Birds in Town and Village

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The owner was disgusted, but took no action. "This," he said, "is their
gratitude"; and from that day he ceased to subscribe to the local
charities or take his walks in the village. He had given the institute,
and so could not pull it down nor prevent them from using it.

It was refreshing to hear that the Badgers had shown a proper spirit in
the matter, and I was grateful to them for having kept the right-of-way,
as on most days I spent several hours in the beautiful woods.

To return to the jay. In spite of the keeper's persecution, I knew that
he was there; every morning when I got up to look out of the window
between four and five o'clock, I heard from some quarter of the village
that curious subdued, but far-reaching, scolding note he is accustomed
to utter when his suspicions have been aroused.

That was the jay's custom--to come from the woods before even the
earliest risers were up, and forage in the village. By and bye I
discovered that, by lying motionless for an hour or so on the dry moss
in the wood, he would at length grow so bold as to allow himself to be
seen, but high up among the topmost branches. Then, by means of my
binocular, I had the wild thing on my thumb, so to speak, exhibiting
himself to me, inquisitive, perplexed, suspicious, enraged by turns, as
he flirted wings and tail, lifted and lowered his crest, glancing down
with bright, wild eyes. What a beautiful hypocrisy and delightful power
this is which enables us, sitting or lying motionless, feigning sleep
perhaps, thus to fool this wild, elusive creature, and bring all its
cunning to naught! He is so much smaller and keener-sighted, able to
fly, to perch far up above me, to shift his position every minute or
two, masking his small figure with this or that tuft of leaves, while
still keeping his eyes on me--in spite of it all to have him so close,
and without moving or taking any trouble, to see him so much better than
he can see me! But this is a legitimate trickery of science, so innocent
that we can laugh at our dupe when we practise it; nor do we afterwards
despise our superior cunning and feel ashamed, as when we slaughter wild
birds with far-reaching shot, which they cannot escape.

* * *

All these corvine birds, which the gamekeeper pursues so relentlessly,
albeit they were before him, killing when they killed to better purpose;
and, let us hope, will exist after him--all these must greatly surpass
other kinds in sagacity to have escaped extermination. In the present
condition of things, the jay is perhaps the best off, on account of his
smaller size and less conspicuous colouring; but whether more cunning
than the crow or magpie or not, in perpetual alertness and restless
energy or intensity of life, he is without an equal among British birds.
And this quality forms his chief attraction; it is more to the mind than
his lifted crest and bright eyes, his fine vinaceous brown and the patch
of sky-blue on his wings. One would miss him greatly from the woods;
some of the melody may well be spared for the sake of the sudden,
brain-piercing, rasping, rending scream with which he startles us in our
solitary forest walks.

It is this extreme liveliness of the jay which makes it more distressing
to the mind to see it pent in a cage than other birds of its family,
such as the magpie; just as it is more distressing to see a skylark than
a finch in prison, because the lark has an irresistible impulse to rise
when his singing fit is on. Sing he must, in or out of prison, yet there
can be little joy in the performance when the bird is incessantly teased
with the unsatisfied desire to mount and pour out his music at heaven's
gate.

Out of the cages, jays make charming and beautiful pets, and some who
have kept them have assured me that they are not mischievous birds. The
late Mark Melford one time when I visited him, had two jays, handsome
birds, in bright, glossy plumage, always free to roam where they liked,
indoors or out. We were sitting talking in his garden when one of the
jays came flying to us and perched on a wooden ledge a few feet from and
above our heads, and after sitting quietly for a little while he
suddenly made a dash at my head, just brushing it with his wings, then
returned to his perch. At intervals of a few moments he repeated this
action, and when I remarked that he probably resented the presence of a
stranger, Melford exclaimed, "Oh, no, he wants to play with you--that's
all."

His manner of playing was rather startling. So long as I kept my eyes on
him he remained motionless, but the instant my attention wandered, or
when in speaking I looked at my companion, the sudden violent dash at my
head would be made.

I was assured by Melford that his birds never carried off and concealed
bright objects, a habit which it has been said the jay, as well as the
magpie, possesses.

"What would he do with this shilling if I tossed it to him?" I asked.

"Catch it," he returned. "It would simply be play to him, but he
wouldn't carry it off."

I tossed up the shilling, and the bird had perhaps expected me to do so,
as he deftly caught it just as a dog catches a biscuit when you toss one
to him. After keeping it a few moments in his beak, he put it down at
his side. I took out four more shilling pieces and tossed them quickly
one by one, and he caught them without a miss and placed them one by one
with the other, not scattered about, but in a neat pile. Then, seeing
that I had no more shillings he flew off.

After these few playful passages with one of his birds, I could
understand Melford's feeling about his free pet jays, magpies and
jackdaws; they were not merely birds to him, but rather like so many
delightful little children in the beautiful shape of birds.

* * *

There was no rookery in or near the village, but a large flock of rooks
were always to be seen feeding and sunning themselves in some level
meadows near the river. It struck me one day as a very fine sight, when
an old bird, who looked larger and blacker and greyer-faced than the
others, and might have been the father and leader of them all, got up on
a low post, and with wide-open beak poured forth a long series of most
impressive caws. One always wonders at the meaning of such displays. Is
the old bird addressing the others in the rook language on some matter
of great moment; or is he only expressing some feeling in the only
language he has--those long, hoarse, uninflected sounds; and if so, what
feeling? Probably a very common one. The rooks appeared happy and
prosperous, feeding in the meadow grass in that June weather, with the
hot sun shining on their glossy coats. Their days of want were long past
and forgotten; the anxious breeding period was over; the tempest in the
tall trees; the annual slaughter of the young birds--all past and
forgotten. The old rook was simply expressing the old truth, that life
was worth living.

These rooks were usually accompanied by two or three or more crows--a
bird of so ill-repute that the most out-and-out enthusiast for
protection must find it hard to say a word in its favour. At any rate,
the rooks must think, if they think at all, that this frequent visitor
and attendant of theirs is more kin than kind. I have related in a
former work that I once saw a peregrine strike down and kill an owl--a
sight that made me gasp with astonishment. But I am inclined to think of
this act as only a slip, a slight aberration, on the part of the falcon,
so universal is the sense of relationship among the kinds that have the
rapacious habit; or, at the worst, it was merely an isolated act of
deviltry and daring of the sharp-winged pirate of the sky, a sudden
assertion of over-mastering energy and power, and a very slight offence
compared with that of the crow when he carries off and devours his
callow little cousins of the rookery.

* * *

One of the first birds I went out to seek--perhaps the most medicinal of
all birds to see--was the kingfisher; but he was not anywhere on the
river margin, although suitable places were plentiful enough, and
myriads of small fishes were visible in the shallow water, seen at rest
like dim-pointed stripes beneath the surface, and darting away and
scattering outwards, like a flight of arrows, at any person's approach.
Walking along the river bank one day, when the place was still new to
me, I discovered a stream, and following it up arrived at a spot where a
clump of trees overhung the water, casting on it a deep shade. On the
other side of the stream buttercups grew so thickly that the glazed
petals of the flowers were touching; the meadow was one broad expanse of
brilliant yellow. I had not been standing half a minute in the shade
before the bird I had been seeking darted out from the margin, almost
beneath my feet, and then, instead of flying up or down stream, sped
like an arrow across the field of buttercups. It was a very bright day,
and the bird going from me with the sunshine full on it, appeared
entirely of a shining, splendid green. Never had I seen the kingfisher
in such favourable circumstances; flying so low above the flowery level
that the swiftly vibrating wings must have touched the yellow petals; he
was like a waif from some far tropical land. The bird was tropical, but
I doubt if there exists within the tropics anything to compare with a
field of buttercups--such large and unbroken surfaces of the most
brilliant colour in nature. The first bird's mate appeared a minute
later, flying in the same direction, and producing the same splendid
effect, and also green. These two alone were seen, and only on this
occasion, although I often revisited the spot, hoping to find them
again.

Now, the kingfisher is blue, and I am puzzled to know why, on this one
occasion, it appeared green. I have, in a former work, _Argentine
Ornithology_, described a contrary effect in a small and beautiful
tyrant-bird, _Cyanotis azarae_, variously called, in the vernacular,
"All-colored or Many-colored Kinglet." It has a little blue on its head,
but its entire back, from the nape to the tail, is deep green. It lives
in beds of bulrushes, and when seen flying from the spectator in a very
strong light, at a distance of twenty or thirty yards, its colour in
appearance is bright cerulean blue. It is a sunlight effect, but how
produced is a mystery to me. In the case of the two green kingfishers, I
am inclined to think that the yellow of that shining field of buttercups
in some way produced the illusion.

Why are these exquisite birds so rare, even in situations so favourable
to them as the one I have described? Are they killed by severe frosts?
An ornithological friend from Oxfordshire assures me that it will take
several favourable seasons to make good the losses of the late terrible
winter of 1891-92. But this, as every ornithologist knows, is only a
part of the truth. The large number of stuffed kingfishers under glass
shades that one sees in houses of all descriptions, in town and country,
but most frequently in the parlours of country cottages and inns, tell a
melancholy story. Some time ago a young man showed me three stuffed
kingfishers in a case, and informed me that he had shot them at a place
(which he named) quite close to London. He said that these three birds
were the last of their kind ever seen there; that he had gone, week
after week and watched and waited, until one by one, at long intervals,
he had secured them all; and that two years had passed since the last
one was killed, and no other kingfisher had been seen at the place. He
added that the waterside which these birds had frequented was resorted
to by crowds of London working people on Saturday afternoons, Sundays
and other holidays; the fact that hundreds, perhaps thousands, of pairs
of tired eyes would have been freshened and gladdened by the sight of
their rare gem-like beauty only made him prouder of his achievement.
This young man was a cockney of the small shop-keeping class--a
Philistine of the Philistines--hence there was no call to feel surprise
at his self-glorification over such a matter. But what shall we say of
that writer whose masterly works on English rural life are familiar to
everyone, who is regarded as first among "lovers of nature," when he
relates that he invariably carried a gun when out of doors, mainly with
the object of shooting any kingfisher he might chance to see, as the
dead bird always formed an acceptable present to the cottager's wife,
who would get it stuffed and keep it as an ornament on her parlour
mantelshelf!

Happily for the kingfisher, and for human beings who love nature, the
old idea that beautiful birds were meant to be destroyed for fun by
anyone and everyone, from the small-brained, detestable cockney
sportsman I have mentioned, to the gentlemen who write books about the
beauties of nature, is now gradually giving place to this new one--that
it would be better to preserve the beautiful things we possess. Half a
century before the author of "Wild Life in a Southern Country" amused
himself by carrying a gun to shoot kingfishers, the inhabitants of that
same county of Wiltshire were bathed in tears--so I read in an old
Salisbury newspaper--at the tragic death of a young gentleman of great
distinction, great social charm, great promise. He was out shooting
swallows with a friend who, firing at a passing swallow, had the
misfortune to shoot and kill _him._

At the present time when gentlemen practise a little at flying birds, to
get their hand in before the first of September, they shoot sparrows as
a rule, or if they shoot swallows, which afford them better practice,
they do not say anything about it.

IV

Where the stream broadened and mixed with the river, there existed a
dense and extensive rush-bed--an island of rushes separated by a deep
channel, some twelve or fourteen yards in width from the bank. This was
a favourite nesting-place of the sedge-warblers; occasionally as many as
a dozen birds could be heard singing at the same time, although in no
sense together, and the effect was indeed curious. This is not a song
that spurts and gushes up fountain-like in the manner of the robin's,
and of some other kinds, sprinkling the listener, so to speak, with a
sparkling vocal spray; but it keeps low down, a song that flows along
the surface gurgling and prattling like musical running water, in its
shallow pebbly channel. Listening again, the similitude that seemed
appropriate at first was cast aside for another, and then another still.
The hidden singers scattered all about their rushy island were small,
fantastic, human minstrels, performing on a variety of instruments, some
unknown, others recognizable--bones and castanets, tiny hurdy-gurdies,
piccolos, banjos, tabours, and Pandean pipes--a strange medley!

Interesting as this concert was, it held me less than the solitary
singing of a sedge-warbler that lived by himself, or with only his mate,
higher up where the stream was narrow, so that I could get near him; for
he not only tickled my ears with his rapid, reedy music, but amused my
mind as well with a pretty little problem in bird psychology. I could
sit within a few yards of his tangled haunt without hearing a note; but
if I jumped up and made a noise, or struck the branches with my stick,
he would incontinently burst into song. It is a very well-known habit of
the bird, and on account of it and of the very peculiar character of the
sounds emitted, his song is frequently described by ornithologists as
"mocking, defiant, scolding, angry," etc. It seems clear that at
different times the bird sings from different exciting causes. When,
undisturbed by a strange presence, he bursts spontaneously into singing,
the music, as in other species, is simply an expression of overflowing
gladness; at other times, the bird expressed such feelings as alarm,
suspicion, solicitude, perhaps anger, by singing the same song. How does
this come about?

I have stated, when speaking of the nightingale, that birds in which the
singing faculty is highly developed, sometimes make the mistake of
bursting into song when anxious or distressed or in pain, but that this
is not the case with the mocking-birds. Some species of these brilliant
songsters of the New World, in their passion for variety (to put it that
way), import every harsh and grating cry and sound they know into their
song; but, on the other hand, when anxious for the safety of their
young, or otherwise distressed, they emit only the harsh and grating
sounds--never a musical note. In the sedge-warbler, the harsh, scolding
sounds that express alarm, solicitude, and other painful emotions, have
also been made a part of the musical performance; but this differs from
the songs of most species, the mocking birds included, in the
extraordinary rapidity with which it is enunciated; once the song begins
it goes on swiftly to the finish, harsh and melodious notes seeming to
overlap and mingle, the sound forming, to speak in metaphor, a close
intricate pattern of strongly-contrasted colours. Now the song
invariably begins with the harsh notes--the sounds which, at other
times, express alarm and other more or less painful emotions--and it
strikes me as a probable explanation that when the bird in the singing
season has been startled into uttering these harsh and grating sounds,
as when a stone is flung into the rushes, he is incapable of uttering
them only, but the singing notes they suggest and which he is in the
habit of uttering, follow automatically.

The spot where I observed this wee feathered fantasy, the tantalizing
sprite of the rushes, and where I soon ceased to see, hear, or think
about him, calls for a fuller description. On one side the wooded hill
sloped downward to the stream; on the other side spread the meadows
where the rooks came every day to feed, or to sit and stand about
motionless, looking like birds cut out of jet, scattered over about half
an acre of the grassy, level ground. Stout old pollard willows grew here
and there along the banks and were pleasant to see, this being the one
man-mutilated thing in nature which, to my mind, not infrequently gains
in beauty by the mutilation, so admirably does it fit into and harmonize
with the landscape. At one point there was a deep, nearly stagnant pool,
separated from the stream by a strip of wet, rushy ground, its still
dark surface covered with water-lilies, not yet in bloom. They were just
beginning to show their polished buds, shaped like snake's heads, above
the broad, oily leaves floating like islands on the surface. The stream
itself was, on my side, fringed with bulrushes and other aquatic plants;
on the opposite bank there were some large alders lifting their branches
above great masses of bramble and rose-briar, all together forming as
rich and beautiful a tangle as one could find even in the most luxuriant
of the wild, unkept hedges round the village. The briars especially
flourished wonderfully at this spot, climbing high and dropping their
long, slim branches quite down to the surface of the water, and in some
places forming an arch above the stream. A short distance from this
tangle, so abundantly sprinkled with its pale delicate roses, the water
was spanned by a small wooden bridge, which no person appeared to use,
but which had a use. It formed the one dry clear spot in the midst of
all that moist vegetation, and the birds that came from the wood to
drink and search for worms and small caterpillars first alighted on the
bridge. There they would rest a few moments, take a look round, then fly
to some favourite spot where succulent morsels had been picked up on
previous visits. Thrushes, blackbirds, sparrows, reed-buntings,
chaffinches, tits, wrens, with many other species, succeeded each other
all day long; for now they mostly had young to provide for, and it was
their busiest time.

The unsullied beauty and solitariness of this spot made me wish at first
that I was a boy once more, to climb and to swim, to revel in the
sunshine and flowers, to be nearer in spirit to the birds and dragon
flies and water-rats; then, that I could build a cabin and live there
all the summer long, forgetful of the world and its affairs, with no
human creature to keep me company, and no book to read, or with only one
slim volume, some Spanish poet, let me say Melendez, for
preference--only a small selection from his too voluminous writings; for
he, albeit an eighteenth-century singer, was perhaps the last of that
long, illustrious line of poets who sang as no others have sung of the
pure delight-fulness of a life with nature. Something of this charm is
undoubtedly due to the beauty of the language they wrote in and to the
free, airy grace of assonants. What a hard, artificial sound the rhyme
too often has: the clink that falls at regular intervals as of a
stone-breaker's hammer! In the freer kinds of Spanish poetry there are
numberless verses that make the smoothest lines and lyrics of our
sweetest and most facile singers, from Herrick to Swinburne, seem hard
and mechanical by comparison. But there is something more. I doubt, for
one thing, if we are justified in the boast we sometimes make that the
feeling for Nature is stronger in our poets than in those of other
countries. The most scientific critic may be unable to pick a hole in
Tennyson's botany and zoology; but the passion for, and feeling of
oneness with Nature may exist without this modern minute accuracy. Be
this as it may, it was not Tennyson, nor any other of our poets, that I
would have taken to my dreamed-of solitary cabin for companionship:
Melendez came first to my mind. I think of his lines to a butterfly:

De donde alegre vienes
Tan suelta y tan festiva,
Las valles alegrando
Veloz mariposilla?*

* May be roughly rendered thus:

Whence, blithe one, comest thou
With that airy, happy flight--
To make the valleys glad,
O swift-winged butterfly?

and can imagine him--the poet himself--coming to see me through the
woods and down the hill with the careless ease and lightness of heart of
his own purple-winged child of earth and air--_tan suelta y tan
festiva_. Here in these four or five words one may read the whole secret
of his charm--the exquisite delicacy and seeming art-lessness in the
form, and the spirit that is in him--the old, simple, healthy, natural
gladness in nature, and feeling of kinship with all the children of
life. But I do not wish to disturb anyone in his prepossessions. It
would greatly trouble me to think that my reader should, for the space
of a page, or even of a single line, find himself in opposition to and
not with me; and I am free to admit that with regard to poetry one's
preferences change according to the mood one happens to be in and to the
conditions generally. At home in murky London on most days I should
probably seek pleasure and forgetfulness in Browning; but in such
surroundings as I have been describing the lighter-hearted, elf-like
Melendez accords best with my spirit, one whose finest songs are without
human interest; who is irresponsible as the wind, and as unstained with
earthly care as the limpid running water he delights in: who is brother
to bird and bee and butterfly, and worships only liberty and sunshine,
and is in love with nothing but a flower.

Nearly midway between the useful little bridge and the rose-blossoming
tangle I have spoken of there were three elm-trees growing in the open
grassy space near the brook; they were not lofty, but had very
wide-spreading horizontal branches, which made them look like oaks. This
was an ideal spot in which to spend the sultry hours, and I had no
sooner cast myself on the short grass in the shade than I noticed that
the end of a projecting branch above my head, and about twenty feet from
the ground, was a favourite perch of a tree-pipit. He sang in the air
and, circling gracefully down, would alight on the branch, where,
sitting near me and plainly visible, he would finish his song and renew
it at intervals; then, leaving the loved perch, he would drop, singing,
to the ground, just a few yards beyond the tree's shadow; thence,
singing again, he would mount up and up above the tree, only to slide
down once more with set, unfluttering wings, with a beautiful swaying
motion to the same old resting-place on the branch, there to sing and
sing and sing.

If Melendez himself had come to me with flushed face and laughing eyes,
and sat down on the grass at my side to recite one of his most
enchanting poems, I should, with finger on lip, have enjoined silence;
for in the mood I was then in at that sequestered spot, with the
landscape outside my shady green pavilion bathed and quivering in the
brilliant sunshine, this small bird had suddenly become to me more than
any other singer, feathered or human. And yet the tree-pipit is not very
highly regarded among British melodists, on account of the little
variety there is in its song. Nevertheless, it is most sweet--perhaps the
sweetest of all. It is true that there are thousands, nay, millions of
things--sights and sounds and perfumes--which are or may be described as
sweet, so common is the metaphor, and this too common use has perhaps
somewhat degraded it; but in this case there is no other word so well
suited to describe the sensation produced.

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