Birds in Town and Village

W >> W. H. Hudson >> Birds in Town and Village

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Soon I fell into thinking of one in some ways greater than Thoreau, so
unlike the skyey-minded New England prophet and solitary, so much more
genial and tolerant, more mundane and lovable; and yet like Thoreau in
his nearness to nature. Not only a lover of generous wines--"That mark
upon his lip is wine"--and books "clothed in black and red," all natural
sights and sounds also "filled his herte with pleasure and solass," and
the early crowing of the cock was a part of the minstrelsy he loved.
Perhaps when lying awake during the dark quiet hours, and listening to
just such a note as this, he conceived and composed that wonderful tale
of the "Nun's Priest," in which the whole character of Chanticleer, his
glory and his foibles, together with the homely virtues of Dame
Partlett, are so admirably set forth.

And longer ago it was perhaps such a note as this, heard in imagination
by the cock-loving Athenians, which all at once made them feel so
unutterably weary of endless fighting with the Lacedaemonians, and
inspired their hearts with such a passionate desire for the long
untasted sweets of security and repose. Is it one of my morning fancies
merely--for fact and fancy mingle strangely at this still, mysterious
hour, and are scarcely distinguishable--or is it related in history that
this strange thing happened when all the people of the violet-crowned
city were gathered to witness a solemn tragedy, in which certain verses
were spoken that had a strange meaning to their war-weary souls? "Those
who sleep in the morning in the arms of peace do not start from them at
the sound of the trumpet, and nothing interrupts their slumbers but the
peaceful crowing of the cock." And at these words the whole concourse
was electrified, and rose up like one man, and from thousands of lips
went forth a great cry of "Peace! Peace! Let us make peace with Sparta!"

Hark! once more that long clarion call: it is the last time--the very
last; for all the others have sung a dozen times apiece and have gone to
sleep again. So would this one have done, but cocks, like minstrels
among men, are vain creatures, and some kind officious fairy whispered
in his ear that there was an appreciative listener hard by, and so to
please me he sang, just one stave more.

Lying and listening in the dark, it seemed to me that there were two
opposite qualities commingled in the sound, with an effect analogous to
that of shadow mingling with and chastening light at eventide. First, it
was strong and clear, full of assurance and freedom, qualities admirably
suited to the song of a bird of Chanticleer's disposition; a lusty,
ringing strain, not sung in the clouds or from a lofty perch midway
between earth and heaven, but with feet firmly planted on the soil, and
earthly; and compared with the notes of the grove like a versified
utterance of Walt Whitman compared with the poems of the true inspired
children of song--Blake, Shelley, Poe. Earthly, but not hostile and
eager; on the contrary, leisurely, _peaceful_ even dreamy, with a touch
of tenderness which brings it into relationship with the more aerial
tones of the true singers; and this is the second quality I spoke of,
which gave a charm to this note and made it seem better than the others.
This is partly the effect of distance, which clarifies and softens
sound, just as distance gives indistinctness of outline and ethereal
blueness to things that meet the sight. To objects beautiful in
themselves, in graceful lines and harmonious proportions and colouring,
the haziness imparts an additional grace; but it does not make beautiful
the objects which are ugly in themselves, as, for instance, an ugly
square house. So in the etherealizing effect of distance on sound, when
so loud a sound as the crowing of a strong-lunged cock becomes dreamy
and tender at a distance of one hundred yards, there must be good
musical elements in it to begin with. I do not remark this dreaminess
in the notes of other birds, some crowing at an equal distance, others
still further away. All natural music is heard best at a distance; like
the chiming of bells, and the music of the flute, and the wild confused
strains of the bagpipes, for among artificial sounds these come the
nearest to those made by nature. The "shrill sharps" of the thrush must
be softened by distance to charm; and the skylark, when close at hand,
has both shrill and harsh sounds scarcely pleasing. He must mount
high before you can appreciate his merit. I do not recommend any one to
keep a caged cock in his study for the sake of its music, crow it never
so well.

To return to the ten cockerels; they did not crow very much, and at
first I paid little attention to them. After a few days I remarked that
one individual among them was rapidly acquiring the clear vigorous
strain of the adult bird. Compared with that fine note which I have
described, it was still weak and shaky, but in shape it was similar, and
the change had come while its brethren were still uttering brief and
harsh screeches as at the beginning. Probably, where there is a great
mixture of varieties, it is the same with the fowl as with man in the
diversity of the young, different ancestral characters appearing in
different members of the same family. This cockerel was apparently the
musical member, and promised in a short time to rival his neighbour.
Having heard that it was intended to keep one of the cockerels to be the
parent of future broods, I began to wonder whether the prize in the
lottery--to wit, life and a modest harem--would fall to this fine
singer or not. The odds were that his musical career would be cut short
by an early death, since the ten birds were very much alike in other
respects, and I felt perfectly sure that his superior note would weigh
nothing in the balance. For when has the character of the voice
influenced a fancier in selecting? Never I believe, odd as it seems. I
have read a very big book on the various breeds of the fowl, but the
crowing of the cock was not mentioned in it. This would not seem so
strange if fanciers had invariably looked solely to utility, and their
highest ambition had ended at size, weight and quality of flesh, early
maturity, hardihood, and the greatest number of eggs. This has not been
the case. They possess, like others, the love of the beautiful,
artificial as their standards sometimes appear; and there are breeds in
which beauty seems to have been the principal object, as, for instance,
in several of the gold and silver spangled and pencilled varieties. But,
besides beauty of plumage, there are other things in the fowl worthy of
being improved by selection. One of these has been cultivated by man for
thousands of years, namely, the combative spirit and splendid courage of
the male bird. But there is a spirit abroad now which condemns
cock-fighting, and to continue selecting and breeding cocks solely for
their game-points seems a mere futility. The energy and enthusiasm
expended in this direction would be much better employed in improving
the bird's vocal powers.

The morning song of the cock is a sound unique in nature, and of all
natural sounds it is the most universal. "All climates agree with brave
Chanticleer. He is more indigenous even than the natives. His health is
ever good; his lungs are sound; his spirits never flag." He is a pet
bird among tribes that have never seen the peacock, goose, and turkey.
In tropical countries where the dog becomes dumb, or degenerates into a
mere growler, his trumpet never rusts. It is true that he was cradled in
the torrid zone, yet in all Western lands, where he "shakes off the
powdery snow," with vigorous wings, his voice sounds as loud and
inspiriting as in the hot jungle. Pale-faced Londoners, and blacks, and
bronzed or painted barbarians, all men all the world over, wake at morn
to the "peaceful crowing of the cock," just as the Athenians woke of
old, and the nations older still. It is not, therefore, strange that
this song has more associations for man than any other sound in nature.
But, apart from any adventitious claims to our attention, the sound
possesses intrinsic merits and pleases for its own sake. In our other
domestic birds we have, with regard to this point, been unfortunate. We
have the gobbling of turkeys, and the hoarse, monotonous come back of
the guinea-fowl, screaming of peacocks and geese, and quacking, hissing,
and rasping of mallard and mus-covy. Above all these sounds the ringing,
lusty, triumphant call of Chanticleer, as the far-reaching toll of the
bell-bird sounds above the screaming and chattering of parrots and
toucans in the Brazilian forest. A fine sound, which in spite of many
changes of climate and long centuries of domestication still preserves
that forest-born character of wildness, which gives so great a charm to
the language of many woodland gallinaceous birds. As we have seen, it is
variable, and in some artificial varieties has been suffered to
degenerate into sounds harsh and disagreeable; yet it is plain that an
improved voice in a beautiful breed would double the bird's value from
an aesthetic point of view. As things now are, the fine voices are in a
very small minority. Some bad voices in artificial breeds, i.e., those
which, like the Brahma and Cochin, diverge most widely from the original
type--are perhaps incurable, like the carrion crow's voice; for that
bird will probably always caw harshly in spite of the musical throat
which anatomists find in it. We can only listen to our birds, and begin
experimenting with those already possessed of shapely notes and voices
of good quality.

I am not going to be so ill-mannered as to conclude without an apology
to those among us who under no circumstances can tolerate the crowing of
the cock. It is true that I have not been altogether unmindful of their
prepossessions, and have freely acknowledged in divers places that
Chanticleer does not always please, and that there is abundant room for
improvement; but if they go further than that, if for them there exists
not on this round globe a cock whose voice would fail to irritate, then
I have not shown consideration enough, and something is still owing to
their feelings, which are very acute. It is possible that one of these
sensitive persons may take up my book, and, attracted by its title, dip
into this paper, hoping to find in it a practical suggestion for the
effectual muzzling of the obnoxious bird. The only improvement which
would fall in with such a one's ideas on the subject of cock-crowing
would be to improve this kind of natural music out of existence.
Naturally the paper would disappoint him; he would be grieved at the
writer's erroneous views. I hope that his feelings would take no acuter
form. I have listened to a person, usually mild-mannered, denouncing a
neighbour in the most unmeasured terms for the crime of keeping a
crowing cock. If the cock had been a non-crower, a silent member, it
would have been different: he would hardly have known that he had a
neighbour. There is a very serious, even a sad, side to this question.
Mr. Sully maintains that as civilization progresses, and as we grow more
intellectual, all noise, which is pleasing to children and savages, and
only exhilarates their coarse and juvenile brains, becomes increasingly
intolerable to us. What unfortunate creatures we then are! We have got
our pretty rattle and are now afraid that the noise it makes is going to
be the death of us. But what is noise? Will any two highly intellectual
beings agree as to the particular sound which produces the effect of
rusty nails thrust in among the convolutions of the brain? Physicians
are continually discovering new forms of nervous maladies, caused by the
perpetual hurry and worry and excitement of our modern life; and perhaps
there is one form in which natural sounds, which being natural should be
agreeable, or at any rate innocent, become more and more abhorrent. This
is a question which concerns the medical journals; also, to some extent,
those who labour to forecast the future. Happily, all our maladies are
thrown off, sooner or later, if they do not kill us; and we can
cheerfully look forward to a time when the delicate chords in us shall
no longer be made to vibrate "like sweet bells jangled out of tune and
harsh" to any sound in nature, and when the peaceful crowing of the cock
shall cease to madden the early waker. For, whatever may be the fate
awaiting our city civilization, brave Chanticleer, improved as to his
voice or not, will undoubtedly still be with us.

IN AN OLD GARDEN

A sunny morning in June--a golden day among days that have mostly a
neutral tint; a large garden, with no visible houses beyond, but green
fields and unkept hedges and great silent trees, oak and ash and
elm--could I wish, just now, for a more congenial resting-place, or even
imagine one that comes nearer to my conception of an earthly paradise?
It is true that once I could not drink deeply enough from the sweet and
bitter cup of wild nature, and loved nature best, and sought it gladly
where it was most savage and solitary. But that was long ago. Now, after
years of London life, during which I have laboured like many another "to
get a wan pale face," with perhaps a wan pale mind to match, that past
wildness would prove too potent and sharp a tonic; unadulterated nature
would startle and oppress me with its rude desolate aspect, no longer
familiar. This softness of a well-cultivated earth, and unbroken verdure
of foliage in many shades, and harmonious grouping and blending of
floral hues, best suit my present enervated condition. I had, I imagine,
a swarter skin and firmer flesh when I could ride all day over great
summer-parched plains, where there was not a bush that would have
afforded shelter to a mannikin, and think that I was having a pleasant
journey. The cloudless sky and vertical sun--how intolerable they would
now seem, and scorch my brain and fill my shut eyes with dancing flames!
At present even this mild June sun is strong enough to make the old
mulberry tree on the lawn appear grateful. It is an ancient,
rough-barked tree, with wide branches, that droop downwards all round,
and rest their terminal leaves on the sward; underneath it is a natural
tent, or pavilion, with plenty of space to move about and sling a
hammock in. Here, then, I have elected to spend the hottest hours of my
one golden day, reading, dreaming, listening at intervals to the fine
bird-sounds that have a medicinal and restorative effect on the jarred
and wounded sense.

From the elms hard by comes a subdued, airy prattle of a few sparrows.
It is rather pleasant, something like a low accompaniment to the notes
of the more tuneful birds; the murmurous music of a many-stringed
instrument, forming the indistinct ground over which runs the bright
embroidery of clear melodious singing.

This morning, while lying awake from four to five o'clock, I almost
hated the sparrows, they were there in such multitudes, and so loud and
persistent sounded their jangling through the open window. It set me
thinking of the England of the future--of a time a hundred years hence,
let us say--when there will remain with us only two representatives of
feral life--the sparrow and the house-fly. Doubtless it will come,
unless something happens; but, doubtless, it will not continue. It will
still be necessary for a man to kill something in order to be happy; and
the sportsmen of that time, like great Gambetta, in the past, will sit
in the balconies, popping with pea-rifles at the sparrows until not one
is left to twitter. Then will come the turn of the untamed and untamable
fly; and he will afford good sport if hunted a la Domitain, with fine,
needle-tipped paper javelins, thrown to impale him on the wall.

One of our savants has lately prophesied that the time will come when
only the microscopic organisms will exist to satisfy the hunting
instinct in man. How these small creatures will be taken he does not
tell us. Perhaps the hunters will station themselves round a table with
a drop of preserved water on its centre, made large and luminous by
means of a ray of magnifying light. When that time comes the
amoeba--that "wandering Jew," as an irreverent Quarterly Reviewer has
called it--will lose its immortality, and the spry rotifer will fall a
victim to the infinitesimal fine bright arrows of the chase. A strange
quarry for men whose paeliolithic progenitors hunted the woolly mastodon
and many-horned rhinoceros and sabre-toothed tiger!

That sad day of very small things for the sportsman is, however, not
near, nor within measurable distance; or, so it seemed to me when, an
hour ago, I strolled round the garden, curiously peering into every
shrub, to find the visible and comparatively noble insect-life in great
abundance. Beetles were there--hard, round, polished, and of various
colours, like sea-worn pebbles on the beach; and some, called lady-birds
in the vernacular, were bound like the books that Chaucer loved in black
and red. And the small gilded fly, not less an insect light-headed, a
votary of vain delights, than in the prehistoric days when a
white-headed old king, discrowned and crazed, railed against sweet
Nature's liberty. And ever waiting to welcome this inconstant lover
(with falces) there sits the solitary geometric spider, an image and
embodiment of patience, not on a monument, but a suspended wheel of
which he is himself the hub; and so delicately fashioned are the silver
spokes thereof, radiating from his round and gem-like body, and the
rings, concentric tire within tire, that its exceeding fineness, like
swift revolving motion, renders it almost invisible. Caterpillars, too,
in great plenty--miniature porcupines with fretful quills on end, and
some naked even as they came into the world. This one, called the
earth-measurer, has drunk himself green with chlorophyll so as to escape
detection. Vain precaution! since eccentric motion betrays him to keen
avian eyes, when, like the traveller's snake, he erects himself on the
tip of his tail and sways about in empty space, vaguely feeling for
something, he knows not what. And the mechanical tortrix that rolls up a
leaf for garment and food, and preys on his own case and shelter until
he has literally eaten himself stark naked; after which he rolls up a
second leaf, and so on progressively. Thus in his larval life does he
symbolize some restless nation that makes itself many successive
constitutions and forms of government, in none of which it abides long;
but afterwards some higher thing, when he rests motionless, in form like
a sarcophagus, whence the infolded life emerges to haunt the twilight--a
grey ghost moth. There is no end to rolled-up leaves, and to the variety
of creatures that are housed in them; for, just as the "insect tribes of
human kind" in all places and in all ages, while seeking to improve
their condition, independently hit on the same means and inventions, so
it is with these small six-legged people; and many species in many
places have found out the comfort and security of the green cylinder.

So many did I open that I at last grew tired of the process, like a man
to whom the post has brought too many letters; but there was one--the
last I opened--the living active contents of which served to remind me
that some insects are unable to make a cylinder for themselves, having
neither gum nor web to fasten it with, and yet they will always find one
made by others to shelter themselves in. Here were no fewer than six
unbeautiful creatures, brothers and sisters, hatched from eggs on which
their parent earwig sat incubating just like an eagle or dove or
swallow, or, better still, like a pelican; for in the end did she not
give of her own life-fluid to nourish her children? Unbeautiful, yet not
without a glory superior to that of the Purple Emperor, and the angelic
blue Morpho, and the broad-winged Ornithoptera, that caused an
illustrious traveller to swoon with joy at the sight of its supreme
loveliness. Du Maurier has a drawing of a little girl in a garden gazing
at two earwigs racing along a stem. "I suppose," she remarks
interrogatively to her mamma, "that these are Mr. and Mrs. Earwig?" and
on being answered affirmatively, exclaims, "What could they have seen in
each other?" What they saw was blue blood, or something in insectology
corresponding to it. The earwig's lustre is that of antiquity. He
existed on earth before colour came in; and colour is old, although not
so old as Nature's unconscious aestheticism which, in the organic world,
is first expressed in beauty of form. It is long since the great May
flies, large as swifts, had their aerial cloudy dances over the vast
everglades and ancient forests of ferns; and when, on some dark night, a
brilliant Will-o'-the-wisp rose and floated above the feathery foliage,
drawn in myriads to its light, they revolved about it in an immense
mystical wheel, misty-white, glistening, and touched with prismatic
colour. Floating fire and wheel were visible only to the stars, and the
wakeful eyes of giant scaly monsters lying quiescent in the black waters
below; but they were very beautiful nevertheless. The modest earwig was
old on the earth even then; he dates back to the time, immeasurably
remote, when scorpions possessed the earth, and taught him to frighten
his enemies with a stingless tail--that curious antique little tail
which has not yet forgot its cunning.

Greater than all these inhabitants of the garden, ancient or modern by
reason of their numbers, which is the sign of predominance, are the
small wingless people that have colonies on every green stem and under
every green leaf.

These are the true generators of that heavenly sweat, or saliva of the
stars, concerning which Pliny the Younger wrote so learnedly. And they
are many tribes--green, purple, brown, isabel-line; but all are one
nation, and sacred to that fair god whom the Carian water-nymph loved
not wisely but too well. For, albeit the children of an ancient union,
they marry not, nor are given in marriage, yet withal multiply
exceedingly, so that one (not two) may in a single season produce a
billion. And at last when autumn comes, won back from the cold god to
his hot mother, they know love and wedlock, and die like all married
things. These are the Aphides--sometimes unprettily called plant-lice,
and vaguely spoken of by the uninformed as "blight"--and they nourish
themselves on vegetable juices, that thin green blood which is the
plant's life.

This, then, is the fruit which the birds have, come to gather. In June
is their richest harvest; it is more bountiful than September, when
apples redden, and grapes in distant southern lands are gathered for the
wine-press. In yon grey wall at the end of the lawn, just above the
climbing rose-bush, there are now seven hungry infants in one small
cradle, each one, some one says, able to consume its own weight of
insect food every day. I am inclined to believe that it must be so,
while trying to count the visits paid to the nest in one hour by the
parent tits--those small tits that do the gardener so much harm! We
know, on good authority, that the spider has a "nutty flavour"; and most
insects in the larval stage afford succulent and toothsome, or at all
events beaksome, morsels. These are, just now, the crimson cherries,
purple and yellow plums, currants, red, white, and black--and
sun-painted peaches, asking in their luscious ripeness for a mouth to
melt in, that fascinate finch and flycatcher alike, and make the
starlings smack their horny lips with a sound like a loving kiss.

Not that I care, or esteem birds for what they eat or do not eat. With
all these creatures that are at strife among themselves, and that birds
prey upon, I am at peace, even to the smallest that are visible--the red
spider which is no spider; and the minute gossamer spider clinging to
the fine silvery hairs of the flying summer; and the coccus that fall
from the fruit trees to float on their buoyant cottony down--a summer
snow. Fils de la Vierge are these, and sacred. The man who can
needlessly set his foot on a worm is as strange to my soul as De
Quincey's imaginary Malay, or even his "damned crocodile." The worm that
one sees lying bruised and incapable on the gravel walk has fallen among
thieves. These little lives do me good and not harm. I smell the acid
ants to strengthen my memory. I know that if I set an overturned
cockchafer on his legs three sins shall be forgiven me; that if I am
kindly tolerant of the spider that drops accidentally on my hand or
face, my purse shall be mysteriously replenished. At the same time, one
has to remember that such sentiments, as a rule, are not understood by
those who have charge over groves and gardens, whose minds are ignorant
and earthy, or, as they would say, practical. Of the balance of nature
they know and care naught, nor can they regard life as sacred; it is
enough to know that it is or may be injurious to their interests for
them to sweep it away. The small thing that has been flying about and
uttering musical sounds since April may, when July comes, devour a
certain number of cherries. Nor is even this plea needed. If it is
innocent for the lower creatures to prey upon one another, it cannot be
less innocent for man to destroy them indiscriminately, if it gives him
any pleasure to do so. It is idle to go into such subtle questions with
those who have the power to destroy; if their hands are to be restrained
it is not by appealing to feelings which they do not possess, but to
their lower natures--to their greed and their cunning. For the rest of
us, for all who have conquered or outgrown the killing instinct, the
impartiality that pets nothing and persecutes nothing is doubtless man's
proper attitude towards the inferior animals; a godlike benevolent
neutrality; a keen and kindly interest in every form of life, with
indifference as to its ultimate destiny; the softness which does no
wrong with the hardness that sees no wrong done.

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