Birds in Town and Village

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To return to the birds. The starlings have kissed like lovers, and
fluttered up vertically on their short wings, trying to stream like
eagles, only to return to the trees once more and sit there chattering
pleasant nothings; at intervals throwing out those soft, round,
modulated whistled notes, just as an idle cigarette-smoker blows rings
of blue smoke from his lips; and now they have flown away to the fields
so that I can listen to the others,

A thrush is making music on a tall tree beyond the garden hedge, and I
am more grateful for the distance that divides us than for the song;
for, just now, he does not sing so well as sometimes of an evening, when
he is most fluent, and a listener, deceived by his sweetness and melody,
writes to the papers to say that he has heard the nightingale. Just now
his song is scrappy, composed of phrases that follow no order and do not
fit or harmonize, and is like a poor imitation of an inferior
mocking-bird's song.

Between the scraps of loud thrush-music I listen to catch the thin,
somewhat reedy sound of a yellow-hammer singing in the middle of the
adjoining grassy field. It comes well from the open expanse of purpling
grass, and reminds me of a favourite grasshopper in a distant sunny
land. O happy grasshopper! singing all day in the trees and tall
herbage, in a country where every village urchin is not sent afield to
"study natural history" with green net and a good store of pins, shall I
ever again hear thy breezy music, and see thee among the green leaves,
beautiful with steel-blue and creamy-white body, and dim purple over and
vivid red underwings?

The bird of the pasture-land is singing still, perhaps, but all at once
I have ceased to hear him, for something has come to lift me above his
low grassy level, something faint and at first only the suspicion of a
sound; then a silvery lisping, far off and aerial, touching the sense as
lightly as the wind-borne down of dandelion.

If any place for any soul there be Disrobed and disentrammelled,
doubtless it is from such a place and such a soul that this sublimated
music falls. The singer, one can imagine, has never known or has
forgotten earth; and if it is visible to him, how small it must seem
from that altitude, "spinning like a fretful midge" beneath him in the
vast void!

It is the lark singing in the blue infinite heaven, at this distance
with something ethereal and heavenly in his voice; but now the wide
circling wings that brought him for a few moments within hearing, have
borne him beyond it again; and missing it, the sunshine looks less
brilliant than before, and all other bird-voices seem by comparison dull
and of the earth.

Certainly there is nothing spiritual in the song of the chaffinch. There
he sits within sight, motionless, a little bird-shaped automaton, made
to go off at intervals of twelve or thirteen seconds; but unfortunately
one hears with the song the whirr and buzz of the internal machinery. It
is not now as in April, when it is sufficient in a song that it shall be
joyous; in the leafy month, when roses are in bloom, one grows critical,
and asks for sweetness and expression, and a better art than this
vigorous garden singer displays in that little double flourish with
which he concludes his little hurry-scurry lyric. He has practised that
same flourish for five thousand years--to be quite within the mark--and
it is still far from perfect, still little better than a kind of musical
sneeze. So long is art!

Perhaps in some subtle way, beyond the psychologist's power to trace, he
has become aware of my opinion of his performance--the unspoken
detraction which yet affects its object; and, feeling hurt in his
fringilline _amour propre_, he has all at once taken himself off. Never
mind; a better singer has succeeded him. I have heard and seen the
little wren a dozen times to-day; now he has come to the upper part of
the tree I am lying under, and although so near his voice sounds
scarcely louder than before. This is also a lyric, but of another kind.
It is not plaintive, nor passionate; nor is it so spontaneous as the
warbling of the robin--that most perfect feathered impressionist; nor is
it endeared to me by early associations since I listened in boyhood to
the songs of other wrens. In what, then, does its charm consist? I do
not know. Certainly it is delicate, and may even be described as
brilliant, in its limited way perfect, and to other greater songs like
the small pimpernel to a poppy or a hollyhock. Unambitious, yet
finished, it has the charm of distinction. The wren is the least
self-conscious of our singers. Somewhere among the higher green
translucent leaves the little brown barred thing is quietly sitting,
busy for the nonce about nothing, dreaming his summer dream, and
unknowingly telling it aloud. When shall we have symbols to express as
perfectly our summer-feeling--our dream?

That small song has served to remind me of two small books I brought
into the garden to read--the works of two modern minor poets whose
"wren-like warblings," I imagined, would suit my mood and the genial
morning better than the stirring or subtle thoughts of greater singers.
Possibly in that I was mistaken; for there until now lie the books
neglected on a lawn chair within reach of my hand. The chair was dragged
hither half-an-hour ago by a maiden all in white, who appeared half
inclined to share the mulberry shade with me. She did not continue long
in that mind. In a lively manner, she began speaking of some trivial
thing; but after a very few moments all interest in the subject
evaporated, and she sat humming some idle air, tapping the turf with her
fantastic shoe. Presently she picked up one of my books, opened it at
random and read a line or two, her vermilion under-lip curling slightly;
then threw it down again, and glanced at me out of the corners of her
eyes; then hummed again, and finally became silent, and sat bending
forward a little, her dark lustrous eyes gazing with strange intentness
through the slight screen of foliage into the vacant space beyond. What
to see? The poet has omitted to tell us to what the maiden's fancy
lightly turns in spring. Doubtless it turns to thoughts of something
real. Life is real; so is passion--the quickening of the blood, the wild
pulsation. But the pleasures and pains of the printed book are not real,
and are to reality like Japanese flowers made of coloured bits of tissue
paper to the living fragrant flowers that bloom to-day and perish
to-morrow; they are a simulacrum, a mockery, and present to us a pale
phantasmagoric world, peopled with bloodless men and women that chatter
meaningless things and laugh without joy. The feeling of unreality
affects us all at times, but in very different degrees. And perhaps I
was too long a doer, herding too much with narrow foreheads, drinking
too deeply of the sweet and bitter cup, to experience that pure
unfailing delight in literature which some have. Its charm, I fancy, is
greatest to those in whom the natural man, deprived in early life of his
proper aliment, grows sickly and pale, and perishes at last of
inanition. There is ample room then for the latter higher growth--the
unnatural cultivated man. Lovers of literature are accustomed to say
that they find certain works "helpful" to them; and doubtless, being all
intellect, they are right. But we, the less highly developed, are
compounded of two natures, and while this spiritual pabulum sustains
one, the other and larger nature is starved; for the larger nature is
earthly, and draws its sustenance from the earth. I must look at a leaf,
or smell the sod, or touch a rough pebble, or hear some natural sound,
if only the chirp of a cricket, or feel the sun or wind or rain on my
face. The book itself may spoil the pleasure it was designed to give me,
and instead of satisfying my hunger, increase it until the craving and
sensation of emptiness becomes intolerable. Not any day spent in a
library would I live again, but rather some lurid day of labour and
anxiety, of strife, or peril, or passion.

Occupied with this profound question, I scarcely noticed when my
shade-sharer, with whom I sympathised only too keenly in her restless
mood, rose and, lifting the light green curtain, passed out into the
sunshine and was gone. Nor did I notice when the little wren ceased
singing overhead. At length recalled to myself I began to wonder at the
unusual silence in the garden, until, casting my eyes on the lawn, I
discovered the reason; for there, moving about in their various ways,
most of the birds were collected in a loose miscellaneous flock, a kind
of happy family. There were the starlings, returned from the fields, and
looking like little speckled rooks; some sparrows, and a couple of
robins hopping about in their wild startled manner; in strange contrast
to these last appeared that little feathered clodhopper, the chaffinch,
plodding over the turf as if he had hobnailed boots on his feet; last,
but not least, came statuesque blackbirds and thrushes, moving, when
they moved, like automata. They all appear to be finding something to
eat; but I Watch the thrushes principally, for these are more at home on
the moist earth than the others, and have keener senses, and seek for
nobler game. I see one suddenly thrust his beak into the turf and draw
from it a huge earthworm, a wriggling serpent, so long that although he
holds his head high, a third of the pink cylindrical body still rests in
its run. What will he do with it? We know how wandering Waterton treated
the boa which he courageously grasped by the tail as it retreated into
the bushes. Naturally, it turned on him, and, lifting high its head,
came swiftly towards his face with wide-open jaws; and at this supreme
moment, without releasing his hold on its tail, with his free hand he
snatched off his large felt hat and thrust it down the monster's throat,
and so saved himself.

Just as I am intently watching to see how my hatless little Waterton
will deal with _his_ serpent, a startling bark, following by a canine
shriek, then a yell, resound through the silent garden; and over the
lawn rush those three demoniacal fox-terriers, Snap, Puzzy, and Babs,
all determined to catch something. Away fly the birds, and though now
high overhead, the baffled brutes continue wildly careering about the
grounds, vexing the air with their frantic barkings. No more birds
to-day! But now the peace-breakers have discovered me, and come tearing
across the lawn, and on to the half-way chair, then to the hammock,
scrambling over each other to inflict their unwelcome caresses on my
hands and face.

Ah well, let them have their way and do their worst, since the birds are
gone, and I shall go soon. It is a consolation to think that they are
not my pets; that I shall not grieve, like their mistress, when their
brief barking period is over; that I care just so much and no more for
them than for any other living creature, not excepting the
_fer-de-lance_, "quoiled in the path like rope in a ship," or the
broad-winged vulture "scaling the heavens by invisible stairs." None are
out of place where Nature placed them, nor unbeautiful; none are
unlovable, since their various qualities--the rage of the one and the
gentleness of the other--are but harmonious lights and shades in the
ever-changing living picture that is so perfect.

BIRDS IN A CORNISH VILLAGE

I

TAKING STOCK OF THE BIRDS

Having begun, or first written, this book in one village, which was near
London, I am now finishing, or re-writing, it in another in "the westest
part of all the land," over three hundred miles from the first. Here I
had to go over this ancient work of twenty-three years ago, which was
also my first English bird book, to prepare it for a new edition; and
after all necessary corrections, omissions and additions of fresh matter
made in the foregoing parts, it seemed best to throw out the whole of
the concluding portion, which dealt mainly with the question of
bird-preservation as it presented itself at that time and is now out of
date, thanks to the legislation of recent years and to the growth in
this country of the feeling or desire for birds during the last two or
three decades. In place of this discarded matter I propose to give here
the results of recent observations on the bird life of a Cornish
village.

My residence in the Cornish Village (or villages) was during May and
June, 1915, and again from October of the same year to June, 1916. These
were months of ill-health, so that I was prevented from pursuing my
customary outdoor rambling life; but, like that poor creature the
barnyard fowl that can't use its wings, instinctively, or from old
habit, I used my eyes in keeping a watch on the feathered (and flying)
people about me.

The village, Lelant, is on the Hayle estuary, and to see the Atlantic
one has but to walk past the grey old church at the end of the street,
where the ground rises, to find oneself in a wilderness of towans, as
the sand-hills are there called, clothed in their rough, grey-green
marram grass and spreading on either hand round the bay of St. Ives. A
beautiful sight, for the sea on a sunny day is of that marvellous blue
colour seen only in Cornwall; far out on a rock on the right hand stands
the shining white Godrevy lighthouse, and on the left, on the opposite
side of the bay, the little ancient fishing-town of St. Ives.

The river or estuary, in sight of the doors and windows of the village,
was haunted every day by numbers of gulls and curlews. These last
numbered about one hundred and fifty birds, and were always there except
at full tide, when they would fly away to the fields and moors. Of all
my bird neighbours I think that these gave me most pleasure, especially
at night, when lying awake I would listen by the hour to the perpetual
curlew conversation going on in the dark--an endless series of clear
modulated notes and trills, with a beautiful expression of wildness and
freedom, a reminder of lonely seashores and mountains and moorlands in
the north country. What wonder that Stevenson, sick in his tropical
island--sick for his cold grey home so many thousands of miles away,
wished once more to hear the whaup crying over the graves of his
forefathers, and to hear no more at all!

Of bird music by day there was little; you would hear more of it in one
morning in that small rustic village in Berkshire where the first part
of this book was written than in a whole summer in one of these West
Cornwall villages, so few comparatively are the songsters. Nor was this
scarcity in the village only; it was everywhere, as I found when able to
get out for a few hours during my two spring seasons in the place. Close
by were the extensive woods of Trevalloe, where I was struck by the
extraordinary silence and where I listened in vain for a single note
from blackcap, garden-warbler, willow-wren, wood-wren, or redstart. The
thrushes, chaffinch, chiff-chaff, and greenfinch were occasionally
heard; outside the wood the buntings, chats, and the skylark were few
and far between.

This scarcity of small birds is, I think, due in the first place to the
extraordinary abundance of the jackdaw, the diligent seeker after small
birds' nests, and to the autumn and winter pastime of bush-beating to
which men and boys are given in these parts, and which the Cornish
authorities refuse to suppress.

After a time, when, owing to increasing debility, I was confined more
and more to the village, I began to concentrate my attention on a few
common species that were always present, particularly on the three
commonest--rook, daw, and starling; the first two residents, the
starling, a winter visitor from September to April.

In October, I started feeding the birds at the house where I was staying
as a guest, throwing the scraps on a lawn at the back which sloped down
towards the estuary. First came all the small birds in the immediate
neighbourhood--robin, dunnock, wagtail, chaffinch, throstle, blackbird,
and blue and ox-eye tits. Then followed troops of starlings, and soon
all the rooks and daws in the village began to see what was going on and
come too, and this attracted the gulls from the estuary--I wished that
it had drawn the curlews; and all these big ones were so greedy and
bold, so noisy and formidable-looking that the small birds were quite
driven out; all except the starlings that came in hungry crowds and were
determined to get their share.

At the beginning of December I had to move to a nursing-home at the
Convent of the Sisters of the Cross at the adjacent village of Hayle,
just across the estuary. The Convent buildings and grounds and gardens
are fortunately outside the ugly village, and my room had an
exceptionally big window occupying almost the whole wall on one side,
with an outlook to the south over the green fields and moors towards
Helston. An ideal sick-room for a man who can't be happy without the
company of birds, and here, even when lying on my bed before I was able
to sit or stand by the window, a large portion of the sky, rainy or
blue, was visible, and rooks and daws and gulls and troops of starlings,
and the curlews from the river, were seen coming and going all day long.

But it was much better when I was able to go to the window, since now,
by feeding them, I could draw the birds to me. I fed them on a green
field beneath my window, where the Convent milch-cows were accustomed to
graze for some hours each day. All through the winter there was grass
for them, and I was glad to have them there, as the cow is my favourite
beast, and it was also pleasant to see the wintering starlings
consorting with them, clustering about their noses, just as they do in
the pasture lands in summer time. But I found it best to feed the birds
when the cows were not there, on account of the behaviour of one of
them, a young animal who had not yet been sobered by having a calf of
her own. She was a frivolous young thing and when tired of feeding, she
would start teasing the old cows, pushing them with her horns, then
flinging up her hind legs to challenge them to a romp. The sight of a
crowd of birds under my window would bring her at a gallop to the spot
to find out what all the fuss was about, and the birds would be driven
off.

One morning I was at my window when the field was empty of bird and
beast life with the exception of a solitary old rook, a big bird who was
a constant attendant and so much bigger than most of the rooks that I
had come to know it well. By and by the young cow walked into the field
by herself and, after gazing all round as if surprised at finding the
place so lifeless, she caught sight of and fixed her eyes on the old
rook working at the turf some fifty or sixty yards away. Presently she
began walking towards it, and when within about twenty yards put her
head down and charged it. The rook paid no attention until she was
almost on it, then rose up, emitting its angriest, most raucous screams
while hovering just over her head, and having thus relieved its
indignant feelings it flew heavily away to the far end of the field, and
settling down began prodding away at the soil. The cow, standing still,
gazed after it, and one could almost imagine her saying: "So you won't
get out of the field! Well! I'll soon make you. I'm going to have it
all to myself this morning." And at once she began rapidly walking
towards the bird. But half-way to it was the post set up in the middle
of the field for the cows to rub their hides, and on coming abreast of
it the sight of it and its proximity suggested the delight of a rub, and
turning off at right angles she walked straight to the post and began
rubbing herself against it. The rook went on with its business, and
after that there was no more quarrelling.

Another morning this same old rook came with his mate to the field:
separating, they came down a distance of a hundred yards or more apart
and began searching for grubs. By and by the old cock discovered
something particularly good and after vigorously prodding the turf for a
few moments he sprang up and flew excitedly to his mate, who instantly
knew what this action meant and began fluttering her wings and crying
for the dainty morsel which he proceeded to deliver into her wide-open
mouth. Having fed her, he flew back to the same spot and began working
again.

This is a common action of the rooks, and I saw this same bird feed his
mate on other occasions during the winter months, when I have no doubt
that he, poor wretch, could hardly find food enough to keep himself
alive during the dark season of everlasting wind and rain when the dim
daylight lasted for about six hours. But I never saw a daw or starling
feed his mate, or feed another daw or starling, although I watched
closely every day and often for an hour at a stretch, and though I am
convinced that the starling, like the rook and crow and daw, and in fact
all the Corvidae, pairs for life. To this point I will return presently;
let me first relate another incident about our frivolous and
irresponsible young cow.

One morning when the cows were in the field, some herring-gulls drifted
by and a few of them remained circling about above the field. I threw
out a piece of bread, and a troop of starlings rushed to it, and one of
the gulls dropped down and took possession of it, but had scarcely began
tearing at it when two more gulls dropped down and the first bird,
lifting his wings began screaming "Hands off!" at the others, and the
others, also raising their wings, screamed their wailing screams in
reply. The young cow, attracted by the noise, gazed at them for a few
moments, then all at once putting her head down furiously charged them.
The three gulls rose up simultaneously and floated over her and then
away, leaving her standing on the spot, shaking her head in anger and
disgust at their escape. A rhinoceros charging a ball of thistledown or
a soap-bubble, and causing it to float away with the wind it created,
would not have been a more Iudicrous spectacle.

II

DO STARLINGS PAIR FOR LIFE?

From my boyhood, when I first began to observe birds, I started with the
imbibed notion that those which paired for life were the rare
exceptions--the dove that rhymed with love, the eagle, and perhaps half
a dozen more. Who, for instance, would imagine that the sexes could be
faithful in parasitical species like the cuckoo of Europe and the
cow-birds of America? Yet even as a boy I made the discovery that an
Argentine cow-bird that lays its eggs in the nests of other species,
does actually pair for life; and so effectually mated is it, that on no
day and no season of the year will you see a male without his female: if
he flies she flies with him and feeds and drinks with him, and when he
perches she perches at his side, and he never utters a sound but a
responsive sound immediately falls from her devoted beak.

Again, it may seem unlikely that there can be pairing for life in
species, like the chaffinch of northern Europe and, with us, of
Scotland, in which the sexes separate and migrate separately. Also of
non-gregarious species like the nightingale in which the males arrive in
this country several days before the females. Yet I am confident that if
we could catch and mark a considerable number of pairs it would be found
that the same male and female found one another and re-mated every year.

It comes to this, that birds may pair for life, yet not be all the time
or all the year together, as in the case of hawks, crows, owls, herons,
and many others. In numberless species which undoubtedly pair for life
the sexes keep apart during several hours each day, and there is some
evidence that those that separate for a part of the year remain faithful.

An incident, related by Miss Ethel Williams, of Winchester, in her
natural history notes contributed to a journal in that city, bears on
this point. She had among the bird pensioners in the garden of her house
adjoining the Cathedral green, a female thrush that grew tame enough to
fly into the house and feed on the dining-room table. Her thrush paired
and bred for several seasons in the garden, and the young, too, were
tame and would follow their mother into the house to be fed. The male
was wild and too shy ever to venture in. She noticed the first year that
it had a wing-feather which stuck out, owing probably to a malformation
of the socket. Each year after the breeding season the male vanished,
the female remaining alone through the winter months, but in spring the
male came back--the same bird with the unmistakable projecting
wing-feather. Yet it was certain that this bird had gone quite away,
otherwise he would have returned to the garden, where there was food in
abundance during the spells of frosty weather. As he did not appear it
is probable that he migrated each autumn to some warmer climate beyond
the sea.

I have noticed that wagtails, thrushes, blackbirds, and some other
species when the young are out of the nest, divide the brood between
male and female and go different ways and spend the daylight hours at a
distance apart, each attending to the one or two young birds in its charge.

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