islands, without including the
waifs and strays and rare visitants which by a fiction
are described as British birds. Of the 226, the
sight-impressions of 10 have become indistinct, and
one has been completely forgotten. The sight of
a specimen might perhaps revive an image of this
lost one as it was seen, a living wild bird ; but I do
not know. This leaves 215, every one of which I
can mentally see as distinctly as I see in my mind

28 BIRDS AND MAN

the common species I am accustomed to look at
every day in England — thrush, starling, robin, etc.

A different story has to be told with regard to the
language. To begin with, there are no fewer than
34 species of which no sound-impressions were
received. These include the habitually silent kinds
— the stork, which rattles its beak but makes no
vocal sound, the painted snipe, the wood ibis, and
a few more ; species which were rarely seen and
emitted no sound — condor, Muscovy duck, harpy
eagle, and others ; species which were known only
as winter visitants, or seen on migration, and wliich
at such seasons were invariably silent.

Thus, those which were heard number 192. Of
these the language of 7 species has been completely
forgotten, and of 31 the sound-impressions have
now become indistinct in varying degrees. Deduct-
ing those whose notes have become silent and are
not clearly heard in the mind, there remain 154
species which are distinctly remembered. That
is to say, when I think of them and their language,
the cries, calls, songs, and other sounds are repro-
duced in the mind.

Studying the list, in which the species are ranged
in order according to their affinities, it is easy to
see why the language of some, although not many^

BIRDS AT THEIR BEST 29

has been lost or has become more or less indistinct.
In some cases it is because there was nothing dis-
tinctive or in any way attractive in the notes ; in
other cases because the images have been covered
and obliterated by others — the stronger images of
closely-allied species. In the two American families
of tyrant-birds and woodhewers, neither of which
are songsters, there is in some of the closely-related
species a remarkable family resemblance in their
voices. Listening to their various cries and calls,
the trained ear of the ornithologist can easily dis-
tinguish them and identify the species ; but after
years the image of the more powerful or the better
voices of, say, two or three species in a group of four
or five absorb and overcome the others. I cannot
find a similar case among British species to illustrate
this point, unless it be that of the meadow- and
rock-pipit. Strongly as the mind is impressed by
the measured tinkling notes of these two songs,
emitted as the birds descend to earth, it is not prob-
able that any person who had not heard them for
a number of years would be able to distinguish or
keep them separate in his mind — to hear them in
their images as two distinct songs.

In the case of the good singers in that distant
region, I find the voices continue remarkably dis-

30 BIRDS AND INIAN

tinct, and as an example will give the two melodi-
ous families of the finches and thetroupials(Icteridae),
the last an American family, related to the finches,
but starling-like in appearance, many of them
brilliantly coloured. Of the first I am acquainted
with 12 and of the second with 14 species.

Here then are 26 highly vocal species, of which
the songs, calls, chirps, and various other notes, are
distinctly remembered in 23. Of the other three one
was silent — a small rare migratory finch resembling
the bearded-tit in its reed-loving habits, its long
tail and slender shape, and partly too in its colour-
ing. I listened in vain for this bird's singing notes.
Of the remaining two one is a finch, the other a
troupial ; the first a pretty bird, in appearance a
small hawfinch with its whole plumage a lovely
glaucous blue ; a poor singer with a low rambling
song : the second a bird of the size of a starling,
coloured like a golden oriole, but more brilliant ;
and this one has a short impetuous song composed
of mixed guttural and clear notes.

Why is this rather peculiar song, of a species
which on account of its colouring and pleasing social
habits strongly impresses the mind, less distinct in
memory than the songs of other troupials ? I
believe it is because it is a rare thing to hear a single

BIRDS AT THEIR BEST 31

song. They perch in a tree in company, hke birds
of paradise, and no sooner does one open his beak
than all burst out together, and their singing strikes
on the sense in a rising and falling tempest of con-
fused sound. But it may be added that though
these two songs are marked " indistinct " in the
list, they are not very indistinct, and become less
so when I listen mentally with closed eyes.

In conclusion, it is worthy of remark that the
good voices, as to quality, and the powerful ones,
are not more enduring in their images than those
which were listened to appreciatively for other
reasons. Voices which have the quahty of ventrilo-
quism, or are in any way mysterious, or are suggestive
of human tones, are extremely persistent ; and such
voices are found in owls, pigeons, snipe, rails, grebes,
night- jars, tinamous, rheas, and in some passerine
birds. Again, the swallows are not remarkable as
singers compared with thrushes, finches, and other
melodists ; but on account of their intrinsic charm
and beauty, their interesting habits, and the senti-
ment they inspire, we listen to them emotionally ;
and I accordingly find that the language of the five
species of swallows I was formerly accustomed to
see and hear continues as distinct in my mind as

32 BIRDS AND MAN

that of the chimney swallow, which I hsten to every
summer in England.

I had meant in this chapter to give three or four
or half a dozen instances of birds seen at their best,
instead of the one I have given — that of the long-
tailed tit ; and as many more images in which a
rare, unforgettable effect was produced by melody.
For as with sights so it is with sounds : for these
too there are " special moments," which have
" special grace." But this chapter is already longer
than it was ever meant to be, and something on
another subject yet remains to be said.

The question is sometimes asked, What is the
charm which you find, or say you find, in nature ?
Is it real, or do these words so often repeated have a
merely conventional meaning, like so many other
words and phrases which men use with regard to
other things ? Birds, for instance : apart from the
interest which the ornithologists must take in his
subject, what substantial happiness can be got out
of these shy creatures, mostly small and not too
well seen, that fly from us when approached, and
utter sounds which at their best are so poor, so thin,
so trivial, compared with our soul-sthring human
music ?

BIRDS AT THEIR BEST 33

That, briefly, is the indoor view of the subject —
the view of those who, to begin with, were perhaps
town-born and town-bred ; who have existed amid
conditions, occupied with work and pleasures, the
reflex effect of which, taken altogether and in the
long-run, is to dim and even deaden some of the
brain's many faculties, and chiefly this best faculty
of preserving impressions of nature for long years
or to the end of life in all their original freshness.

Some five or six years ago I heard a speech about
birds delivered by Sir Edward Grey, in which he
said that the love and appreciation and study of
birds was something fresher and brighter than the
second-hand interests and conventional amusements
in which so many in this day try to live ; that the
pleasure of seeing and listening to them was purer
and more lasting than any pleasures of excitement,
and, in the long-run, " happier than personal suc-
cess." That was a saying to stick in the mind, and
it is probable that some who listened failed to under-
stand. Let us imagine that in addition to this
miraculous faculty of the brain of storing innumer-
able brilliant images of things seen and heard, to
be reproduced at call to the inner sense, there existed
in a few gifted persons a correlated faculty by means
of which these treasured images could be thrown at

34 BIRDS AND MAN

will into the mind of another ; let us further imagine
that some one in the audience who had wondered
at that saying, finding it both dark and hard, had
asked me to explain it ; and that in response I
had shown him, as by a swift succession of lightning
flashes a scare or a hundred images of birds at their
best — the unimaginable loveliness, the sunlit colour,
the giace of form and of motion, and the melody —
how great the effect of even that brief glance into
a new unknown world would have been ! And if I
had then said : All that you have seen — the pictures
in one small room in a house of many rooms — is not
after all the main thing ; that it would be idle to
speak of, since you cannot know what you do not
feel, though it should be told you many times ;
this only can be told — the enduring images are but
an incidental result of a feeling which existed already ;
they were never looked for, and are a free gift from
nature to her worshipper ; — if I had said this to him,
the words of the speech which has seemed almost sheer
insanity a little while before would have acquired
a meaning and an appearance of truth.

It has curiously happened that while writing
these concluding sentences some old long-forgotten
lines which I read in my youth came suddenly into

BIRDS AT THEIR BEST 35

my mind, as if some person sitting invisible at my
side and thinking them apposite to the subject had
whispered them into my ear. They are Hnes ad-
dressed to the Merrimac River by an American
poet — whether a major or minor I do not know,
having forgotten his name. In one stanza he
mentions the fact that " young Brissot " looked
upon this stream in its bright flow —

And bore its image o'er the deep

To soothe a martyr's sadness,
And fresco in his troubled sleep

His prison walls with gladness.

Brissot is not generally looked upon as a " martyr "
on this side of the Atlantic, nor was he allowed to
enjoy his " troubled sleep " too long after his fellow-
citizens (especially the great and sea-green Incor-
ruptible) had begun in their fraternal fashion to
thirst for his blood ; but we can easily believe that
during those dark days in the Bastille the image and
vision of the beautiful river thousands of miles away
was more to him than all his varied stores of know-
ledge, all his schemes for the benefit of suffering
humanity, and perhaps even a better consolation
than his philosophy.

It is indeed this " gladness " of old sunshine
stored within us — if we have had the habit of seeing

36 BIRDS AND MAN

beauty everywhere and of viewing all beautiful
things with appreciation — this incalculable wealth
of images of vanished scenes, which is one of our best
and dearest possessions, and a joy for ever.

" What asketh man to have ? " cried Chaucer,
and goes on to say in bitterest words that " now
with his love " he must soon lie in " the colde grave
— alone, withouten any companie."

What he asketh to have, I suppose, is a blue
diamond — some unattainable good ; and in the
meantime, just to go on with, certain pleasant
things which perish in the using.

These same pleasant things are not to be despised,
but they leave nothing for the mind in hungry days to
feed upon, and can be of no comfort to one who is shut
up within himself by age and bodily infirmities and the
decay of the senses ; on the contrary, the recollection
of them at such times, as has been said, can but
serve to make a present misery more poignantly felt.

It was the nobly expressed consolation of an
American poet, now dead, when standing in the
summer sunshine amid a fine prospect of woods
and hills, to think, when he remembered the dark-
ness of decay and the grave, that he had beheld
in nature, though but for a moment,

The briglitness of the skirts of God.

CHAPTER II

BIRDS AND MAN

To most of our wild birds man must appear as a
being eccentric and contradictory in his actions.
By turns he is hostile, indifferent, friendly towards
them, so that they never quite know what to expect.
Take the case of a blackbird who has gradually
acquired trustful habits, and builds its nest in the
garden or shrubbery in sight of the friends that have
fed it in frosty weather ; so little does it fear that
it allows them to come a dozen times a day, put the
branches aside and look upon it, and even stroke
its back as it sits on its eggs. By and by a neigh-
bour's egg-hunting boy creeps in, discovers the nest,
and pulls it down. The bird finds itself betrayed
by its confidence ; had it suspected the boy's evil
intentions it would have made an outcry at his
approach, as at the appearance of a cat, and the
nest would perhaps have been saved. The result of
such an accident would probably be the unsettling
of an acquired habit, the return to the usual sus-
picious attitude.

87

38 BIRDS AND MAN

Birds are able sometimes to discriminate between
protectors and persecutors, but seldom very well I
should imagine ; they do not view the face only,
but the whole form, and our frequent change of
dress must make it difficult for them to distinguish
the individuals they know and trust from strangers.
Even a dog is occasionally at fault when his master,
last seen in black and grey suit, reappears in straw
hat and flannels.

Nevertheless, if birds once come to know those
who habitually protect them and form a trustful
habit, this will not be abandoned on account of a
little rough treatment on occasions. A lady at
Worthing told me of her blackbirds breeding in
her garden that they refused to be kept from the
strawberries when she netted the ripening fruit.
One or more of the birds would always manage to
get under the net; and when she would capture
the robber and carry him, screaming, struggling and
pecking at her fingers, to the end of the garden and
release him, he would immediately follow her back
to the bed and set himself to get at the fruit again.

In a bird's relations with other mammals there
is no room for doubt or confusion ; each consistently
acts after its kind ; once hostile, always hostile ;
and if once seen to be harmless, then to be trusted

BIRDS AND IVIAN 39

for ever. The fox must always be feared and de-
tested ; his disposition, hke his sharp nose and red
coat, is unchangeable ; so, too, with the cat, stoat,
weasel, etc. On the other hand, in the presence of
herbivorous mammals, birds show no sign of sus-
picion ; they know that all these various creatures
are absolutely harmless, from the big formidable-
looking bull and roaring stag, to the mild- eyed,
timorous hare and rabbit. It is common to see
wagtails and other species attending cattle in the
pastures, and keeping close to their noses, on the
look-out for the small insects driven from hiding in
the grass. Daws and starlings search the backs of
cattle and sheep for ticks and other parasites, and
it is plain that their visits are welcome. Here a
joint interest unites bird and beast ; it is the nearest
approach to symbiosis among the higher vertebrates
of this country, but is far less advanced than the
partnership which exists between the rhinoceros
bird and the rhinoceros or buffalo, and between
the spm'-winged plover and crocodile in Africa.

One day I was walking by a meadow, adjoining
the Bishop's palace at Wells, where several cows
were grazing, and noticed a little beyond them a
number of rooks and starlings scattered about.
Presently a flock of about forty of the cathedral

40 BIRDS AND MAN

jackdaws flew over me and slanted down to join
the other birds, when all at once two daws dropped
out of the flock on to the back of the cow standing
nearest to me. Immediately five more daws followed,
and the crowd of seven birds began eagerly pecking
at the animal's hide. But there was not room
enough for them to move freely ; they pushed and
struggled for a footing, throwing their wings out lu
keep their balance, looking like a number of hungry
vultures fighting for places on a carcase ; and soon
two of the seven were thrown off and flew away.
The remaining five, although much straitened for
room, continued for some time scrambling over
the cow's back, busy with their beaks and apparently
very much excited over the treasure they had dis-
covered. It was amusing to see how the cow took
their visit ; sinking her body as if about to lie down
and broadening her back, and dropping her head
until her nose touched the ground, she stood per-
fectly motionless, her tail stuck out behind like a
pump-handle. At length the daws finished their
feeding and quarrelling and flew away ; but for
some minutes the cow remained immovable in the
same attitude, as if the rare and dehghtful sensation
of so many beaks prodding and so many sharp claws
scratching her hide had not yet worn off.

BIRDS AND IVIAN 41

Deer, too, like cows, are very grateful to the daw
for its services. In Savernake Forest I once wit-
nessed a very pretty little scene. I noticed a hind
lying down by herself in a grassy hollow, and as I
passed her at a distance of about fifty yards it struck
me as singular that she kept her head so low down
that I could only see the top of it on a level with her
back. Walking round to get a better sight, I saw
a jackdaw standing on the turf before her, very
busily pecking at her face. With my glass I was
able to watch his movements very closely ; he
pecked round her eyes, then her nostrils, her throat,
and in fact every part of her face ; and just as a man
when being shaved turns his face this way and that
under the gentle guiding touch of the barber's fingers,
and lifts up his chin to allow the razor to pass be-
neath it, so did the hind raise and lower and turn her
face about to enable the bird to examine and reach
every part with his bill. Finally the daw left the
face, and, moving round, jumped on to the deer's
shoulders and began a minute search in that part ;
having finished this he jumped on to the head and
pecked at the forehead and round the bases of the
ears. The pecking done, he remained for some
seconds sitting perfectly still, looking very pretty
with the graceful red head for a stand, the hind's

42 BIRDS AND MAN

long ears thrust out on either side of him. From
his Hving perch he sprang into the air and flew away,
going close to the sm'face ; then slowly the deer
raised her head and gazed after her black friend —
gratefully, and regretting his departure, I could not
but think.

Some birds when breeding exliibit great anxiety
at the approach of any animal to the nest ; but
even when most excited they behave very differ-
ently towards herbivorous mammals and those which
they know to be at all times the enemies of their
kind. The nest of a ground-breeding species may
be endangered by the proximity of a goat, sheep,
deer, or any grazing animal, but the birds do not
winnow the air above it, scream, make threatening
dashes at its head, and try to lead it away as they
would do in the case of a dog or fox. When small
birds dash at and violently attack large animals
and man in defence of their nest, even though the
nest may not have been touched, the action appears
to be purely instinctive and involuntary, almost
unconscious, in fact. Acts of this kind are more
often seen in humming-birds than in birds of other
families ; and humming-birds do not appear to
discriminate between rapacious and herbivorous
mammals. When they see a large animal moving

BIRDS AND MAN 43

about they fly close to and examine it for a few
moments, then dart away ; if it comes too near the
nest they will attack it, or threaten an attack.
When examining their nests I have had humming-
birds dash into my face. The action is similar to
that of a stingless, solitary carpenter bee, common
in La Plata : a round burly insect with a shining
steel-blue body : when the tree or bush in which
this bee has its nest is approached by a man
it darts about in an eccentric manner, humming
loudly, and at intervals remains suspended motion-
less for ten or fifteen seconds at a height of
seven or eight yards above his head ; suddenly
it dashes quick as lightning into his face, inflicting
a sharp blow. The bee falls, as if stunned, a
space of a couple of feet, then rises again to repeat
the action.

There is certainly a wide difference between so
simple an instinctive action as this, which cannot
be regarded as intelligent or conscious, and the
actions of most birds in the presence of danger to
their eggs or young. In species that breed on the
ground in open situations the dangers to which bird
and nest are exposed are of different kinds, and,
leaving out the case of that anomalous creature,
man, we see that as a rule the bird's judgment is

44 BIRDS AND IMAN

not at fault. In one case it is necessary that he
should guard himself while trying to save his nest ;
in another case the danger is to the nest only, and
he then shows that he has no fear for liimself. The
most striking instance I have met with, bearing
on this last point, relates to the action of a spur-
winged lapwing observed on the Pampas. The bird's
loud excited cries attracted my attention ; a sheep
was lying down with its nose directly over the nest,
containing three eggs, and the plover was trying to
make it get up and go away. It was a hot day and
the sheep refused to stir ; possibly the fanning of
the bird's wings was grateful to her. After beating
the sheep's face for some time it began pecking
sharply at the nose ; then the sheep raised her head,
but soon grew tired of holding it up, and no sooner
was it lowered than the blows and peckings began
again. Again the head was raised, and lowered
again with the same result, and this continued for
about twelve or fourteen minutes, until the annoy-
ance became intolerable ; then the sheep raised
her head and refused to lower it any more, and in
that very uncomfortable position, with her nose high
in the air, she appeared determined to stay. In
vain the lapwing waited, and at last began to make
little jumps at the face. The nose was out of reach,

BIRDS AND MAN 45

but by and by, in one of its jumps, it caught the
sheep's ear in its beak and remained hanging with
di'ooping wings and danghng legs. The sheep shook
her head several times and at last shook the bird off ;
but no sooner was it down than it jumped up and
caught the ear again ; then at last the sheep, fairly
beaten, struggled up to her feet, throwing the bird
off, and lazily walked away, shaking her head
repeatedly.

How great the confidence of the plover must have
been to allow it to act in such a manner !

This perfect confidence which birds have in the
mammals they have been taught by experience and
tradition to regard as harmless must be familiar to
any one who has observed partridges associating
with rabbits. The manners of the rabbit, one would
imagine, must be exceedingly " upsetting " to birds
of so timorous a disposition. He has a way, after a
quiet interval, of leaping into activity with startling
suddenness, darting violently away as if scared out
of his senses ; but his eccentric movements do not
in the least alarm his feathered companions. One
evening early in the month of March I witnessed
an amusing scene near Ockley, in Surrey. I was
walking towards the village about half an hour after
sunset, when, hearing the loud call of a partridge,

46 BIRDS AND MAN

I turned my eyes in the direction of the sound and
saw five birds on a shght eminence nearly in the
centre of a small green field, surrounded by a low
thorn hedge. They had come to that spot to roost ;
the calling bird was standing erect, and for some
time he continued to call at intervals after the others
had settled down at a distance of one or t^", yards
apart. All at once, while I stood watching the birds
there was a rustling sound in the hedge, and out of
it burst two buck rabbits engaged in a frantic run-
ning fight. For some time they kept near the hedge,
but fighting rabbits seldom continue long on one
spot ; they are incessantly on the move, although
their movements are chiefly round and round now
one way — flight and pursuit — then, like lightning,
the foremost rabbit doubles back and there is a
collision, bitings, and rolling over and over together,
and in an instant they are up again, wide apart,
racing like mad. Gradually they went farther and
farther from the hedge ; and at length chance took
them to the very spot on which the partridges had
settled, and there for three or four minutes the duel
went on. But the birds refused to be turned out
of their quarters. The bird that had called still
remained standing, expectant, with raised head,
as if watching for the appearance of some loiterer,

BIRDS AND MAN 47

while the others all kept their places. Their quietude
in the midst of that whirlwind of battle was wonder-
ful to see. Their only movement was when one of
the birds was in a direct line with a flying rabbit,
when, if it stayed still, in another moment it would
be struck and perhaps killed by the shock ; then
it would leap a few inches aside and immediately
settle down again. In this way every one of the
birds had been forced to move several times before
the battle passed on towards the opposite side of
the field and left the covey in peace.

Social animals, Herbert Spencer truly says, " take
pleasure in the consciousness of one another's com-
pany ; " but he appears to limit the feeling to those
of the same herd, or flock, or species. Speaking of
the mental processes of the cow, he tells us just
how that large mammal is impressed by the sight of
birds that come near it and pass across its field of
vision ; they are regarded in a vague way as mere
shadows, or shadowy objects, flitting or blown about
hither and thither over the grass or through the air.
He didn't know a cow's mind. My conviction is
that all animals distinctly see in those of other species,
living, sentient, intelligent beings like themselves ;
and that, when birds and mammals meet together,
they take pleasure in the consciousness of one

48 BIRDS AND MAN

another's presence, in spite of the enormous differ-
ence in size, voice, habits, etc. I beheve that this
sympathy exists and is just as strong between a
cow and its small volatile companion, the wagtail,
as between a bird and mammal that more nearly
resemble each other in size ; for instance, the
partridge, or pheasant, and rabbit.

The only bird with us that appears to have some
such feeling of pleasure in the company of man is
the robin. It is not universal, not even very com-
mon, and Macgillivray, in speaking of the confidence
in men of that bird during severe weather, very truly
says, " In ordinary times he is not perfectly dis-
posed to trust in man." Any person can prove
this for himself by going into a garden or shrubbery
and approaching a robin. We see, too, that the bird
shows intense anxiety when its nest is approached
by a man ; this point, however, need not be made
much of, since all visitors, een its best friends, are
unwelcome to the breeding bird. Still, there is no
doubt that the robin is less distrustful of man than
other species, but not surely because this bird is
regarded by most persons with kindly feelings. The
curious point is that the young birds find something
in man to attract them. This is usually seen at the
end of summer, when the old birds have gone into

BIRDS AND MAN 49

hiding, and it is then surprising to find how many
of the young robins left in possession of the ground
appear to take pleasure in the company of human
beings. Often before a person has been many
minutes in a garden strolling about, he will discover
that the quiet little spotted bird is with him, hopping
and flying from twig to twig and occasionally alight-
ing on the ground, keeping company with him,
sometimes sitting quite still a yard from his hand.
The gardener is usually attended by a friendly robin,
and when he turns up the soil the bird will come
down close to his feet to pick up the small grubs and
worms. Is it not probable that the tameness of the
tame young robin so frequently met with is, like that
of the robin who keeps company with the gardener
or woodman, an acquired habit ; that the young
bird has made the discovery that when a person
is moving about among the plants, picking fruit
perhaps, lurking insects are disturbed at the roots
and small spiders and caterpillars shaken from the
leaves ? We are to the robin what the cow is to
the wagtail and the sheep to the starling — a food
finder.

Among the birds of the homestead the swallow
is another somewhat exceptional species in his way
of regarding man. He is too much a creature of

D

50 BIRDS AND ^lAN

the air to take any pleasure in the comany of heavy
animals, bound to earth ; the distance is too great
for sympathy to exist. When we consider h^w
closely he is bound and how much he is to us, it is hard
to believe that he is wholly unconscious of our
benefits, that when he returns in spring, overflowing
with gladness, to twitter his delightful airy music
round the house, he is not singing to us, glad to see
us again after a long absence, to be once more our
welcome guest as in past years. But so it is. When
there were no houses in the land he built his nest
in some rocky cavern, where a she- wolf had her lair,
and his life and music were just as joyous as they
are now, and the wolf suckling her cubs on the stony
floor beneath was nothing to him. But if by chance
she climbed a little way up or put her nose too near
his nest, his lively twittering quickly changed to
shrill cries of alarm and anger. And we are no more
than the vanished wolf to the swallow, and so long
as we refrain from peeping into his nest and hand-
ling his eggs or young, he does not know us, and is
hardly conscious of our existence. All the social
feelings and sympathy of the swallow are for
creatures as aerial and swift-winged as itself — its
playmates in the wide fields of air.

Swallows hawking after flies in a village street,

BIRDS AND MAN 51

where people are walking about, is a familiar sight,
Swifts are just as confident. A short time ago,
while standing in the churchyard at Farnham, in
Surrey, watching a bunch of ten or twelve swifts
racing through the air, I noticed that on each return
to the church they followed the same line, doubling
round the tower on the same side, then sweeping
down close to the surface, and mounting again.
Going to the spot I put myself directly in their way
— on their race-course as it were, at that point
where it touched the earth ; but they did not on
that account vary their route ; each time they
came back they streamed screaming past my head
so near as almost to brush my face with their wings.
But I was never more struck by the unconcern at
the presence of man shown by these birds — swallows,
martins, and swifts — as on one occasion at Frensham,
when the birds were very numerous. This was in
the month of May, about five weeks after I had
witnessed the fight between two rabbits, and the
wonderful composure exhibited by a covey of par-
tridges through it all. It was on a close hot morn-
ing, after a night of rain, when, walking down to
Frensham Great Pond, I saw the birds hawking
about near the water. The may-flies were just out,
and in some mysterious way the news had been

52 BIRDS AND MAN

swiftly carried all over the surrounding country.
So great was the number of birds that the entire
population of swallows, house- and sand-martins,
and swifts, must have been gathered at that spot
from the villages, farms, and sand-banks for several
miles around. At the side of the pond I was ap-
proaching there is a green strip about a hundred
and twenty or a hundred and thirty yards in length
and forty or fifty yards wide, and over this ground
from end to end the birds were smoothly and swiftly
gliding backwards and forwards. The whole place
seemed alive with them. Hurrying to the spot I
met with a little adventure which it may not be
inapt to relate. Walking on through some scattered
furze-bushes, gazing intently ahead at the swallows,
I almost knocked my foot against a hen pheasant
covering her young chicks on the bare ground beside
a dwarf bush. Catching sight of her just in time I
started back ; then, with my feet about a yard
from the bird, I stood and regarded her for some
time. Not the slightest movement did she make ;
she was like a bird carved out of some beautifully
variegated and highly-polished stone, but her bright
round eyes had a wonderfully alert and wild ex-
pression. With all her stillness the poor bird must
have been in an agony of terror and suspense, and I

BIRDS AND MAN 53

wondered how long she would endure the tension.
She stood it for about fifty seconds, then burst
screaming away with such violence that her seven
or eight chicks were flung in all directions to a dis-
tance of two or three feet like little balls of fluff ;
and going twenty yards away she dropped to the
ground and began beating her wings, calling loudly.

I then walked on, and in three or four minutes
was on the green ground in the thick of the swallows.
They were in hundreds, flying at various heights,
but mostly low, so that I looked down on them, and
they certainly formed a curious and beautiful spec-
tacle. So thick were they, and so straight and rapid
their flight, that they formed in appearance a current,
or rather many currents, flowing side by side in
opposite directions ; and when viewed with nearly
closed eyes the birds were like black lines on the
green surface. They were silent except for the
occasional weak note of the sand-martin ; and
through it all they were perfectly regardless of me,
whether I stood still or walked about among them ;
only when I happened to be directly in the way of
a bird coming towards me he would swerve aside
just far enough to avoid touching me.

In the evening of that very day the behaviour
of a number of gold- crests, disturbed at my presence,

54 BIRDS AND MAN

surprised and puzzled me not a little ; their action
had a peculiar interest just then, as the encounter
with the pheasant, and the sight of the multitude
of swallows and their indifference towards me were
still very fresh in memory. The incident has only
an indirect bearing on the subject discussed here,
but I think it is worth relating.

About two miles from Frensham ponds there
is a plantation of fir-trees with a good deal of gorse
growing scattered about among the trees ; in walk-
ing through this wood on previous occasions I had
noticed that gold-crests were abundant in it. Soon
after sunset on the evening in question I went through
this wood, and after going about eighty to a hundred
yards became conscious of a commotion of a novel
kind in the branches above my head — conscious too
that it had been going on for some time, and that
absorbed in thought I had not remarked it. A
considerable number of gold-crests were flitting
through the branches and passing from tree to tree,
keeping over and near me, all together uttering
their most vehement cries of alarm. I stopped and
listened to the little chorus of shrill squeaking
sounds, and watched the birds as well as I could in
the obscurity of the branches, flitting about in the
greatest agitation. It was perfectly clear that I

BIRDS AND MAN 55

was the cause of the excitement, as the birds in-
creased in number as long as I stood at that spot,
until there could not have been less than forty or
fifty, and when I again walked on they followed.
One expects to be mobbed and screamed at by gulls,
terns, lapwings, and some other species, when ap-
proaching their nesting-places, but a hostile demon-
stration of this kind from such minute creatures as
gold-crests, usually indifferent to man, struck me
as very unusual and somewhat ridiculous. What,
I asked myself, could be the reason of their sudden
alarm, when my previous visits to the wood had not
excited them in the least ? I could only suppose
that I had, without knowing it, brushed against a
nest, and the alarm note of the parent birds had ex-
cited the others and caused them to gather near me,
and that in the obscure light they had mistaken me
for some rapacious animal. The right explanation
(I think it the right one) was found by chance three
months later.

In August I was in Ireland, staying at a country
house among the Wicklow hills. There were several
swallows' nests in the stable, one or two so low that
they could be reached by the hand, and the birds
went in and out regardless of the presence of any
person. In a few days the young were out, sitting

56 BIRDS AND MAN

in rows on the roof of the house or on a low fence
near it, where their parents fed them for a short
time. After these young birds were able to take
care of themselves they still kept about the house,
and were joined by more swallows and martins from
the neighbourhood. One bright sunny morning,
when not fewer than two or three score of these
birds were flying about the house, gaily twittering,
I went into the garden to get some fruit. All at
once a swallow uttered his loud shrill alarm cry
overhead and at the same time darted down at me,
almost grazing my hat, then mounting up he con-
tinued making swoops, screaming all the time.
Immediately all the other swallows and martins
came to the spot, joining in the cry, and continued
flying about over my head, but not darting at me
Uke the first bird. For some moments I was very
much astonished at the attack ; then I looked
round for the cat — it must be the cat, I thought.
Tliis animal had a habit of hiding among the goose-
berry bushes, and, when I stooped to pick the fruit,
springing very suddenly upon my back. But pussy
was nowhere near, and as the swallow continued to
make dashes at me, I thought that there must be
something to alarm it on my head, and at once
pulled off my hat and began to examine it. In a

BIRDS AND MAN 57

moment the alarm cries ceased and the whole gather-
ing of swallows dispersed in all directions. There
was no doubt that my hat had caused the excite-
ment ; it was of tweed, of an obscure grey colour,
striped or barred with dark brown. Throwing it
down on the ground among the bushes it struck me
that its colour and markings were like those of a
grey striped cat. Any one seeing it lying there
would, at the first moment, have mistaken it for a
cat lying curled up asleep among the bushes. Then I
remembered that I had been wearing the same
delusive, dangerous-looking round tweed fishing-
hat on the occasion of being mobbed by the gold-
crests at Frensham. Of course the illusion could
only have been produced in a bird looking down
upon the top of the hat from above.

CHAPTER III

DAWS IN THE WEST COUNTRY

Daws are more abundant in the west and south-
west of England generally than in any other part of
the kingdom ; and they abound most in Somerset,
or so it has seemed to me. It is true that the largest
congregations of daws in the entire country are to
be seen at Savernake in Wiltshire, where the ancient
hollow beeches and oaks in the central parts of the
forest supply them with all the nesting holes they
require. There is no such wood of old decaying
trees in Somerset to attract them to one spot in such
numbers, but the country generally is singularly
favourable to them. It is mainly a pastoral country
with large areas of rich, low grass land, and ranges
of high hills, where there are many rocky precipices
such as the daw loves. For very good reasons he
prefers the inland to the sea-cliff as a breeding site.
It is, to begin with, in the midst of his feeding ground,
whereas the sea-wall is a boundary to a feeding
ground beyond which the bird cannot go. Better
still, the inland bird has an immense advantage over

58

DAWS IN THE WEST COUNTRY 59

the other in traveUing to and from his nest in bad
weather. When the wind blows strong from the
sea the seaside bird must perpetually fight against
it and win his home by sheer muscular exertion.
The other bird, able to go foraging to this side or
that, according to the way the wind blows, can
always have the wind as a help instead of a hindrance.

Somerset also possesses a long coast-line and some
miles of sea-cliffs, but the colonies of jack-daws
found here are small compared with those of the
Mendip range. The inland-cliff breeding daws that
inhabit the valley of the Somerset Axe alone prob-
ably greatly outnumber all the daws in Middlesex,
or Surrey, or Essex.

Finally, besides the cliffs and woods, there are
the old towns and villages — small towns and villages
with churches that are almost like cathedrals. No
county in England is richer in noble churches, and
no kind of building seems more attractive to the
" ecclesiastical daw " than the great Perpendicular
tower of the Glastonbury type, which is so common
here.

Of the old towns which the bird loves and inhabits
in numbers, Wells comes first. If Wells had no
birds it would still be a city one could not but delight
in. There are not more than half a dozen towns

60 BIRDS AND MAN

in all the country where (if I were compelled to live
in towns) life would not seem something of a burden ;
and of these, two are in Somerset — Bath and Wells.
Of the former something will be said further on :
Wells has the first place in my affections, and is the
one town in England the sight of which in April and
early May, from a neighbouring hill, has caused me
to sigh with pleasure. Its cathedral is assuredly
the loveliest work of man in this land, supremely
beautiful, even without the multitude of daws that
make it their house, and may be seen every day
in scores, looking like black doves perched on the
stony heads and hands and shoulders of that great
company of angels and saints, apostles, kings, queens,
and bishops, that decorate the wonderful west front.
For in this building — not viewed as in a photograph
or picture, nor through the eye of the mere architect
or archaeologist, who sees the gem but not the setting
— nature and man appear to have worked together
more harmoniously than in others.

But it is hard to imagine a birdless Wells. The
hills, beautiful with trees and grass and flowers,
come down to it ; cattle graze on their slopes ; the
peewit has its nest in their stony places, and the
kestrel with quick-beating wings hangs motionless
overhead. Nature is round it, breathing upon and

DAWS IN THE WEST COUNTRY 61

touching it caressingly on every side ; flowing
through it Hke the waters that gave it its name in
olden days, that still gush with noise and foam from
the everlasting rock, to send their crystal currents
along the streets. And with nature, in and around
the rustic village-like city, live the birds. The green
woodpecker laughs aloud from the group of old
cedars and pines, hard by the cathedral close — you
will not hear that woodland sound in any other city
in the kingdom ; and the rooks caw all day from
the rookery in the old elms that grow at the side of
the palace moat. But the cathedral daws, on
account of their numbers, are the most important
of the feathered inhabitants of Wells. These city
birds are familiarly called " Bishop's Jacks," to
distinguish them from the " Ebor Jacks," the daws
that in large numbers have their home and breeding-
place in the neighbouring cliffs, called the Ebor
Rocks.

The Ebor daws are but the first of a succession of
colonies extending along the side of the Cheddar
valley. A curious belief exists among the people
of Wells and the district, that the Ebor Jacks make
better pets than the Bishop's Jacks. If you want
a young bird you have to pay more for one from the
rocks than from the cathedral. I was assured that

62 BIRDS AND MAN

the cliff bird makes a livelier, more intelligent and
amusing pet than the other. A similar notion
exists, or existed, at Hastings, where there was a
saying among the fisher folks and other natives that
" a Grainger daa is worth a ha'penny more than
a castle daa." The Grainger rock, once a favourite
breeding-place of the daws at that point, has long
since fallen into the sea, and the saying has perhaps
died out.

At Wells most of the cathedral birds — a hundred
couples at least — breed in the cavities behind the
stone statues, standing, each in its niche, in rows,
tier above tier, on the west front. In April, when
the daws are busiest at their nest-building, I have
amused myself early every morning watching them
flying to the front in a constant procession, every
bird bringing his stick. This work is all done in the
early morning, and about half-past eight o'clock a
man comes with a barrow to gather up the fallen
sticks — there is always a big barrowful, heaped high,
of them ; and if not thus removed the accumulated
material would in a few days form a rampart or
zareba, which would prevent access to the cathedral
on that side.

It has often been observed that the daw, albeit
so clever a bird, shows a curious deficiency of judg-

DAWS IN THE WEST COUNTRY 63

ment when building, in his persistent efforts to carry
in sticks too big for the cavity. Here, for instance,
each morning in turning over the Htter of fallen
material I picked up sticks measuring from four or
five to seven feet in length. These very long sticks
were so slender and dry that the bird was able to
lift and to fly with them ; therefore, to his corvine
mind, they were suitable for his purpose. It comes
to this : the daw knows a stick when he sees one,
but the only way of testing its usefulness to him is
to pick it up in his beak, then to try to fly with it.
If the stick is six feet long and the cavity will only
admit one of not more than eighteen inches, he dis-
covers his mistake only on getting home. The
question arises : Does he continue all liis life long
repeating this egregious blunder ? One can hardly
believe that an old, experienced bird can go on from
day to day and year to year wasting his energies
in gathering and carrying building materials that
will have to be thrown away in the end — that he is,
in fact, mentally on a level with the great mass of
meaner beings who forget nothing and learn nothing.
It is not to be doubted that the daw was once a
builder in trees, like all his relations, with the ex-
ception of the cliff-breeding chough. He is even
capable of reverting to the original habit, as I know

64 BIRDS AND MAN

from an instance which has quite recently come to
my knowledge. In this case a small colony of daws
have been noticed for several years past breeding
in stick nests placed among the clustering foliage
of a group of Scotch firs. This colony may have
sprung from a bird hatched and reared in the nest
of a carrion crow or magpie. Still, the habit of
breeding in holes must be very ancient, and
considering that the jackdaw is one of the
most intelligent of our birds, one cannot but be
astonished at the rude, primitive, blundering way
in which the nest-building work is generally per-
formed. The most we can see by carefully watch-
ing a number of birds at work is that there appears
to be some difference with regard to intelligence
between bird and bird. Some individuals blunder
less than others ; it is possible that these have
learned something from experience ; but if that be
so, their better way is theirs only, and their young
will not inherit it.

One morning at Wells as I stood on the cathedral
green watching the birds at their work, I witnessed
a rare and curious scene — one amazing to an orni-
thologist. A bird dropped a stick — an incident
that occurred a dozen times or oftener any minute
at that busy time ; but in this instance the bird

DAWS IN THE \^^ST COUNTRY 65

had no sooner let the stick fall than he rushed down
after it to attempt its recovery, just as one may see
a sparrow drop a feather or straw, and then dart
down after it and often recover it before it touches
the ground. The heavy stick fell straight and fast
on to the pile of sticks already lying on the pavement,
and instantly the daw was down and had it in his
beak, and thereupon laboriously flew up to his
nesting-place, which was forty to fifty feet high.
At the moment that he rushed down after the falling
stick two other daws that happened to be standing
on ledges above dropped down after him, and copied
his action by each picking up a stick and flying with
it to their nests. Other daws followed suit, and in
a few minutes there was a stream of descending and
ascending daws at that spot, every ascending bird
with a stick in his beak. It was curious to see that
although sticks were lying in hundreds on the pave-
ment along the entire breadth of the west front, the
daws continued coming down only at that spot
where the first bird had picked up the stick he
had dropped. By and by, to my regret, the birds
suddenly took alarm at something and rose up, and
from that moment not one descended.

Presently the man came round with his rake and
broom and barrow to tidy up the place. Before

66 BIRDS AND MAN

beginning his work he solemnly made the following
remark : " Is it not curious, sir, considering the
distance the birds go to get their sticks, and the
work of carrying them, that they never, by any
chance, think to come down and pick up what they
have dropped ! " I replied that I had heard the same
thing said before, and that it was in all the books ;
and then I told him of the scene I had just witnessed.
He was very much surprised, and said that such a
thing had never been witnessed before at that place.
It had a disturbing effect on him, and he appeared
to me to resent this departure from their old ancient
conservative ways on the part of the cathedral
birds.

For many mornings after I continued to watch
the daws until the nest-building was finished, with-
out witnessing any fresh outbreak of intelligence
in the colony : they had once more shaken down
into the old inconvenient traditional groove, to the
manifest rehef of the man with the broom and
barrow.

Bath, like Wells, is a city that has a considerable
amount of nature in its composition, and is set down
in a country of hills, woods, rocks and streams,
and is therefore, like the other, a city loved by
daws and by many other wild birds. It is a town

DAWS IN THE WEST COUNTRY 67

built of white stone in the hollow of an oblong basin,
with the river Avon flowing through it ; and though
perhaps too large for perfect beauty, it is exceedingly
pleasant. Its " stone walls do not a prison make,"
since they do not shut you out from rural sights and
sounds : walking in almost any street, even in the
lowest part, in the busiest, noisiest centre of the
town, you have but to lift your eyes to see a green
hill not far away ; and viewed from the top of one
of these hills that encircle it, Bath, in certain favour-
able states of the atmosphere, wears a beautiful
look. One afternoon, a couple of miles out, I was
on the top of Barrow Hill in a sudden, violent storm
of rain and wind ; when the rain ceased, the sun
burst out behind me, and the town, rain- wet and sun-
flushed, shone white as a city built of whitest marble
against the green hills and black cloud on the farther
side. Then on the slaty blackness appeared a com-
plete and most brilliant rainbow, on one side stream-
ing athwart the green hill and resting on the centre
of the town, so that the high, old, richly-decorated
Abbey Church was seen through a band of green
and violet mist. That storm and that rainbow,
seen by chance, gave a peculiar grace and glory to
Bath, and the bright, unfading picture it left in
memory has perhaps become too much associated

68 BIRDS AND MAN

in my mind with the thought of Bath, and has given
me an exaggerated idea of its charm.

When staying in Bath in the winter of 1898-9 I
saw a good deal of bird Hfe even in the heart of the
town. At the back of the house I lodged in, in New
King Street, within four minutes' walk of the Pump
Room, there was a strip of ground called a garden,
but with no plants except a few dead stalks and
stumps and two small leafless trees. Clothes-lines
were hung there, and the ground was littered with
old bricks and rubbish, and at the far end of the strip
there was a fowl-house with fowls in it, a small shed,
and a wood-pile. Yet to this unpromising-looking
spot came a considerable variety of birds. Starlings,
sparrows, and chaffinches were the most numerous,
while the blackbird, thrush, robin, hedge-sparrow
and wren were each represented by a pair. The
wrens lived in the wood-pile, and were the only
members of the little feathered community that did
not join the others at table when crumbs and scraps
were thrown out.

It was surprising to find all or most of these birds
evidently wintering on that small plot of ground in the
middle of the town, solely for the sake of the warmth
and shelter it afforded them, and the chance crumbs
that came in their way. It is true that I fed them

DAWS IN THE WEST COUNTRY 69

regularly, but they were all there before I came.
Yet it was not an absolutely safe place for them,
being much infested by cats, especially by a big
black one who was always on the prowl, and who
had a peculiarly murderous gleam in his luminous
yellow, orbs when he crouched down to watch or
attempted to stalk them. One could not but
imagine that the very sight of such eyes in that
black, devilish face would have been enough to
freeze their blood with sudden terror, and make
them powerless to fly from him. But it was not
so : he could neither fascinate nor take them by
surprise. No sooner would he begin to practise
his wiles than all the population would be up in
arms — the loud, sharp summons of the blackbird
sounding first ; then the starlings would chatter
angrily, the thrush scream, the chaffinches begin
to fink-'piiik with all their might, and the others
would join in, even the small hideling wrens coming
out of their fortress of faggots to take part in the
demonstration. Then puss would give it up and
go away, or coil himself up and go to sleep on the
sloping roof of the tiny shed or in some other sheltered
spot ; peace and quiet would once more settle on
the Httle republic, and the birds would be content
to dwell with their enemy in theu' midst in full sight

70 BIRDS AND IVIAN

of them, so long as he slept or did not watch them
too narrowly.

Finding that blue tits were among the visitors
at the back, I hmig up some lumps of suet and a
cocoa-nut to the twigs of the bushes. The suet
was immediately attacked, but judging from the
suspicious way in which they regarded the round
brown object swinging in the wind, the Bath tits
had never before been treated to a cocoa-nut.
But though suspicious, it was plain that the singular
object greatly excited their curiosity. On the
second day they made the discovery that it was a
new and delightful dish invented for the benefit
of the blue tits, and from that time they were at it
at all hours, coming and going from morning till
night. There were six of them, and occasionally
they were all there at once, each one anxious to
secure a place, and never able when he got one to
keep it longer than three or four seconds at a time.
Looking upon them from an upper window, as they
perched against and flitted round and round the
suspended cocoa-nut, they looked like a gathering
of very large pale-blue flies flitting round and feeding
on medlar.

No doubt the sparrow is the most abundant
species in Bath — I have got into a habit of not

DAWS IN THE WEST COUNTRY 71

noticing that bird, and it is as if I did not see him ;
but after him the starHng is undoubtedly the most
numerous. He is, we know, increasing every-
where, but in no other town in England have I
found him in such numbers. He is seen in flocks
of a dozen to half a hundred, busily searching for
grubs on every lawn and green place in and round
the town, and if you go up to some elevated spot
so as to look down upon Bath, you will see flocks
of starlings arriving and departing at all points.
As you walk the streets their metallic clink-cUnk-
clinh sounds from all quarters — small noises which
to most men are lost among the louder noises of a
populous town. It is as if every house had a peal
of minute bells hidden beneath the tiles or slates
of the roof, or among the chimney-pots, that they
were constantly being rung, and that every bell
was cracked.

The ordinary or unobservant person sees and
hears far more of the jackdaw than of any other
bird in Bath. Daws are seen and heard all over
the town, but are most common about the Abbey,
where they soar and gambol and quarrel all day
long, and when they think that nobody is looking,
drop down to the streets to snatch up and carry
off any eatable-looking object that catches their eye.

72 BIRDS AND MAN

It was here at this central spot, while I stood one
day idly watching the bkds disporting themselves
about the Abbey and listened to their clamour, that
certain words of Ruskin came into my mind, and I
began to think of them not merely with admiration,
as when I first read them long ago, but critically.

Ruskin, one of our greatest prose writers, is
usually at his best in the transposition of pictures
into words, his descriptions of what he has seen,
in nature and art, being the most perfect examples
of " word painting " in the language. Here his
writing is that of one whose vision is not merely,
as in the majority of men, the most important and
intellectual of the senses, but so infinitely more
important than all the others, and developed and
trained to so extraordinary a degree, as to make
him appear like a person of a single sense. We
may say that this predominant sense has caused,
or fed upon, the decay of the others. This is to
me a defect in the author I most admire ; for
though he makes me see, and delight in seeing, that
which was previously hidden, and all things gain in
beauty and splendour, I j^et miss something from
the picture, just as I should miss light and colour
from a description of nature, however beautifully
written, by a man whose sense of sight was nothing

DAWS IN THE WEST COUNTRY 73

or next to nothing to him, but whose other senses
were all developed to the highest state of perfection.

No doubt Ruskin is, before everything, an artist :
in other words, he looks at nature and all visible
things with a purpose, which I am happily without :
and the reflex effect of his purpose is to make nature
to him what it can never appear to me — a painted
canvas. But this subject, which I have touched
on in a single sentence, demands a volume.

Ruskin wrote of the cathedral daws, " That drift
of eddying black points, now closing, now scatter-
ing, now settling suddenly into invisible places
among the bosses and flowers, the crowd of restless
birds that fill the whole square with that strange
clangour of theii's, so harsh and yet so soothing."
For it seemed to me that he had seen the birds but
had not properly heard them ; or else that to his
mind the sound they made was of such small con-
sequence in the effect of the whole scene — so in-
significant an element compared with the sight
of them — that it was really not worth attending
to and describing accurately.

Possibly, in this particular case, when in speak-
ing of the daws he finished his description by throw-
ing in a few words about their voices, he was thinking
less of the impression on his own mind, presumably

74 BIRDS AND MAN

always vague about natural sounds, than of what
the poet Cowper had said in the best passage in
his best work about " sounds harsh and inhar-
monious in themselves," which are yet able to
produce a soothing effect on us on account of the
peaceful scenes amid which they are heard.

Cowper's notion of the daw's voice, by the way,
was just as false as that expressed by Ruskin, as
we may find in his paraphrase of Vincent Bourne's
lines to that bird : —

There is a bird that by his coat,
And by the hoarseness of his note
Might be supposed a crow.

Now the daw is capable at times of emitting
both hoarse and harsh notes, and the same may
perhaps be said of a majority of birds ; but his
usual note — the cry or caw varied and inflected
a hundred ways, which we hear every day and all
day long where daws abound — is neither harsh
like the crow's, nor hoarse like the rook's. It is,
in fact, as unlike the harsh, grating caw of the
former species as the clarion call of the cock is
unlike the grunting of swine. It may not be de-
scribed as bell-like nor metallic, but it is loud and
clear, with an engaging wildness in it, and, like
metallic sounds, far-reaching ; and of so good

DAWS IN THE WEST COUNTRY 75

a quality that very little more would make it ring
musically.

Sometimes when I go into this ancient abbey
church, or into some cathedral, and seatmg myself,
and looking over a forest of bonnets, see a pale
young curate with a black moustache, arrayed in
white vestments, standing before the reading-desk,
and hear him gabbling some part of the Service
in a continuous buzz and rumble that roams like
a gigantic blue-bottle through the vast dim interior,
then I, not following him — for I do not know where
he is, and cannot find out however much I should
like to — am apt to remember the daws out of doors,
and to think that it would be well if that young
man would but climb up into the highest tower,
or on to the roof, and dwell there for the space of a
year listening to them ; and that he would fill his
mouth with polished pebbles, and medals, and coins
and seals and seal-rings, and small porcelain cats and
dogs, and little silver pigs, and other objects from
the chatelaines of his lady admirers, and strive to
imitate that clear, penetrating sound of the bird's voice,
until he had mastered the rare and beautiful arts of
voice production and distinct understandable speech.

To go back to Cowper — the poet who has been
much in men's thoughts of late, and who appears

76 BIRDS AND MAN

to us as perhaps the most modern-minded of those
who ceased to Hve a century ago. Undoubtedly
he was as bad a naturahst as any singer before or
after him, and as any true poet has a perfect right
to be. As bad, let us say, as Shakespeare and
Wordsworth and Tennyson. He does not, it is
true, confound the sparrow and hedge-sparrow
like Wordsworth, nor confound the white owl with
the brown owl like Tennyson, nor puzzle the ornith-
ologist with a " sea-blue bird of March." But we
must not forget that he addressed some verses to
a nightingale heard on New Year's Day. It is clear
that he did not know the crows well, for in a letter
of May 10, 1780, to his friend Newton, he writes :
" A crow, rook, or raven, has built a nest in one
of the young elm-trees, at the side of Mrs Aspray's
orchard." But when he wrote those words —

Sounds iiiliarmouious in themselves, and harsh,
Yet heard in scenes where peace for ever reigns.
And only there, please highly for their sake —

words which I have suggested misled Ruskin, and
have certainly misled others — he, Cowper, knew
better. His real feeling, and better and wiser
thought, is expressed in one of his incomparable
letters (Hayley, vol. ii. p. 230) —

" My green-house is never so pleasant as when

DAWS IN THE WEST COUNTRY 77

we are just on the point of surrendering it ... I
sit with all the windows and the door wide open,
and am regaled with the scent of every flower in
a garden as full of flowers as I have known how
to make it. We keep no bees, but if I lived in a
hive I could hardly have more of their music. All
the bees in the neighbourhood resort to a bed of
mignonette opposite to the window, and pay me
for the honey they get out of it by a hum, which,
though rather monotonous, is as agreeable to my
ears as the whistling of my linnets. All the sounds
that nature utters are delightful, at least in this
country. I should not perhaps find the roaring
of lions in Africa, or of bears in Russia, very pleas-
ing ; but I know no beast in England whose voice
I do not account as musical, save and except always
the braying of an ass. The notes of all our birds
and fowls please me, without one exception. I
should not indeed think of keeping a goose in a
cage that I might hang him up in the parlour for
the sake of his melody, but a goose upon a common,
or in a farmyard, is no bad performer ; and as to
insects, if the black beetle, and beetles indeed of
all hues, will keep out of my way, I have no objec-
tion to any of the rest ; on the contrary, in what-
ever key they sing, from the gnat's fine treble to

78 BIRDS AND ]MAN

the bass of the bumble-bee, I admire all. Seriously,
however, it strikes me as a very observable instance
of providential kindness to men, that such an exact
accord has been contrived between his ear and the
sounds with which, at least in a rural situation,
it is almost every moment visited."

A\lio has not felt the truth of this saying, that
all natural sounds heard in their proper surround-
ings are pleasing ; that even those which we call
harsh do not distress, jarring or grating on our
nerves, like artificial noises ! The braying of the
donkey was to Co^^"per the one exception in animal
life ; but he never heard it in its proper conditions.
I have often listened to it, and have been deeply
impressed, in a wild, silent country, in a place
where herds of semi-wild asses roamed over the
plains ; and the sound at a distance had a wild
expression that accorded with the scene, and owing
to its much greater power effected the mind
more than the trumpeting of wild swans, and shrill
neighing of wild horses, and other far-reaching
cries of wild animals.

About the sounds emitted by geese in a state
of nature, and the effect produced on the mind,
I shall have something to say in a chapter on that
bird.

CHAPTER IV

EARLY SPRING IN SAVERNAKE FOREST

When the spring-feeling is in the blood, infecting
us with vague longings for we know not what ;
when we are restless and seem to be waiting for
some obstruction to be removed — blown away by
winds, or washed away by rains — some change
that will open the way to liberty and happiness,
— the feeling not unfrequently takes a more or
less definite form : we want to go away somewhere,
to be at a distance from our fellow-beings, and
nearer, if not to the sun, at all events to wild nature.
At such times I think of all the places where I
should like to be, and one is Savernake ; and
thither in two following seasons I have gone to
ramble day after day, forgetting the world and
myself in its endless woods.

It is not that spring is early there ; on the con-
trary, it is actually later by many days than in the
surrounding country. It is flowerless at a time
when, outside the forest, on southern banks and
by the hedge-side, in coppices and all sheltered

79

80 BIRDS AND MAN

spots, the firstlings of the year are seen — purple
and white and yellow. The woods, which are
composed almost entirely of beech and oak, are
leafless. The aspect on a dull cold day is some-
what cheerless. On the other hand, there is that
largeness and wildness which accord with the spring
mood ; and there are signs of the coming change
even in the greyest weather. Standing in some
wide green drive or other open space, you see all
about you acres on acres, miles on miles, of majestic
beeches, and their upper branches and network of
terminal twigs, that look at a distance like heavy
banked-up clouds, are dusky red and purple with
the renewed life that is surging in them. There
are jubilant cries of wild creatures that have felt
the seasonal change far more keenly than we are
able to feel it. Above everything, we find here
that sohtariness and absence of human interest
now so rare in England. For albeit social creatures
in the main, we are yet all of us at times hermits
in heart, if not exactly wild men of the woods ;
and that solitude which we create by shutting
ourselves from the world in a room or a house, is
but a poor substitute — nay, a sham : it is to im-
mure ourselves in a cage, a prison, which hardly
serves to keep out the all-pervading atmosphere

EARLY SPRING IN SAVERNAKE FOREST 81

of miserable conventions, and cannot refresh and
invigorate us. There are seasons and moods when
even the New Forest does not seem sufficiently
remote from life : in its most secluded places one
is always liable to encounter a human being, an
old resident, going about in the exercise of his
commoner's rights ; or else his ponies or cows or
swine. These last, if they be not of some improved
breed, may have a novel or quaint aspect, as of
wild creatures, but the appearance is deceptive ;
as you pass they lift their long snouts from grubb-
ing among the dead leaves to salute you with
a too familiar grunt — an assurance that William
Rufus is dead, and all is well ; that they are do-
mestic, and will spend their last days in a stye,
and end their life respectably at the hands of the
butcher.

At Savernake there is nothing so humanised as
the pig, even of the old type ; you may roam for
long hours and see no man and no domestic animal.
You have heard that this domain is the property
of some person, but it seems like a fiction. The
forest is nature's and yours. There you are at
liberty to ramble all day unchallenged by any one ;
to walk, and run to warm yourself ; to disturb a
herd of red deer, or of fallow deer, wliich are more

82 BIRDS AND MAN

numerous ; to watch them standing still to gaze
back at you, then all with one impulse move rapidly
away, showing their painted tails, keeping a kind
of discipline, row behind row, moving over the
turf with that airy tripping or mincing gait that
strikes you as quaint and somewhat bird-like.
Or you may coil yourself up, adder-like, beside
a thick hawthorn bush, or at the roots of a giant
oak or beech, and enjoy the vernal warmth, while
outside of your shelter the wind blows bleak and
loud.

To lie or sit thus for an hour at a time listening
to the wind is an experience worth going far to
seek. It is very restorative. That is a mysterious
voice which the forest has : it speaks to us, and
somehow the life it expresses seems nearer, more
intimate, than that of the sea. Doubtless because
we are ourselves terrestrial and woodland in our
origin ; also because the sound is infinitely more
varied as well as more human in character. There
are sighings and moanings, and wails and shrieks,
and wind-blown murmurings, like the distant con-
fused talking of a vast multitude. A high wind
in an extensive wood always produces this effect
of numbers. The sea-like sounds and rhythmic
volleyings, when the gale is at its loudest, die away,

EARLY SPRING IN SAVERNAKE FOREST 83

and in the succeeding lull there are only low, mys-
terious agitated whisperings ; but they are multi-
tudinous ; the suggestion is ever of a vast concourse
— crowds and congregations, tumultuous or orderly,
but all swayed by one absorbing impulse, solemn
or passionate. But not always moved simul-
taneously. Through the near whisperings a deeper,
louder sound comes from a distance. It rumbles
like thunder, falling and rising as it rolls on-
wards ; it is antiphonal, but changes as it travels
nearer. Then there is no longer demand and re-
sponse ; the smitten trees are all bent one way,
and their innumerable voices are as one voice,
expressing we know not what, but always some-
thing not wholly strange to us — lament, entreaty,
denunciation.

Listening, thinking of nothing, simply living in
the sound of the wind, that strange feeling which
is unrelated to anything that concerns us, of the
life and intelligence inherent in nature, grows upon
the mind. I have sometimes thought that never
does the world seem more alive and watchful of
us than on a still, moonlight night in a solitary
wood, when the dusky green foliage is silvered by
the beams, and all visible objects and the white
lights and black shadows in the intervening spaces

84 BIRDS AND MAN

seem instinct with spirit. But it is not so. If
the conditions be favourable, if we go to our soH-
tude as the crystal-gazer to his crystal, with a
mind prepared, this faculty is capable of awaking
and taking complete possession of us by day as
well as by night.

As the trees are mostly beeches — miles upon
miles of great trees, many of them hoUow-trunked
from age and decay — the fallen leaves are an im-
portant element in the forest scenery. They lie
half a yard to a yard deep in all the deep hollows
and dells and old water-worn channels, and where
the ground is sheltered they cover acres of ground
— millions and myriads of dead, fallen beech leaves.
These, too, always seem to be alive. It is a leaf
that refuses to die wholly. When separated from
the tree it has, if not immortality, at all events a
second, longer life. Oak and ash and chestnut
leaves fade from month to month and blacken,
and finally rot and mingle with the earth, while
the beech leaf keeps its sharp clean edges unbroken,
its hard texture and fiery colour, its buoyancy
and rustling incisive sound. Swept by the autumn
winds into sheltered hollows and beaten down by
rains, the leaves lie mingled in one dead, sodden
mass for days and weeks at a time, and appear

EARLY SPRING IN SAVERNAKE FOREST 85

ready to mix with the soil ; but frost and sun suck
up the moisture and the dead come to life again.
They glow like fire, and tremble at every breath.
It was strange and beautiful to see them lying all
around me, glowing copper and red and gold when
the sun was strong on them, not dead, but sleeping
like a bright-coloured serpent in the genial warmth ;
to see, when the wind found them, how they
trembled, and moved as if awakening ; and as
the breath increased rose up in twos and threes
and half-dozens here and there, chasing one an-
other a little way, hissing and rustling ; then all
at once, struck by a violent gust, they would be
up in thousands, eddying round and round in a
dance, and, whirling aloft, scatter and float among
the lofty branches to which they were once attached.
On a calm day, when there was no motion in
the sunlit yellow leaves below and the reddish-
purple cloud of twigs above, the sounds of bird-
life were the chief attraction of the forest. Of
these the cooing of the wood-pigeon gave me the
most pleasure. Here some reader may remark
that this pigeon's song is a more agreeable sound
than its plain cooing note. This, indeed, is per-
haps thought little of. In most biographies of the
bird it is not even mentioned that he possesses

86 BIRDS AND MAN

such a note. Nevertheless I prefer it to the song.
The song itself — the set melody composed of half
a dozen inflected notes, repeated three or four
times with little or no variation — is occasionally
heard in the late winter and early spring, but at
this time of the year it is often too husky or croaky
to be agreeable. The songster has not yet thrown
off his seasonal cold ; the sound might sometimes
proceed from a crow suffering from a catarrh. It
improves as the season advances. The song is
sometimes spelt in books :

Coo-coo-roo, cou-coo-roo.

A lady friend assures me the right words of this

song are :

Take tivo cows, David.

She cannot, if she tries, make the bird say any-
thing different, for these are the words she was
taught to hear in the song, as a child, in Leicester-
shhe. Of course they are uttered with a great
deal of emotion in the tone, David being tearfully,
almost sobbingly, begged and implored to take
two cows ; the emphasis is very strong on the two
^it is apparently a matter of the utmost conse-
quence that David should not take one, nor three,
nor any other number of cows, but just two.

EARLY SPRING IN SAVERNAKE FOREST 87

In East Anglia I have been informed that what
the bird really and truly says is —

My toe bleeds, Betty.

Many as are the species capable of articulate
speech, as we may see by referring to any orni-
thological work, there is no bird in our woods whose
notes more readily lend themselves to this childish
fancy than the wood-pigeon, on account of the depth
and singularly human quality of its voice. The song
is a passionate complaint. One can fancy the human-
Hke feathered creature in her green bower, plead-
ing, upbraiding, lamenting; and, listening, we will
find it easy enough to put it all into plain language ;

0 swear not you love me, for you cannot be true,

0 perjured wood-pigeon ! Go from me — woo

Some other ! Heart-broken I rue

That softness, ah me ! when you cooed your false coo.

Soar to your new love — the creature in blue !

Who, who would have thought it of you !

And perhaps you consider her beau —

Oo — tiful ! 0 you are too too cru —

Bid them come shoo — oot me, do, do !

Would I had given my heart to a hoo —

Oo-ting wood-owl, cuckoo, woodcock, hoopoo !

One morning, at a village in Berkshire, I was
walking along the road, about twenty-five yards
from a cottage, when I heard, as I imagined, the
familiar song of the wood-pigeon ; but it sounded

88 BIRDS AND INIAN

too close, for the nearest trees were fifty yards
distant. Glancing up at the open window of an
upper room in the cottage, I made the discovery
that my supposed pigeon was a four-year-old child
who had recently been chastised by his mother
and sent upstairs to do penance. There he sat
by the open window, his face in his hands, crying,
not as if his heart would break, but seeming to
take a mournful pleasure in the rhytlunical sound
of his own sobs and moans ; they had settled into
a rising and falling boo-hoo, with regularly recur-
ring long and short notes, agreeable to the ear,
and very creditable to the little crier's musical
capacity. The incident shows how much the
pigeon's plaint resembles some human sounds.

The plain cooing note is so common in this order
of birds that it may be regarded as the original
and universal pigeon language, out of which the
set songs have been developed, with, in most in-
stances, but little change in the quality of the
sound. In the multitude of species there are
voices clear, resonant, thick, or husky, or guttural,
hollow or booming, grating and grunting ; but,
however much they vary, you can generally detect
the pigeon or family soimd, which is more or less
human-like. In some species the set song has

EARLY SPRING IN SAVERNAKE FOREST 89

almost superseded the plain single note, which
has diminished to a mere mm-mur ; in others, on
the contrary, there is no song at all, imless the
single unvarying coo can be called a song. In most
species in the typical genus Columba the plain coo
is quite distinct from the set song, but has at the
same time developed into, a kind of second song,
the note being pleasantly modulated and repeated
many times. We find this in the rock- dove : the
curious guttural sounds composing its set song,
which accompnay the love antics of the male, are
not musical, while the clear inflected cooing note
is agreeable to most ears. It is a pleasing morning
sound of the dove-cote ; but the note, to be properly
appreciated, must be heard in some dimly lighted
ocean-cavern in which the bird breeds in its wild state.
The long-drawn, oft-repeated musical coo mingles
with and is heard above the murmuring and lapping
of the water beneath ; the hollow chamber retains
and prolongs the sound, and makes it more sonorous,
and at the same time gives it something of mystery.
Of all the cooing notes of the different species
I am acquainted with, that of the stock-dove, a
pigeon with no set song, is undoubtedly the most
attractive : next in order is that of the wood-
pigeon on account of its depth and human-like

90 BIRDS AND MAN

character. And it is far from monotonous. In
this wood in March I have often kept near a pigeon
for half an hour at a time hearing it uttering its
cooing note, repeated half a dozen or more times,
at intervals of three or four minutes ; and again
and again the note has changed in length and
power and modulation. In the profound stillness,
on a windless day, of the vast beechen woods, these
sonorous notes had a singularly beautiful effect.

After spending a short time in the forest, one
might easily get the idea that it is a sanctuary for
all the persecuted creatures of the crow family.
It is not quite that ; the ravens have been de-
stroyed here as in most places ; but the other birds
of that tribe are so numerous that even the most
bloodthirsty keeper might be appalled at the task
of destroying them. The clearance would doubt-
less have been effected if this noble forest had
passed, as so nearly happened, out of the hands
of the family that have so long possessed it : that
calamity was happily averted. Not only are the
rooks there in legions, having their rookeries in
the park, but, throughout the forest, daws, carrion
crows, jays, and magpies are abundant. The jack-
daws outnumber all the other species (rooks in-
cluded) put together ; they literally swarm, and

EARLY SPRING IN SAVERNAKE FOREST 91

their ringing, yelping cries may be heard at all
hours of the day in any part of the forest. In
March, when they are nesting, their numbers are
concentrated in those parts of the wood where
the trees, beech and oak, are very old and have
hollow trunks. In some places you will find many
acres of wood where every tree is hollow and appar-
ently inhabited. Yet there are doubtless some
hollow trees into which the daw is not permitted
to intrude. The wood-owl is common here, and
is presumably well able to hold his castle against
all aggressors. If one could but climb into the airy
tower, and, sitting invisible, watch the siege and
defence and the many strange incidents of the war
between these feathered foes ! The daw, bold
yet cautious, venturing a little way into the dim
interior, with shrill threats of ejectment, ruffling
his grey pate and peeping down with his small,
malicious, serpent-like grey eyes ; the owl puffing
out his tiger- coloured plumage, and lifting to the
light his pale, shield-like face and luminous eyes,
— would indeed be a rare spectacle ; and then,
what hissings, snappings, and beak-clatterings, and
shrill, cat-like, and yelping cries ! But, although
these singular contests go on so near us, a few
yards above the surface, Savernake might be in the

92 BIRDS AND MAN

misty mid-region of Weir, or on the slopes of Mount
Yanik, for all the chance we have of witnessing them.
An experience I had one day when I was new
to the forest and used occasionally to lose myself,
gave me some idea of the numbers of jackdaws
breeding in Savernake. During my walk I came
to a spot where all round me and as far as could
be seen the trees were in an advanced state of
decay : not only were they hollow and rotten
within, but the immense horizontal branches and
portions of the trunks were covered with a thick
crop of fern, which, mixed with dead grass and
moss, gave the dying giants of the forest a strange,
ragged and desolate appearance. Many a time look-
ing at one of these trees I have been reminded
of Holman Hunt's forlorn Scapegoat. Here the
daws had their most populous settlement. As I
advanced, the dead twigs and leaves crackling
beneath my feet, they rose up everywhere, singly
and in twos and threes and half-dozens, darting
hurriedly away and disappearing among the trees
before me. The alarm-note they emit at such
times is like their usual yelping call subdued to a
short, querulous chirp ; and this note now sounded
before me and on either hand, at a distance of about
one hundred yards, uttered continually by so many

EARLY SPRING IN SAVERNAKE FOREST 93

birds that their voices mingled into a curious sharp
murmur. Tired of walking, I sat down on a root
in the shelter of a large oak, and remained there
perfectly motionless for about an hour. But the
birds never lost their suspicion ; all the time the
distant subdued tempest of sharp notes went on,
occasionally dying down until it nearly ceased,
then suddenly rising and spreading again until
I was ringed round with the sound. At length
the loud, sharp invitation or order to fly was given
and taken up by many birds ; then, through the
opening among the trees before me, I saw them
rise in a dense flock and circle about at a distance :
other flocks rose on the right and left hands and
joined the first ; and finally the whole mass come
slowly overhead as if to explore ; but when the
foremost birds were directly over me the flock
divided into two columns, which deployed to the right
and left, and at a distance poured again into the trees.
There could not have been fewer than two thousand
birds in the flock that came over me, and they were
probably all building in that part of the forest.

The daw, whether tame or distrustful of man,
is always interesting. Here I was even more in-
terested in the jays, and it was indeed chiefly for
the pleasure of seeing them, when they are best

94 BIRDS AND MAN

to look at, that I visited this forest. I had also
formed the idea that there was no place in England
where the jay could be seen to better advantage,
as they are, or until recently were, exceedingly
abundant at Savernake, and were not in constant
fear of the keeper and his everlasting gun. Here one
could witness their early spring assemblies, when the
jay, beautiful at all times, is seen at his very best.

It is necessary to say here that this habit of the
jay does not appear to be too well known to our
ornithologists. When I stated in a small work
on British Birds a few years ago that jays had the
custom of congregating in spring, a distinguished
naturalist, who reviewed the book in one of the
papers, rebuked me for so absurd a statement, and
informed me that the jay is a solitary bird except
at the end of summer and in the early autumn,
when they are sometimes seen in famihes. If I
had not made it a rule never to reply to a critic,
I could have informed this one that I knew exactly
where his knowledge of the habits of the jay was
derived — that it dated back to a book published
ninety-nine years ago. It was a very good book,
and all it contains, some errors included, have been
incorporated in most of the important ornitho-
logical works which have appeared during the

EARLY SPRING IN SAVERNAKE FOREST 95

nineteenth century. But though my critic thus
" wrote it all by rote," according to the books,
" he did not write it right." The ancient error has
not, however, been repeated by all writers on the
subject. Seebohm, in his History of British Birds,
wrote : " Sometimes, especially in Spring, fortune may
favour you, and you will see a regular gathering of
these noisy birds. . . . Ij: is only at this time that the
jay displays a social disposition ; and the birds may
often be heard to utter a great variety of notes, some
of the modulations approaching almost to a song."

The truth of the statement I have made that
most of our writers on birds have strictly followed
Montague in his account of the jay's habits, un-
mistakably shows itself in all they say about the
bird's language. Montagu wrote in his famous
Dictionary of Birds (1802) : —

" Its common notes are various, but harsh ;
will sometimes in spring utter a sort of song in a
soft and pleasing manner, but so low as not to be
heard at any distance ; and at intervals introduce
the bleatings of a Lamb, mewing of a Cat, the note
of a Kite or Buzzard, hooting of an Owl, and even
the neighing of a Horse.

" These imitations are so exact, even in a natural
wild state, that we have frequently been deceived."

96 BIRDS AND MAN

This description somewhat amphfied, and the
wording varied to suit the writer's style, has been
copied into most books on British birds — the lamb
and the cat, and the kite and the horse, faithfully
appearing in most cases. Yet it is certain that if
aU the writers had listened to the jay's vocal per-
formances for themselves, they would have given a
different account. It is not that Montagu was wrong :
he went to nature for his facts and put down what
he heard, or thought he heard, but the particular
sounds which he describes they would not have heard.

My experience is, that the same notes and phrases
are not ordinarily heard in any two localities ;
that the bird is able to emit a great variety of
soimds — some highly musical ; that he is also a
great mimic in a wild irregular way, mixing borrowed
notes with his own, and flinging them out anyhow,
so that there is no order nor harmony, and they
do not form a song.

But he also has a real song, which may be heard
in any assembly of jays and from some male birds
after the congregating season is over and breeding
is in progress. This singing of the jay is some-
what of a puzzle, as it is not the same song in any
two places, and gives one the idea that there is
no inherited and no traditional song in this species,

EARLY SPRING IN SAVERNAKE FOREST 97

but that each bird that has a song has invented it
for himself. It varies from " a sort of low song,"
as Montagu said, — a soft chatter and warble which
one can just hear at a distance of thirty or forty
yards, — to a song composed of several musical
notes harmoniously arranged, which may be heard
distinctly a quarter of a mile away. This set and
far-reaching song is rare, but some birds have a
single very powerful and musical note, or short
phrase, which they repeat at regular intervals by
way of song. If by following up the sound one
can get near enough to the tree where the meet-
ing is being held to see what is going on, it is most
interesting to watch the vocalist, who is like a
leader, and who, perched quietly, continues to
repeat that one powerful, unchanging, measured
sound in the midst of a continuous concert of more
or less musical sounds from the other birds.

What I should very much like to know is, whether
these powerful and peculiar notes, phrases, and
songs of the jay, which are clearly not imitations
of other species, are repeated year after year by
the buds in the same localities, or are dropped for
ever or forgotten at the end of each season. It
is hard for me to find this out, because I do not
as a rule revisit the same places in spring, and on

G

98 BIRDS AND MAN

going to a new or a different spot I find that the
birds utter different sounds. Again, the places
where jays assemble in numbers are very few and
far between. It is true, as an observant game-
keeper once said to me, that if there are as many
as half a dozen to a dozen jays in any wood they
will contrive to hold a meeting ; but when the
birds are few and much persecuted, it is difficult to
see and hear them at such times, and when seen and
heard, no adequate idea is formed of the beauty
of their displays, and the power and variety of
their language, as witnessed in localities where
they are numerous, and fear of the keeper's gun
has not damped their mad, jubilant spirits.

In genial weather the jays' assembly may be
held at any hour, but is most frequently seen dur-
ing the early part of the day : on a fine warm
morning in March and April one can always count
on witnessing an assembly, or at all events of hear-
ing the birds, in any wood where they are fairly
common and not very shy. They are so voci-
ferous and so conspicuous to the eye during these
social intervals, and at the same time so carried
away by excitement, that it is not only easy to
find and see them, but possible at times to observe
them very closely.

EARLY SPRING IN SAVERNAKE FOREST 99

The loud rasping alarm- and angry- cry of the
jay is a sound familiar to every one ; the cry used
by the bird to call his fellows together is some-
what different. It resembles the cry or call of
the carrion crow, in localities where that bird is
not persecuted, when, in the love season, he takes
his stand on the top of the nesting-tree and calls
with a prolonged, harsh, grating, and exceedingly
powerful note, many times repeated. The jay's
call has the same grating or grinding character,
but is louder, sharper, more prolonged, and in a
quiet atmosphere may be heard distinctly a mile
away. The wood is in an uproar when the birds
assemble and scream in concert while madly pur-
suing one another over the tall trees.

At such times the peculiar flight of the jay is
best seen and is very beautiful. In almost all
birds that have short, round wings, as we may
see in our little wren, and in game birds, and the
sparrow-hawk, and several others, the wing-beats
are exceedingly rapid. This is the case with the
magpie ; the quickness of the wing-beats causes
the black and white on the quills to mingle and
appear a misty grey ; but at short intervals the
bird glides and the wings appear black and white
again. The jay, although his wings are so short

100 BIRDS AND MAN

and round, when not in a hurry progresses by
means of comparatively slow, measured wing-beats,
and looks as if swimming rather than flying.

It is when the gathered birds all finally settle on
a tree that they are most to be admired. They
will sometimes remain on the spot for half an hour
or longer, displaying their graces and emitting
the extraordinary medley of noises mixed with
musical sounds. But they do not often sit still
at such times ; if there are many birds, and the
excitement is great, some of them are perpetually
moving, jumping and flitting from branch to branch,
and springing into the air to wheel round or pass
over the tree, all apparently intent on showing
off their various colours — vinaceous brown, sky
blue, velvet black, and gHstening white — to the
best advantage.

Again and again, when watching these gather-
ings at Savernake and at other places where jays
abound, I have been reminded of the description
given by Alfred Russel Wallace of the bird of
paradise assemblies in the Malayan region. Our
jay in some ways resembles his glorious Eastern
relation ; and although his lustre is so much less,
he is at his very best not altogether unworthy of
being called the British Bird of Paradise.

CHAPTER V

A WOOD WREN AT WELLS

East of Wells Cathedral, close to the moat sur-
rounding the bishop's palace, there is a beautifully
wooded spot, a steep slope, where the birds had
their headquarters. There was much to attract
them there : sheltered by the hill behind, it was
a warm corner, a wooded angle, protected by high
old stone walls, dear to the redstart, masses of
ivy, and thickets of evergreens ; while outside
the walls were green meadows and running water.
When going out for a walk I always passed through
this wood, lingering a little in it ; and when I
wanted to smoke a pipe, or have a lazy hour to
myself among the trees, or sitting in the sun, I
almost invariably made for this favourite spot.
At different hours of the day I was a visitor, and
there I heard the first spring migrants on their
arrival — chiff-chaff, willow wren, cuckoo, redstart,
blackcap, white-throat. Then, when April was
drawing to an end, I said. There are no more to
come. For the wryneck, lesser white-throat, and

101

102 BIRDS AND MAN

garden warbler had failed to appear, and the few
nightingales that visit the neighbourhood had
settled down in a more secluded spot a couple of
miles away, where the million leaves in coppice
and brake were not set a-tremble by the melodious
thunder of the cathedral chimes.

Nevertheless, there was another still to come,
the one I perhaps love best of all. On the last
day of April I heard the song of the wood wren,
and at once all the other notes ceased for a while
to interest me. Even the last comer, the mellow
blackcap, might have been singing at that spot
since February, like the wren and hedge-sparrow,
so familiar and workaday a strain did it seem to
have compared with this late warbler. I was
more than glad to welcome him to that particular
spot, where if he chose to stay I should have him
so near me.

It is well known that the wood wren can only be
properly seen immediately after his arrival in this
country, at the end of April or early in May, when
the young foliage does not so completely hide his
slight unresting form, as is the case afterwards.
For he, too, is green in colour ; like Wordsworth's
green linnet,

A brother of the leaves he seems.

A WOOD WREN AT WELLS 103

There is another reason why he can be seen so
much better during the first days of his sojourn
with us : he does not then keep to the higher parts
of the tall trees he frequents, as his habit is later,
when the air is warm and the minute winged insects
on which he feeds are abundant on the upper sun-
touched foliage of the high oaks and beeches. On
account of that ambitious habit of the wood wren
there is no bird with us so difficult to observe ;
you may spend hours at a spot, where his voice
sounds from the trees at intervals of half a minute
to a minute, without once getting a glimpse of his
form. At the end of April the trees are still very
thinly clad ; the upper foliage is but an airy gar-
ment, a slight golden-green mist, through which
the sun shines, lighting up the dim interior, and
making the bed of old fallen beech-leaves look
like a floor of red gold. The small- winged insects,
sun-loving and sensitive to cold, then hold their
revels near the surface ; and the bii'd, too, prefers
the neighbourhood of the earth. It was so in the
case of the wood wren I observed at Wells, watch-
ing him on several consecutive days, sometimes
for an hour or two at a stretch, and generally more
than once a day. The spot where he was always
to be found was quite free from underwood, and

104 BIRDS AND MAN

the trees were straight and tall, most of them with
slender, smooth boles. Standing there, my figure
must have looked very conspicuous to all the small
birds in the place ; but for a time it seemed to me
that the wood wren paid not the slightest atten-
tion to my presence ; that as he wandered hither
and thither in sunlight and shade at his own sweet
will, my motionless form was no more to him than
a moss-grown stump or grey upright stone. By
and by it became apparent that the bird knew me
to be no stump or stone, but a strange living crea-
ture whose appearance greatly interested him ;
for invariably, soon after I had taken up my position,
his careless little flights from twig to twig and
from tree to tree brought him nearer, and then
nearer, and finally near me he would remain for
most of the time. Sometimes he would wander
for a distance of forty or fifty yards away, but
before long he would wander back and be with
me once more, often perching so near that the
most delicate shadings of his plumage were as
distinctly seen as if I had had him perched on my
hand.

The human form seen in an unaccustomed place
always excites a good deal of attention among the
birds ; it awakes their curiosity, suspicion, and

A WOOD WREN AT WELLS 105

alarm. The wood wren was probably curious
and nothing more ; his keeping near me looked
strange only because he at the same time appeared
so wholly absorbed in his own music. Two or
three times I tried the experiment of walking to
a distance of fifty or sixty yards and taking up a
new position ; but always after a while he would
drift tliither, and I would have him near me, singing
and moving, as before.

I was glad of this inquisitiveness, if that was
the bird's motive (that I had unconsciously fas-
cinated him I could not believe) ; for of all the
wood wrens I have seen this seemed the most
beautiful, most graceful in his motions, and un-
tiring in song. Doubtless this was because I saw
him so closely, and for such long intervals. His
fresh yellowish-green upper and white under plum-
age gave him a wonderfully delicate appearance,
and these colours harmonised with the tender
greens of the opening leaves and the pale greys
and silvery whites of the slender boles.

Seebohm says of this species : " They arrive
in our woods in marvellously perfect plumage.
In the early morning sun they look almost as deli-
cate a yellowish-green as the half-grown leaves
amongst which they disport themselves. In the

106 BIRDS AND MAN

hand the deHcate shading of the eye-stripe, and
the margin of the feathers of the wings and tail,
is exquisitely beautiful, but is almost all lost under
the rude handling of the bu"d-skinner."

The concluding words sound almost strange ;
but it is a fact that this sylph-like creature is some-
times shattered with shot and its poor remains
operated on by the bird-stuffer. Its beauty " in
the hand " cannot compare with that exhibited
when it hves and moves and sings. Its appear-
ance during flight differs from that of other warblers
on accoimt of the greater length and sharpness
of the wings. Most warblers fly and sing hurriedly ;
the wood wren's motions, like its song, are slower,
more leisurely, and more beautiful. When moved
by the singing passion it is seldom stiU for more
than a few moments at a tune, but is continuaUy
passing from branch to branch, from tree to tree,
finding a fresh perch from which to deliver its song
on each occasion. At such times it has the appear-
ance of a dehcately coloured miniature kestrel or
hobby. Most lovely is its appearance when it
begins to sing in the air, for then the long sharp
wings beat time to the first clear measured notes,
the prelude to the song. As a rule, however, the
flight is silent, and the song begins when the new

A WOOD WREN AT WELLS 107

perch is reached — first the distinct notes that are
Uke musical strokes, and fall faster and faster until
they run and swell into a long passionate trill —
the woodland sound which is like no other.

Charming a creature as the wood wren appears
when thus viewed closely in the early spring-time,
he is not my favourite among small birds because
of his beauty of shape and colour and graceful
motions, which are seen only for a short time, but
on account of his song, which lasts until September ;
though I may not find it very easy to give a reason
for the preference.

It comforts me a little in this inquiry to re-
member that Wordsworth preferred the stock-
dove to the nightingale — that " creature of ebul-
lient heart." The poet was a little shaky in his
ornithology at times ; but if we take it that he
meant the ring-dove, his preference might still
seem strange to some. Perhaps it is not so very
strange after all.

If we take any one of the various qualities which
we have agreed to consider highest in bird-music,
we find that the wood wren compares badly with
his fellow-vocahsts — that, measured by this stan-
dard, he is a very inferior singer. Thus, in variety,
he cannot compare with the tlu'ush, garden-warbler,

108 BIRDS AND MAN

sedge -warbler, and others ; in brilliance and purity
of sound with the nightingale, blackcap, etc. ; in
strength and joyousness with the skylark ; in
mellowness with the blackbird ; in sprightliness
with the goldfinch and chaffinch ; in sweetness
with the woodlark, tree-pipit, reed-warbler, the
chats and wagtails, and so on to the end of all the
qualities which we regard as important. What,
then, is the charm of the wood wren's song ? The
sound is unlike any other, but that is nothing,
since the same can be said of the wryneck and
cuckoo and grasshopper warbler. To many persons
the wood wren's note is a bird-sound and nothing
more, and it may even surprise them to hear it
called a song. Indeed, some ornithologists have
said that it is not a song, but a call or cry, and it
has also been described as " harsh."

I here recall a lady who sat next to me on the
coach that took me from Minehead to Lynton.
The lady resided at Lynton, and finding that
I was visiting the place for the first time, she
proceeded to describe its attractions with fluent
enthusiasm. When we arrived at the town, and
were moving very slowly into it, my companion
turned and examined my face, waiting to hear
the expressions of rapturous admuation that would

A WOOD WREN AT WELLS 109

fall from my lips. Said I, " There is one thing
you can boast of in Lynton. So far as I know,
it is the only town in the country where, sitting
in your own room with the windows open, you can
listen to the song of the wood wren." Her face
fell. She had never heard of the wood wren, and
when I pointed to the tree from which the sound
came and she listened and heard, she turned aw^ay,
evidently too disgusted to say anything. She had
been wasting her eloquence on an unworthy sub-
ject— one who was without appreciation for the
sublime and beautiful in nature. The wild romantic
Lynn, tumbling with noise and foam over its rough
stony bed, the vast wooded hills, the piled-up
black rocks (covered in places with beautiful red
and blue lettered advertisements), had been passed
by in silence — nothing had stirred me but the
chirping of a miserable little bird, which, for
all that she knew or cared, might be a sparrow !
When we got down from the coach a couple of
minutes later, she walked away without even
saying good-bye.

There is no doubt that very many persons know
and care as little about bird voices as this lady ;
but how about the others who do know and care
a good deal — what do they think and feel about

110 BIRDS AND MAN

the song of the wood wren ? I know two or three
persons who are as fond of the bird as I am ; and
two or three recent writers on bird Kfe have spoken
of its song as if they loved it. The ornithologists
have in most cases been satisfied to quote Gilbert
White's description of Letter XIX. : " This last
haunts only the tops of trees in high beechen woods,
and makes a sibilous grasshopper-like noise now
and then, at short intervals, shaking a little with
its wings when it sings."

White was a little more appreciative in the case
of the willow wren when he spoke of its " joyous,
easy, laughing note " ; yet the willow wren has
had to wait a long time to be recognised as one of
our best vocalists. Some years ago it was greatly
praised by John Burroughs, who came over from
America to hear the British songsters, his thoughts
running chiefly on the nightingale, blackcap,
throstle, and blackbird ; and he was astonished
to find that this unfamed warbler, about which
the ornithologists had said little and the poets
nothing, was one of the most delightful vocalists,
and had a " delicious warble." He waxed in-
dignant at our neglect of such a singer, and cried
out that it had too fine a song to please the British
ear : that a louder coarser voice was needed to

A WOOD WREN AT WELLS 111

come up to John Bull's standard of a good song.
No one who loves a hearty laugh can feel hurt at
his manner of expressing himself, so characteristic
of an American. Nevertheless, the fact remains
that only since Burroughs' appreciation of the
British song-birds first appeared, several years
ago, the willow wren, which he found languishing
in obscurity, has had many to praise it. At all
events, the merits of its song are now much more
freely acknowledged than they were formerly.

Perhaps the wood wren's turn will come by and
by. He is still an obscure bird, little known, or
not known, to most people : we are more influenced
by what the old writers have said than we know
or like to believe ; our preferences have mostly
been made for us. The species which they praised
and made famous have kept their places in popular
esteem, while other species equally charming, which
they did not know or said nothing about, are still
but little regarded. It is hardly to be doubted
that the wood wren would have been thought
more of if Willughby, the Father of British Orni-
thology, had known it and expressed a high opinion
of its song ; or that it would have had millions to
admire it if Chaucer or Shakespeare had singled it
out for a few words of praise.

112 BIRDS AND MAN

It is also probably the fact that those who are
not students, or close observers of bird Ufe, seldom
know more than a very few of the most common
species ; and that when they hear a note that
pleases them they set it doAvn to one of the half-
dozen or three or foin* songsters whose names they
remember. I met with an amusing instance of
this common mistake at a spot in the west of Eng-
land, where I visited a castle on a hill, and was
shown over the beautiful but steep grounds by a
stout old dame, whose breath and temper were
alike short. It was a bright morning in May, and
the birds were in fuU song. As we walked through
the shubbery a blackcap burst into a torrent of
wild heart- enhvening melody from amidst the
foliage not more than three yards away. " How
well that blackcap sings ! " I remarked. " That
blackbird," she corrected ; " yes, it sings well."
She stuck to it that it was a blackbird, and to prove
that I was wrong assured me that there were no
blackcaps there. Finding that I refused to ac-
knowledge myself in error, she got cross and dropped
into sullen sUence ; but ten or fifteen minutes
later she returned of her own accord to the sub-
ject. " I've been thinking, sir," she said, " that
you must be right. I said there are no blackcaps

A WOOD WREN AT WELLS 113

here because I've been told so, but all the same
I've often remarked that the blackbird has two
different songs. Now I know, but I'm so sorry
that I didn't know a few days sooner." I asked
her why. She replied, " The other day a young
American lady came to the castle and I took her
over the grounds. The birds were singing the
same as to-day, and the young lady said, ' Now,
I want you to tell me which is the blackcap's song.
Just think,' she said, ' what a distance I have come,
from America ! Well, when I was bidding good-
bye to my friends at home I said, " Don't you
envy me ? I'm going to Old England to hear
the blackcap's song." ' Well, when I told her we
had no blackcaps she was so disappointed ; and
yet, sir, if what you say is right, the bird was
singing near us all the time ! "

Poor young lady from America ! I should have
liked to know whose written words first fired her
brain with desire of the blackcap's song — a golden
voice in imagination's ear, while the finest home
voices were merely silvern. I think of my own
case ; how in boyhood this same bird first warbled
to me in some lines of a poem I read ; and how,
long years afterwards, I first heard the real song —
beautiful, but how unlike the song I had imagined !

H

114 BIRDS AND MAN

— one bright evening in early May, at Netley Abbey.
But the poet's name had meanwhile slipped out of
memory ; nothing but a vague impression remained
(and still persists) that he flourished and had great
fame about the beginning of the nineteenth cen-
tury, and that now his (or her) fame and works
are covered with oblivion.

To return to the subject of this paper : the wood
wren — the secret of its charm. We see that, tried
by ordinary standards, many other singers are
its superiors ; what, then, is the mysterious some-
thing in its music that makes it to some of us
even better than the best ? Speaking for myself,
I should say because it is more harmonious, or in
more perfect accord with the nature amid which
it is heard ; it is the truer woodland voice.

The chaffinch as a rule sings in open woods and
orchards and groves when there is light and life
and movement ; but sometimes in the heart of a
deep wood the silence is broken by its sudden
loud lyric : it is unexpected and sounds unfamiliar
in such a scene ; the wonderfully joyous ringing
notes are like a sudden flood of sunshine in a shady
place. The sound is intensely distinct and in-
dividual, in sharp contrast to the low forest tones :
its effect on the ear is similar to that produced

A WOOD WREN AT WELLS 115

on the sight by a vivid contrast in colours, as by
a splendid scarlet or shining yellow flower bloom-
ing solitary where all else is green. The effect
produced by the wood wren is totally different ;
the strain does not contrast with, but is comple-
mentary to, the " tremulous cadence low " of in-
animate nature in the high woods, of wind- swayed
branches and pattering of rain and lisping and
murmuring of innumerable leaves — the elemental
sounds out of which it has been fashioned. In a
sense it may be called a trivial and a monotonous
song — the strain that is like a long tremulous cry,
repeated again and again without variation ; but
it is really beyond criticism — one would have to
begin by depreciating the music of the wind. It
is a voice of the beechen woods in summer, of the
far-up cloud of green, translucent leaves, with open
spaces full of green shifting sunlight and shadow.
Though resonant and far-reaching it does not strike
you as loud, but rather as the diffused sound of the
wind in the foliage concentrated and made clear — a
voice that has light and shade, rising and passing
like the wind, changing as it flows, and quivering
like a wind-fluttered leaf. It is on account of this
harmony that it is not trivial, and that the ear
never grows tired of listening to it : sooner would

116 BIRDS AND MAN

it tire of the nightingale — its purest, most briUiant
tone and most perfect artistry.

The continuous singing of a skylark at a vast
height above the green, billowy sun and shadow-
swept earth is an etherealised sound which fills
the blue space, fills it and falls, and is part of that
visible nature above us, as if the blue sky, the
floating clouds, the wind and sunshine, has some-
thing for the hearing as well as for the sight. And
as the lark in its soaring song is of the sky, so the
wood wren is of the wood.

CHAPTER VI

THE SECRET OF THE WILLOW WREN

The willow wren is one of the commonest and
undoubtedly the most generally diffused of the
British songsters. A summer visitor, one of the
earliest to arrive, usually appearing on the South
Coast in the last week in March ; a little later he
may be met with in very nearly every wood, thicket,
hedge, common, marsh, orchard, and large garden
throughout the kingdom — it is hard to say, writes
Seebohm, where he is not found. Wherever there
are green perching-places, and small caterpillars,
flies and aphides to feed upon, there you will see
and hear the willow wren. He is a sweet and con-
stant singer from the date of his arrival until about
the middle of June, when he becomes silent for a
season, resuming his song in July, and continuing
it throughout August and even into September.
This late summer singing is, however, fitful and
weak and less joyous in character than in the spring.
But in spite of his abundance and universality,
and the charm of his little melody, he is not fami-

117

118 BIRDS AND MAN

liarly known to the people generally, as they know
the robin redbreast, pied wagtail, dunnock, red-
start, wheatear, and stonechat. The name we call
him by is a very old one ; it was first used in English
by Ray, in his translation of Willughby's Orni-
thology, about three centuries ago ; but it still
remains a book-name unknown to the rustic. Nor
has this common little bird any widely known
vernacular name. If by chance you find a country-
man who knows the bud, and has a name for it,
this will be one which is applied indiscriminately
to two, three, or four species. The willow wren,
in fact, is one of those little birds that are "" seen
rather than distinguished," on account of its small
size, modest colouring, and its close resemblance
to other species of warblers ; also on account of
the quiet, gentle character of its song, which is
little noticed in the spring and summer concert of
loud, familiar voices.

One day in London during the late summer I
was amused and at the same time a httle disgusted
at this general indifference to the delicate beauty
in a bird- sound which distinguishes the willow
wren even among such delicate singers as the
warblers : it struck me as a kind of aesthetic hard-
ness of hearing. I heard the song in the flower

THE SECRET OF THE WILLOW WREN 119

walk, in Kensington Gardens, on a Sunday morn-
ing, and sat down to listen to it ; and for half an
hour the bird continued to repeat his song two or
three times a minute on the trees and bushes within
half a dozen yards of my seat. Just after I had
sat down, a throstle, perched on the topmost bough
of a thorn that projected over the walk, began his
song, and continued it a long time, heedless of the
people passing below. Now, I noticed that in
almost every case the person approaching hfted
his eyes to the bird above, apparently admiring the
music, sometimes even pausing for a moment in
his walk ; and that when two or three came to-
gether they not only looked up, but made some
remark about the beauty of the song. But from
first to last not one of all the passers-by cast a look
towards the tree where the willow wren was sing-
ing ; nor was there anything to show that the
sound had any attraction for them, although they
must have heard it. The loudness of the thrush
prevented them from giving it any attention, and
made it practically inaudible. It was Hke a pim-
pernel blossoming by the side of a poppy, or dahlia,
or peony, where, even if seen, it would not be noticed
as a beautiful flower.

In the chapter on the wood wren, I endeavoured

120 BIRDS AND MAN

to trace to its source the pleasurable feelings which
the song of that bird produces in me and in many
others — a charm exceeding that of many more
celebrated vocahsts. In that chapter the song
of the willow wren was mentioned incidentally.
Now, these two — wood wren and willow wren —
albeit nearly related, are, in the character of their
notes, as widely different as it is possible for two
songsters to be ; and when we listen attentively
to both, we recognise that the feeling produced
in us differs in each case — that it has a different
cause. In the case of the willow wren it might
be said off-hand that our pleasure is simply due
to the fact that it is a melodious sound, associated
in our minds with summer scenes. As much could
be said of any other migrant's song — nightingale,
tree-pipit, blackcap, garden warbler, swallow, and
a dozen more. But it does not explain the in-
dividual and very special charm of this particular
bird — what I have ventured to call the secret of
the willow wren. After all, it is not a deeply hidden
secret, and has indeed been half guessed or hinted
by various \mters on bird melody ; and as it also
happens to be the secret of other singers besides
the willow wren, we may, I think, find in it an
explanation of the fact that the best singers do

THE SECRET OF THE WILLOW WREN 121

not invariably please us so well as some that are
considered inferior.

The song of the willow wren has been called
singular and unique among our birds ; and Mr
Warde Fowler, who has best described it, says
that it forms an almost perfect cadence, and adds,
" 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 return-
ing upward at the end." Now, this arrangement
of its notes, although very rare and beautiful, does
not give the little song its highest aesthetic value.
The secret of the charm, I imagine, is traceable
to the fact that there is distinctly something human-
like in the quality of the voice, its timbre. Many
years ago an observer of wild birds and listener
to their songs came to this country, and walking
one day in a London suburb he heard a small bird
singing among the trees. The trees were in an
enclosure and he could not see the bird, but there
would, he thought, be no difficulty in ascertaining
the species, since it would only be necessary to
describe its peculiar little song to his friends and
they would tell him. Accordingly, on his return

122 BIRDS AND MAN

to the house he proceeded to describe the song
and ask the name of the singer. No one could
tell him, and much .to his surprise, his account of
the melody was received with smiles of amusement
and incredulity. He described it as a song that
was like a wonderfully bright and delicate human
voice talking or laughingly saying something rather
than singing. It was not until some time after-
wards that the bird-lover in a strange land dis-
covered that his little talker and laugher among
the leaves was the willow wren. In vain he had
turned to the ornithological works ; the song he
had heard, or at all events the song as he had
heard it, was not described therein ; and yet to this
day he cannot hear it differently — cannot dissociate
the sound from the idea of a fairy-like child with
an exquisitely pure, bright, spiritual voice laugh-
ingly speaking in some green place.

And yet Gilbert White over a century ago had
noted the human quality in the willow wren's voice
when he described it as an " easy, joyous, laugh-
ing note." It is still better to be able to quote
Mr Warde Fowler, when writing in A Year with
the Birds, on the futile attempts which are often
made to represent birds' songs by means of our
notation, since birds are guided in their songs by

THE SECRET OF THE WH.LOW WREN 123

no regular succession of intervals. Speaking of
the willow wren in this connection, he adds :
" 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 instru-
ment, or with the human voice when singing."
The truth of this observation must strike any
person who will pay close attention to the singing
of birds ; but there are two criticisms to be made
on it. One is that the resemblance of a bird's
song to a human voice when speaking is confined
to some or to a few species ; the second is that
it is a mistake to think, as Mr Fowler appears to
do, that the resemblance is wholly or mainly due
to the fact that the bird's voice is free when sing-
ing— that, like the human voice in talking, it is
not tied to tones and semitones. For instance,
we note this peculiarity in the willow wren, but
not in, say, the wren and chaffinch, although the
songs of these two are just as free, just as inde-
pendent of regular intervals as our voices when
speaking and laughing. The resemblance in a
bird's song to human speech is entirely due to the
human-like quality in the voice ; for we find that
other songsters — notably the swallow — have a
charm similar to that of the willow wren, although

124 BIRDS AND MAN

the notes of the former bird are differently arranged,
and do not form anything Uke a cadence. Again,
take the case of the blackbird. We are accus-
tomed to describe the blackbird's voice as flute-Hke,
and the flute is one of the instruments which
most nearly resemble the human voice. Now, on
account of the leisurely manner in which the black-
bird gives out his notes, the resemblance to human
speech is not so pronounced as in the case of the
willow wren or swallow ; but when two or three
or half a dozen blackbirds are heard singing close
together, as we sometimes hear them in woods
and orchards where they are abundant, the effect
is singularly beautiful, and gives the idea of a con-
versation being carried on by a set of human beings
of arboreal habits (not monkeys) with glorified
voices. Listening to these blackbird concerts, I
have sometimes wondered whether or not they
produced the same effect on others' ears as on mine,
as of people talking to one another in high-pitched
and beautiful tones. Oddly enough, it was only
while writing this chapter that I by chance found
an affirmative answer to my question. Glancing
through Leslie's Riverside Letters, which I had
not previously seen, I came upon the following
remarks, quoted from Sir George Grove, in a letter

THE SECRET OF THE WILLOW WREN 125

to the author, on the blackbird's singing : " He
selects a spot where he is within hearing of a com-
rade, and then he begins quite at leisure (not all
in a hiu-ry like the thrush) a regular conversation.
' And how are you ? Isn't this a fine day ? Let us
have a nice talk,' etc., etc. He is answered in the
same strain, and then replies, and so on. Nothing
more thoughtful, more refined, more feeling, can
be conceived." In another passage he writes :
" I love them (the robins), but they fill a much
smaller part than the blackbnd does in my heart.
To hear the blackbird talking to his mate a field
off, with deliberate, refined conversation, the very
acme of grace and courtesy, is perfectly splendid."

There are two more common British songsters
that produce much the same effect as the willow
wren and blackbird ; these are the swallow and
pied wagtail. They are not in the first rank as
melodists, and I can find no explanation of the
fact that they please me better than the great
singers other than their more human-like tones,
which to my hearing have something of an ex-
ceedingly beautiful contralto sound. The swallow's
song is familiar to every one, but that of the wag-
tail is not well known. The bird has two distinct
songs : one, heard oftenest in early spring, con-

126 BIRDS AND MAN

sists of a low rambling warble, with some resem-
blance to the whinchat's song ; it is the second
song, heard occasionally until late June, frequently
uttered on the wing — a torrent of loud, rapidly
uttered, and somewhat swallow-like notes — that
comes nearest in tone to the human voice, and has
the greatest charm.

After these, we find other songsters with one or
two notes, or a phrase, human-like in quality, in
their songs. Of these I will only mention the
blackcap, linnet, and tree-pipit. The most beauti-
ful of the blackcap's notes, which come nearest
to the blackbird, have this human sound ; and
certainly the most beautiful part of the linnet's
song is the opening phrase, composed of notes
that are both swallow-like and human-like.

It may appear strange to some readers that I
put the tree-pipit, with his thin, shrill, canary-
like pipe, in this list ; but his notes are not all of
this character ; he is moreover a most variable
singer ; and it happens that in some individuals
the concluding notes of the song have more of
that pecuhar human quality than any other British
songster. No doubt it was a bird in which these
human-like, languishing notes at the close of the
song were very full and beautiful that inspired

THE SECRET OF THE WILLOW WREN 127

Burns to write his " Address to a Wood-lark."
The tree pipit is often called by that name in
Scotland, where the true wood-lark is not found.

0 stay, sweet warbling wood-lark, stay,
Nor quit for rae the trembling spray,
A hopeless lover courts thy lay.
Thy soothing, fond complaining.

Again, again that tender part,
That I may catch thy meltmg art ;
For surely that would touch her heart
Who kills me wi' disdaining.

Say, was thy little mate unkind.
And heard thee as the passing wind ?
0 nocht but love and sorrow joiued
Sic notes o' wae could waken !

Thou tells o' never-ceasing care,
0' speechless grief and dark despair ;
For pity's sake, sweet bird, nae mair,
Or my poor heart is broken !

Much more could be said about these and other
species in the passerine order that have some re-
semblance, distinct or faint, to the human voice
in then* singing notes — an echo, as it were, of our
own common emotions, in most cases simply glad
or joyous, but sometimes, as in the case of the tree-
pipit, of another character. And even those species
that are fmthest removed from us in the character

128 BIRDS AND IVIAN

of the sounds they emit have some notes that
suggest a highly brightened human voice. Wit-
ness the throstle and nightingale. Tlie last ap-
proaches to the human voice in that rich, musical
throb, repeated many times with passion, which
is the invariable prelude to his song ; and again,
in that " one low piping note, more sweet than
all," four times repeated in a wonderfully beautiful
crescendo. Viho that ever Hstened to Carlotta
Patti does not remember sounds like these from
her Hps ? It was commonly said of her that her
voice was bird-hke ; certainly it was clarified and
brightened beyond other voices — in some of her
notes almost beyond recognition as a human voice.
It was a voice that had a great deal of the quality
of gladness in it, but less depth of human passion
than other great singers. Still, it was a human
voice ; and, just as Carlotta Patti (outshining the
best of her sister-singers even as the diamond
outsparkles all other gems) rose to the birds in
her miraculous flights, so do some of the birds
come down to and resemble us in their songs.

If I am right in thinking that it is the human
note in the voices of some passerine birds that
gives a pecuhar and very great charm to their
songs, so that an inferior singer shall please us

THE SECRET OF THE WILLOW WREN 129

more than one that ranks high, according to the
accepted standard, it remains to ask why it should
be so. WTiy, I mean, should the mere likeness
to a human tone in a httle singing-bird impart so
great a pleasure to the mind, when the undoubtedly
human-like voices of many non-passerine species
do not as a rule affect us in the same way ? As
a matter of fact, we find in the multitude of species
that resemble us in their voices a few, outside of
the order of singers, that do give us a pleasure
similar to that imparted by the willow wren,
swallow, and tree-pipit. Thus, among British
birds we have the wood-pigeon, and the stock-
dove ; the green woodpecker, with his laugh-like
cry ; the cuckoo, a universal favourite on account
of his double fluty call ; and (to those who are not
incHned to be superstitious) the wood-owl, a most
musical night- singer ; and the curlew, with, in a
less degree, various other shore birds. But in a
majority of the larger birds of all orders the effect
produced is different, and often the reverse of
pleasant. Or if such sounds dehght us, the feeling
differs in character from that produced by the
melodious singer, and is mainly due to that wild-
ness with which we are in sympathy expressed by
such sounds. Human-like voices are found among
I

130 BIRDS AND MAN

the auks, loons, and grebes ; eagles and falcons ;
cuckoos, pigeons, goatsuckers, owls, crows, rails,
ducks, waders, and gallinaceous birds. The cries
and shrieks of some among these, particularly
when heard in the dark hours, in deep woods and
marshes and other solitary places, profoundly im-
press and even startle the mind, and have given
rise all the world over to numberless superstitious
beliefs. Such sounds are supposed to proceed
from devils, or from demons inhabiting woods
and waters and all desert places ; from night-
wandering witches ; spirits sent to prophesy death
or disaster ; ghosts of dead men and women
wandering by night about the world in search of
a way out of it ; and sometimes human beings
who, burdened with dreadful crimes or irremediable
griefs, have been changed into birds. The three
British species best known on account of their
supernatural character have very remarkable voices
with a human sound in them : the raven with his
angry, barking cry, and deep, solemn croak ; the
booming bittern ; and the white or church owl,
with his funereal screech.

It is, I think, plain that the various sensations
excited in us by the cries, moans, screams, and the
more or less musical notes of different species, are

THE SECRET OF THE WILLOW WREN 131

due to the human emotions which they express
or seem to express. If the voice simulates that
of a maniac, or of a being tortured in body or mind,
or overcome with grief, or maddened with terror,
the blood-curdHng and other sensations proper
to the occasion will be experienced ; only, if we
are familiar with the sound or know its cause, the
sensation will be weak. Similarly, if in some deep,
silent wood we are suddenly startled by a loud
human whistle or shouted " Hi ! " although we
may know that a bird, somewhere in that waste
of foliage around us, uttered the shout, we yet
cannot help experiencing the feelings — a combina-
tion of curiosity, amusement, and irritation — which
we should have if some friend or some human being
had hailed us while purposely keeping out of sight.
Finally, if the bird- sounds resemble refined, bright,
and highly musical human voices, the voices, let
us say, of young girls in conversation, expressive
of various beautiful qualities — sympathy, tender-
ness, innocent mirth, and overflowing gladness
of heart — the effect will be in the highest degree
delightful.

Herbert Spencer, in his account of the origin
of our love of music in his Psychology, writes :
" While the tones of anger and authority are harsh

132 BIRDS AND MAN

and coarse, the tones of sympathy and refinement
are relatively gentle and of agreeable timbre.
That is to say, the timbre is associated in experi-
ence with the receipt of gratification, has acquired
a pleasm:"e-giving quality, and consequently the
tones which in music have an alhed timbre become
pleasure-giving and are called beautiful. Not
that this is the sole cause of their pleasure-giving
quaHty. . . . Still, in recalling the tones of in-
struments which approach the tones of the human
voice, and observing that they seem beautiful in
proportion to their approach, we see that this
secondary aesthetic element is important."

As with instruments, so it is with bird voices ;
in proportion as they approach the tones of the
human voice, expressive of sympathy, refinement,
and other beautiful quahties, they will seem beauti-
ful— in some cases even more beautiful than those
which, however high they may rank in other ways,
are yet without this secondary aesthetic element.

CHAPTER VII

SECRET OF THE CHARM OF FLOWERS

When my mind was occupied with the subject
of the last chapter — the human quahty in some
sweet bird voices — it struck me forcibly that all
resemblances to man in the animal and vegetable
worlds and in inanimate nature, enter largely into
and strongly colour our aesthetic feehngs. We
have but to listen to the human tones in wind and
water, and in animal voices ; and to recognise
the human shape in plant, and rock, and cloud,
and in the round heads of certain mammals, like
the seal ; and the human expression in the eyes,
and faces generally, of many mammals, birds and
reptiles, to know that these casual resemblances
are a great deal to us. They constitute the ex-
pression of numberless natural sights and sounds
with which we are familiar, although in a majority
of cases the resemblance being but slight, and to
some one quality only, we are not conscious of the
cause of the expression.

It was principally with flowers, which excite

133

134 BIRDS AND MAN

more attention and give more pleasure than most
natural objects, that my mind was occupied in
this connection ; for here it seemed to me that the
effect was similar to that produced on the mind
by sweet human-like tones in bird music. In
other words, a very great if not the principal charm
of the flower was to be traced to the human associa-
tions of its colouring ; and this was, in some cases,
more than all its other attractions, including beauty
of form, purity and brilliance of colour, and the
harmonious arrangement of colours ; and, finally,
fragrance, where such a quality existed.

We see, then, that there is an intimate connec-
tion between the two subjects — human associations
in the colouring of flowers and in the voices of
birds ; and that in both cases this association
constitutes, or is a principal element in, the ex-
pression. This connection, and the fact that the
present subject was suggested and appeared almost
an inevitable outcome of the one last discussed,
must be my excuse for introducing a chapter on
flowers in a book on birds — or birds and man. But
an excuse is hardly needed. It must strike most
readers that a great fault of books on birds is,
that there is too much about birds in them, conse-
quently that a chapter about something else, which

SECRET OF THE CHARM OF FLOWERS 135

has not exactly been dragged in, may come as a
positive relief.

As the word expression which occm's with fre-
quency in this chapter was not understood in the
sense in which I used it on the first appearance
of the book, it may be well to explain that it is
not used here in its ordinary meaning as the quality
in a face, or picture, or any work of art, which
indicates thought or feeling. Here the word has
the meaning given to it by writers on the aesthetic
sense as descriptive of the quality imparted to an
object by its associations. These may be untrace-
able : we may not be conscious and as a rule we
are not conscious that any such associations exist ;
nevertheless they are in us all the time, and with
what they add to an object may enhance and even
double its intrinsic beauty and charm.

I have somewhere read a very ancient legend,
which tells that man was originally made of many
materials, and that at the last a bunch of wild
flowers was gathered and thrown into the mixture
to give colour to his eyes. It is a pretty story,
but might have been better told, since it is certain
that flowers which have delicate and beautiful

136 BIRDS AND MAN

flesh-tints are attractive mainly on that account,
just as blue and some purples delight us chiefly
because of their associations with the human iris.
The skin, too, needed some beautiful colour, and
there were red as well as blue flowers in the bunch ;
and the red flowers being most abundant in nature
and in greater variety of tints, give us altogether
more pleasure than their beautiful rivals in our
affection.

The blue flower is associated, consciously or not,
with the human blue eye ; and as the floral blue
is in all or nearly aU instances pure and beautiful,
it is like the most beautiful human eye. This
association, and not the colour itself, strikes me
as the true cause of the superior attraction which
the blue flower has for most of us. Apart from
association blue is less attractive than red, orange,
and yellow, because less luminous ; furthermore
green is the least effective background for such
a colour as blue in so small an object as a flower ;
and, as a fact, we see that at a little distance the
blue of the flower is absorbed and disappears in
the surrounding green, while reds and yellows
keep their splendour. Nevertheless the blue has
a stronger hold on our affections. As a human
colour, blue comes first in a blue-eyed race because

SECRET OF THE CHARM OF FLO^^"ERS 137

it is the colour of the most important feature, and,
we may say, of the very soul in man.

Some purple flowers stand next in our regard
on account of their nearness in colour to the pure
blue. The wild hyacinth, blue-bottle, violet, and
pansy, and some others, will occur to every one.
These are the purple flowers in which blue pre-
dominates, and on that account have the same
expression as the blue. The purples in which red
predominates are akin in expression to the reds,
and are associated with flesh-tints and blood.
And here it may be noted that the blue and blue-
purple flowers, which have the greatest charm for
us, are those in which not only the colour of the
eye but some resemblance in their form to the iris,
with its central spot representing the pupil, appears.
For example, the flax, borage, blue geranium,
periwinkle, forget-me-not, speedwell, pansy and
blue pimpernel, are actually more to us than some
larger and handsomer blue flowers, such as the
blue-bottle, vipers' bugloss, and succory, and of
blue flowers seen in masses.

With regard to the numerous blue and purple-
blue flowers which we all admire, or rather for
which we all feel so great an affection, we find
that in many cases their very names have been

138 BIRDS AND MAN

suggested by their human associations — by their
expression.

Love-in-a-mist, angels' eyes, forget-me-not, and
heartsease, are famiUar examples. Heartsease and
pansy both strike us as peculiarly appropriate to
one of our commonest and most universal garden
flowers ; yet we see something besides the sym-
pathetic and restful expression which suggested
these names in this flower — a certain suggestion
of demureness, in fact, reminding those who have
seen Guido's picture of the " Adoration of the
Virgin," of one of his loveliest angels whose angelical
eyes and face reveal some desire for admiration
and love in the spectator. And that expres-
sion, too, of the pansy named Love-in-idleness,
has been described, coarsely or rudely it may be,
in some of its country names : " Kiss me behind
the garden gate," and, better (or worse) still, " Meet-
her - i' - th' - entry -kiss- her -i'-th'- buttery." Of this
order of names are None-so-pretty and Pretty
maids. Pretty Betsy, Kiss-me-quick. Even such
a name as Tears of the blood of Christ does not
sound extravagantly fanciful or startling when
we look at the glowing deep golden crimson of the
wall flower ; nor of a blue flower, the germander
speedwell, such names as The more I see you the

SECRET OF THE CHARM OF FLOWERS 139

more I love you, and Angels' tears, and Tears of
Christ, with many more.

A writer on our wild flowers, in speaking of their
vernacular names of this kind, has said : " Could
we penetrate to the original suggestive idea that
called forth its name, it would bring valuable in-
formation about the first openings of the human
mind towards nature ; and the merest dream of
such a discovery invests with a strange charm the
words that could tell, if we could understand, so
much of the forgotten infancy of the human race."

What a roll of words and what a mighty and
mysterious business is here made of a very simple
little matter ! It is a charming example of the
strange helplessness, not to say imbecility, which
affects most of those who have been trained in our
mind-killing schools ; trained not to think, but
taught to go for anything and everything they
desire to know to the books. If the books in the
British Museum fail to say why our ancestors
hundreds of years ago named a flower None- so-
pretty or Love-in-a-mist, why then we must be
satisfied to sit in thick darkness with regard to
this matter until some heaven-born genius descends
to illuminate us ! Yet I daresay there is not a
country child who does not occasionally invent

140 BIRDS AND MAN

a name for some plant or creature which has
attracted his attention ; and in many cases the
child's new name is suggested by some human associa-
tion in the object — some resemblance to be seen in
form or colour or sound. Not books but the hght
of nature, the experience of our own early years,
the look which no person not blinded by reading
can fail to see in a flower, is sufficient to reveal all
this liidden wonderful knowledge about the first
openings of the heart towards nature, during the
remote infancy of the human race.

From this it will be seen that I am not claiming
a discovery ; that what I have called a secret of
the charm of flowers is a secret known to every
man, woman, and child, even to those of my own
friends who stoutly deny that they have any such
knowledge. But I think it is best known to chil-
dren. What I am here doing is merely to bring
together and put in form certain more or less vague
thoughts and feelings which I (and therefore all
of us) have about flowers ; and it is a small matter,
but it happens to be one which no person has
hitherto attempted.

It may be that in some of my readers' minds —
those who, like the sceptical friends I have men-
tioned, are not distinctly conscious of the cause

SECRET OF THE CHARM OF FLOWERS 141

or secret of the expression of a flower — some doubt
may still remain after what has been said of the
blue and purple-blue blossom. Such a doubt
ought to disappear when the reds are considered,
and when it is found that the expression peculiar
to red flowers varies infinitely in degree, and is
always greatest in those shades of the colour which
come nearest to the most beautiful flesh-tints.

When I say " beautiful flesh-tints " I am think-
ing of the aesthetic pleasure which we receive from
the expression, the associations, of the red flower.
The expression which delights is in the soft and
dehcate shades ; and in the texture which is some-
times hke the beautiful soft skin ; but the expression
would exist still in the case of floral tints resem-
bling the unpleasant reds, or the reds which disgust
us, in the human face. And we most of us know
that these distressing hues are to be seen in some
flowers. I remember that I once went into a
florist's shop, and seeing a great mass of hard purple-
red cinerarias on a shelf I made some remark about
them. " Yes, are they not beautiful ? " said the
woman in the shop. " No, I loathe the sight of
them," I returned. " So do I ! " she said very
quickly, and then added that she called them beauti-
ful because she had to sell them. She, too, had no

142 BIRDS AND MAN

doubt seen that same purple-red colour in the evil
flower called " grog-blossom," and in the faces of
many middle-aged lovers of the bottle, male and
female, who would perish before their time, to the
great relief of their kindred, and whose actions
after they were gone would not smell sweet and
blossom in the dust.

The reds we like best in flowers are the delicate
roseate and pinky shades ; they are more to us
than the purest and most luminous tints. And
here, as with bird notes which delight us on account
of their resemblance to fresh, young, highly musical
human voices, flowers please us best when they
exhibit the loveliest human tints — the apple blossom
and the bindweed, musk mallow and almond and
wild rose, for example. After these we are most
taken with the deeper but soft and not too luminous
reds — the red which we admire in the red horse-
chestnut blossom, and many other flowers, down
to the minute pimpernel. Next come the intense
rosy reds seen in the herb-robert and other wild
geraniums, valerian, red campion and ragged
robin ; and this shade of red, intensified but still
soft, is seen in the willow-herb and foxglove, and,
still more intensified, in the bell- and small-leafed
heath. Some if not all of these pleasing reds have

SECRET OF THE CHARM OF FLOWERS 143

purple in them, and there are very many distinctly
purple flowers that appeal to us in the same way
that red flowers do, receiving their expression from
the same cause. There is some purple colour in
most skins, and even some blue.

The azured harebell, like thy veins,

is a familiar verse from Cymbeline ; any one can
see the resemblance to the pale blue of that admired
and loved blossom in the blue veins of any person
with a delicate skin. Purples and purplish reds in
masses are mostly seen in young persons of delicate
skins and high colour in frosty weather in winter,
when the eyes sparkle and the face glows with the
happy sensations natural to the young and healthy
during and after outdoor exercise. The skin purples
and purple-reds here described are beautiful, and
may be matched to a nicety in many flowers ; the
human purple may be seen (to name a very common
wild flower) in purple loosestrife and the large marsh
mallow, and in dozens and scores of other famihar
purple flowers ; and the purple-red hue in many
richly coloured skins has its exact shade in common
hounds' tongue, and in other dark and purple-red
flowers. But we always find, I fancy, that the ex-
pression due to human association in a purple flower

144 BIRDS AND MAN

is greatest when this colour (as in the human face) is
placed side by side or fades into some shade of red or
pink. I think we may see this even in a small
flower like the fumitory, in which one portion is
deep purple and all the rest of the blossoms a deli-
cate pink. Even when the red is very intense,
as in the common field poppy, the pleasing ex-
pression of purple on red is very evident.

To return to pure reds. We may say that just
as purples in flowers look best, or have a greater
degree of expression, when appearing in or with
reds, so do the most delicate rose and pink shades
appeal most to us when they appear as a tinge or
blush on white flowers. Probably the flower that
gives the most pleasure on account of its beautiful
flesh-tints of different shades is the Gloire de
Dijon rose, so common with us and so universal a
favourite. Roses, being mostly of the garden, are
out of my hne, but they are certainly glorious to
look at — glorious because of their associations,
their expression, whether we know it or not. One
can forgive Thomas Carew the conceit in his lines —

Ask me no more where Jove bestows
When June is past, the fading rose,
For in your beauty's orient deep
These flowers as in their causes sleep.

SECRET OF THE CHARM OF FLOWERS 145

But all reds have something human, even the most
luminous scarlets and crimsons — the scarlet ver-
bena, the poppy, our garden geraniums, etc. —
although in intensity they so greatly surpass the
brightest colour of the lips and the most vivid
blush on the cheek. Luminous reds are not, how-
ever, confined to lips and cheeks : even the fingers
when held up before the eyes to the sun or to fire-
hght show a very delicate and beautiful red ; and
this same brilliant floral hue is seen at times in
the membrane of the ear. It is, in fact, the colour
of blood, and that bright fluid, which is the life,
and is often spilt, comes very much into the human
associations of flowers. The Persian poet, whose
name is best left unwritten, since from hearing
it too often most persons are now sick and tired
of it, has said,

I sometimes think that never blooms so red
The rose as where some buried Csesar bled.

There is many and many a " plant of the blood
of men." Our most common Love-lies-bleeding
with its " dropping wells " of crimson serves to
remind us that there are numberless vulgar names
that express this resemblance and association.
The thought or fancy is found everywhere in poetic

146 BIRDS AND MAN

literature, in the fables of antiquity, in the tales
and folk-lore of all nations, civilised and barbarous.

I think that we can more quickly recognise this
human interest in a flower, due to its colour, and
best appreciate its aesthetic value from this cause,
when we turn from the blues, purples, and reds,
to the whites and the yellows. The feehng these
last give us is distinctly different in character from
that produced by the others. They are not like
us, nor like any hving sentient thing we are related
to : there is no kinship, no human quality.

When I say " no kinship, no human quality,"
I refer to flowers that are entirely pure wliite or
pure yellow ; in some dull or impure yellows, and
in white and yellow flowers that have some tinge
or mixture of red or purple, we do get the expres-
sion of the red and purple flower. The crystalline
and snow wliite of the whitest flowers do indeed
resemble the white of the eyeballs and the teeth
in human faces ; but we may see that this human
white colour by itself has no human association
in a flower.

The whiteness of the white flower where there
is any red is never unhuman, probably because
a very brilliant red or rose colour on some delicate
skins causes the hght flesh-tints to appear white

SECRET OF THE CHARM OF FLOWERS 147

by contrast, and is the complexion known as
" milk and roses." The apple-blossom is a beauti-
ful example, and the beloved daisy — the " wee,
modest, crimson-tipped flower," which would be
so much less dear but for that touch of human
crimson. This is the herb-Margaret of so many
tender and pretty legends, that has white for
purity and red for repentance. Even those who
have never read these legends and that prettiest,
most pathetic of all which tells of the daisy's origin,
find a secret charm in the flower. Among other
common examples are the rosy-white hawthorn,
wood anemone, bindweed, dropwort, and many
others. In the dropwort the rosy buds are seen
among the creamy white open flowers ; and the
expression is always very marked and beautiful
when there is any red or purple tinge or blush on
cream- whites and ivory- whites. When we look from
the dropwort to its nearest relative, the common
meadow-sweet, we see how great a charm the touch
of rose-red has given to the first : the meadow-
sweet has no expression of the kind we are con-
sidering— no human association.

In pure yellow flowers, as in pure white, human
interest is wanting. It is true that yellow is a
human colour, since in the hair we find yellows

148 BIRDS AND ISIAN

of different shades — ^it is a pity that we cannot
find, or have not found, a better word than " shades "
for the specific differences of a colour. There is
the so-called tow, the taAvny, the bronze, the simple
yellow, and the golden, which includes many
varieties, and the hair called carroty. But none
of these has the flower yellow. Richard Jefferies
tells us that when he placed a sovereign by the
side of a dandelion he saw how unlike the two
colours were — that, in fact, no two colours could
seem more unlike than the yellow of gold and the
yellow of the flower. It is not necessary to set a
lock of hair and any yellow flower side by side to
know how utterly different the hues are. The
yellow of the hair is Uke that of metals, of clay,
of stone, and of various earthy substances, and
like the fur of some mammals, and like xanthophyll
in leaf and stalk, and the yellow sometimes seen
in clouds. When Ossian, in his famous address
to the sun, speaks of his yellow hair floating on
the eastern clouds, we instantly feel the truth as
well as beauty of the simile. We admire the yellow
flower for the purity and brilHance of its colour,
just as we admire some bird notes solely for the
purity and brightness of the sound, however un-
like the human voice they may be. We also admire

SECRET OF THE CHARM OF FLOWERS 149

it in many instances for the exquisite beauty of
its form, and the beauty of the contrast of pure
yellow and deep green, as in the yellow flag, mi-
mulus, and numerous other plants. But however
much we may admire, we do not experience that
intimate and tender feeling which the blues and
reds inspire in us ; in other words, the yellow
flower has not the expression which distinguishes
those of other colours. Thus, when Tennyson
speaks of the " speedwell's darling blue," we know
that he is right — that he expresses a feeling about
this flower common to all of us ; but no poet would
make so great, so absurd a mistake as to describe
the purest and loveHest yeUow of the most prized
and famiUar wild flower — buttercup or kingcup,
yellow flag, sea poppy, marsh marigold, or broom,
or furze, or rock-rose, let us say — by such a word
— the word that denotes an intimate and affection-
ate feeling — the feeling one cherishes for the loved
ones of our kind. Nor could that word of Tenny-
son be properly used of any pure white flower —
the stitchwort for instance ; nor of any wliite and
yellow flower Uke the Marguerite. But no sooner
do you get a touch of rose or crimson in the whitest
flower, as we see in the daisy and eyebright, than
you can say of it that it is a " dear " or a " dar-

150 BIRDS AND MAN

ling " colour, and no one can find fault with the
expression.

When we consider the dull and impure yellows
sometimes seen in flowers, and some soft yellows
seen in combination with pleasing wholesome reds,
as in the honeysuckle, we may find something
of the expression — the human association — in
yellow flowers. For there is yellow in the skin,
even in perfect health ; it appears strongest on
the neck, and spread round to the throat and chin,
and is a warm buff, very beauitful in some women ;
but very little of this tint appears in the face.
When a tinge of this warm buffy yellow and creamy
yellow is seen mixed with warmer reds, as in the
Gloire de Dijon rose, the effect is most beautiful
and the expression most marked. But the ex-
pression in flowers of a pale dull, impure yellow*
where there is an expression, is unpleasant. It
is the yellow of unhealthy skins, of faces discoloured
by jaundice, dyspepsia, and other ailments. We
commonly say of such flowers that they are " sickly "
in colour, and the association is mth sick and decay-
ing humanity. Gerarde, in describing such hues
in flowers, was fond of the word " overworn " ;
and it was a very good word, and, like the one now
in use, is derived from the association.

SECRET OF THE CHARM OF FLOWERS 151

It will be noted by those who are acquainted
with many flowers that I have given the names
of but few — it may be too few — as examples, and
that these are nearly all of familiar wild flowers.
My reason for not going to the garden is, that our
cultivated blooms are not only artificially pro-
duced, and in some degree monstrosities, but they
are seen in unnatural conditions, in crowds and
masses, the various kinds too near together, and
in most cases selected on account of their gorgeous
colouring. The effect produced, however delight-
ful it may be in some ways, is confusing to those
simple natm-al feelings which flowers in a state of
nature cause in us.

I confess that gardens in most cases affect me
disagreeably ; hence I avoid them, and think and
know httle about garden flowers. It is of course
impossible not to go into gardens. The large
garden is the greatly valued annexe of the large
house, and is as much or more to the mistress than
the coverts to the master ; and when I am asked
to go into the garden to see and adnire all that
is there, I cannot say, " Madam, I hate gardens."
On the contrary, I must weakly comply and pre-
tend to be pleased. And when going the rounds
of her paradise my eyes light by chance on a bed

152 BIRDS AND MAN

of tulips, or scarlet geraniums, or blue larkspurs,
or destested calceolarias or cinerarias — a great
patch of coloured flame springing out of a square
or round bed of grassless, brown, desolate earth
— the effect is more than disagreeable : the mass
of colour glares at and takes possession of me, and
spreads itself over and blots out a hundred deHcate
and prized images of things seen that existed in
the mind.

But I am going too far, and perhaps making
an enemy of a reader when I would much prefer
to have him (or her) for a friend.

I have named few flowers, and those all the most
familiar kinds, because it seemed to me that many
examples would have had a confusing effect on
readers who do not intimately know many species,
or do not remember the exact colour in each case,
and are therefore unable to reproduce in their
minds the exact expression — the feeling which every
flower conveys. On the other hand, the reader
who knows and loves flowers, who has in his mind
the distinct images of many scores, perhaps of
two or three hundreds of species, can add to my
example many more from his own memory.

There is one objection to the explanation given
here of the cause of the charm of certain flowers,

SECRET OF THE CHARM OF FLOWERS 153

which will instantly occur to some readers, and
may as well be answered in advance. This view,
or theory, must be wrong, a reader will perhaps
say, because my own preference is for a yellow
flower (the primrose or daffodil, let us say), which
to me has a beauty and charm exceeding all other
flowers.

The obvious explanation of such a preference
would be that the particular flower preferred is
intimately associated with recollections of a happy
childhood, or of early life. The associations will
have made it a flower among flowers, charged with
a subtle magic, so that the mere sight or smell of
it calls up beautiful visions before the mind's eye.
Every person bred in a country place is affected
in this way by certain natural objects and odours ;
and I recall the case of Cuvier, who was always
affected to tears by the sight of some common
yellow flower, the name of which I have forgotten.

The way to test the theory is to take, or think
of, two or three or half-a-dozen flowers that have
no personal associations with one's own early life
— that are not, like the primrose and daffodil in
the foregoing instance, sacred flowers, unlike all
others ; some with and some without human colour-
ing, and consider the feeling produced in each

154 BIRDS AND MAN

case on the mind. If any one will look at, say,
a Gloire de Dijon rose (in some persons its mental
image wiU serve as well as the object itself) and
then at a perfect white chrysanthemum, or lily,
or other beautiful white flower ; then at a perfect
yellow chrysanthemum, or an allamanda, and at
any exquisitely beautiful orchid, that has no himian
colour in it, which he may be acquainted with,
he will probably say : I admire these chrysan-
themums and other flowers more than the rose ;
they are most perfect in their beauty — I cannot
imagine anything more beautiful ; but though
the rose is less beautiful and splendid, the admira-
tion I have for it appears to differ somewhat in
character — to be mixed with some new element
which makes this flower actually more to me than
the others.

That something different, and something more,
is the human association which this flower has for
us in virtue of its colour ; and the new element
— the feeling it inspires, which has something of
tenderness and affection in it — is one and the same
with the feeling which we have for human beauty.

The foregoing has been given here with a few

SECRET OF THE CHARM OF FLOWERS 155

alterations, mainly verbal, as it appeared originally :
something now remains to be added.

When writing about the wild flowers of West
Cornwall in a work on The Land's End (1908), I
returned to the subject of the charm of flowers
due to their human colouring, and will repeat here
much of what was there said.

Some of the readers of my flower chapter were
not convinced that I had made out my case : it
came as a surprise to them, and in some instances
they cherished views of their own which they did
not want to give up. Thus, two of my critics,
writing independently, expressed their belief that
flowers are precious to us and seem more beautiful
than they are, because they are absolutely un-
related to our human life with its passions, sorrows,
and tragedies — because, looking at flowers, we are
taken into, or have glimpses of, another and brighter
world such as a disembodied spirit might find itself
in. It was nothing more than a pretty fancy ;
but I had other more thoughtful critics, and during
my correspondence with them I became convinced
of a serious omission in my account of the blue
flower, when I said that its expression was due
to association with the blue eye in man. The
strongest of my friendly adversaries informed me

156 BIRDS AND MAN

that any man can revel at will among his own
personal feelings and associations ; that these
were a " kind of bloom on the intrinsic beauty of
things " — a happy phrase ! He then asks : " What
does blue suggest to a sailor ? Sometimes the sea,
sometimes the sky, sometimes the Blue Peter ;
but if you ask him what does blue paint suggest
he would say mourning, that being the colour of
a ship's mourning. Dr Sutton always called blue
no colour, because it was the colour of death, the
sign of the withdrawal of life."

This was interesting but fails as an argument
since it was taken for granted in the chapter that
blue in a flower or anything else, and in fact any
colour, possesses individual associations for every
one of us, according to what we are, to the temper
of our minds, to the conditions in which we exist,
our vocation, our early life, and so on. Blue may
suggest sea and sky and the Blue Peter to a sailor,
and yet the blue flower have an expression due
to its human association in him as in another.

But my critic dropped by chance into something
better, when he went on to ask, " Why shouldn't
the heaven's blue make us love flowers ? It does
in my case I know, and I can feel the different blues
of skies and air and distance in flower blue."

SECRET OF THE CHARM OF FLOWERS 157

Undoubtedly he was right ; the blue sky, fair
weather, the open air, was a suggestion of the blue
flower. It amazed me to think of the years I had
spent under blue skies and of all I had felt about
blue flowers, without stumbling upon this very
simple fact. So simple, so near to the surface that
you no sooner hear it than you imagine you have
always known it ! It was impossible to look at
blue flowers and not be convinced of its truth,
especially when the flowers were spread over con-
siderable areas, as when I looked at wild hyacinths
in the spring woods, or followed the interminable
blue band of the vernal squill on the west Cornish
coast, or saw large arid tracts of land in Suffolk
blue with viper's bugloss.

Oddly enough just after the letter containing
this criticism had reached me, another corres-
pondent who was also among my opponents, sent
me this fine passage from the old writer Sir John
Feme, on azure in blazoning : " Which blew colour
representeth the Aire amongst the elements, that
of all the rest is the greatest favourer of life, as
the only nurse and maintainer of spirits in any
living creature. The colour blew is commonly
taken from the blue skye which appeareth so often
as the tempests be overblowne, and notes pro-

158 BIRDS AND MAN

sperous successe and good fortune to the wearer
in all his affayres."

In conclusion, after having adopted this new
idea, my view is still that the human association
is the principal factor in the expression of the blue
flower, or at all events in a majority of flowers that
bloom more or less sparingly and are usually seen
as single blooms, not as mere splashes of colour.
Such are the pansy, violet, speedwell, hairbell,
lungwort, blue geranium, etc. It may be that in
all flowers of this kind too an element in the ex-
pression is due to the fair-weather associations
with the colour ; but these associations must be
very much stronger in the case of a blue flower
always seen in masses and sheets of colour as the
wild hyacinth. Among dark-eyed races the fair-
weather associations would alone give the blue
flower its expression. I shouldn't wonder, if
some explorer with a curious mind would try to
find out what savages feel about flowers, that he
would discover in them a special regard for the blue
flower.

CHAPTER VIII

RAVENS IN SOMERSET

Mr Warde Fowler in his Summer Studies of Birds
and Books has a pleasant chapter on wagtails, in
which he remarks incidentally that he does not care
for the big solemn birds that please, or are dear to,
" Mr Hudson." Their bigness disturbs and their
solemnity oppresses him. They do not twitter
and warble, and flit hither and thither, flirting their
feathers, and with then* dainty gracefulness and
airy, fairy ways wind themselves round his heart.
Wagtails are quite big enough for him ; they are,
in fact, as big as birds should be, and so long as
these charming little creatures abound in these
islands he (Mr Fowler) will be content. Indeed,
he goes so far as to declare that on a desert island,
without a human creature to share its solitude
with him, he would be happy enough if only wag-
tails were there to keep him company. Mr Fowler
is not joking ; he tells us frankly what he thinks
and feels, and when we come to consider the matter
seriously, as he wishes us to do, we discover that

169

160 BIRDS AND MAN

there is nothing astonishing in his confession — that
his mental attitude is capable of being explained.
It is only natural, in an England from which most
of the larger birds have been banished, that he
should have become absorbed in observing and in
admiration of the small species that remain ; for
we observe and study the life that is nearest to us,
and seeing it well we are impressed by its perfec-
tion— the perfect correspondence that exists between
the creature and its surroundings — by its beauty,
grace, and other attractive qualities, as we are not
impressed by the life which is at a distance, and of
which we only obtain rare and partial glimpses.

These thoughts passed through my mind one cold,
windy day in spring, several hours of which I spent
lying on the short grass on the summit of a cliff,
watching at intervals a pair of ravens that had their
nest on a ledge of rock some distance below. Big
and solemn, and solemn and big, they certainly were,
and although inferior in this respect to eagle, pelican,
bustard, crane, vulture, heron, stork, and many an-
other feathered notable, to see them was at the same
time a pleasure and a relief. It also occurred to me
at the time that, alone on a desert island, I should be
better off with ravens than wagtails for companions ;
and this for an excellent reason. The wagtail is no

RAVENS IN SOMERSET 161

doubt a very lively, pretty, engaging creature — so
for that matter is the house fly — but between our-
selves and the small birds there exists, psychologi-
cally, a vast gulf. Birds, says Matthew Arnold, live
beside us, but unknown, and try how we will we can
find no pasages from our souls to theirs. But to
Arnold — in the poem to which I have alluded at all
events — a bird simply meant a caged canary ; he
was not thinking of the larger, more mammal-like,
and therefore more human-like, mind of the raven,
and, it may be added, of the crows generally.

The pair 1 spent so long a time in watching were
greatly disturbed at my presence on the cliff. Their
anxiety was not strange, seeing that their nest is
annually plundered in the interest of the " cursed
collector," as Sir Herbert Maxwell has taught us to
name the worst enemy of the rarer British birds.
The " worst," T say; but there is another almost if
not quite as bad, and who in the case of some species
is really worse. At intervals of from fifteen to
twenty minutes they would appear overhead utter-
ing their angry, deep croak, and, with wings out-
spread, seemingly without an effort on their part
allow the wind to lift them higher and higher until
they would look no bigger than daws ; and, after
dwelling for a couple of minutes on the air at that

162 BIRDS AND MAN

great height, they would descend to the earth again,
to disappear behind a neighbouring chff. And on
each occasion they exhibited that wonderful aerial
feat, characteristic of the raven, and rare among
birds, of coming down in a series of long drops with
closed wings. I am inclined to think that a strong
wind is necessary for the performance of this feat,
enabling the bird to fall obliquely, and to arrest the
fall at any moment by merely throwing out the wings.
At any rate, it is a fact that I have never seen this
method of descent used by the bird in calm weather.
It is totally different to the tumbhng down, as if
wounded, of ravens when two or more are seen toying
with each other in the air — a performance which is
also practised by rooks and other species of the crow
family. The tumbling feat is indulged in only when
the birds are playing, and, as it would appear, solely
for the fun of the thing ; the feat I am describing
has a use, as it enables the bird to come down from a
great height in the air in the shortest time and with
the least expenditure of force possible. With the
vertical fall of a bird like the gannet on its prey we
are not concerned here, but with the descent to earth
of a bird soaring at a considerable height. Now,
many birds when rushing rapidly down appear to
close their wings, but they are never wholly closed ;

RAVENS IN SOMERSET 163

in some cases they are carried as when folded, but
are sHghtly raised from the body ; in other cases the
wing is tightly pressed against the side, but the
primaries stand out obliquely, giving the descending
bird the figure of a barbed arrow-head. This may be
seen in daws, choughs, pipits, and many other species.
The raven suddenly closes his outspread wings, just
as a man might drop his arms to his sides, and falls
head downwards through the air like a stone bird
cast down from its pedestal ; but he falls obliquely,
and, after falling for a space of twenty or thirty or
more feet, he throws out his wings and floats for a
few seconds on the air, then falls again, and then
again, until the earth is reached.

Let the reader imagine a series of invisible wires
stretched, wire above wire, at a distance of thirty or
forty yards apart, to a height of six or seven hundred
yards from the earth. Let him next imagine an
acrobat, infinitely more daring, more agile, and
graceful in action than any performer he has ever
seen, standing on the highest wire of all, in his black
silk tights, against the blue sky, his arms outstretched ;
then dropping his arms to his sides and diving through
the air to the next wire, then to the next, and so on
successively until he comes to the earth. The feat
would be similar, only on a larger scale and less

164 BIRDS AND MAN

beautiful than that of the ravens as I witnessed it
again and again from the cHff on that windy day.

While watching this magnificent display it troubled
me to think that this pair of ravens would probably
not long survive to be an ornament to the coast.
Their nest, it has been stated, is regularly robbed,
but I had been informed that in the summer of 1894
a third bird appeared, and it was then conjectured
that the pair had succeeded in rearing one of their
young. About a month later a raven was picked up
dead on the coast by a boatman, — killed, it was be-
lieved, by his fellow-ravens, — and since then two
birds only have been seen. There are only two more
pair of ravens on the Somersetshire coast, and, as
one of these has made no attempt to breed of late,
we may take it that the raven population of this
county, where the species was formerly common, has
now been reduced to two pairs.

Anxious to find out if there was any desire in the
place to preserve the birds I had been observing, I
made many inquiries in the neighbourhood, and was
told that the landlord cared nothing about them, and
that the tenant's only desire was to see the last of
them. The tenant kept a large number of sheep,
and always feared, one of his men told me, that the
ravens would attack and kill his lambs. It was true

RAVENS IN SOMERSET 165

that they had not done so as yet, but they might kill
a lamb at any time ; and, besides, there were the
rabbits — the place swarmed with them — there was
no doubt that a young rabbit was taken occasionally.

Why, then, I asked, if they were so destructive,
did not his master go out and shoot them at once ?
The man looked grave, and answered that his master
would not do the killing himself, but would be very
glad to see it done by some other person.

How curious it is to find that the old superstitions
about the raven and the evil consequences of inflicting
wilful injury on the bird still survive, in spite of the
fact that the species has been persecuted almost to
extirpation !

" Have you not read, sir," Don Quixote is made
to say, " the annals and histories of England, where-
in are renowned and famous exploits of King Arthur?
of whom there goes a tradition, and a common one,
all over that kingdom of Great Britain, that the
king did not die, but that by magic art he was trans-
formed into a raven, and that in process of time he
shall reign again and recover his kingdom and
sceptre, for which reason it cannot be proved that,
from that day to this, any Englishman has killed a
raven ? "

Now, it is certain that many Englishmen kill

166 BIRDS AND MAN

ravens, also that if the country people in England
ever had any knowledge of King Arthur they have
long forgotten it. Nevertheless this particular
superstition still exists. I have met with it in various
places, and found an instance of it only the other day
in the IVIidlands, where the raven no longer breeds.
Near Broadway, in Worcestershire, there is a farm
called " Kite's Nest," where a pair of ravens bred
annually up to about twenty- eight or thirty years
ago, when the young were taken and the nest pulled
down by three young men from the village : to this
day it is related by some of the old people that the
three young men all shortly came to bad ends. Near
Broadway an old farmer told me that since the birds
had been driven away from " Kite's Nest " he had
not seen a raven in that part of the country until one
made its appearance on his farm about four years
ago. He was out one day with his gun, cautiously
approaching a rabbit warren, when the bird suddenly
got up from the mouth of a burrow, and coming
straight to him, hovered for some seconds above his
head, not more than thirty yards from him. " It
looked as if he wanted to be shot at," said the
old man, " but he's no bird to be shot at by I.
'Twould be bad for I to hurt a raven, and no
mistake."

RAVENS IN SOMERSET 167

Continuing my inquiries about the Somerset ravens,
I found a man who was anxious that they should be
spared. His real reason was that their eggs for him
were golden eggs, for he lived near the cliff, and had
an eye always on them, and had been successful for
many years in robbing their nest, until he had at
length come to look on these birds almost as his own
property. Being his he loved them, and was glad to
talk about them to me by the hour. Among other
things he related that the ravens had for very near
neighbours on the rocks a pair of peregrine falcons,
and for several years there had always been peace
between them. At length one winter afternoon he
heard loud, angry cries, and presently two birds ap-
peared above the cliff — a raven and a falcon — en-
gaged in desperate battle and mounting higher and
higher as they fought. The raven, he said, did not
croak, but constantly uttered his harsh, powerful,
barking cry, while the falcon emitted shrill, piercing
cries that must have been audible two miles away.
At intervals as they rose, wheeling round and round,
they struck at each other, and becoming locked to-
gether fell like one bird for a considerable distance ;
then they would separate and mount again, shrieking
and barking. At length they rose to so great a
height that he feared to lose sight of them ; but the

168 BIRDS AND MAN

struggle grew fiercer ; they closed more often and
fell longer distances, until they were near the earth
once more, when they finally separated, flying away
in opposite directions. He was afraid that the birds
had fatally injm-ed each other, but after two or three
days he saw them again in their places.

It was not possible for him, he told me, to describe
the feehngs he had while watching the bu'ds. It
was the most wonderful thing he had ever witnessed,
and while the fight lasted he looked round from time
to time, straining his eyes and praying that some one
would come to share the sight with liim, and because
no one appeared he was miserable.

I could well understand his feeling, and have not
ceased to envy him his good fortune. Thinking, after
leaving him, of the sublime conflict he had described,
and of the raven's savage nature, Blake's question in
his " Tiger, tiger, burning bright " came to my mind :

Did He who made the lamb make thee ?

We can but answer that it was no other ; that when
the Supreme Artist had fashioned it with bold, free
lines out of the blue-black rock, he smote upon it
with his mallet and bade it live and speak ; and its
voice when it spoke was in accord with its appearance
and temper — the savage, human-like croak, and the

RAVENS IN SOMERSET 169

loud, angry bark, as if a deep-chested man had
barked hke a blood-hound.

How strange it seems, when we come to think of
it, that the owners of great estates and vast parks,
who are lovers of wild nature and animal life, and
should therefore have been most anxious to preserve
this bird, have allowed it to be extirpated ! "A
raven tree," says the author of the Birds of Wiltshire ,
" is no mean ornament to a park, and speaks of a wide
domain and large timber, and an ancient family ; for
the raven is an aristocratic bhd and cannot brook a
confined property and trees of a young growth. Would
that its predilection were more humoured and a
secure retreat allowed it by the larger proprietors
in the land ! "

The wide domains, the large timber, and the ancient
families survive, but the raven has vanished. It
occasionally takes a yoimg rabbit. But the human
ravens of Somerset — to wit, the men and boys who
have as little right to the rabbits — do the same. I
do not suppose that in this way fewer than ten thou-
sand to twenty thousand rabbits are annually
" picked up," or " poached " — if any one likes that
word better — in the county. Probably a larger
number. The existence of a pair of ravens on an
estate of twenty or thirty thousand acres would not

170 BIRDS ANB MAN

add much to the loss. No doubt the raven kills
other creatures that are preserved for sport, but it
does not appear that its extermination has improved
things in Somerset. Thirty years ago, when black-
game was more plentiful than it is now, the raven
was to be met with throughout the county, and was
abundant on Exmoor and the Quantocks. The old
head keeper on the Forest of Exmoor told me that
when he took the place, twenty-five years ago, ravens,
carrion crows, buzzards, and hawks of various kinds
were very abundant, and that the war he had waged
against them for a quarter of a century had well-nigh
extirpated all these species. He had kept a careful
record of all birds killed, noting the species in every
case, as he was paid for all, but the reward varied, the
largest sum being given for the largest birds — ravens
and buzzards. His book shows that in one year, a
quarter of a century ago, he was paid for fifty-two
ravens shot and trapped. After that the number
annually diminished rapidly, and for several years
past not one raven had been killed.

At present one may go from end to end of the
county, which is a long one, and find no raven ;
but in very many places, from North Devon to the
borders of Gloucestershire, one would find accounts of
" last ravens." Even in the comparatively populous

RAVENS IN SOMERSET 171

neighbourhood of Wells at least three pairs of ravens
bred annually down to about twenty years ago —
one pair in the tower on Glastonbury Tor, one on the
Ebor rocks, and one at Wookey Hole, two miles from
the town.

But Somerset is no richer in memories of " last
ravens " than most English counties. A selection
of the most interesting of such memories of ravens
expelled from their ancestral breeding-places during
the last half-century would fill a volume. In con-
clusion I will give one of the raven stories I picked up
in Somerset. It was related to me by Dr Livett,
who has been the parish doctor in Wells for over sixty
years, and was able to boast, before retiring in 1898,
that he was the oldest parish doctor in the kingdom.
About the year 1841 he was sent for to attend a
cottage woman at Priddy — a desolate little village
high up in the Mendips, four or five miles from Wells.
He had to remain some hours at the cottage, and
about midnight he was with the other members of
the family in the living-room, when a loud tapping
was heard on the glazed window. As no one in the
room moved, and the tapping continued at intervals,
he asked why some one did not open the door. They
replied that it was only the ravens, and went on to
tell him that a pair of these birds roosted every night

172 BIRDS AND IVIAN

close by, and invariably when a light was seen burn-
ing at a late hour in any cottage they would come and
tap at the window. The ravens had often been seen
doing it, and their habit was so well known that no
notice was taken of it.

CHAPTER IX

OWLS IN A VILLAGE

In November, when tramping in the Midlands, I paid
a visit to a friend who had previously informed me, in
describing the attractions of the small, remote, rustic
village he lived in, that it was haunted by owls.

The night-roving bird that inhabits the country
village and its immediate neighbourhood is, in most
cases, the white or barn owl, the owl that prefers a
loft in a barn or a church tower for home and breed-
ing-place to the hollow, ivied tree. The loft is dry
and roomy, the best shelter from the storm and the
tempest, although not always from the tempest of
man's insensate animosity. The larger wood owl
is supposed to have a different disposition, to be a
dweller in deep woods, in love with " seclusion, gloom,
and retirement," — a thorough hermit. It is not so
everywhere, certainly not in my friend's Gloucester-
shire village, where the white owl is unknown, while
the brown or wood owl is quite common. But it is
not a thickly wooded district ; the woods there are
small and widely separated. There is, however, a

173

174 BIRDS AND MAN

deal of old hedgerow timber and many large trees
scattered about the fields. These the owl inhabits
and is abundant simply because the gamekeeper is
not there with his everlasting gun ; while the farmers
look on the bird rather as a friend than an enemy.

To go a little further into the matter, there are no
gamekeepers because the landowners cannot afford
the expensive luxury of hand-reared pheasants. The
country is, or was, a rich one ; but the soil is clay so
extraordinarily stiff that four or five horses are
needed to draw a plough. It is, indeed, strange to
see five huge horses, all in line, dragging a plough, and
moving so slowly that, when looked at from a dis-
tance, they appear not to move at all. If here and
there a little wheat is still grown, it is only because,
as the farmers say, " We mun have straw." The
land has mostly gone out of cultivation, many vacant
farms could be had at about five shillings an acre, and
the landlords would in many cases, when pay day came
round, be glad to take half a crown and forgive the rest.

The fields that were once ploughed are used for
grazing, but the sheep and cattle on them are very
few ; one can only suppose that the land is not suit-
able for grazing purposes, or else that the farmers
are too poor to buy sufficient stock.

Viewed from some eminence, the wide, green

OWLS IN A VILLAGE 175

country appears a veritable waste ; the idle hedges
enclosing vacant fields, the ancient scattered trees,
the absence of life, the noonday quiet, where the
silence is only broken at interwals by some distant
bird voice, strangely impress the mind as by a vision
of a time to come and of an England dispeopled. It
is restful ; there is a melancholy charm in it similar
to that of a nature untouched by man, although not
so strong. Here, everywhere are visible the marks
of human toil and ownership — the wave-like, parallel
ridges in the fields, now mantled with grass, and the
hedges that cut up the surface of the earth into in-
numerable segments of various shapes and sizes. It
is not wild, but there is something in it of the desolaton
that accompanies wildness — a promise soon to be
fulfilled, now that grass and herbage will have freedom
to grow, and the hedges that have been trimmed for
a thousand years will no longer be restrained from
spreading.

In this district the farmhouses and cottages are
not scattered over the country. The farm-buildings,
as a rule, form part of the village ; the villages are
small and mostly hidden from sight among embower-
ing trees or in a coombe. From the high ground in
some places it is possible to gaze over many miles of
surrounding country and not see a human habitation ;

176 BIRDS AND MAN

hours may sometimes be passed in such a spot with-
out a human figure appearing in the landscape.

The village I was staying at is called Willersey ; the
nearest to it, a little over a mile away, is Saintbury.
This last was just such a pretty peaceful spot as
would tempt a world-weary man to exclaim on first
catching sight of it, " Here I could wish to end my
days." A little old-world village, set among trees
in the sheltering hollow of a deep coombe, consisting
of thatched stone cottages, grouped in a pretty dis-
order ; a modest ale-house ; a parsonage overgrown
with ivy ; and the old stone church, stained yellow
and grey with lichen, its low square tower overtopped
by the surrounding trees. It was a pleasure merely
to sit idle, thinking of nothing, on the higher part of
the green slope, with that small centre of rustic life
at my feet. For many hours of each day it was
strangely silent, the hours during which the men were
away at a distance in the fields, the children shut up
in school, and the women in their cottages. An
occasional bird voice alone broke the silence — the
distant harsh call of a crow, or the sudden startled
note of a magpie close at hand, a sound that resembles
the broken or tremulous bleat of a goat. If an apple
dropped from a tree in the village, its thud would be
audible from end to end of the httle crooked street —

OWLS IN A VILLAGE 177

in every cottage it would be known that an apple had
dropped. On some days the sound of the threshing-
machine would be heard a mile or two away ; in that
still atmosphere it was like the prolonged hum of
some large fly magnified a million times. A musical
sound, buzzing or clear, at times tremulous, rising or
falling at intervals, it would swell and fill the world,
then grow faint and die away. This is one of the
artificial sounds which, like distant chimes, harmonise
with rural scenes.

Towards evening the children were all at play,
their shrill cries and laughter sounding from all parts
of the village. Then, when the sun had set and the
landscape grew dim, they would begin to call to one
another from all sides in imitation of the wood owl's
hoot. During these autumn evenings the children
at this spot appeared to drop naturally into the owl's
note, just as in spring in all parts of England they
take to mimicking the cuckoo's call. Children are
like birds of a social and loquacious disposition in
their fondness for a set call, a penetrative cry or note,
by means of which they can converse at long dis-
tances. But they have no settled call of their own,
no cry as distinctive as that of one of the lower
animals. They mimic some natural sound. In the
case of the children of these Midland villages it is

178 BIRDS AND MAN

the wood owl's clear prolonged note ; and in every
place where some animal with a striking and imitable
voice is found its call is used by them. Where no
such sound is heard, as in large towns, they invent a
call ; that is, one invents it and the others immedi-
ately take it up. It is curious that the human species,
in spite of its long wild life in the past, should have
no distinctive call, or calls, universally understood.
Among savage tribes the men often mimic the cry
of some wild animal as a call, just as our children do
that of an owl by night, and of some diurnal species
in the daytime. Other tribes have a call of their
own, a shout or yell peculiar to the tribe ; but it is
not used instinctively — it is a mere symbol, and is
artificial, like the long-drawn piercing coo-ee of the
Australian colonists in the bush, and the abrupt Hi !
with which we hail a cab, with other forms of haloo-
ing ; or even the lupine gurgled yowl of the morning
milkman.

After dark the silence at the village was very pro-
found until about half-past nine to ten o'clock, when
the real owls, so easily to be distinguished from their
human mockers, would begin their hooting — a single,
long, uninflected note, and after it a silent interval
of eight or ten seconds ; then the succeeding longer,
much more beautiful note, quavering at first, but

OWLS IN A VILLAGE 179

growing steady and clear, with some slight modula-
tion in it. The symbols Jioo-hoo and to-whit to-who,
as Shakespeare wrote it, stand for the wood owl's
note in books ; but you cannot spell the sound of an
oaten straw, nor of the owl's pipe. There is no w in
it, and no h and no t. It suggests some wind instru-
ment that resembles the human voice, but a very un-
English one — perhaps the high-pitched somewhat
nasal voice of an Arab intoning a prayer to Allah.
One cannot hit on the precise instrument, there are
so many ; perhaps it is obsolete, and the owl was
taught his song by lovers in the long ago, who wooed
at twilight in a forgotten tongue.

And gave the soft winds a voice,
With instruments of unremembered forms.

No, that cannot be ; for the wood owl's music is

doubtless older than any instrument made by hands

to be blown by human lips. Listening by night to

their concert, the many notes that come from far

and near, human-like, yet airy, delicate, mysterious,

one could imagine that the sounds had a meaning

and a message to us ; that, like the fairy-folk in Mr

Yeats' s Celtic lyric, the singers were singing —

We who are old, old and gay,

0, so old ;
Thousands of years, thousands of years,

If all were told !

180 BIRDS AND MAN

The fairies certainly have a more understandable
way of putting it than the geologists and the anthro-
pologists when we ask them to tell us how long it is
since Palaeolithic man listened to the hooting of the
wood owl. Has this sound the same meaning for us
that it had for him — the human being that did not
walk erect, and smile, and look on heaven, but went
with a stoop, looking on the earth ? No, and Yes.
Standing alone under the great trees in the dark still
nights, the sound seems to increase the feeling of
loneliness, to make the gloom deeper, the silence
more profound. Turning our visions inward on such
occasions, we are startled with a glimpse of the night-
side of nature in the soul : we have with us strange
unexpected guests, fantastic beings that are in no way
related to our lives ; dead and buried since child-
hood, they have miraculously been restored to life.
When we are back in the candlelight and fireHght, and
when the morrow dawns, these children of night and
the unsubstantial appearance of things

fade away
Into the light of common day.

The villagers of Saintbury are, however, still in a
somewhat primitive mental condition ; the light of
common day does not dehver them from the presence
of phantoms, as the following instance will show.

OWLS IN A VILLAGE 181

Near Willersey there is a group of very large old
elm-trees which is a favourite meeting-place of the
owls, and one very dark starless night, about ten
o'clock, I had been listening to them, and after they
ceased hooting I remained for half an hour standing
motionless in the same place. At length, in the
direction of Saintbury, I heard the dull sound of
heavy stumbling footsteps coming towards me over
the rough, ridgy field. Nearer and nearer the man
came, until, arriving at the hedge close to which I
stood, he scrambled through, muttering maledictions
on the thorns that scratched and tore him ; then,
catching sight of me at a distance of two or three
yards, he started back and stood still very much
astonished at seeing a motionless human figure at
that spot. I greeted him, and, to explain my
presence, remarked that I had been listening to
the owls.

" Owls ! — listening to the owls ! " he exclaimed,
staring at me. After a while he added, " We have
been having too much of the owls over at Saintbury."
Had I heard, he asked, about the young woman who
had dropped down dead a week or two ago, after
hearing an owl hooting near her cottage in the day-
time ? Well, the owl had been hooting again in the
same tree, and no one knew who it was for and what

182 BIRDS AND MAN

to expect next. The village was in an excited state
about it, and all the children had gathered near the
tree and thrown stones into it, but the owl had stub-
bornly refused to come out.

That about the young woman he had spoken of is
a queer little story to read in this enlightened land-
She was apparently in very good health, a wife, and
the mother of a small child ; but a few weeks before
her sudden death a strange thing occurred to trouble
her mind. One afternoon, when sitting alone in her
cottage taking tea, she saw a cricket come in at the
open door, and run straight into the middle of the
room. There it remained motionless, and without
stirring from her seat she took a few moist tea-leaves
and threw them down near the welcome guest. The
cricket moved up to the leaves, and when it touched
them and appeared just about to begin sucking their
moisture, to her dismay it turned aside, ran away out
at the door, and disappeared. She informed all her
neighbours of this startling occurrence, and sadly
spoke of an aunt who was living at another village
and was kno^vn to be in bad health. " It must be
for her," she said ; " we'll soon be hearing bad news
of her, I'm thinking. But no bad news came, and
when she was beginning to beheve that the strange
cricket that had refused to remain in the house had

OWLS IN A VILLAGE 183

proved a false prophet, the warning of the owl came
to startle her afresh. At noonday she heard it hoot-
ing in the great horse-chestnut overgrown with ivy
that stands at the roadside, close to her cottage.
The incident was discussed by the villagers with their
usual solemnity and head-shakings, and now the
young woman gave up all hopes of her sick aunt's re-
covery ; for that one of her people was going to die
was certain, and it could be no other than that ailing
one. And, after all, the message and warning was
for her and not the axuit. Not many days after the
owl had hooted in broad daylight, she dropped down
dead in her cottage while engaged in some domestic
work.

On the following morning I went with the friend
I was visiting at Willersey to Saintbury, and the
story heard overnight was confirmed. The owl had
been hooting in the daytime in the same old horse-
chestnut tree from which it had a short time ago
foretold the young woman's death. One of the
villagers, who was engaged in repairing the thatch
of a cottage close to the tree, informed us that the
owl's hooting had not troubled him in the least.
Owls, he truly said, often hoot in the daytime during
the autumn months, and he did not believe that it
meant death for some one.

184 BIRDS AND MAN

This sceptical fellow, it is hardly necessary to say,
was a young man who had spent a good deal of his
time away from the village.

At Willersey, a Mr Andrews, a lover of birds who
owns a large garden and orchard in the village, gave
me an entertaining account of a pet wood owl he once
had. He had it as a young bird and never confined
it. As a rule it spent most of the daylight hours in
an apple loft, coming forth when the sun was low to
fly about the grounds until it found him, when it
would perch on his shoulder and spend the evening in
his company. In one thing this owl differed from
most pet bu'ds which are allowed to have their liberty :
he made no difference between the people of the house
and those who were not of it ; he would fly on to any-
body's shoulder, although he only addressed his
hunger-cry to those who were accustomed to feed him.
As he roamed at will all over the place he became
well known to every one, and on account of his beauty
and perfect confidence he grew to be something of a
village pet. But short days with long, dark evenings
— and how dark they can be in a small, tree- shaded,
lampless village ! — wrought a change in the public
feeling about the owl. He was always abroad in the
evening, gliding about unseen in the darkness on
downy silent wings, and very suddenly dropping on

OWLS IN A VILLAGE 185

to the shoulder of any person — man, woman, or
child — who happened to be out of doors. Men would
utter savage maledictions when they felt the demon
claws suddenly clutch them ; girls shrieked and fled
to the nearest cottage, into which they would rush,
palpitating with terror. Then there would be a
laugh, for it was only the tame owl ; but the same
terror would be experienced on the next occasion, and
young women and children were afraid to venture out
after nightfall lest the ghostly creature with luminous
eyes should pop down upon them.

At length, one morning the bird came not back
from his night-wandering, and after two days and
nights, during which he had not been seen, he was
given up for lost. On the third day Mr Andrews
was in his orchard, when, happening to pass near
a clump of bushes, he heard the owl's note of re-
cognition very faintly uttered. The poor bird had
been in hiding at that spot the whole time, and
when taken up was found to be in a very weak
condition and to have one leg broken. No doubt
one of the villagers on whose shoulders it had sought
to alight, had struck it down with his stick and
caused its injury. The bone was skilfully repaired
and the bird tenderly cared for, and before long
he was well again and strong as ever ; but a change

186 BIRDS AND MAN

had come over his disposition. His confidence in
his human fellow- creatures was gone ; he now
regarded them all — even those of the house — with
suspicion, opening wide his eyes and drawing a
little back when any person approached him. Never
more did he alight on any person's shoulder, though
his evenings were spent as before in flying about
the village. Insensibly his range widened and he
became wilder. Human companionship, no longer
pleasant, ceased to be necessary ; and at length
he found a mate who was willing to overlook his
pauper past, and with her he went away to live
his wild life.

CHAPTER X

THE STRANGE AND BEAUTIFUL SHELDRAKE

At the head of the Cheddar valley, a couple of miles
from the cathedral city of Wells, the Somerset Axe
is born, gushing out noisily, a mighty volume of
clear cold water, from a cavern in a black precipitous
rock on the hillside. This cavern is called Wookey
Hole, and above it the rough wall is draped with
ivy and fern, and many small creeping plants and
flowery shrubs rooted in the crevices ; and in the
holes in the rock the daws have their nests. They
are a numerous and a vociferous colony, but the
noise of their loudest cawings, when they rush out
like a black cloud and are most excited, is almost
drowned by the louder roar of the torrent beneath
— the river's great cry of liberty and joy on issuing
from the blackness in the hollow of the hills into
the sunshine of heaven and the verdure of that beauti-
ful valley. The Axe finishes its course fifteen miles
away, for 'tis a short river, but they are pleasant
miles in one of the fairest vales in the west of
England, rich in cattle and in corn. And at the

187

188 BIRDS AND MAN

point where it flows into the Severn Sea stands
Brean Down, a huge isolated hill, the last of the
Mendip range on that side. It has a singular
appearance : it might be hkened in its form to a
hippopotamus standing on the flat margin of an
African lake, its breast and mouth touching the
water, and all its body belly-deep in the mud; it is,
in fact, a hill or a promontory united to the main-
land by a strip of low flat land — a huge, oblong,
saddle-backed hill projected into the sea towards
Wales. Down at its foot, at the point where it
touches the mainland, close to the mouth of the
Axe, there is a farmhouse, and the farmer is the
tenant of the entire hill, and uses it as a sheep-walk.
The sheep and rabbits and birds are the only in-
habitants. I remember a delightful experience I
had one cold windy but very bright spring morning
near the farmhouse. There is there, at a spot where
one is able to ascend the steep hill, a long strip of
rock that looks like the wall of a gigantic ruined
castle, rough and black, draped mth ancient ivy
and crowned with furze and bramble and thorn.
Here, coming out of the cold wind to the shelter of
this giant ivy-draped black wall, I stood still to
enjoy the sensations of warmth and a motionless
air, when high above appeared a swift-moving little

STRANGE AND BEAUTIFUL SHELDRAKE 189

cloud of linnets, seemingly blown across the sky by
the gale ; but quite suddenly, when directly over
me, the birds all came straight down, to drop like
a shower of small stones into the great masses of
ivy and furze and bramble. And no sooner had
they settled, vanishing into that warm and windless
greenery, than they simultaneously burst into such
a concert of sweetest wild linnet music, that I was
enchanted, and thought that never in all the years
I had spent in the haunts of wild birds had I heard
anything so fairy-like and beautiful.

On this hill, or down, at the highest point, you
have the Severn Sea before you, and, beyond, the
blue mountains of Glamorganshire, and, on the shore,
the town of Cardiff made beautiful by distance,
vaguely seen in the blue haze and shimmering sun-
hght hke a dream city. On your right hand, on
your own side of the narrow sea, you have a good
view of the big young growing town of Weston-
super-Mare — Bristol's Margate or Brighton, as it
has been called. It is built of Bath stone, and at
this distance looks grey, darkened with the slate
roofs, and a little strange ; but the sight is not un-
pleasant, and if you wish to retain that pleasant
impression, go not nearer to it than Brean Down,
since on a closer view its aspect changes, and it is

190 BIRDS AND MAN

simply ugly. On your left hand you look over
long miles, long leagues, of low flat country, ex-
tending to the Parret River, and beyond it to the
blue Quantoek range. That low land is on a level
with the sea, and is the flattest bit of country in
England, not even excepting the Ely district.
Apart from the charm which flatness has in itself
for some persons — it has for me a very great charm
on account of early associations — there is much
here to attract the lover of nature. It is the chief
haunt and paradise of the reed warbler, one of our
sweetest songsters, and here his music may be heard
amid more perfect surroundings than in any other
haunt of the bird known to me in England.

This low level strip of country is mostly pasture-
land, and is drained by endless ditches, full of reeds
and sedges growing in the stagnant sherry- coloured
water ; dwarf hawthorn grows on the banks of the
ditches, and is the only tree vegetation. Standing
on one of the wide flat green fields or spaces, at a
distance from the sandy dyke or ditch, it is strangely
silent. Unless a lark is singing near, there is no
sound at all ; but it is wonderfuUy bright and
fragrant where the green level earth is yellowed
over with cowslips, and you get the deliciousness
of that flower in fullest measure. On coming to

STRANGE AND BEAUTIFUL SHELDRAKE 191

the dyke you are no longer in a silent land with
fragrance as its principal charm — you are in the
midst of a perpetual flow and rush of sound. You
may sit or lie there on the green bank by the hour
and it will not cease ; and so sweet and beautiful
is it, that after a day spent in rambling in such a
place with these delicate spring delights, on return-
ing to the woods and fields and homesteads the
songs of thrush and blackbird sound in the ear as
loud and coarse as the cackling of fowls and geese.

It is in this district, from Brean Down westwards
along the coast to Dunster, that I have been best
able to observe and enjoy the beautiful sheldrake
— almost the only large bird which is now permitted
to exist in Somerset.

The sheldrake of the British Islands, called the
common sheldrake (or sheld-duck) in the natural
history books, for no good reason, since there is but
one, is now becoming common enough as an orna-
mental waterfowl. It is to be seen in so many
parks and private grounds all over the country
that the sight of it in its conspicuous plumage must
be pretty familiar to people generally. And many
of those who know it best as a tame bird would,
perhaps, say that the descriptive epithets of strange
and beautiful do not exactly fit it. They would

192 BIRDS AND MAN

say that it has a striking appearance, or that it is
pecuUar and handsome in a curious way ; or they
might describe it as an abnormally slender and
elegant-looking Aylesbury duck, whiter than that
domestic bird, with a crimson beak and legs, dark-
green glossy head, and sundry patches of chestnut-
red and black on its snowy plumage. In calling it
" strange " I was thinking of its manners and cus-
toms rather than of the singularity of its appearance.
As to its beauty, those who know it in a state of
nature, in its haunts on the sea coast, will agree
that it is one of the handsomest of our large wild
birds. It cannot now be said that it is common,
except in a few favoured localities. On the south
coast it is all but extinct as a breeding species, and
on the east side of England it is becoming increas-
ingly rare, even in spots so well suited to it as Holy
Island, and the coast at Bamborough Castle, with
its great sand-hills. These same liills that look on
the sea, and are greener than ivy with the ever-
lasting green of the rough marram grass that
covers them, would be a very paradise to the shel-
drake, but for man — vile man ! — who watches him
through a spy-glass in the breeding season to rob
him of his eggs. The persecuted bird has grown
exceedingly shy and cautious, but go he must to

STRANGE AND BEAUTIFUL SHELDRAKE 193

his burrow in the dunes, and the patient watcher
sees him at a great distance on account of his con-
spicuous white plumage, and marks the spot, then
takes his spade to dig down to the hidden eggs.

On the Somerset coast the bird is not so badly
off, and I have had many happy days with him
there. Simply to watch the birds at feed, when
the tide goes out and they are busy searching for
the small marine creatures they live on among the
stranded seaweed, is a great pleasure. At such
times they are most active and loquacious, utter-
ing a variety of wild goose-like sounds, frequently
rising to pursue one another in circles, or to fly up
and down the coast in pairs, or strings of half a
dozen birds, with a wonderfully graceful flight.
If, after watching this sea-fowl by the sea, a person
will go to some park water to look on the same bird,
pinioned and tame, sitting or standing, or swim-
ming about in a quiet, listless way, he will be amazed
at the difference in its appearance. The tame
bird is no bigger than a domestic duck ; the wild
sheldrake, flying about in the strong sunshine,
looks almost as large as a goose. A similar illusion
is produced in the case of some other large birds.
Thus, the common buzzard, when rising in circles
high above us, at times appears as big as an eagle.

194 BIRDS AND MAN

and it has been conjectured that this magnifying
effect, which gives something of subhmity to the
soaring buzzard, is caused by the sunhght passing
through the semi-translucent wing and tail feathers.
In the case of the sheldrake, the exaggerated size
may be an effect of strong sunlight on a flying white
object. Seen on the wing at a distance the plum-
age appears entirely of a surpassing whiteness, the
dark patches of chestnut, black, and deep green
colour showing only when the bird is near, or when
it alights and folds its white wings.

When the tide has covered their feeding-ground
on the coast, the sheldrakes are accustomed to visit
the low green pasture-lands, and may be seen in
small flocks feeding like geese on the clover and
grass. Here one day I saw about a dozen sheld-
rakes in the midst of an immense congregation of
rooks, daws, and starlings feeding among some
cows. It was a curious gathering, and the red
Devons, shining white sheldrakes, and black rooks
on the bright green grass, produced a singular effect.

Best of all it is to observe the birds when breed-
ing in May. Brean Down is an ancient favourite
breeding- site, and the birds breed there in the
rabbit holes, and sometimes under a thick furze-
bush on the ground. At another spot on this coast

STRANGE AND BEAUTIFUL SHELDRAKE 195

I have had the rare good fortune to find a number
of pairs breeding at one spot on private enclosed
land, where I could approach them very closely,
and watch them any day for hours at a stretch,
studying their curious sign- language, about which
nothing, to my knowledge, has hitherto been written.
There were about thirty pairs, and their breeding-
holes were mostly rabbit-burrows scattered about
on a piece of sandy ground, about an acre and a
half in extent, almost surrounded by water. When
I watched them the birds were laying ; and at
about ten o'clock in the morning they would begin
to come in from the sea in pairs, all to settle down
at one spot ; and by creeping some distance at the
waterside among the rushes, I could get within
forty yards of them, and watch them by the hour
without being discovered by them. In an hour
or so there would be forty or fifty birds forming
a flock, each couple always keeping close together,
some sitting on the short grass, others standing,
all very quiet. At length one bird in the flock, a
male, would all at once begin to move his head in
a slow, measured manner from side to side, like a
pianist swaying his body in time to his own music.
If no notice was taken of this motion by the duck
sitting by his side dozing on the grass, the drake,

196 BIRDS AND MAN

would take a few steps forward and place himself
directly before her, so as to compel her to give
attention, and rock more vigorously than ever,
haranguing her, as it were, although without words ;
the meaning of it all being that it was time for her
to get up and go to her burrow to lay her egg. I
do not know any other species in which the male
takes it on himself to instruct his mate on a domestic
matter which one would imagine to be exclusively
within her own province ; and some ornithologists
may doubt that I have given a right explanation
of these curious doings of the sheldrake. But
mark what follows : The duck at length gets up,
in a lazy, reluctant way, perhaps, and stretches a
wing and a leg, and then after awhile sways her
head two or three times, as if to say that she is
ready. At once the drake, followed by her, walks
off, and leads the way to the burrow, which may
be a couple of hundred yards away ; and during
the walk she sometimes stops, whereupon he at
once turns back and begins the swaying motion
again. At last, arriving at the mouth of the burrow,
he steps aside and invites her to enter, rocking him-
self again, and anon bending his head down and
looking into the cavity, then drawing back again;
and at last, after so much persuasion on his part.

STRANGE AND BEAUTIFUL SHELDRAKE 197

she lowers her head, creeps quietly down and dis-.
appears within. Left alone, the drake stations
himself at the burrow's mouth, with head raised
hke a sentinel on duty ; but after five or ten
minutes he slowly walks back to the flock, and
settles down for a quiet nap among his fellows.
They are all married couples ; and every drake
among them, when in some mysterious way he knows
the time has come for the egg to be laid, has to
go through the same long ceremonious performance,
with variations according to his partner's individual
disposition.

It is amusing to see at intervals a pair march off
from the flock ; and one wonders whether the
others, whose turn wiU come by and by, pass any
remarks ; but the dumb conversation at the
burrow's mouth is always most delightful to wit-
ness. Sometimes the lady bird exhibits an extreme
reluctance, and one can imagine her saying, " t have
come thus far just to please you, but you'll never
persuade me to go down into that horrid dark hole.
If I must lay an egg, I'll just drop it out here on
the grass and let it take its chance."

It is rather hard on the drake ; but he never
loses his temper, never boxes her ears with his
carmine red beak, or thrashes her with his shining

198 BIRDS AND MAN

white wings, nor does he teU her that she is just
Hke a woman — an illogical fool. He is most gentle
and considerate, full of distress and sympathy for
her, and tells her again what he has said before,
but in a different way ; he agrees with her that it
is dark and close down there away from the sweet
sunlight, but that it is an old, old custom of the
sheldi'akes to breed in holes, and has its advant-
ages ; and that if she will only overcome her natural
repugnance and fear of the dark, in that long narrow
tunnel, when she is once settled down on the nest
and feels the cold eggs growing warm again under
her warm body she will find that it is not so bad
after all.

And in the end he prevails ; and bowing her
pretty head she creeps quietly down and disappears,
while he remains on guard at the door — for a little
while.

CHAPTER XI

GEESE : AN APPRECIATION AND A MEMORY

One November evening, in the neighbourhood
of Lyndhurst, I saw a flock of geese marching in
a long procession, led, as their custom is, by a
majestical gander ; they were coming home from
their feeding-ground in the forest, and when I
spied them were approaching theh owner's cottage.
Arrived at the wooden gate of the garden in front
of the cottage, the leading bird drew up square
before it, and with repeated loud screams demanded
admittance. Pretty soon, in response to the
summons, a man came out of the cottage, walked
briskly down the garden path and opened the gate,
but only wide enough to put his right leg through ;
then, placing his foot and knee against the leading
bird, he thrust him roughly back ; as he did so
three young geese pressed forward and were allowed
to pass in ; then the gate was slammed in the face
of the gander and the rest of his followers, and the
man went back to the cottage. The gander's in-
dignation was fine to see, though he had most

199

200 BIRDS AND MAN

probably experienced the same rude treatment
on many previous occasions. Drawing up to the
gate again he called more loudly than before ; then
deliberately lifted a leg, and placing his broad
webbed foot hke an open hand against the gate
actually tried to push it open ! His strength was
not sufficient ; but he continued to push and to
call until the man returned to open the gate and
let the birds go in.

It was an amusing scene, and the behaviour of
the bird struck me as characteristic. It was this
lofty spirit of the goose and strict adhesion to his
rights, as well as his noble appearance and the
stately formality and deliberation of his conduct,
that caused me very long ago to respect and
adnui'e him above all our domestic buds. Doubtless
from the aesthetic point of view other domesticated
species are his superiors in some things : the mute
swan, " floating double," graceful and majestical,
with arched neck and ruffled scapulars ; the oriental
pea-fowl in his glittering mantle ; the helmeted
guinea-fowl, powdered with stars, and the red cock
with his military bearing — a shining EHzabethan
knight of the feathered world, singer, lover, and
fighter. It is hardly to be doubted that, mentally,
the goose is above all these ; and to my mind his,

GEESE 201

too, is the nobler figure ; but it is a very familiar
figure, and we have not forgotten the reason of its
presence among us. He satisfies a material want
only too generously, and on this account is too
much associated in the mind with mere flavours.
We keep a swan or a peacock for ornament ; a
goose for the table — he is the Michaelmas and
Christmas bird. A somewhat similar debasement
has fallen on the sheep in Australia. To the man
in the bush he is nothing but a tallow- elaborating
organism, whose destiny it is to be cast, at maturity,
into the melting vat, and whose chief use it is to
lubricate the machinery of civiUsation. It a little
shocks, and at the same time amuses, our Colonial
to find that great artists in the parent country
admire this most unpoetic beast, and waste their
time and talents in painting it.

Some five or six years ago, in the Alpine Journal,
Sir Martin Conway gave a lively and amusing
account of his first meeting with A. D. M'Cormick,
the artist who subsequently accompanied him to
the Karakoram Himalayas. " A friend," he wrote,
" came to me bringing in his pocket a crumpled-
up water sketch or impression of a lot of geese. I
was struck by the breadth of the treatment, and I
remember saying that the man who could see such

202 BIRDS AND MAN

monumental magnificence in a flock of geese ought
to be the kind of man to paint mountains, and
render somewhat of their majesty."

I will venture to say that he looked at the sketch
or impression with the artist's clear eye, but had
not previously so looked at the living creature ;
or had not seen it clearly, owing to the mist of
images — if that be a permissible word — that floated
between it and his vision — remembered flavours
and fragrances, of rich meats, and of sage and
onions and sweet apple sauce. When this inter-
posing mist is not present, who can fail to admire
the goose — that stately bird-shaped monument of
clouded grey or crystal white marble, to be seen
standing conspicuous on any village green or common
in England ? For albeit a conquered bird, some-
thing of the ancient wild and independent spirit
survives to give him a prouder bearing than we
see in his fellow feathered servants. He is the
least timid of our domestic birds, yet even at a
distance he regards your approach in an attitude
distinctly reminiscent of the grey-lag goose, the
wariest of wild fowl, stretching up his neck and
standing motionless and watchful, a sentinel on
duty. Seeing him thus, if you deliberately go
near him he does not slink or scuttle away, as other

GEESE 203

domestic birds of meaner spirits do, but boldly
advances to meet and challenge you. How keen
his senses are, how undimmed by ages of captivity
the ancient instinct of watchfulness is in him, every
one must know who has slept in lonely country
houses. At some late hour of the night the sleeper
was suddenly awakened by the loud screaming of
the geese ; they had discovered the approach of
some secret prowler, a fox perhaps, or a thievish
tramp or gipsy, before a dog barked. In many a
lonely farmhouse throughout the land you will be
told that the goose is the better watch-dog.

When we consider this bird purely from the
aesthetic point if view — and here I am speaking of
geese generally, all of the thirty species of the sub-
family Anseringe, distributed over the cold and
temperate regions of the globe — we find that several
of them possess a rich and beautiful colouring, and,
if not so proud, often a more graceful carriage than
our domestic bird, or its original, the wild grey-
lag goose. To know these birds is to greatly admire
them, and we may now add that this admiration
is no new thing on the earth. It is the belief
of distinguished Egyptologists that a fragmentary
fresco, discovered at Medum, dates back to a time
at least four thousand years before the Christian

204 BIRDS AND MAN

era, and is probably the oldest picture in the world.
It is a representation of six geese, of three different
species, depicted with marvellous fidelity, and a
thorough appreciation of form and colouring.

Among the most distinguished in appearance
and carriage of the handsome exotic species is the
Magellanic goose, one of the five or six species of
the Antarctic genus Chloephaga, found in Pata-
gonia and the Magellan Islands. One peculiarity
of this bird is that the sexes differ in colouring, the
male being white, with grey mottlings, whereas the
prevailing colour of the female is a ruddy brown, —
a fine rich colour set off with some white, grey,
intense cinnamon, and beautiful black mottlings.
Seen on the wing the flock presents a somewhat
singular appearance, as of two distinct species
associating together, as we may see when by chance
gulls and rooks, or sheldrakes and black scoters,
mix in one flock.

This fine bird has long been introduced into this
country, and as it breeds freely it promises to be-
come quite common. I can see it any day ; but
these exiles, pinioned and imprisoned in parks, are
not quite like the Magellanic geese I was intimate
with in former years, in Patagonia and in the
southern pampas of Buenos Ayres, where they

GEESE 205

wintered every year in incredible numbers, and
were called " bustards " by the natives. To see
them again, as I have seen them, by day and all
day long in their thousands, and to listen again by
night to their wild cries, I would willingly give up,
in exchange, all the invitations to dine which I shall
receive, all the novels I shall read, all the plays I
shall witness, in the next three years ; and some
other miserable pleasures might be thrown in.
Listening to the birds when, during migration, on
a still frosty night, they flew low, following the
course of some river, flock succeeding flock all
night long ; or heard from a herdsman's hut on the
pampas, when thousands of the birds had encamped
for the night on the plain hard by, the effect of
their many voices (like that of their appearance
when seen flying) was singular, as well as beautiful,
on account of the striking contrasts in the various
sounds they uttered. On clear frosty nights they
are most loquacious, and their voices may be heard
by the hour, rising and falling, now few, and now
many taking part in the endless confabulation —
a talkee-talkee and concert in one ; a chatter as
of many magpies ; the solemn deep, honk-honJc,
the long, grave note changing to a shuddering
sound ; and, most wonderful, the fine silvery

206 BIRDS AND MAN

whistle of the male, steady or tremulous, now long
and now short, modulated a hundred ways — wilder
and more beautiful than the night-cry of the widgeon,
brighter than the voice of any shore bird, or any
warbler, thrush or wren, or the sound of any wind
instrument.

It is probable that those who have never known
the Magellanic goose in a state of nature are best
able to appreciate its fine qualities in its present
semi- domestic state in England. At all events
the enthusiasm with which a Londoner spoke of this
bird in my presence some time ago came to me rather
as a surprise. It was at the studio in St John's
Wood of our greatest animal painter, one Sunday
evening, and the talk was partly about birds,
when an elderly gentleman said that he was pleased
to meet some one who would be able to tell him
the name of a wonderful bird he had lately seen in
St James's Park. His description was vague ; he
could not say what its colour was, nor what sort of
beak it had, nor whether its feet were webbed or
not ; but it was a large tall bird, and there were
two of them. It was the way this bird had com-
ported itself towards him that had so taken him.
As he went through the park at the side of the en-
closure, he caught sight of the pair some distance

GEESE 207

away on the grass, and the birds, observing that he
had stopped in his walk to regard them, left off
feeding, or whatever they were doing, and came
to him. Not to be fed — it was impossible to be-
lieve that they had any such motive ; it was solely
and purely a friendly feeling towards him which
caused them immediately to respond to his look,
and to approach him, to salute him, in their way.
And when they had approached to within three or
four yards of where he stood, advancing with a
quiet dignity, and had then uttered a few soft low
sounds, accompanied with certain graceful gestures,
they turned and left him ; but not abruptly, with
their backs towards him — oh, no, they did nothing
so common ; they were not like other birds — they
were perfect in everything ; and, moving from him,
half paused at intervals, half turning first to one
side then the other, incHning their heads as they
went. Here our old friend rose and paced up and
down the floor, bowing to this side and that and
making other suitable gestures, to try to give
us some faint idea of the birds' gentle courtesy
and exquisite grace. It was, he assured us, most
astonishing ; the birds' gestures and motions
were those of a human being, but in their per-
fection immeasurably superior to anything of the

208 BIRDS AND MAN

kind to be seen in any Court in Europe or the
world.

The birds he had described, I told him, were no
doubt Upland Geese.

" Geese ! " he exclaimed, in a tone of surprise,
and disgust. " Are you speaking seriously ?
Geese ! Oh, no, nothing like geese — a sort of
ostrich ! "

It was plain that he had no accurate knowledge
of birds ; if he had caught sight of a kingfisher or
green woodpecker, he would probably have de-
scribed it as a sort of peacock. Of the goose, he
only knew that it is a ridiculous, awkward creature,
proverbial for its stupidity, although very good to
eat ; and it wounded him to find that any one
could think so meanly of his intelligence and taste
as to imagine him capable of greatly admiring any
bird called a goose, or any bird in any way related
to a goose.

I will now leave the subject of the beautiful
antarctic goose, the " bustard " of the horsemen
of the pampas, and " sort of ostrich " of our
Londoner, to relate a memory of my early years,
and of how I first became an admirer of the familiar
domestic goose. Never since have I looked on it
in such favourable conditions.

GEESE 209

Two miles from my home there stood an old
mud-built house, thatched with rushes, and shaded
by a few ancient half-dead trees. Here lived a
very old woman with her two unmarried daughters,
both withered and grey as their mother ; indeed,
in appearance, they were three amiable sister
witches, all very very old. The high ground on
which the house stood sloped down to an extensive
reed- and rush-grown marsh, the source of an im-
portant stream ; it was a paradise of wild fowl,
swan, roseate spoonbill, herons white and herons
grey, ducks of half a dozen species, snipe and
painted snipe, and stilt, plover and godwit ; the
glossy ibis, and the great crested blue ibis with a
powerful voice. All these interested, I might say
fascinated, me less than the tame geese that spent
most of their time in or on the borders of the marsh
in the company of the wild birds. The three old
women were so fond of their geese that they would
not part with one for love or money ; the most
they would ever do would be to present an egg, in
the laying season, to some visitor as a special mark
of esteem.

It was a grand spectacle, when the entire flock,
numbering upwards of a thousand, stood up on
the marsh and raised their necks on a person's

210 BIRDS AND MAN

approach. It was grand to hear them, too, when,
as often happened, they all burst out in a great
screaming concert. I can hear that mighty uproar
now !

With regard to the character of the sound : we
have seen in a former chapter that the poet Cowper
thought not meanly of the domestic grey goose as
a vocalist, when heard on a common or even in a
farmyard. But there is a vast difference in the
effect produced on the mind when the sound is
heard amid its natural sm*roundings in silent desert
places. Even hearing them as I did, from a dis-
tance, on that great marsh, where they existed
almost in a state of nature, the sound was not
comparable to that of the perfectly wild bhd in
his native haunts. The cry of the wild grey-lag
was described by Robert Gray in his Birds of the
West of Scotland. Of the bird's voice he writes :
" My most recent experiences (August 1870) in the
Outer Hebrides remind me of a curious effect which
I noted in connection with the call-note of this
bird in these quiet solitudes. I had reached South
Uist, and taken up my quarters under the hospit-
able roof of Mr Birnie, at Grogarry . . . and in
the stillness of the Sabbath morning following my
airival was aroused from sleep by the cries of the

GEESE 211

grey-lags as they flew past the house. Their voices,
softened by distance, sounded not unpleasantly,
reminding me of the clanging of church bells in
the heart of a large town."

It is a fact, I think, that to many minds the mere
wildness represented by the voice of a great wild
bird in his lonely haunts is so grateful, that the
sound itself, whatever its quality may be, delights,
and is more than the most beautiful music. A
certain distinguished man of letters and Church
dignitary was once asked, a friend tells me, why
he lived away from society, buried in the loneliest
village on the dreary East coast ; at that spot
where, standing on the flat desolate shore you look
over the North Sea, and have no land between you
and far Spitzbergen. He answered, that he made
his home there because it was the only spot in
England in which, sitting in his own room, he could
listen to the cry of the pink-footed goose. Only
those who have lost their souls will fail to under-
stand.

The geese I have described, belonging to the
three old women, could fly remarkably well, and
eventually some of them, during their flights down
stream, discovered at a distance of about eight
miles from home the immense, low, marshy plain

212 BIRDS AND IMAN

bordering the sea-like Plata River. There were
no houses and no people in that endless green, wet
land, and they liked it so well that they visited it
more and more often, in small flocks of a dozen to
twenty birds, going and coming all day long, until
all knew the road. It was observed that when a
man on foot or on horseback appeared in sight of
one of these flocks, the birds at this distance from
home were as wary as really wild birds, and watched
the stranger's approach in alarm, and when he was
still at a considerable distance rose and flew away
beyond sight.

The old dames grieved at this wandering spirit
in their beloved birds, and became more and more
anxious for their safety. But by this time the
aged mother was fading visibly into the tomb,
though so slowly that long months went by while
she lay on her bed, a weird-looking object — I re-
member her well — leaner, greyer, more ghost-hke,
than the silent, lean, grey heron on the marsh hard
by. And at last she faded out of life, aged, it was
said by her descendants, a hundred and ten years ;
and, after she was dead, it was found that of that
great company of noble birds there remained only
a small remnant of about forty, and these were
probably incapable of sustained flight. The others

GEESE 213

returned no more ; but whether they met their
death from duck and swan shooters in the marshes,
or had followed the great river down to the sea,
forgetting their home, was never known. For
about a year after they had ceased going back,
small flocks were occasionally seen in the marshes,
very wild and strong on the wing, but even these,
too, vanished at last.

It is probable that, but for powder and shot, the
domestic goose of Europe, by occasionally taking
to a feral life in thinly- settled countries, would
ere this have become widely distributed over the
earth.

And one wonders if in the long centuries running
to thousands of years, of tame flightless existence,
the strongest impulse of the wild migrant has been
wholly extinguished in the domestic goose ? We
regard him as a comparatively unchangeable species,
and it is probable that the unexercised faculty is
not dead but sleeping, and would wake again in
favourable circumstances. The strength of the
wild bird's passion has been aptly described by
Miss Dora Sigerson in her little poem, " The Flight
of the Wild Geese." The poem, oddly enough, is
not about geese but about men — wild Irishmen
who were called Wild Geese ; but the bird's power-

214 BIRDS AND MAN

ful impulse and homing faculty are employed as
an illustration, and admirably described : —

Flinging the salt from their wings, and despair from their hearts
They arise on the breast of the storm with a cry and are gone.
When will you come home, wild geese, in your thousand

strong ? . . .
Not the fierce wind can stay your return or tumultuous

sea, . . .
Only death in his reaping could make yon return no more.

Now arctic and antarctic geese are alike in this
their devotion to their distant breeding-ground,
the cradle and true home of the species or race ;
and I will conclude this chapter with an incident
related to me many years ago by a brother who
was sheep-farming in a wild and lonely district on
the southern frontier of Buenos Ayres. Immense
numbers of upland geese in great flocks used to
spend the cold months on the plains where he had
his lonely hut ; and one morning in August in the
early spring of that southern country, some days
after all the flocks had taken their departure to
the south, he was out riding, and saw at a distance
before him on the plain a pair of geese. They
were male and female — a white and a brown bird.
Their movements attracted his attention and he
rode to them. The female was walking steadily

GEESE 215

on in a southerly direction, while the male, greatly
excited, and calUng loudly from time to time,
walked at a distance ahead, and constantly turned
back to see and call to his mate, and at intervals
of a few minutes he would rise up and fly, scream-
ing, to a distance of some hundreds of yards ; then
finding that he had not been followed, he would
return and alight at a distance of forty or fifty
yards in advance of the other bird, and begin walk-
ing on as before. The female had one wing broken,
and, unable to fly, had set out on her long journey
to the Magellanic Islands on her feet ; and her
mate, though called to by that mysterious im-
perative voice in his breast, yet would not forsake
her ; but flying a little distance to show her the
way, and returning again and again, and calling
to her with his wildest and most piercing cries,
urged her still to spread her wdngs and fly with
him to their distant home.

And in that sad, anxious way they would journey
on to the inevitable end, when a pair or family of
carrion eagles would spy them from a great dis-
tance— the two travellers left far behind by
their fellows, one flying, the other walking ; and
the first would be left to continue the journey
alone.

216 BIRDS AND MAN

Since this appreciation was written a good many
years ago I have seen much of geese, or, as it might
be put, have continued my relations with them and
have written about them too in my Adventures
among Birds (1913). In recent years it has be-
come a custom of mine to frequent Wells-next-the-
Sea in October and November just to welcome the
wild geese that come in numbers annually to winter
at that favoured spot. Among the incidents re-
lated in that last book of mine about the wild geese,
there were two or three about the bird's noble and
dignified bearing and its extraordinary intelligence,
and I wish here to return to that subject just to
tell yet one more goose story : only in this instance
it was about the domestic bird.

It happened that among the numerous letters I
received from readers of Birds and Man on its first
appearance there was one which particularly in-
terested me, from an old gentleman, a retired
schoolmaster in the cathedral city of Wells. He
was a delightful letter-writer, but by-and-bye our
correspondence ceased and I heard no more of him
for three or four years. Then I was at Wells,
spending a few days looking up and inquiring after
old friends in the place, and remembering my
pleasant letter-writer I went to call on him. Dur-

GEESE 217

ing our conversation he told me that the chapter
which had impressed him most in my book was
the one on the goose, especially all that related to
the lofty dignified bearing of the bird, its inde-
pendent spirit and fearlessness of its human masters,
in which it differs so greatly from all other domestic
birds. He knew it well ; he had been feelingly
persuaded of that proud spirit in the bird, and had
greatly desired to tell me of an adventure he had
met with, but the incident reflected so unfavour-
ably on himself, as a humane and fair-minded or
sportsmanlike person, that he had refrained. How-
ever, now that I had come to see him he would
make a clean breast of it.

It happened that in January some winters ago,
there was a very great fall of snow in England,
especially in the south and west. The snow fell
without intermission all day and all night, and on
the following morning Wells appeared half buried
in it. He was then living with a daughter who
kept house for him in a cottage standing in its own
grounds on the outskirts of the town. On attempt-
ing to leave the house he found they were shut in
by the snow, which had banked itself against the
walls to the height of the eaves. Half an hour's
vigorous spade work enabled liim to get out from

218 BIRDS AND MAN

the kitchen door into the open, and the sun in a
blue sky shining on a dazzhng wliite and silent
world. But no milkman was going his rounds,
and there would be no baker nor butcher nor any
other tradesman to call for orders. And there
were no provisions in the house ! But the milk
for breakfast was the first thing needed, and so
with a jug in his hand he went bravely out to try
and make his way to the milk shop which was not
far off.

A wall and hedge bounded his front garden on
one side, and this was now entirely covered by an
immense snowdrift, sloping up to a height of about
seven feet. It was only when he paused to look
at this vast snow heap in his garden that he caught
sight of a goose, a very big snow-white bird without
a grey spot in its plumage, standing within a few
yards of him, about four feet from the ground.
Its entire snowy whiteness with snow for a back-
ground had prevented him from seeing it until he
looked directly at it. He stood still gazing in
astonishment and admiration at this noble bird,
standing so motionless with its head raised high
that it was hke the figure of a goose carved out of
some crystalline white stone and set up at that
spot on the gUttering snowdrift. But it was no

GEESE 219

statue ; it had living eyes which without the least
turning of the head watched him and every motion
he made. Then all at once the thought came into
his head that here was something, very good
succulent food in fact, sent, he almost thought pro-
videntially, to provision his house ; for how easy
it would be for him as he passed the bird to throw
himself suddenly upon and capture it ! It had
belonged to some one, no doubt, but that great
snowstorm and the furious north-east wind had
blown it far far from its native place and it was
lost to its owner for ever. Practically it was now
a wild bird free for him to take without any qualms
and to nourish himself on its flesh while the snow
siege lasted. Standing there, jug in hand, he
thought it out, and then took a few steps towards
the bird in order to see if there was any sign of
suspicion in it ; but there was none, only he could
see that the goose without turning its head was
all the time regarding him out of the corner of one
eye. Finally he came to the conclusion that his
best plan was to go for the milk and on his return
to set the jug down by the gate when coming in,
then to walk in a careless, unconcerned manner
towards the door, taking no notice of the goose
until he got abreast of it, and then turn suddenly

220 BIRDS AND MAN

and hurl himself upon it. Nothing could be easier ;
so away he went and in about twenty minutes was
back again with the milk, to find the bird in the
same place standing as before motionless in the
same attitude. It was not disturbed at his coming
in at the gate, nor did it show the slightest dis-
position to move when he walked towards it in
his studied careless manner. Then, when within
three yards of it, came the supreme moment, and
wheeling suddenly round he hurled himself with
violence upon his victim, throwing out his arms
to capture it, and so great was the impulse he had
given himself that he was buried to the ankles in
the drift. But before going into it, in that brief
moment, the fraction of a second, he saw what
happened ; just as his hands were about to touch
it the wings opened and the bird was lifted from
its stand and out of his reach as if by a miracle.
In the drift he was like a drowning man, swallow-
ing snow into his lungs for water. For a few dread-
ful moments he thought it was all over with him ;
then he succeeded in struggling out and stood
trembling and gasping and choking, blinded with
snow. By-and-bye he recovered and had a look
round, and lo ! there stood his goose on the sum-
mit of the snow bank about three yards from the

GEESE 221

spot where it had been ! It was standing as before,
perfectly motionless, its long neck and head raised,
and was still in appearance the snow-white figure
of a carved bird, only it was more conspicuous
and impressive now, being outlined against the
blue sky, and as before it was regarding him out
of the corner of one eye. He had never, he said,
felt so ashamed of himself in his life ! If the bird
had screamed and fled from him it would not have
been so bad, but there it had chosen to remain, as
if despising his attempt at harming it too much
even to feel resentment. A most uncanny bird !
it seemed to him that it had divined his intention
from the first and had been prepared for his every
movement ; and now it appeared to him to be
saying mentally : " Have you got no more plans
to capture me in your clever brain, or have you
quite given it up ? "

Yes, he had quite, quite given it up !

And then the goose, seeing there were no more
plans, quietly unfolded its wings and rose from the
snowdrift and flew away over the town and the
cathedral away on the further side, and towards
the snow- covered Mendips ; he standing there watch-
ing it until it was lost to sight in the pale sky.

CHAPTER XII

THE DARTFORD WARBLER

HOW TO SAVE OUR RARE BIRDS

The most interesting chapter in John Burroughs'
Fresh Fields contains an account of an anxious
hurried search after a nightingale in song, at a
time of the year when that " creature of ebuUient
heart " somewhat suddenly drops into silence. A
few days were spent by the author in rushing about
the country in Surrey and Hampshire, with the
result that once or twice a few musical throbs of
sound, a trill, a short detached phrase, were heard
— just enough to convince the eager listener that
here was a vocalist beautiful beyond all others,
and that he had missed its music by appearing a
very few days too late on the scene.

During the last seven or eight years I have read
this chapter several times with undiminished in-
terest, and with a feeling of keen sympathy for
the writer in his disappointment ; for it is the
case that I, too, all this time, have been in chase

THE DARTFORD WARBLER 223

of a small British songster — a rare elusive bird,
hard to find at any time as it is to hear a nightin-
gale pour out its full song in the last week in June.
In these years I have, at every opportunity, in
spring, summer, and autumn, sought for the bird
in the southern half of England, chiefly in the
south and south-western counties. In the Mid-
lands, and in Devonshire, where he was formerly
well known, but where the authorities say he is
now extinct, I failed to find him. I found him
altogether in four counties, in a few widely- separated
localities ; in every case in such small numbers
that I was reluctantly forced to give up a long-
cherished hope that this species might yet recover
from the low state, with regard to numbers, in
which it lingers, and be permanently preserved
as a member of the British avifauna.

It would indeed hardly be reasonable to enter-
tain such a hope, when we consider that the furze
wren, or Dartford warbler, as it is named in books,
is a small, frail, insectivorous species, a feeble flyer
that must brave the winters at home ; that down
to within thirty years ago it was fairly common,
though local, in the south of England, and ranged
as far north as the borders of Yorkshire, and that
in this period it has fallen to its present state, when

224 BIRDS AND MAN

but a few pairs and small colonies, wide apart,
exist in isolated patches of furze in four or five,
possibly six, counties.

There can be no doubt that the decline of this
species, which, on account of its furze-loving habits,
must always be restricted to limited areas, is
directly attributable to the greed of private col-
lectors, who are all bound to have specimens — as
many as they can get — both of the bird and its
nest and eggs. Its strictly local distribution made
its destruction a comparatively easy task. In 1873
Gould wrote in his large work on British Birds :
" All the commons south of London, from Black-
heath and Wimbledon to the coast, were formerly
tenanted by this little bird ; but the increase in
the number of collectors has, I fear, greatly thinned
them in all the districts near the metropolis ; it is
still, however, very abundant in many parts of
Surrey and Hampshire." It did not long continue
" very abundant." Gould was shown the bird, and
supplied with specimens, by a man named Smithers,
a bird- stuff er of Churt, who was at that time col-
lecting Dartford warblers and their eggs for the
trade and many private persons, on the open heath
and gorse-grown country that lies between Farn-
ham and Haslemere. Gould in the work quoted,

THE DARTFORD WARBLER 225

adds : "As most British collectors must now be
supplied with the eggs of the furze wren, I trust
Mr Smithers will be more sparing in the future."
So little sparing was he, that when he died, but few
birds were left for others of his detestable trade
who came after him.

Three or four years ago I got in conversation
with a heath-cutter on Milford Common, a singular
and brutal-looking fellow, of the half-Gypsy Devil's
Punch-Bowl type, described so ably by Baring-
Gould in his Broom Squire. He told me that when
he was a boy, about thirty-five years ago, the furze
wren was common in all that part of the country,
until Smithers' offer of a shilhng for every clutch
of eggs, had set the boys from all the villages in the
district hunting for the nests. Many a shilling
had he been paid for the nests he found, but in a
few years the birds became rare ; and he added
that he had not now seen one for a very long time.

In Clark's Kennedy's Birds of Berkshire and
Buckinghamshire we get a glimpse of the furze
wren collecting business at an earlier date and
nearer the metropolis. In 1868 he wrote : — " The
only locality in the two counties in which this
species is at all numerous, is a common in the
vicinity of Sunninghill, where it is found breeding

226 BIRDS AND MAN

every summer, and from whence a person in the
neighbourhood obtains specimens at all times of the
year, with which to supply the London bird-stuffers."
When the district worked by Smithers, and
the neighbouring commons round Godalming,
where Newman in his Letters of Rusticus says he
had seen the " tops of the furze quite aHve with
these birds," had been depleted, other favourite
haunts of the Httle doomed furze-lover were visited,
and for a time yielded a rich harvest. In a few
years the bird was practically extirpated ; in the
sixties and seventies it was common, now there are
many young ornithologists with us who have never
seen it (in this country at all events) in a state of
nature. In some cases even persons interested in
bird hfe, some of them naturalists too, did not know
what was going on in their immediate neighbour-
hood until after the bird was gone. I met with a
case of the kind, a vey strange case indeed, in the
summer of 1899, at a place near the south coast
where the bird was common after it had been
destroyed in Surrey, but does not now exist. In
my search for information I paid a visit to the
octogenarian vicar of a small rustic village. He
was a native of the parish, and loved his home above
all places, even as White loved Selborne, and had been

THE DARTFORD WARBLER 227

a clergyman in it for over sixty years ; moreover
he was, I was told, a keen naturalist, and though
not a collector nor a writer of books, he knew every
plant and every wild animal to be found in the
parish. He better than another, I imagined, would
be able to give me some authentic local information.

I found him in his study — a tall, handsome,
white-haired old man, very feeble ; he rose, and
supporting his steps with a long staff, led me out
into the grounds and talked about nature. But his
memory, like his strength, was failing ; he seemed,
indeed, but the ruin of a man, although still of a
very noble presence. What he called the vicarage
gardens, where we strolled about among the trees,
was a place without walks, all overgrown with grass
and wildings ; for roses and dahlias he showed me
fennel, goat's-beard, henbane, and common hound's
tongue ; and when speaking of their nature he stroked
their leaves and stems caressingly. He loved these
better than the gardener's blooms, and so did I •
but I wanted to hear about the vanished birds of the
district, particularly the furze wren, which had
survived all the others that were gone.

His dim eyes brightened for a moment with old
pleasant memories of days spent in observing these
birds ; and leading me to a spot among the trees,

228 BIRDS AND MAN

from which there was a view of the open country
beyond, he pointed to a great green down, a couple
of miles away, and told me that on the other side I
would come on a large patch of furze, and that by
sitting quietly there for half an hom* or so I might
see a dozen furze wrens. Then he added : " A dozen,
did I say ? Why, I saw not fewer than forty or
fifty flitting about the bushes the very last time I
went there, and I daresay if you are patient enough
you will see quite as many."

I assured him that there were no furze wrens at
the spot he had indicated, nor anywhere in that
neighbourhood, and I ventured to add that he must
be telling me of what he had witnessed a good many
years ago. " No, not so many," he returned, " and
I am astonished and grieved to hear that the birds
are gone — four or five years, perhaps. No, it was
longer ago. You are right — I think it must be at
least fifteen years since I went to that spot the last
time. I am not so strong as I was, and for some
years have not been able to take any long walks."

Fifteen years may seem but a short space of time
to a man verging on ninety ; in the mournful story
of the extermination of rare and beautiful British
birds for the cabinet it is in reahty a long period.
Fifteen years ago the honey buzzard was a breeding

THE DARTFORD WARBLER 229

species in England, and had doubtless been so for
thousands of years. When the price of a " British-
killed " specimen rose to £25, and of a " British-
taken " egg to two or three or four pounds, the bird
quickly ceased to exist. Probably there is not a
local ornithologist in all the land who could not say
of some species that bred annually, within the
limits of his own country, that it has not been
extirpated within the last fifteen years.

In the instance just related, when the aged vicar,
sorrying at the loss of the birds, began to recall the
rare pleasure it had given him to watch them dis-
porting themselves among the furze-bushes, something
of the illusion which had been in his mind imparted
itself to mine, for I could see what he was mentally
seeing, and the fifteen years dwindled to a very
brief space of time. Like Burroughs with the night-
ingale, I, too, had arrived a few days too late on the
scene ; the " cursed collector " had been before-
hand with me, as had indeed been the case on so
many previous occasions with regard to other species.

A short time after my interview with the aged
vicar, at an inn a very few miles from the village, I
met a person who interested me in an exceedingly un-
pleasant way. He was a big repulsive- looking man in
a black greasy coat — a human animal to be avoided ;

230 BIRDS AND MAN

but I overheard him say something about rare birds
which caused me to put on a friendly air and join in
the talk. He was a Kentish man who spent most
of his time in driving about from village to village,
and from farm to farm, in the southern counties,
in search of bargains, and was prepared to buy for
cash down anything he could find cheap, from an
old teapot, or a print, or copper scuttle, to a horse,
or cart, or pig, or a houseful of furniture. He also
bought rare birds in the flesh, or stuffed, and was
no doubt in league with a good many honest
gamekeepers in those counties. I had heard of
" travellers " sent out by the great bird stuffers to
go the rounds of all the big estates in some parts of
England, but this scoundrel appeared to be a traveller
in the business on his own account. I asked him if
he had done anything lately in Dartford warblers.
He at once became confidential, and said he had
done nothing but hoped shortly to do some-
thing very good indeed. The bird, he said, was
supposed to be extinct in Kent, and on that account
specimens obtained in that county would command
a high price. Now he had but recently discovered
that a few — ^two or three pairs — existed at one spot,
and he was anxious to finish the business he had on
hand so as to go there and secure them. In answer

THE DARTFORD WARBLER 231

to further questions, he said that the birds were in
a place where they could not very well be shot, but
that made no difference ; he had a simple, effective
way of getting them without a gun, and he was sure
that not one would escape him.

On my mentioning the fact that the Kent County
Council had obtained an order for an all the year
round protection of this very bird, he looked at me
out of the corners of his eyes and laughed, but said
nothing. He took it as a rather good joke on my part.

There is not the slightest doubt that our wealthy
private collectors have created the class of injurious
wretches to which this man belonged.

To some who have glanced at a little dusty,
cut of shape mummy of a bird, labelled " Dartford
Warbler," in a museum, or private collection, or
under a glass shade, it may seem that I speak too
warmly of the pleasure which the sight of the small
furze-lover can give us. They have never seen it
in a state of nature, and probably never will. When
I consider all these British Passeres, which, seen at
their best, give most delight to the aesthetic sense —
the jay, the " British Bird of Paradise," as I have
ventured to call it, displaying his vari - coloured

232 BIRDS AND MAN

feathers at a spring-time gathering ; the yellow-
green, long- winged wood wren, most aerial and
delicate of the woodland warblers ; the kingfisher,
flashing torquoise blue as he speeds by ; the elegant
fawn-coloured, black-bearded tit, chnging to the
grey-green, swaying reeds, and springing from them
with a bell-like note ; and the rose-tinted narrow-
shaped bottle-tit as he drifts by overhead in a
flock ; the bright, lively goldfinch scattering the
silvery thistle-down on the air ; the crossbill, that
quaint little many-coloured parrot of the north,
feeding on a pine-cone ; the grey wagtail exhibiting
his graceful motions ; and the golden- crested wren,
seen suspended motionless with swiftly vibrating
wings above his mate concealed among the clustering
leaves, in appearance a great green hawk-moth, h:s
opened and flattened crest a shining, flame-coloured
disc or shield on his head, — when I consider all
these, and others, I find that the peculiar charm of
each does not exceed in degree that of the furze
wren — seen at Ms best. He is of the type of the
white-throat, but idealised ; the familiar brown,
excitable Sylvia, pretty as he is and welcome to
our hedges in April, is in appearance but a rough
study for the smaller, more delicately-fashioned
and richly-coloured Melizophilus, or furze-lover. On

THE DARTFORD WARBLER 233

account of his excessive rarity he can now be seen
at his best only by those who are able to spend many
days in searching and in watching, who have the
patience to sit motionless by the hour ; and at
length the little hideling, tired of concealment or
overcome by curosity, shows himself and comes
nearer and nearer, until the ruby red of the small
gem-like eye may been seen without aid to the
vision. A sprite-like bird in his slender exquisite
shape and his beautiful fits of excitement ; fantastic
in his motions as he flits and flies from spray to spray,
now hovering motionless in the air like the wooing
goldcrest, anon dropping on a perch, to sit jerking
his long tail, his crest raised, his throat swollen,
chiding when he sings and singing when he chides,
hke a refined and lesser sedge warbler in a
frenzy, his slate-black and chestnut-red plumage
showing rich and dark against the pure luminous
yellow of the massed furze blossoms. It is a sight
of fairy-like bird life and of flower which cannot
soon be forgotten. And I do not think that any
man who has in him any love of nature and of the
beautiful can see such a thing, and exist with its
image in his mind, and not regard with an extreme
bitterness of hatred those among us whose par-
ticular craze it is to " collect " such creatures, thereby

234 BIRDS AND MAN

depriving us and our posterity of the delight the sight
of them affords.

Of many curious experiences I have met in my
quest of the rare Httle bird, or of information con-
cerning it, I have related two or three : I have one
more to give — assuredly the strangest of all. I was out
for a day's ramble with the members of a Natural
History Society, at a place the name of which must
not be told, and was walking in advance of the
others with a Mr A., the leading ornithologist of the
county, one whose name is honourably known to all
naturahsts in the kingdom. The Dartford warbler,
he said in the course of conversation, had unhappily
long been extinct in the county. Now it happened
that among those just behind us there was another
local naturahst, also well known outside his own
county — Mr B., let us call him. When I separated
from my companion this gentleman came to my side,
and said that he had overheard some of our talk, and
he wished me to know that Mr A. was in error in
saying that the Dartford warbler was extinct in the
county. There was one small colony of three or
four pairs to be found at a spot ten to eleven miles
from where we then were ; and he would be glad
to take me to the place and show me the birds. The
existence of this small remnant had been known for

THE DARTFORD WARBLER 235

several years to half a dozen persons, who had
jealously kept the secret ; — to their great regret
they had had to keep it from their best friend and
chief supporter of their Society, Mr A., simply
because it would not be safe with him. He was
enthusiastic about the native bird hfe, the number
of species the county could boast, etc., and sooner
or later he would incautiously speak about the
Dartford warbler, and the wealthy local collectors
would hear of it, with the result that the birds would
quickly be gathered into their cabinets.

My informant went on to say that the greatest
offenders were four or five gentlemen in the place
who were zealous collectors. The county had
obtained a stringent order, with all-the-year-round
protection for its rare species. Much, too, had been
done by individuals to create a public opinion
favourable to bird protection, and among the
educated classes there was now a strong feeling
against the destruction by private collectors of all
that was best worth preserving in the local wild
bird life. But so far not the slightest effect had
been produced in the principal offenders. They
would have the rare birds, both the resident species
and the occasional visitants, and paid liberally for
all specimens. Bird-stuffers, gamekeepers — their

236 BIRDS AND MAN

own and their neighbours' — fowlers, and all those
who had a keen eye for a feathered rarity, were in
their pay ; and so the destruction went merrily
on. The worst of it was that the authors of the evil,
who were not only law-breakers themselves, but were
paying others to break the law, could not be touched ;
no one could prosecute nor openly denounce them be-
cause of their important social position in the county.
There was notliing new to me in all this : it was
an old familiar story ; I have given it fully, simply
because it is an accurate statement of what is being
done all over the country. There is not a county
in the kingdom where you may not hear of important
members of the community who are collectors of
birds and their eggs, and law-breakers, both directly
and indirectly, every day of their lives. They all
take, and pay for, every rare visitant that comes
in their way, and also require an unlimited supply
of the rarer resident species for the purpose of
exchange with other private collectors in distant
counties. In this way our finest species are gradually
being extirpated. Within the last few years we have
seen the disappearance (as breeding species) of the
raff and reeve, marsh harrier, and honey buzzard ;
and the species now on the verge of extinction, which
will soon follow these and others that have gone

THE DARTFORD WARBLER 237

before, if indeed some of them have not aheady gone,
are the sea-eagle, osprey, kite, hen harrier, Montagu's
harrier, stone curlew, Kentish plover, dotterel, red-
necked phalarope, roseate tern, bearded tit, grey-
lag goose, and great skua. These in their turn will
be followed by the chough, hobby, great black-
backed gull, furze wren, crested tit, and others.
These are the species which, as things are going, will
absolutely and for ever disappear, as residents and
breeders, from off the British Islands. Meanwhile
other species that, although comparatively rare, are
less local in their distribution, are being annually
exterminated in some parts of the country : it is
poor comfort to the bird lover in southern England
to know that many species that formerly gave life
and interest to the scene, and have lately been done
to death there, may still be met with in the wilder
districts of Scotland, or in some forest in the north
of Wales. Finally, we have among our annual
visitants a considerable number of species which
have either bred in these islands in past times (some
quite recently), or else would probably remain to
breed if they were not immediately killed on arrival —
bittern, little bittern, night heron, spoonbill, stork,
avocet, black tern, hoopoe, golden oriole, and many
others of less well-known names.

238 BIRDS AND MAN

This is the case, and that it is a bad one, and well-
nigh hopeless, no man will deny. Nevertheless, I
believe that it may be possible to find a remedy.

That " destruction of beautiful things," about
which Ruskin wrote despairingly, " of late ending
in perfect blackness of catastrophe, and ruin of all
grace and glory in the land," has fallen, and con-
tinues to fall, most heavily on the beautiful bird hfe
of our country. But the destruction has not been
unremarked and unlamented, and the existence of
a strong and widespread pubHc feeling in favour of
the preservation of our wild birds has of late shown
itself in many ways, especially in the unopposed
legislation on the subject during the last few years,
and the mllingness that Government and Parha-
ment have shown recently to consider a new Act.
There is no doubt that this feeling will grow until
it becomes too strong even for the selfish Phihs-
tines, who are bhnd to all grace and glory in
nature, and incapable of seeing anything in a rare
and beautiful bird but an object to be collected.
Those who in the years to come will inlierit the
numberless useless private collections now being
formed will make haste to rid themselves of such
unhappy legacies, by thrusting them upon local
museums, or by destroying them outright in their

THE DARTFORD WARBLER 239

anxiety to have it forgotten that one of their name
had a part in the detestable business of depriving
the land of these wonderful and beautiful forms of
life — a life which future generations would have
cherished as a dear and sacred possession.

But we cannot afford to wait : we have been
made too poor in species already, and are losing
something further every year ; we want a remedy now.

So far two suggestions have been made. One
is an alteration in the existing law, which will allow
the infliction of far heavier fines on offenders. All
those who are acquainted with collectors and their
ways will at once agree that increased penalties
will not meet the case ; that the only effect of such
an alteration in the law would be to make collectors
and the persons employed by them more careful
than they have yet found it necessary to be. The
other suggestion vaguely put forth is that something
of the nature of a private inquiry agency should
be established to find out the offenders, and that
they should be pilloried in the columns of some
widely-circulating journal, a method which has been
tried with some success in the cases of other classes
of obnoxious persons. This suggestion may be dis-
missed at once as of no value ; not one offence in a
hundred would be discovered by such means, and the

240 BIRDS AND MAN

greatest sinners, who are not infrequently the most
intelHgent men, would escape scot free.

Perhaps I should have said that three suggestions
have been made, for there is yet another, put forward
by ]Mr Richard Kearton in one of liis late books.
He is thoroughly convinced, he tells us, that the
County Council orders are perfectly useless in the
case of any and every rare bird which collectors
covet ; and on that point we are all agreed ; he
then says : " We should select a dozen species
admitted by a committee of practical ornithologists
to be in danger, and afford them personal protection
during the whole of the breeding season by placing
reliable watchers, night and day, upon the nesting-
ground."

Watchers provided and paid by individuals and
associations have been in existence these many
years, and this is undoubtedly the best plan in the
case of all species which breed in colonies. These
are mostly sea-birds — gulls, terns, cormorants, guille-
mots, razor-bills, etc. Our rare birds are distributed
over the country, and in the case of some, if a hundred
pairs of a species exist in the British Islands, a
hundred or two hundred watchers would have to be
engaged. But who that has any knowledge of what
goes on in the collecting world does not know that

THE DARTFORD WARBLER 241

the guarded birds would be the first to vanish ? I
have seen such things — pairs of rare birds breeding
in private grounds, where the keepers had strict
orders to watch over them, and no stranger could
enter without being challenged, and in a little
while they have mysteriously disappeared. The
" watcher " is good enough on the exposed sea-
coast or island where an eye is kept on his doings,
and where the large number of birds in his charge
enables him to do a little profitable stealing and
still keep up an appearance of honesty. I have
visited most of the watched colonies, and therefore
know. The watchers, who were paid a pound a
week for guarding the nests, were not chary of their
hints, and I have also been told in very plain words
that I could have any eggs I wanted.

It is hardly necessary to say here that the proposed
alteration in the law to make it protective of all
species will, so far as the private collector is con-
cerned, leave matters just as they are.

There is really only one way out of the difficulty, —
one remedy for an evil which grows in spite of
penalties and of public opinion, — namely, a law to
forbid the making of collections of British birds by
private persons. If all that has been done in and
out of Parliament since 1868 to preserve our wild

Q

242 BIRDS AND MAN

birds — not merely the common abundant species,
which are not regarded by collectors, but all species —
is not to be so much labour wasted, such a law must
sooner or later be made. It will not be denied by
any private collector, whether he cHngs to the old
delusion that it is to the advantage of science that
he should have cabinets full of " British killed "
specimens or not, — it will not be denied that the
drain on our wild bird Ufe caused by collecting is a
constantly increasing one, and that no fresh legisla-
tion on the lines of previous bird protection Acts
can arrest or diminish that drain. Thirty years
ago, when the first Act was passed, which prohibited
the slaughter of sea-birds during the breeding
season, the drain on the bird life which is valued by
collectors was far less than it is now ; not only
because there are a dozen or more collectors now
where there was one in the sixties, but also because
the business of collecting has been developed and
brought to perfection. All the localities in which
the rare resident species may be looked for are known,
while the collectors all over the country are in touch
with each other, and have a system of exchanges as
complete as it is deadly to the birds. Then there is
the money element ; bird-collecting is not only the
hobby of hundreds of persons of moderate means and

THE DARTFORD WARBLER 243

of moderate wealth, but, like horse-racing, yachting,
and other expensive forms of sport, it now attracts
the very wealthy, and is even a pastime of million-
aires. All this is a familiar fact, and clearly shows
that without such a law as I have suggested it has
now become impossible to save the best of our wild
bird Ufe.

The collectors will doubtless cry out that such
a law would be a monstrous injustice, and an un-
warrantable interference with the liberty of the
subject ; that there is really no more harm in collect-
ing birds and their eggs than in collecting old
prints, Guatemalan postage stamps, samplers, and
first editions of minor poets ; that to compel them
to give up their treasures, which have cost them in-
finite pains and thousands of pounds to get together,
and to abandon the pursuit in which their happiness
is placed, would be worse than confiscation and down-
right tyranny ; that the private collectors cannot
properly be described as law-breakers and injurious
persons, since they count among their numbers
hundreds of country gentlemen of position, pro-
fessional men (including clergymen), noblemen,
magistrates, and justices of the peace, and dis-
tinguished naturalists — all honourable men.

To put in one word on this last very delicate

244 BIRDS AND MAN

point : Where, in collecting, does the honourable
man draw the line, and sternly refuse to enrich his
cabinet with a long-wished-for specimen of a rare
British species ? — a specimen " in the flesh," not
only " British killed " but obtained in the county ;
not killed wantonly, nor stolen by some poaching
rascal, but unhappily shot in mistake for some-
thing else by an ignorant young under-keeper, who,
in fear of a wigging, took it secretly to a friend at a
distance and gave it to him to get rid of. The story
of the unfortunate killing of the rare bird varies in
each case when it has to be told to one whose standard
of morality is very high even with regard to his hobby.
My experience is, that where there are collectors
who are men of means, there you find their parasites,
who know how to treat them, and who feed on their
enthusiasms.

In my rambles about the country during the last
few years, I have neglected no opportunity of con-
versing with land-owners and large tenants on this
subject, and, with the exception of one man, all those
I have spoken to agreed that owners generally —
not nine in every ten, as I had put it, but ninety-nine
in every hundred — would gladly welcome a law to
put down the collecting of British birds by private
persons. The one man who disagreed is the owner

THE DARTFORD WARBLER 245

of an immense estate, and he was the bitterest of all
in denouncing the scoundrels who came to steal his
birds ; and if a law could be made to put an end to
such practices he would, he said, be delighted ; but
he drew the line at forbidding a man to collect birds
on his own property. " No, no ! " he concluded ;
" that would be an interference with the liberty of the
subject." Then it came out that he was a collector
himself, and was very proud of the rare species in
his collection ! If I had known that before, I should
not have gone out of my way to discuss the subject
with him.

Clearly, then, there is a very strong case for
legislation. How strong the case is I am not yet
able to show, my means not having enabled me to
carry out an intention of discussing the subject
with a much greater number of landowners, and of
addressing a circular later stating the case to all
the landlords and shooting-tenants in the country.
That remains to be done ; in the meantine this
chapter will serve to bring the subject to the
attention of a considerable number of persons who
would prefer that our birds should be preserved
rather than that they should be exterminated in
the interests of a certain number of individuals whose
amusement it is to collect such objects.

246 BIRDS AND MAN

That a law on the Hnes suggested will be made
sooner or later is my behef : that it may come soon
is my hope and prayer, lest we have to say of the
Dartford warbler, and of twenty other species named
in this chapter, as we have had to say of so many
others that have gone

The beautiful is vanished and returns not.

Note, — The foregoing chapter, albeit written so many years
ago, is still "up-to-date" — still represents without a shadow of
a shade of difference the state of the case. The extermination
of our rare birds and " occasional visitors " still goes merrily
on in defiance of the law, and the worst offender's are still received
with open arms by the British Ornithologists' Union. Indeed,
that Society, from the point of view of many of its members
would have no raison rf' etre if membership were denied to the
private collector of rare " British killed " birds and their eggs
and to the " scientific " ornithologist whose mission is to add
several new species annually to the British list. They still
dine together and exhibit their specimens to one another. On
the last occasion of my attending one of these meetings a member
exhibited a small bird " in the flesh " — a bird from some far
country which had been shot somewhere on the east coast and
was so knocked to pieces by the shot that the ornithologists
had great difficulty in identifying it. Although a collector
himself he was anxious to dispose of the specimen, but none of
his brother collectors would give him a five-pound note for it
owing to its condition. It was handed round and examined
and discussed by all the authorities present. I stood apart,
looking at a group of ornithologists bending over the shattered

THE DARTFORD WARBLER 247

specimen, all talking and arguing, when another member wlio
by cbance was not a collector moved to my side and whispered
in my ear : " Just like a lot of little children ! "

Is it not time to say to these " little children " that they
must find a new toy — a fresh amusement to fill their vacant
hours : that birds — living flying birds — are a part of nature,
of this visible world in this island, the dwelling-place of some
forty-five or fifty millions of souls ; that these millions have a
right in the country's wild life too — surely a better one than
that of a few hundreds of gentlemen of leisure who have money
to hire gamekeepers, bird-stuffers, wild-fowlers, and many
others, to break the law for them, and to take the punishment
when any is given ?

By saying it will be understood that I mean enacting a law
to prohibit private collection. It is surely time. But what
prospects are there of such an Act being passed by a Parliament
which has spent six years playing with a Plumage Prohibition
Bill!

Well, just now we have a committee appointed by the Govern-
ment to consider the whole question of bird protection with a
view to fresh legislation. Will this committee recommend the
one and only way to put a stop to the continuous destruction
of our rarer birds ? I don't think so. For such a law
would be aimed at those of their own class, at their friends, at
themselves.

At the end of the chapter I gave an account of an interview
I had with a great landowner who happened to be a collector,
and who cried out that such a law as the one I suggested would
be an unwarrantable interference with the liberty of the subject.
Another interview years later was with one who is not only a
landowner, the head of a branch of a great family in the land,
but a great power in the political world as well, and, finally,
{not wonderful to relate) a great " protector of birds." " No,"

248 BIRDS AND MAN

he said warmly, " I will not for a moment encourage you to
hope that any good will come of such a proposal. If any
person should bring in such a measure I would do everything
in my power to defeat it. I am a collector myself and I am
perfectly sure that such an interference with the liberty of the
subject would not be tolerated."

That, I take it, is or will be the attitude of the committee
now considering the subject of our wild bird life and its better
protection.

CHAPTER XIII

VERT — VERT ; OR PARROT GOSSIP

I AM not an admirer of pet parrots. To me, and I
have made the discovery that to many others too,
it is a depressing experience, on a first visit to nice
people, to find that a parrot is a member of the
family. As a rule he is the most important member.
When I am compelled to stand in the admiring
circle, to look on and to listen while he exhibits his
weary accomplishments, it is but lip service that I
render : my eyes are turned inward, and a vision of
a green forest comes before them resounding with the
wild, glad, mad cries of flocks of wild parrots. This
is done purposely, and the sound which I mentally
hear and the sight of their vari-coloured plumage
in the dazzUng sunlight are a corrective, and keep
me from hating the bird before me because of the
imbecihty of its owners. In his proper place, which
is not in a tin cage in a room of a house, he is to be
admired above most birds ; and I wish I could be
where he is living his wild life ; that I could have
again a swarm of parrots, angry at my presence,

249

250 BIRDS AND MAN

hovering above my head and deafening me with
their outrageous screams. Bat I cannot go to those
beautiful distant places — I must be content mth an
image and a memory of things seen and heard, and
with the occasional sight of a bird, or birds, kept by
some intelligent person ; also with an occasional
visit to the Parrot House in Regent's Park. There
the uproar, when it is at its greatest, when innumer-
able discordant voices, shrill and raucous, unite in one
voice and one great cry, and persons of weak nerves
stop up their ears and fly from such a pandemonium,
is higlily exhilarating.

Of the most interesting captive parrots I have
met in recent years I will speak here of two. The
first was a St Vincent bird, Chrysoiis guildingi,
brought home with seven other parrots of various
species by Lady Thompson, the wife of the then
Administrator of the Island. This is a handsome
bird, green, with blue head and yellow tail, and is
a member of an American genus numbering over
forty species. He received his funny specific name
in compliment to a clergyman who was a zealous
collector not of men's souls, but of birds' skins.
To ornithologists this parrot is interesting on account
of its rarity. For the last thirty years it has existed
in small numbers ; and as it is confined to the

VERT— VERT ; OR PARROT GOSSIP 251

island of St Vincent it is feared that it may become
extinct at no distant date. Altogether there are
about five hundred species of parrots in the world,
or about as many parrots as there are species of
birds of all kinds in Europe, from the great bustard,
the hooper swan, and golden eagle, to the little
bottle-tit whose minute body, stript of its feathers,
may be put in a lady's thimble. And of this multi-
tude of parrots the St Vincent Chrysotis, if it still
exists, is probably the rarest.

The parrot I have spoken of, with his seven travel-
ling companions, arrived in England in December,
and a few days later their mistress witnessed a curious
thing. On a cold grey morning they were enjoying
themselves on their perches in a well-warmed room
in London, before a large window, when suddenly
they all together emitted a harsh cry of alarm or
terror — the sound which they invariably utter on the
appearance of a bird of prey in the sky, but at no
other time. Looking up quickly she saw that
snow in big flakes had begun to fall. It was the
birds' first experience of such a phenomenon, but
they had seen and had been taught to fear some-
thing closely resembling falling flakes — flying feathers
to wit. The fear of flying feathers is universal
among species that are preyed upon by hawks. In

252 BIRDS AND MAN

a majority of cases the birds that exhibit terror and
fly into cover or sit closely have never actually seen
that winged thunderbolt, the peregrine falcon, strike
down a duck or pigeon, sending out a small cloud of
feathers ; or even a harrier or sparrowhawk pulling
out and scattering the feathers of a bird it has
captured, but a tradition exists among them that the
sight of flying feathers signifies danger to bird life.

When I was in the young barbarian stage, and
my playmates were gaucho boys on horseback on
the pampas, they taught me to catch partridges in
their simple way with a slender cane twenty to
twenty-five feet long, a running noose at its tip made
from the fine pliant shaft of a rhea's wing feather.
The bird was not a real partridge though it looks like
it, but was the common or spotted tinamu of the
plains, Nothura maculosa, as good a table bird as our
partridge. Our method was, when we flushed a
bird, to follow its swift straight flight at a gallop,
and mark the exact spot where it dropped to earth
and vanished in the grass, then to go round the spot
examining the ground until the tinamu was detected
in spite of his protective colouring sitting close among
the dead and fading grass and herbage. The cane
was put out, the circle narrowed until the small
noose was exactly over the bird's head, so that

VERT— VERT ; OR PARROT GOSSIP 253

when he sprang into the air on being touched by the
slender tip of the cane he caught and strangled
himself. To make the bird sit tight until the noose
was actually over his head, we practised various
tricks, and a very common one was, on catching
sight of the close-squatting partridge, to start
plucking feathers from a previously - killed bird
hanging to our belt and scatter them on the wind.
Sometimes we were saved the trouble of scattering
feathers when we were followed by a pair of big
carrion hawks on the look-out for an escaped bird or for
any trifle we throw to them to keep them with us.
The effect was the same in both cases ; the sight of the
flying feathers was just as terrifying as that of the
big hovering hawks, and caused the partridge to sit
close.

This way of taking the tinamu may seem un-
sportsmanlike. Well, if I were a boy in a wild
land again — with my present feelings about bird
life, I mean — I should not do it. Nor would I
shoot them ; for I take it that the gun is the deadliest
instrument our cunning brains have devised to
destroy birds in spite of their bright instinct of self-
preservation, their faculty of flight, and their
intelligence. It is a hundred times more effective
than the boy-on-horseback's long cane with its

254 BIRDS AND MAN

noose made of an ostrich feather — therefore more
unsportsmanHke.

To return. The resemblance of faUing flakes to
flying white feathers does not deceive birds
accustomed to the sight of snow : it is very striking,
nevertheless, and so generally recognised that most
persons in Europe have heard of the old woman
plucking her geese in the sky. It is curious to find
the subject discussed in Herodotus. In Book IV.
he says : " The Scythians say that those lands
which are situated in the northernmost parts of their
territories are neither visible nor practicable by reason
of the feathers that fall continually on all sides ;
for the earth is so entirely covered, and the air is
so full of these feathers, that the sight is altogether
obstructed." Further on he says : " Touching the
feathers . . . my opinion is that perpetual snows
fall in those parts, though probably in less quantity
during the summer than in winter, and whoever has
observed great abundance of snow falling will easily
comprehend what I say, for snow is not unlike
feathers."

Probably the Scythians had but one word to
designate both. To go back to the St Vincent
parrot. Concerning a bird of that species I have
heard, and cannot disbelieve, a remarkable story.

VERT— VERT ; OR PARROT GOSSIP 255

During the early years of the last century a gentle-
man went out from England to look after some
landed property in the island, which had come to
him by inheritance, and when out there he paid a
visit to a friend who had a plantation in the interior.
His friend was away when he arrived, and he was
conducted by a servant into a large, darkened, cool
room ; and, tired with his long ride in the hot sun,
he soon fell asleep in his chair. Before long a loud
noise awoke him, and from certain scrubbing sounds
he made out that a couple of negro women were
engaged in washing close to him, on the other side
of the lowered window blinds, and that they were
quarrelling over their task. Of course the poor
women did not know that he was there, but he was
a man of a sensitive mind and it was a torture to
him to have to listen to the torrents of exceedingly
bad language they discharged at one another. It
made him angry. Presently his friend arrived and
welcomed him with a hearty hand-shake and asked
him how he Hked the place. He answered that it
was a very beautiful place, but he wondered how his
friend could tolerate those women with their tongues
so close to his windows. Women with their tongues !
What did he mean ? exclaimed the other in great
surprise. He meant, he said, those wretched nigger

256 BIRDS AND ]NL\N

washerwomen outside the window. His host there-
upon threw up the bHnd and both looked out : no
living creature was there except a St Vincent parrot
dosing on his perch in the shaded verandah. " Ah,
I see, the parrot ! " said his friend. And he
apologised and explained that some of the niggers
had taken advantage of the bird's extraordinary
quickness in learning to teach him a lot of improper
stuff.

Another parrot, which interested me more than
the St Vincent bird, was a member of the same
numerous genus, a double-fronted amazon, Chry-
sotis lavalainte, a larger bird, green with face and
fore-part of head pure yellow, and some crimson
colour in the wings and tail. I came upon it at an
inn, the Lamb, at Hindon, a village in the South
Wiltshire downs. One could plainly see that it
was a very old bird, and, judging from the ragged
state of its plumage, that it had long fallen into the
period of irregular or imperfect moult — " the sere,
the yellow leaf " in the bird's hfe. It also had the
tremor of the very aged — man or bird. But its
eyes were still as bright as polished yellow gems and
full of the almost uncanny parrot intelligence. The
voice, too, was loud and cheerful ; its call to its
mistress — " Mother, mother ! " would ring through

VERT— VERT ; OR PARROT GOSSIP 257

the whole rambhng old house. He talked and laughed
heartily and uttered a variety of powerful whistling
notes as round and full and modulated as those of
any grey parrot. Now, all that would not have
attracted me much to the bird if I had not heard its
singular history, told to me by its mistress, the
landlady. She had had it in her possession fifty
years, and its story was as follows : —

Her father-in-law, the landlord of the Lamb, had
a beloved son who went of? to sea and was seen and
heard of no more for a space of fourteen years, when
one day he turned up in the possession of a sailor's
usual fortune, acquired in distant barbarous lands —
a parrot in a cage ! This he left with his parents,
charging them to take the greatest care of it, as it
was really a very wonderful bird, as they would
soon know if they could only understand its language,
and he then began to make ready to set off again,
promising his mother to write this time and not to
stay away more than five or at most ten years.

Meanwhile, his father, who w^as anxious to keep
him, succeeded in bringing about a meeting between
him and a girl of his acquaintance, one who, he
believed, would make his son the best wife in the
world. The young wanderer saw and loved, and as
the feeling was returned he soon married and endowed

258 BIRDS AND MAN

her with all his worldly possessions, which consisted
of the parrot and cage. Eventually he succeeded
his father as tenant of the Lamb, where he died many
years ago : the widow was grey when I first knew
her and old like her parrot ; and she was like the bird
too in her youthful spirit and the brilHance of her
eyes.

Her young sailor had picked up the bird at Vera
Cruz in Mexico. He saw a girl standing in the market
place with the parrot on her shoulder. She was
talking and singing to the bird, and the bird was
talking, whistling, and singing back to her — singing
snatches of songs in Spanish. It was a wonderful
bird, and he was enchanted and bought it, and brought
it all the way back to England and Wiltshire. It
was, the girl had told him, just five years old, and as
fifty 3^ ears had gone by it was, when I first knew it,
or was supposed to be, fifty-five. In its Wiltshire
home it continued to talk and sing in Spanish, and
had two favourite songs, which delighted everybody,
although no one could understand the words. By
and by it took to learning words and sentences in
EngHsh, and spoke less in Spanish year after year
until in about ten to twelve years that language had
been completely forgotten. Its memory was not as
good as that of Humboldt's celebrated parrot of the

VERT— VERT ; OR PARROT GOSSIP 259

Maipures, which had belonged to the Apures tribe
before they were exterminated by the Caribs. Their
language perished with them, only the long-living
parrot went on talking it. This parrot story took
the fancy of the public and was re-told in a hundred
books, and was made the subject of poems in several
countries — one by our own " Pleasures of Hope "
Campbell.

Nevertheless I thought it would be worth while
trying a little Spanish on old Polly of the Lamb, and
thought it best to begin by making friends. It was
of little use to offer her something to eat. Poll was
a person who rather despised sweeties and kickshaws.
It had been the custom of the house for half a century
to allow Polly to eat what she liked and when she
liked, and as she — it was really a he — was of a social
disposition she preferred taking her meals with the
family and eating the same food. At breakfast she
would come to the table and partake of bacon and
fried eggs, also toast and butter and jam and
marmalade, at dinner it was a cut off the joint with
(usually) two vegetables, then pudding or tart with
pippins and cheese to follow. Between meals she
amused herself with bird seed, but preferred a meaty
mutton-bone, which she would hold in one hand or
foot and feed on with great satisfaction. It was

260 BIRDS AND MAN

not strange that when I held out food for her she took
it as an insult, and when I changed my tactics and
offered to scratch her head she lost her temper alto-
gether, and when I persisted in my advances she
grew dangerous and succeeded in getting in several
nips with her huge beak, which drew blood from my
fingers.

It was only then, after all my best blandishments

had been exhausted, and when our relations were at

their worst, that I began talking to her in Spanish,

in a sort of caressing falsetto like a " native " girl,

calling her " Lorito " instead of Polly, coupled with

all the endearing epithets commonly used by the

women of the green continent in addressing their

green pets. Polly instantly became attentive. She

listened and listened, coming down nearer to hsten

better, the one eye she fixed on me shining like a

fiery gem. But she spoke no word, Spanish or

English, only from time to time little low inarticulate

sounds came from her. It was evident after two

or three days that she was powerless to recall the

old lore, but to me it also appeared evident that some

vague memory of a vanished time had been evoked —

that she was conscious of a past and was trying to

recall it. At all events the effect of the experiment

was that her hostility vanished, and we became

VERT— VERT ; OR PARROT GOSSIP 261

friends at once. She would come down to me,
step on to my hand, chmb to my shoulder, and
allow me to walk about with her.

It saddened me a few months later to receive a
letter from her mistress announcing Polly's death,
on 2nd December 1909.

I have thought since that this bird, instead of
being only five years old when bought, was probably
aged twenty-five years or more. Naturally, the
girl who had been sent into the market-place to
dispose of the bird would tell a possible buyer that
it was young ; the parrots one wants to buy are
generally stated to be five years old. However,
it may be that the bird grew old before its time on
account of its extraordinary dietary. The parrot
may have an adaptive stomach, still, one is inclined
to think that half a century of fried eggs and bacon,
roast pork, boiled beef and carrots, steak and onions,
and stewed rabbit must have put a rather heavy
strain on its system.

Many parrots have lived longer than Polly in
captivity, long as her life was ; and here it strikes
me as an odd circumstance that Polly's specific
name was bestowed on the species, the double-
fronted amazon, as a compliment to the distinguished
French ornithologist, La Valainte, who has himself

262 BIRDS AND MAN

recorded the greatest age to which a captive parrot
has been known to attain. This bird was the
famihar African grey species. He says that it began
to lose its memory at the age of sixty, to moult
irregularly at sixty-five, that it became blind at
ninety, and died aged ninety-three.

We may well believe that if parrots are able to
exist for fifty years to a century in the unnatural
conditions in which they are kept, caged or chained
in houses, over-fed, without using their enormously-
developed wing-muscles, the constant exercise of
which must be necessary to perfect health and vigour,
their hfe in a state of nature must be twice as long.

To return to parrots in general. This bird has
perhaps more points of interest for us than any
other of the entire class : his long life, unique form,
and brilliant colouring, extreme sociability, intelli-
gence beyond that of most birds, and, last, his
faculty of imitating human speech more perfectly
than the birds of other famihes.

The last is to most persons the parrot's greatest
distinction ; to me it is his least. I do not find it so
wonderful as the imitative faculty of some mocking
birds or even of our dehghtful little marsh-warbler,
described in another book. This may be because I
have never had the good fortune to meet with a

VERT— VERT ; OR PARROT GOSSIP 263

shining example, for we know there is an extra-
ordinary difference in the talking powers of parrots,
even in those of the same species — differences as
great, in fact, as we find in the reasoning faculty
between dog and dog, and in the songs of different
birds of the same species. Not once but on several
occasions I have heard a song from some common
bird which took my breath away with astonishment.
I have described in another book certain black-
birds of genius I have encountered. And what a
wonderful song that caged canary in a country
inn must have had, which tempted the great Lord
Peterborough, a man of some sliining quahties, to
get the bird from its mistress, an old woman who
loved it and refused to sell it to him, by means of a
dishonest and very mean trick. Denied the bird,
he examined it minutely and went on his way. In
due time he returned with a canary closely resembling
the one he wanted in size, colour, and markings,
concealed on his person. He ordered dinner, and
when the good woman was gone from the room to
prepare it, changed liis bird for hers, then, having
had his meal, went on his way rejoicing. Still he
was curious to learn the effect of his trick, and
whether or not she had noticed any difference in her
loved bird ; so, after a long interval, he came once

264 BIRDS AND MAN

more to the inn, and seeing the bird in its cage in
the old place began to speak in praise of its beautiful
singing as he had heard it and remembered it so well.
She replied sadly that since he Hstened to and
wanted to buy it an unaccountable change had come
over her bird. It was silent for a spell, perhaps
sick, but when it resumed singing its voice had
changed and all the beautiful notes which everyone
admired were lost. The great man expressed his
regret, and went away chuckling at his deliciously
funny joke.

The ordinary talking parrot is no more to me than
the ordinary or average canary, piping his thin expres-
sionless notes ; he is a prodigy I am pleased not to
know. On the other hand there are numerous
authenticated cases of parrots possessed of really
surprising powers, and it was doubtless the mimicking
powers of such birds of genius which suggested such
fictions as that of the Tota Kuhami in the East ; and
in Europe, Gresset's Hvely tale of Vert Vert and the
convent nuns.

It was perhaps a parrot of this rare kind which
played so important a part in the early history of
South America. It is nothing but a legend of the
Guarani nation, which inhabit Paraguay, neverthe-
less I do believe that we have here an accoimt

VERT— VERT ; OR PARROT GOSSIP 265

mainly true of an important event in the early
history of the race or nation. This parrot is not
the impossible bird of the fictitious Tota Kahami
order we all know, who not only mimics our
speech but knows the meaning of the words he
utters. He was nothing but a mimic, exceptionally
clever, and the moral of the story is the f amihar one
that great events may proceed from the most trivial
causes, once the passions of men are inflamed.

The tradition was related centuries ago to the
Jesuit Fathers in Paraguay, and I give it as they
tell it, briefly.

In the beginning a great canoe came over the
waters from the east and was stranded on the shores
of Brazil. Out of the canoe came the brothers
Tupi and Guarani and their sons and daughters
with their husbands and wives and their children
and children's children.

Tupi was the leader, and being the eldest was
called the father, and Tupi said to his brother :
Behold, this great land with all its rivers and forests,
abounding in fish and birds and beasts and fruit, is
ours, for there are no other men dwelHng in it ; but
we are few in number, let us therefore continue to
live together with our children in one village.

266 BIRDS AND MAN

Guarani consented, and for many year? they lived
together in peace and amity hke one family, until at
last there came a quarrel to divide them. And it
was all about a parrot that could talk and laugh and
sing just like a man. A woman first found it in the
forest, and not wishing to burden herself with the rear-
ing of it she gave it to another woman. So well did
it learn to talk from its new mistress that everybody
admired it and it grew to be the talk of the village.

Then the woman who had found and brought it,
seeing how much it was admired and talked about,
went and claimed it as her own. The other refused
to give it up, saying that she had reared it and had
taught it all it knew, and by doing so had become its
rightful owner.

Now, no person could say which was in the right,
and the dispute was not ended and tongues con-
tinued wagging until the husbands of the two women
became engaged in the quarrel. And then brothers
and sisters and cousins were drawn into it, until the
whole village was full of bitterness and strife, all
because of the parrot, and men of the same blood for
the first time raised weapons against one another.
And some were wounded and others killed in open
fight, and some were treacherously slain when
hunting in the forest.

VERT— VERT ; OR PARROT GOSSIP 267

Now when things had come to this pass Tupi the
Father, called his brother to him and said : 0 brother
Guarani, this is a day of grief to us who had looked
to the spending of our remaining years together
with all our children at this place where we have lived
so long. Now this can no longer be on account of
the great quarrel about a parrot, and the shedding
of blood ; for only by separating our two familes
can we save them from destroying one another.
Come then, let us divide them and lead them away
in opposite directions, so that when we settle again
they may be far apart. Guarani consented, and he
also said that Tupi was the elder and their head, and
was called the Father, and it was therefore in his
right to remain in possession of the village and of all
that land and to end his days in it. He, on his
part, would call his people together and lead them to
a land so distant that the two famihes would never
see nor hear of each other again, and there would
be no more bitter words and strife between them.

Then the two old brothers bade each other an
eternal farewell, and Guarani led his people south a
great distance and travelled many moons until he
came to the River Paraguay, and settled there ; and
his people still dwell there and are called by his name
to this day.

268 BIRDS AND MAN

Only, I beg to add, they do not call their nation
by that word, as the Spanish colonists first spelt it
in their carelessness, and as they pronounce it.
Heaven knows how we pronounce it ! They, the
Guarani people, call themselves Wa-ra-na-ee, in a
soft musical voice. Also they call their river,
which we spell Paraguay, and pronounce I don't
know how, Pa-ra-wa-ee.

CHAPTER XIV

SOMETHING PRETTY IN A GLASS CASE

It was said by a Norfolk naturalist more than three-
quarters of a century ago, that the desire to possess
" something pretty in a glass case " caused the
killing of very many birds, especially of such as were
rare and beautiful, which if allowed to exist in our
country would maintain the species and be a constant
source of pleasure to all who beheld them. For who,
walking by a riverside, does not experience a thrill of
delight at the sudden appearance in the field of vision
of that living jewel, the shining blue kingfisher !
This is one of the favourites of all who desire to have
something pretty in a glass case in the cottage
parlour in room of the long- vanished pyramid of
wax flowers and fruit. It is, however, not only
the common people, the cottager and the village
publican who desire to possess such ornaments. You
see them also in baronial halls. Many a time on
visiting a great house the first thing the owner has
drawn my attention to has been his stuffed birds in
a glass case : but in the great houses the peregrine,

269

270 BIRDS AND MAN

and hobby, and goshawk, and buzzard and harrier
are more prized than the kingfisher and other pretty
httle birds.

The PhiHstine we know is everywhere and is of all
classes.

It is to me a cause of astonishment that these
mournful mementoes should be regarded as they
appear to be, as objects pleasing to the eye, like
pictures and statues, tapestries, and other decorative
works of art. The sight of a stuffed bird in a house
is revolting to me ; it outrages our sense of fitness,
and is as detestable as stuffed birds and wings,
tails and heads, and beaks of murdered and mutilated
birds on women's headgear. " Properly speaking,"
said St George Mivart in his greatest work, " there
is no such thing as a dead bird." The life is the bird,
and when that has gone out what remains is the case.
These dead empty cases are as much to me as to any
naturalist, and I can examine the specimens in a
museum cabinet with interest. But the mental
attitude is changed at the sight of these same dead
empty cases set up in imitation of the living creature ;
and the more cleverly the stuffer has done his work
the more detestable is the result.

It may be that some vague notion of a faint rem-
nant of life lingering in the life-like specimen with

SOMETHING PRETTY IN A GLASS CASE 271

glass eyes, is the cause of my hatred of the feathered
ornament in a glass case. At all events I have had
one experience, to be related here, which has almost
made me believe that the idea of a sort of post-
mortem life in the stuffed bird is not wholly fanciful.
I will call it :

A DIALOGUE OF THE DEAD (AND STUFFED)

Ever since I came the wind has been blowing a
gale on this furthermost, lonely, melancholy coast,
as if I had got not only to the Land's End, but to
the end of the world itself, to the confines of Old
Chaos his kingdom, a region where the elements are in
everlasting conflict. Two or three times during the
afternoon I have resolutely put on my cap and water-
proof and gone out to face it, only to be quickly
driven in again by the bitter furious blast. Yet it
was almost as bad indoors to have to sit and listen
by the hour to its ravings. From time to time I
get up and look through the window-pane at the few
cold grey naked cottages and empty bleak fields,
divided by naked grey stone fences, and, beyond the
fields, the foam-flecked, colder, greyer, more desolate
ocean. Would it be better, I wonder, to fight my
way down to those wave-loosened masses of granite

272 BIRDS AND MAN

by the sea, where I would hear the roar and thunder
of the surf instead of this perpetual insane howling
and screaming of the wind round the house ? I
turn from the window with a shiver ; a splash of
rain hurled against it has blotted the landscape
out ; I go back once more to my comfortable easy-
chair by the fire. Patience ! Patience ! By and by,
I say to myself — I say it many times over — day-
light will be gone ; then the lamp will be brought
in, the curtains drawn, and tea will follow, with
buttered toast and other good things. Then the
solacing pipe, and thoughts and memories and some
pleasant waking drawn to while away the time.

What shall this dream be ? Ah, what but the
best of all possible dreams on such a day as this — a
dream of spring ! Somewhere in the sweet west
country I shall stand in a wood where beeches grow ;
and it will be April, near the end of the month, before
the leaves are large enough to hide the blue sky
and the floating white clouds so far above their tops.
Perhaps I shall sit down on one of the huge root-
branches, " coiled like a grey old snake," so as to gaze
at ease before me at the cloud of purple-red boughs,
and interlacing twigs, sprinkled over with golden
buds and silky opening leaves of a fresh briUiant green
that has no match on the earth or sea, nor under the

SOMETHING PRETTY IN A GLASS CASE 273

earth in the emerald mines. I shall watch the love-
flight of the cushat above the wood, mounting higher
and higher, then ghding down on motionless dove-
coloured wings ; and I shall listen to the wood
wren, ever wandering and singing in the tree-tops —
singing that same insistent, passionate — passion-
less strain to which one could listen for ever.

I shall ask for no other song, but there will be other
creatures there. Down the tall grey trunk of a
beech tree before me a squirrel will slip — down,
down nearly to the mossy roots, then pause and re-
main so motionless as to seem like a squirrel-shaped
patch of bright chestnut-red moss or lichen or alga
on the grey bark. And on the next tree, but a little
distance off, I shall presently catch sight of another
listener and watcher — a green woodpecker clinging
vertically against the trunk, so still as to look like
a bird figure carved in wood and painted green and
gold and crimson.

Just when I had got so far with the thought of
what my dream was to be, I raised my eyes from the
fire and allowed them to rest attentively for the first
time on a collection of ornaments crowded together
in a niche in the wall at the side of the fireplace.
The ornamental objects one sees in a cottage are as a
rule offensive to me, and I have acquired the habit

274 BIRDS AND MAN

of not seeing them ; now I was compelled to look at
these. There were photographs, Uttle china vases
and cups with boys or cupids, and things of that kind ;
these I did not regard ; my whole attention was
directed to a pair of glass -fronted cases and the
living creatures in them. They were not really
ahve, but dead and stuffed and set up in hfehke
attitudes, and one was a squirrel, the other a green
woodpecker. The squirrel with his back to his
neighbour sat up on his mossy wood, his bushy tail
thrown along his back, his two little hands grasping
a hazel-nut, which he was in the act of conveying
to his mouth. The green woodpecker was placed
vertically against his branch, his side towards his
neighbour, his head turned partly round so that he
looked directly at him with one eye. That w^de-open
white glass eye and the whole attitude of the bird,
with his wings half open and beak raised, gave him
a wonderfully alert look, so that after regarding him
fixedly for some time I began to imagine that,
despite the old dead dusty look of the feathers, there
was sometliing of life still remaining in him and that
he really was watching his neighbour with the nut
very intently.

Why, of course he was alive — ahve and speaking
to the squirrel ! I could hear him distinctly. The

SOMETHING PRETTY IN A GLASS CASE 275

wind outside was madly beating against the house
and trying to force its way through the window, and
was making a hundred strange noises — httle sharp
shrill broken sounds that mixed with and filled the
pauses between the wailing and shrieking gusts, and
somehow the woodpecker was catching these small
sounds in his beak and turning them into words.

" Hullo ! " he said. " Who are you and what
are you doing there ? "

" I'm a squirrel," responded the other. " I've said
so over and over again, but you will go on worrying
me ! My only wish is that I could bring my tail just
a httle more to the right so as to hide my head and
paws altogether from you."

" But you can't. Hullo ! squirrel, what are you
doing there ? You forgot to tell me that."

" I'm eating a nut, confound you ! You know it ;
I've told you ten thousand times. I can't ever get it
up quite close enough to bite it and I haven't tasted
one for seventeen years. One forgets what a tiling
tastes hke."

" I know. I've been fasting just as long myself.
Never an ant's egg ! Hullo ! Have you got it up ?
How does it taste ? "

" Taste ! You fool ! If I could only move I
wouldn't mind the nut ; I'd go for you like a shot,

276 BIRDS AND MAN

and if I could get at you I'd tear you to pieces. I
hate you ! "

" Why do you hate me, squirrel ? "

" More questions ! Because you're green and
yellow like the woods where I Hved. There were
beeches and oaks. And because your head is crimson
red like the agarics I used to find in the woods in
autumn. I used to eat them for fun just because
they said the}' were poisonous and it would kill you
to eat them."

^' And that's what you died of ? Hullo ! Why
don't you answer me ? Where did you find red
agarics ?

" I've told you, I've told you, I've told you, in
Treve woods where I Uved, very far from here on the
other side of Lostwithiel."

" Treve woods, between the hills away beyond
Lostwithiel ! Why, squirrel, that's where I lived."

" So I've heard ; you have said it every day and
every night these seventeen years. I hate you."

" Hullo ! Why do you hate me ? "

" I always disHked woodpeckers. I remember a
pair that made a hole in a beech near the tree my
drey was in. I played those two yafilers with their
laugh laugh laugh some good tricks, and the best of
all was when then- young began to come out. One

SOMETHING PRETTY IN A GLASS CASE 277

morning when the old birds were away I hid myself
in the fork above the hole and waited till they crept
out and up close to me, when I suddenly burst out
upon them, chattering and flourishing my tail, and
they were so terrified they actually lost their hold
on the bark and tumbled right down to the ground.
How I enjoyed it ! "

" You malicious little red beast ! You chattering
little red devil ! They were my young ones, and I
remember what a fright we were in when we came
back and saw what had happened. It was lucky we
didn't lose one ! I shall never speak to you again.
There you may sit trying to eat your nut for another
seventeen years, and for a hundred years if this
horrible life is going to last so long, but you'll never
get another word from me."

" I thought that would touch you, woodpecker !
Ha, ha, ha — who's the yaffler now ? What a rehef ;
at last I shall be left to eat my nut in peace and
quiet, here in this glass case where they put me."

" Why did they put us here ? "

" You are speaking to me ! Are the hundred
years over so soon ? "

" There's no one else — what am I to do ? Answer
me, why did they put us here ? Answer me, little
red wretch ! I don't mind now what you did — they

278 BIRDS AND MAN

were not hurt after all. You didn't know what you
were doing — you had no young ones of your own."

" Hadn't I indeed ! My little ones were there
close by in the drey."

" And when they were out of the drey did you
teach them to run about in the tree, and jump from
one branch to another, and pass from tree to tree ? "

" I never saw them leave the drey — I was shot."

" Where was that, squirrel ? "

" In the Treve Woods where the big beeches are,
beyond Lostwdthiel."

" Never ! Why, that's just where I lived and was
shot, too. Did it hurt you, squirrel ? "

" I don't know. I saw a flash and remembered
no more until I found myself dead in the man's
pocket pressed against some wet soft thing. Did
it hurt you ? "

" Yes, very much. I fell when he fired and tried to
get away, but he chased and caught me and the blood
ran out on to his hand. He wiped it off on liis coat,
then squeezed my sides with his finger and thumb
until I was dead, then put me in his pocket. There
was some dead warm soft thing in it."

Here there was a break in the talk owing to a
momentary lull in the wind. I listened intently,
but the slu-ieking and wailing noises without had

SOMETHING PRETTY IN A GLASS CASE 279

ceased and with them the sharp little voices had
died away. Then suddenly the wind rose and
shrieked again and the talk recommenced.

" Hullo ! " said the woodpecker. " Do you see a
man sitting by the fire looking at us ? He has been
staring at us that way all the evening."

" What of it ! Everyone who comes into this
room and sits by the fire does the same. It's nothing
new."

" It is — it is ! Listen to me, squirrel. He looks
as if he could hear and understand us. That's
new, isn't it ? And he has a strange look in his
eyes. Do you know, I think he is going mad."

" I don't mind, woodpecker. I shouldn't care
if he were to run out on to the rocks at the Land's
End and cast himself into the sea."

" Nor should I. But just think, if before rushing
out to put an end to himself he should, in his raving
madness, snatch down our cases from the niche and
crush them into the grate with his heel ! "

" What do you mean, woodpecker ? Could such a
thing happen ? "

" Yes, if he really is insane, and if he is listening
to us, and we are making him worse."

" If I could believe such a thing ! I should cease
to hate you, woodpecker. No, no, I can't believe it ! "

280 BIRDS AND MAN

" Just think, old neighbour, to liave it end at last !
Burnt up to ashes and smoke — feathers and hair,
glass eyes, cottonwool stuffing and all ! "

" Never again to hear that everlasting Hullo ! To
hate you and hate you and tell you a thousand
thousand times, only to begin it all over again ! "

"To fly up away in the smoke, out out out in
the wind and rain ! "

" The rain ! the rain ! "

" The rain from the south-west that made me
laugh my loudest ! Raining all day, wetting my
green feathers, wetting every green leaf in the woods
beyond Lostwithiel. Raining until all the stony
gullies were filled to overflowing, and the water ran
and gurgled and roared until the whole wood was
filled with the sound."

" No, no, woodpecker, I can't, I can't believe it ! "

" It's true ! It's true ! Don't you see it coming,
squirrel ? Look at him ! Look at him ! Now, now !
At last ! At last ! At last ! "

Suddenly their sharp agitated voices fell to a
broken whispering and died into silence. For the
wind had lulled again. Looking closely at them I
thought I could see a new expression in their immov-
able glass eyes. It frightened me, I began to be
frightened at myself ; for it now seemed to me that

SOMETHING PRETTY IN A GLASS CASE 281

I really was becoming insane, and I was suddenly
seized with a fierce desire to snatch the cases down
and crush them into the fire with my heel. To save
myself from such a mad act I jumped up, and picking
up my candle, hurried upstairs to my bedroom. No
sooner did I reach it than the wind was up again,
waihng and shrieking louder than ever, and between
the gusts there were the murmurings and strange
small noises of the wind in the roof, and once more
I began to catch the sound of their renewed talk.
" Gone ! gone ! " they said or seemed to say. " Our
last hope ! What shall we do, what shall we do ?
Years ! Years ! Years ! " Then by and by the
tone changed, and there were question and answer.
" ^'Vhen was that, squirrel ? " I heard ; and then
a furious quarrel with curses from the squirrel, and
" huUos " and renewed questions from the wood-
pecker, and memories of their life and death in
Treve Wood, beyond Lostwithiel.

WTiat wonder that, when hours later I fell asleep,
I had the most distressing and maddest dreams
imaginable !

One dream was that when men die and go to hell,
they are sent in large baskets-full to the taxider-
mists of the estabhshment, who are highly pro-
ficient in the art, and set them up in the most perfect

282 BIRDS AND MAN

life-like attitudes, with wideawake glass eyes, blue or
dark, in their sockets, their hair varnished to preserve
its natural colour and glossy appearance. They are
placed separately in glass cases to keep them from the
dust, and the cases are set up in pairs in niches in the
walls of the palace of hell. The lord of the place
takes great pride in these objects ; one of his favourite
amusements is to sit in his easy-chair in front of a
niche to listen by the hour to the endless discussions
going on between the two specimens, in which each
expresses his virulent but impotent hatred of the
other, damning his glass eyes ; at the same time
relating his own happy life and adventures in the
upper sunlit world, how important a person he was
in his own parish of borough, and what a gorgeous
time he was having when he was unfortunately
nabbed by one of the collectors or gamekeepers in
his lordship's service.

CHAPTER XV

SELBORNE
(1896)

First impressions of faces are very much to us :
vivid and persistent, even long after they have been
judged false they will from time to time return to
console or mock us. It is much the same with
places, for these, too, an ineradicable instinct will
have it, are persons. Few in number are the towns
and villages which are dear to us, whose memory
is always sweet, like that of one we love. Those
that wake no emotion, that are remembered much
as we remember the faces of a crowd of shop assis-
tants in some emporium we are accustomed to
visit, are many. Still more numerous, perhaps,
are the places that actually leave a disagreeable
impression on the mind. Probably the reason
of this is because most places are approached by
railroad. The station, which is seen first, and cannot
thereafter be dissociated from the town, is invariably
the centre of a chaotic collection of ugly objects and

283

284 BIRDS AND MAN

discordant noises, all the more hateful because so
familiar. For in coming to a new place we look
instinctively for that which is new, and the old, and
in themselves unpleasant sights and sounds, at such a
moment produce a disheartening, deadening effect on
the stranger : — the same clanging, puffing, grinding,
gravel-crushing, banging, shrieking noises ; the same
big unlovely brick and metal structure, the long plat-
form, the confusion of objects and people, the waiting
vehicles, and the glittering steel rails stretching away
into infinitude, like unburied petrified webs of some
gigantic spider of a remote past — webs in which
mastodons were caught like flies. Approaching a
town from some other direction — riding, driving, or
walking — we see it with a clearer truer vision, and
take away a better and more lasting image.

Selborne is one of the noted places where pilgrims
go that is happily without a station. From which-
ever side you approach it the place itself, features
and expression, is clearly discerned : in other words
you see Selborne, and not a brick and metal out-
work or mask ; not an excrescence, a goitre, which
can make even a beautiful countenance appear
repulsive. There is a station within a few miles of
the village. I approached by a different route, and
saw it at the end of a fifteen miles' walk. Rain had

SELBORNE 285

begun to fall on the previous evening ; and when in
the morning I looked from my bedroom window in
the wayside inn, where I had passed the night, it
was raining still, and everywhere, as far as I could
see, broad pools of water were gleaming on the level
earth. All day the rain fell steadily from a leaden
sky, so low that where there were trees it seemed
almost to touch their tops, while the hills, away on
my left, appeared like vague masses of cloud that rest
on the earth. The road stretched across a level moor-
land country ; it was straight and narrow, but I was
compelled to keep to it, since to step aside was to
put my feet into water. Mile after mile I trudged
on without meeting a soul, where not a house was
visible — a still, wet, desolate country with trees and
bushes standing in water, unstirred by a breath of
wind. Only at long intervals a yellow hammer was
heard uttering his thin note ; for just as this bird
sings in the sultriest weather which silences other
voices, so he will utter his monotonous chant on the
gloomiest day.

It may be because he sung

The yellow hammer in the rain

that I have long placed Faber among my best-loved
minor poets of the past century. He alone among

286 BIRDS AND MAN

our poets has properly appreciated that the singer
who never stops, but, " pleased with his own
monotony," shakes off the rain and sings on in a mood
of cheerfulness dashed with melancholy :

And there lie is within the rain,
And beats and beats his tune again,
Quite happy in himself.

Within the heart of this great shower
He sits, as in a secret bower,
With curtains drawn about him :
And, part in duty, part in mirth,
He beats, as if upon the earth
Rain could not fall without him.

I remember that W. E. Henley once took me
severely to task on account of some jeering remarks
made about our poet's way of treating the birds and
their neglect of so many of our charming singers.
In the course of our correspondence he questioned me
about the cirl bunting, that Hvely singer and pretty
first cousin of the yellow hammer ; and after I had
supplied him with full information, he informed me
that it was his intention to write a poem on that
bird, and that he would be the first Enghsh poet to
sing the cirl bunting.

He never wrote that lyric, " part in duty, part in
mirth " : he was then near his end.

SELBORNE 287

To return to my walk. At last the aspect of the
country changed : in place of brown heath, with
gloomy fir and furze, there was cheerful verdure of
grass and deciduous trees, and the straight road
grew deep and winding, running now between hills,
now beside woods, and hop-fields, and pasture lands.
And at length, wet and tired, I reached Selborne —
the remote Hampshire village that has so great a
fame.

To very many readers a description of the place

would seem superfluous. They know it so well,

even without having seen it ; the little, old-world

village at the foot of the long, steep, bank-like hill,

or Hanger, clothed to its summit with beech- wood as

with a green cloud ; the straggHng street, the Plestor,

or village green, an old tree in the centre, with a

bench surrounding its trunk for the elders to rest on

of a summer evening. And, close by, the grey

immemorial church, with its churchyard, its grand

old yew-tree, and, overhead, the bunch of swifts,

rushing with jubilant screams round the square tower.

I had not got the book in my knapsack, nor did I

need it. Seeing the Selborne swifts, I thought how a

century and a quarter ago Gilbert White wrote that

the number of birds inhabiting and nesting in the

village, summer after summer, was nearly always

288 BIRDS AND MAN

the same, consisting of about eight pairs. The
birds now rushing about over the church were
twelve, and I saw no others.

If Gilbert White had never lived, or had never
corresponded with Pennant and Daines Barrington,
Selborne would have impressed me as a very pleasant
village set amidst diversified and beautiful scenery,
and I should have long remembered it as one of the
most charming spots which I had found in my rambles
in southern England. But I thought of White con-
tinually. The village itself, every feature in the
surrounding landscape, and every object, living or
inanimate, and every sound, became associated in
my mind with the thought of the obscure country
curate, who was without ambition, and was " a still,
quiet man, with no harm in him — no, not a bit,"
as was once said by one of his parishioners. There,
at Selborne — to give an altered meaning to a verse
of quaint old Nicholas Culpepper —

His image stamped is on every grass.

With a new intense interest I watched the swifts
careering through the air, and listened to their shrill
screams. It was the same with all the birds, even
the commonest — ^the robin, blue tit, martin, and
sparrow. In the evening I stood motionless a long

SELBORNE 289

time intently watching a small flock of greenfinches
settling to roost in a hazel-hedge. From time to
time they became disturbed at my presence, and
fluttering up to the topmost twigs, where their
forms looked almost black against the pale amber
sky, they uttered their long-drawn canary -Hke
note of alarm. At all times a delicate, tender
note, now it had something more in it — something
from the far past — the thought of one whose
memory was interwoven with living forms and
sounds.

The strength and persistence of this feeling had
a curious effect. It began to seem to me that he
who had ceased to live over a century ago, whose
Letters had been the favourite book of several
generations of naturalists, was, albeit dead and gone,
in some mysterious way still living. I spent a long
time groping about in the long rank grass of the
churchyard in search of a memorial ; and this,
when found, turned out to be a modest- sized head-
stone, and I had to go down on my knees, and put
aside the rank grass that half covered it, just as
when we look into a child's face we push back the
unkempt hair from its forehead ; and on the stone
were graved the name, and beneath, " 1793," the
year of his death.

290 BIRDS AND MAN

Happy the nature-lover who, in spite of fame, is
allowed to rest, as White rests, pressed upon by no
ponderous stone ; the sweet influences of sun and
rain are not kept from him ; even the sound of the
wild bird's cry may penetrate to his narrow apart-
ment to gladden his dust !

Perhaps there is some truth in the notion that
when a man dies he does not wholly die ; that is to
say, the earthly yet intelligent part of him, which,
being of the earth, cannot ascend ; that a residuum
of Ufe remains, hke a perfume left by some long-
vanished, fragrant object ; or it may be an emanation
from the body at death, which exists thereafter
diffused and mixed with the elements, perhaps un-
conscious and yet responsive, or capable of being
vivified into consciousness and emotions of pleasure
by a keenly sympathetic presence. At Selborne
this did not seem mere fantasy. StroUing about the
village, loitering in the park-like garden of the
Wakes, or exploring the Hanger ; or when I sat on
the bench under the churchyard yew, or went softly
through the grass to look again at those two letters
graved on the headstone, there was a continual
sense of an unseen presence near me. It was like
the sensation a man sometimes has when lying still
with closed eyes of some one moving softly to his

SELBORNE 291

side. I began to think that if that feeling and sensa-
tion lasted long enough without diminishing its
strength, it would in the end produce something
like conviction. And the conviction would imply
communion. Furthermore, between the thought
that we may come to believe in a thing and behef
itself there is practically no difference. I began to
speculate as to the subjects about to be discussed
by us. The chief one would doubtless relate to the
bird life of the district. There are fresh things to be
related of the cuckoo ; how " wonder has been
added to wonder " by observers of that bird since
the end of the eighteenth century. And here is a
deUcate subject to follow — to wit, the hibernation
of swallows — yet one by no possibihty to be avoided.
It would be something of a disappointment to him
to hear it stated, as an estabhshed fact, that none of
our hirundines do winter, fast asleep Uke dormice,
in these islands. But there would be comfort in the
succeeding declaration that the old controversy
is not quite dead yet — that at least two popular
writers on British birds have boldly expressed the
behef that some of our supposed migrants do actually
" lay up " in the dead season. The deep interest
manifested in the subject would be a temptation
to dwell on it. I should touch on the discovery

292 BIRDS AND MAN

made recently by a young English naturalist abroad,
that a small species of swallow in a temperate country
in the Southern Hemisphere shelters itself under the
thick matted grass, and remains torpid during spells
of cold weather. We have now a magnificent mono-
graph of the swallows, and it is there stated of the
purple martin, an American species, that in some
years bitter cold weather succeeds its arrival in early
spring in Canada ; that at such times the birds
take refuge in their nesting holes and lie huddled
together in a semi-torpid state, sometimes for a
week or ten days, until the return of genial weather,
when they revive and appear as full of Hf e and vigour
as before. It is said that these and other swallows
are possessed of habits and powers of which we have
as yet but slight knowledge. Candour would compel
me to add that the author of the monograph in
question, who is one of the first Hving ornithologists,
is inchned to beheve that some swallows in some
circumstances do hibernate.

At this I should experience a curious and almost
startHng sensation, as if the airy hands of my in-
visible companion had been clapped together, and
the clap had been followed by an exclamation — a
triumphant " Ah ! "

Then there would be much to say concerning the

SELBORNE 293

changes in the bird population of Selborne parish,
and of the southern counties generally. A few
small species — hawfinch, pretty chaps, and gold-
crest — were much more common now than in his
day ; but a very different and sadder story had to
be told of most large birds. Not only had the
honey buzzard never returned to nest on the beeches
of the Hanger since 1780, but it had continued to
decrease everywhere in England and was now
extinct. The raven, too, was lost to England as an
inland breeder. It could not now be said that
" there are bustards on the wide downs near Bright-
helmstone," nor indeed anywhere in the kingdom.
The South Downs were unchanged, and there were
still pretty rides and prospects round Lewes ; but
he might now make his autumn journey to Ringmer
without seeing kites and buzzards, since these had
both vanished ; nor would he find the chough
breeding at Beachy Head, and aU along the Sussex
coast. It would also be necessary to mention the
disappearance of the quail, and the growing scarcity
of other once abundant species, such as the stone
plover and curlew, and even of the white owl, which
no longer inhabited its ancient breeding-place beneath
the caves of Selborne Church.

Finally, after discussing these and various other

294 BIRDS AND MAN

matters which once engaged his attention, also the
Httle book he gave to the world so long ago, there
would still remain another subject to be mentioned
about which I should feel somewhat shy — namely,
the marked difference in manner, perhaps in feeUng,
between the old and new writers on animal Ufe and
nature. The subject would be strange to him. On
going into particulars, he would be surprised at the
disposition, almost amounting to a passion, of the
modern mind to view Hfe and nature in their aesthetic
aspects. This new spirit would strike him as some-
thing odd and exotic, as if the writers had been
first artists or landscape-gardeners, who had, as
naturaUsts, retained the habit of looking for the
picturesque. He w ould further note that we moderns
are more emotional than the writers of the past, or,
at all events, less reticent. There is no doubt, he
would say, that our researches into the kingdom of
nature produce in us a wonderful pleasure, unlike in
character and perhaps superior to most others ; but
this feehng, which was indefinable and not to be
traced to its source, was probably given to us for a
secret gratification. If we are curious to know its
significance, might we not regard it as something
ancillary to our spiritual natm'es, as a kind of sub-
sidiary conscience, a private assurance that in all

SELBORNE 295

our researches into the wonderful works of creation
we are acting in obedience to a tacit command, or,
at all events in harmony with the Divine Will ?

Ingenious ! would be my comment, and possibly
to the eighteenth century mind it would have proved
satisfactory. There was something to be said in
defence of what appeared to him as new and strange
in our books and methods. Not easily said, un-
fortunately ; since it was not only the expression that
was new, but the outlook, and something in the heart.
We are bound as much as ever to facts ; we seek for
them more and more dihgently, knowing that to
break from them is to be carried away by vain
imaginations. All the same, facts in themselves
are nothing to us : they are important only in their
relations to other facts and things — to all things,
and the essence of things, material and spiritual.
We are not like children gathering painted shells
and pebbles on a beach ; but, whether we know it
or not, are seeking after something beyond and
above knowledge. The wilderness in which we are
sojourners is not our home ; it is enough that its
herbs and roots and wild fruits nourish and give us
strength to go onward. Intellectual curiosity, with
the gratification of the individual for only purpose,
has no place in this scheme of things as we conceive

296 BIRDS AND MAN

it. Heart and soul are with the brain in all investiga-
tion— a truth which some know in rare, beautiful
intervals, and others never ; but we are all mean-
while busy with our work, Hke myriads of social
insects engaged in raising a structure that was never
planned. Perhaps we are not so wholly unconscious
of our destinies as were the patient gatherers of facts of
a hundred years ago. Even in one brief century the
dawn has come nearer — perhaps a faint whiteness in
the east has exhilarated us like wine. Undoubtedly
we are more conscious of many things, both within
and without — of the length and breadth and depth
of nature ; of a unity which was hardly dreamed
of by the naturaHsts of past ages, a commensalism
on earth from which the meanest organism is not
excluded. For we are no longer isolated, standing
like starry visitors on a mountain-top, surveying
life from the outside ; but are on a level with and
part and parcel of it ; and if the mystery of life daily
deepens, it is because we view it more closely and with
clearer vision. A poet of our age has said that in
the meanest floweret we may find " thoughts that
do often lie too deep for tears." The poet and
prophet is not alone in this ; he expresses a feeling
common to all of those who, with our wider know-
ledge, have the passion for nature in their hearts, who

SELBORNE 297

go to nature, whether for knowledge or inspiration
That there should appear in recent literature some-
thing of a new spirit, a sympathetic feeHng which
could not possibly have flourished in a former age,
is not to be wondered at, considering all that has
happened in the present century to change the
current of men's thoughts. For not only has the new
knowledge wrought in our minds, but has entered,
or is at last entering, into our souls.

Having got so far in my apology, a feehng of
despair would all at once overcome me at the thought
of the vastness of the subject I had entered upon.
Looking back it seems but a httle while since the
introduction of that new element into thought,
that " fiery leaven " which in the end would " leaven
all the hearts of men for ever." But the time was
not really so short ; the gift had been rejected with
scorn and bitterness by the mass of mankind at
first ; it had taken them years — the years of a genera-
tion— to overcome repugnance and resentment, and
to accept it. Even so it had wrought a mighty
change, only this had been in the mind ; the change
in the heart would follow, and it was perhaps early
to boast of it. How was I to disclose all this to b'm ?
All that I had spoken was but a brief exordium — a
prelude and note of preparation for what should

298 BIRDS AND MAN

follow — a story immeasurably longer and infinitely
more wonderful than that which the Ancient Mariner
told to the Wedding Guest. It was an impossible
task.

At length, after an interval of silence, to me
full of trouble, the expected note of dissent would
come.

I had told him, he would say, either too much
or not enough. No doubt there had been a very
considerable increase of knowledge since his day ;
nevertheless, judging from something I had said
on the hibernation, or torpid condition, of swallows,
there was still something to learn with regard to the
hfe and conversation of animals. The change in
the character of modern books about nature, of
which I had told him, quoting passages — a change
in the direction of a more poetic and emotional treat-
ment of the subject — he, looking from a distance,
was inclined to regard as merely a literary fashion of
the time. That anything so unforeseen had come
to pass, — so important as to change the current of
thought, to give to men new ideas about the unity
of nature and the relation in which we stood towards
the inferior creatures, — he could not understand. It
should be remembered that the human race had
existed some fifty or sixty centuries on the earth,

SELBORNE 299

and that since the invention of letters men had
recorded their observations. The increase in the
body of facts had thus been, on the whole, gradual
and continuous. Take the case of the cuckoo.
Aristotle, some two thousand years ago, had given
a fairly accurate account of its habits ; and yet in
very recent years, as I had informed him, new facts
relating to the procreant instincts of that singular
fowl had come to light.

After a short interval of silence I would become
conscious of a change in him, as if a cloud had lifted —
of a quiet smile on his, to my earthly eyes, invisible
countenance, and he would add : " No, no ; you have
yourself supplied me with a reason for questioning
your views ; your statement of them — pardon me
for saying it — struck me as somewhat rhapsodical.
I refer to your commendations of my humble history
of the Parish of Selborne. It is gratifying to me
to hear that this poor Uttle book is still in such good
repute, and I have been even more pleased at that
idea of modern naturalists, so flattering to my
memory, of a pilgrimage to Selborne ; but, if so
great a change has come over men's minds as you
appear to believe, and if they have put some new
interpretation on nature, it is certainly curious that
I should still have readers."

300 BIRDS AND MAN

It would be my turn to smile now — a smile for
a smile — and silence would follow. And so, with
the dispersal of this Uttle cloud, there would be an
end of the colloquy, and each would go his way :
one to be re-absorbed into the grey stones and long
grass, the ancient yew-tree, the wooded Hanger ;
the other to pursue his walk to the neighbouring
parish of Liss, almost ready to beHeve as he went
that the interview had actually taken place.

It only remains to say that the smile (my smile)
would have been at the expense of some modern
editors of the famous Letters, rather than at that
of my interlocutor. They are astonished at Gilbert
White's vitahty, and cannot find a reason for it.
Why does this " httle cockle-shell of a book," as
one of them has lately called it, come gaily down to
us over a sea full of waves, where so many brave
barks have foundered ? The style is sweet and
clear, but a book cannot hve merely because it is
weU written. It is chock-full of facts ; but the facts
have been tested and sifted, and all that were worth
keeping are to be found incorporated in scores of
standard works on natural history. I would humbly
suggest that there is no mystery at all about it ;
that the personahty of the author is the principal
charm of the Letters, for in spite of his modesty

SELBORNE 301

and extreme reticence his spirit shines in every
page ; that the world will not willingly let this
small book die, not only because it is small, and well
written, and full of interesting matter, but chiefly
because it is a very dehghtful human document.

INDEX

A

Adventures among Birds, 216
" Age of Fools," story of the, 8
Agriculture, decay of, in Gloucester-
shire, 174
Amazon, double-fronted, 256
Arnold, Matthew, on birds, 161
Arthur, King, legend of, 165
Asses, wild, their braying, 78
Axe, daws in the valley of Somerset,
59, 61, 187

B

Baring-Gould's Broom Sq^iire, 225

Bath, 66 ; bird life in, 68

Bee, stingless, in La Plata, its mode
of attack, 43

Beech leaves, 84

Birds, stutfed, effect of, 1-7 ; at their
best, 13-18 ; mental reproduction
of voices of, 18-26 ; durability of
images of, 28-32 ; their relations
with man, 37, 48-50 ; human sug-
gestions in voices of, 121-132 ; rare,
their gradual extirpation, 236-248

Birds of Berkshire, 225

Birds of Wiltshire, 1 69

" Bishops Jacks," at Wells, 61

Blackbird, 124

Blackcap, its song, 112-114

Blue, in flowers, 136, 154

Booth collection, the, at Brighton, 3

Brean Down, singular appearance of,
188 ; shildrakes binding at, 194

Brissot and the Merrimac River, 35

"British Bird of Paradise," 100

British Ornithologists's Union, 24

Broadway, raven superstitions at, 114

Burns, "Address to a Woodlark,"
127

Burroughs, John, on the willow wren,
101 ; search for the nightingale,
222

C

Carew, Thomas, lines quoted, 144

Cathedral Daws at Wells, 61

Cattle, tended by birds, 39

Chaffinch, song of, 114

Children, imitative calls of, 177

Chri/sotis guildingi, 250

— lavalaniti, 256

Collections of birds, small educational
value of, 6

Collectors, destruction of Dartford
warblers by, 224-231 ; as law-
breakers, 234-237

Cowper, the poet, on the daw's voice,
74 ; as naturalist, 76

D

Dartford warbler, 3 ; dead and alive,
4 ; search for the, 223 ; cause of
decrease of, 224 ; gradual extirpa-
tion by collectors, 229 ; at its best,
31, 231-234

Daws, cows and, 39 ; at Savernake,
58, 90-93 ; choice of a breeding
site, 58 ; stick-carrying and drop-
ping by, 62-64; originally builders
in trees, 63; at Bath, 66, 71-78;
their voices, 72-75 ; alarm cry, 92

Deer and jackdaw, 41

Destruction of British birds and
pressing need for remedy, 224-248

E

"Ebor Jacks," 61

Ebor rocks, former presence of ravens

at the, 171
Exraoor, extirpation of birds by

keepers in the Forest of, 170
Expression in natural objects due to

human ascociations, 133 ; in flowers,

135-137

303

304

BIRDS AND MAN

F

Faber, Father, lines on the yellow
hammer, 285

Feathers, falling, birds' fear of, 252

Feme, Sir John, on azure in blazon-
ing, 157

Flowers, expression in, 133, 153 ;
human colours in, 135-137 ; ver-
nacular names of, 137-140, 145 ;
yellow and white, lack of human
associations in, 146-149 ; personal
preferences, 153 ; charm due to
human associations, 154

Fowler, Mr Warde, on wagtails, 159 ;
on the willow wren's song, 121

Frensham Pond, swallows and swifts
at, 51 ; gold-crests at, 53

Furze wren, see Dartford Warbler

G

Gardens, 151

Geese, on a common, 78 ; at Lynd-
hurst, 199 ; their lofty demeanour,
200, 206, 216-221 ; degraded by
culinary associations, 201 ; as
watch-dogs, 203 : Egyptian repre-
sentations of, 203 ; voice of, 210 ;
migratory instinct in domestic, 213

Geese, Magellanic, 204 ; voices of,
205 ; courtly demeanour of, 206 ;
a migi-ating pair of, 214

Gerarde, 150

Gold-crests alarmed, 53, 57

Gould, on abundance of the Dartford
warbler, 224

Gray, Robert, on the gray-lag goose,
210

Gresset, the story of Vert Vert by,
264

Grey, Sir Edward, on the study of
birds, 33

Grove, Sir George, blackbird's singing
described by, 124

Guarani, legend of a parrot, 264

Hastings, daws at, 62
Henley, W. E. on bird poems, 286
Herodotus, on flying feathers and
snow, 254

Honey buzzard, destruction of the,

228, 236
Humming-bird, defending its nest,

42

Impressions, emotion a condition of
their permanence, 6, 15 ; sound,
18 ; durability of, 26

Jackdaws, sec Daws

Jays, spring assemblies, 94-100 ;
mimicry, 95 ; variability of song,
97 ; their call, 99 ; mode of flight,
99 ; British bird of Paradise, 100

Jefleries, Richard, on yellow flowers,
148

K

Kearton, Mr Richard, suggestion for
the protection of rare birds by, 240

Kennedy, Clark, on the furze wren
in Berkshire, 225

King Arthur, legend of, 165

Kingfishers, alive and dead, 12

Land's End, the, 155

La Plata and Patagonia, images of

birds of, 26
Lapwing, the spur-winged, and

sheep, 44
Leslie's Riverside Letters, 1 24
Letters of Rusticus, 226
Linnets, a concert of, 188
Livett, Dr, a raven story told by,

171
Long-tailed tit at its best, 16
Lynton, wood wren at, 97

M

Macgillivray, on the redbreast, 48
JIagellanic geese. See Geese
Magpie, manner of flight of, 284
Mammals, relations of birds with, 38

INDEX

305

Man, from the birds' point of view,
37 ; the robin's pleasure in his com-
pany, 48

Maxwell, Sir Herbert, on the "cursed
collector," 16i*

Medum, representation of geese at,
203

Memory of things seen, 18 ; of things
heard, 18

Montagu's Dictionary of Birds, ac-
count ot the jay in, 95

Mivart, St George, on dead birds,
270

N

Naturalist, the old and new, 294
Nature, modern sense of the unity of,

294
Newman on the Dartford warbler,

226
Nightingale, quality of its voice, 128.
Nothur a maculosa, the "partridge"

of Argentina, 252

0

Ossian's address to the sun, 148
Owl, wood, hooting of the, 178 ;

superstitions regarding the, 181 ;

a pet, 184
Owls, in a village, 173

Parrot, caged and free, 249 ; the St
Vincent, 250, 254 ; history of a
double-fronted amazon, 256 ; a lost
language talked by a, 258 ; lon-
gevity of the, 261 ; tales and legends
of the, 264-268

Partridges and rabbits, 45

Patti, Carlota, bird-like voice of,
128

Peregrine falcon, fight with raven,
167

Peterborough, the great Lord, and a
canary, 263

Pheasant and chicks, 52

Pigeon family, the, original notes of,
88

Pigs in the New Forest, 81.

U

Quixote, Don, as to tradition of King
Arthur, 165

R

Rabbits, how regarded by partridges,

45

Ravens, in Somerset, 160 ; aereal feat
of, 161 ; decrease and disappear-
ance of, 169-170 ; superstitious fear
of killing, 165; last, 170; tapping
at lighted windows, 170

Raven tree, a, 169

Red, in flowers, human associations
of, 141-145

Redbreast, tameness of the, 48

Reed warbler, the, in Somerset,
190-191

Ruskin, "word painting," 72; on
cathedral daws, 73 ; on the dis-
tinction of beauty, 238

Saintbury, village of, 176 ; owl super-
stitions at, 180

St Vincent parrot, 250 ; anecdote of,
254

Savernake Forest, early spring in,
76 ; daws in, 90 ; jays in, 94

Sea-birds, protection of, 240, 242

Seebohm, on the wood wren, 105 ; on
the willow wren, 117 ; on jay as-
semblies, 95

Selborne, a first sight of, 284 ; changes
in its bird population. 293

Sheep, tended by birds, 39 ; quarrel
of a spur-winged lapwing with, 44

Sheldrake in Somerset, 191 ; tame
and wild, 193 ; appearance when
flying, 193 ; singular breeding
habits, 194-195

Sigerson, Miss Dora (Mrs Shorter)
in "Flight of the Wild Geese,"
213

Skylark, song, 116

Somerset, daws in, 59 ; ravens in,
160 ; red warbler in, 190

Sound-images, their durability, 18,
21

306

BIRDS AND MAN

Spencer, Herbert, on social animals,

47 ; on the origin of music, 131
Starlings, their services to cattle, 39 ;

abundance at Bath of, 71
Siwimer Studies of Birds aiid Books.

159
Sunlight, eflFects on plumage of birds,

3, 12
Swallows, how man is regarded by,

49-53, 55 ; alarmed by a grey hat,

57 ; quality of the voice of, 125 ;

Gilbert Whits on hybernation of,

291
Swifts, unconcern of in man's

presence, 51 ; at Selborne, 287

Tennyson, on the speedwell, 149
Throstle, loudness of its song, 118
Tits, blue, at Bath, 71 ; long-tailed,

seen at their best, 16
Tree-pipit, quality of voice of, 126

U
Upland geese. See Geese.

Visitants, rare annual slaughter of,
237

W

Wagtail, pied, attending cows in
the pasture . . , quality of voice
of, 125

Wallace, Alfred Russel, Bird of Para-
dise assemblies described by, 100

Wells, daws at the cathedral, 60 ; a
wood wren at, 102

White, Gilbert, wood wren's song,
described by, 106 ; willow wren's
song described by, 122 ; associa-
tions with, at Selborne, 288 ; an
imaginary conversation with, 291

Whiteness, in flowers, 146 ; magni-
fying effect of, 193

Willersey, owls at, 173 ; a pet wood
owl at, 184

Willow wren, Burroughs on the song
of the, 101 ; Gilbert White's de-
scription of its song, 122 ; Warde
Fowler's description of its song,
121, 122 ; abundance and wide
distribution of, 117

Willoughby, Father of British Orni-
thology, willow wren described
by 118.

Wood lark, Burns' address to, 127

Wood owl. See Owls.

Wood pigeon, song of, 85 ; human
quality in voice of, 87-90

Wood wren, at Wells, 102 ; difficulty
in seeing, 103 ; inquisitiveness,
104 ; secret of its charm, 114

Wookey Hole, source of the Somerset
Axe, 59

Wordsworth, bird voices preferred by,
107

Year with the Birds, A, 122
Yellow, in flowers, 146
Yellow-hammer, singing in the rain,
285

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