Birds in Town and Village

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

Pages:
1 | 2 | 3 | 4 | 5 | 6 | 7 | 8 | 9 | 10 | 11 | 12 | 13 | 14

The tree-pipit has a comparatively short song, repeated, with some
variation in the number and length of the notes, at brief intervals. The
opening notes are thick and throaty, and similar in character to the
throat-notes of many other species in this group, a softer sound than
the throat-notes of the skylark and woodlark, which they somewhat
resemble. The canary-like trills and thin piping notes, long drawn out,
which follow vary greatly in different individuals, and in many cases
the trills are omitted. But the concluding notes of the song I am
considering--which is only one note repeated again and again--are clear
and beautifully inflected, and have that quality of sweetness, of
lusciousness, I have mentioned. The note is uttered with a downward
fall, more slowly and expressively at each repetition, as if the singer
felt overcome at the sweetness of life and of his own expression, and
languished somewhat at the close; its effect is like that of the perfume
of the honeysuckle, infecting the mind with a soft, delicious languor, a
wish to lie perfectly still and drink of the same sweetness again and
again in larger measure.

To some who are familiar with this by no means uncommon little bird, it
may seem that I am overstating the charm of its melody. I can only say
that the mood I was then in made me very keenly appreciative; also that
I have never heard any other individual of this species able to produce
precisely the same effect. We know that there are quite remarkable
differences in the songs of birds of the same species, that among
several that appear to be perfect and to sing alike one will possess a
charm above the other. The truth is they are not alike; they affect us
differently, but the sense is not fine enough or not sufficiently
trained to detect the cause. The poet's words may be used of this
natural melody as well as of the works of art:

"O the little more and how much it is!"

There were about the village, within a few minutes' walk of the cottage,
not fewer than half-a-dozen tree-pipits, each inhabiting a favourite
spot where I could always count on finding and hearing him at almost any
hour of the day from sunrise to sunset. Yet I cared not for these. To
the one chosen bird I returned daily to spend the hot hours, lying in
the shade and listening to his strain. Finally, I allowed two or three
days to slip by, and when I revisited the old spot the secret charm had
vanished. The bird was there, and rose and fell as formerly, pouring out
his melody; but it was not the same: something was missing from those
last sweet, languishing notes. Perhaps in the interval there had been
some disturbing accident in his little wild life, though I could hardly
believe it, since his mate was still sitting about thirty yards from the
tree on the five little mottled eggs in her nest. Or perhaps his
midsummer's music had reached its highest point, and was now in its
declension. And perhaps the fault was in me. The virtue that draws and
holds us does not hold us always, nor very long; it departs from all
things, and we wonder why. The loss is in ourselves, although we do not
know it. Nature, the chosen mistress of our heart, does not change
towards us, yet she is now, even to-day--

"Less full of purple colour and hid spice,"

and smiles and sparkles in vain to allure us, and when she touches us
with her warm, caressing touch, there is, compared with yesterday, only
a faint response.

V

Coming back from the waterside through the wood, after the hottest hours
of the day were over, the crooning of the turtle-doves would be heard
again on every side--that summer beech-wood lullaby that seemed never to
end. The other bird voices were of the willow-wren, the wood-wren, the
coal-tit, and the now somewhat tiresome chiffchaff; from the distance
would come the prolonged rich strain of the blackbird, and occasionally
the lyric of the chaffinch. The song of this bird gains greatly when
heard from a tall tree in the woodland silence; it has then a resonance
and wildness which it appears to lack in the garden and orchard. In the
village I had been glad to find that the chaffinch was not too common,
that in the tangle of minstrelsy one could enjoy there his vigorous
voice was not predominant.

Of all these woodland songsters the wood-wren impressed me the most. He
could always be heard, no matter where I entered the wood, since all
this world of tall beeches was a favoured haunt of the wood-wren, each
pair keeping to its own territory of half-an-acre of trees or so, and
somewhere among those trees the male was always singing, far up,
invisible to eyes beneath, in the topmost sunlit foliage of the tall
trees. On entering the wood I would, stand still for a few minutes to
listen to the various sounds until that one fascinating sound would come
to my ears from some distance away, and to that spot I would go to find
a bed of last year's leaves to sit upon and listen. It was an enchanting
experience to be there in that woodland twilight with the green cloud of
leaves so far above me; to listen to the silence, to the faint whisper
of the wind-touched leaves, then to little prelusive drops of musical
sound, growing louder and falling faster until they ran into one
prolonged trill. And there I would sit listening for half-an-hour or a
whole hour; but the end would not come; the bird is indefatigable and
with his mysterious talk in the leaves would tire the sun himself and send
him down the sky: for not until the sun has set and the wood has grown
dark does the singing cease.

On emerging from the deep shade of the beeches into the wide grassy road
that separated the wood from the orchards and plantations of fruit
trees, and pausing for a minute to look down on the more than
half-hidden village, invariably the first loud sounds that reached my
ear were those of the cuckoo, thrush, and blackbird. At all hours in the
village, from early morning to evening twilight, these three voices
sounded far and near above the others. I considered myself fortunate
that no large tree near the cottage had been made choice of by a
song-thrush as a singing-stand during the early hours. The nearest tree
so favoured was on the further side of a field, so that when I woke at
half-past three or four o'clock, the shrill indefatigable voice came in
at the open window, softened by distance and washed by the dewy
atmosphere to greater purity. Throstle and skylark to be admired must be
heard at a distance. But at that early hour when I sat by the open
window, the cuckoo's call was the commonest sound; the birds were
everywhere, bird answering bird far and near, so persistently repeating
their double note that this sound, which is in character unlike any
other sound in nature, which one so listens and longs to hear in spring,
lost its old mystery and charm, and became of no more account than the
cackle of the poultry-yard. It was the cuckoo's village; sometimes three
or four birds in hot pursuit of each other would dash through the trees
that lined the further side of the lane and alight on that small tree at
the gate which the nightingale was accustomed to visit later in the day.

Other birds that kept themselves very much out of sight during most of
the time also came to the same small tree at that early hour. It was
regularly visited, and its thin bole industriously examined, by the
nuthatch and the quaint little mouse-like creeper. Doubtless they
imagined that five o'clock was too early for heavy human creatures to be
awake, and were either ignorant of my presence or thought proper to
ignore it.

But where, during the days when the vociferous cuckoo, with hoarse
chuckle and dissyllabic call and wild bubbling cry was so much with
us--where, in this period of many pleasant noises was the cuckoo's mate,
or maid, or messenger, the quaint and beautiful wryneck? There are few
British birds, perhaps not one--not even the crafty black and white
magpie, or mysterious moth-like goatsucker, or tropical kingfisher--more
interesting to watch. At twilight I had lingered at the woodside, also
in other likely places, and the goatsucker had failed to appear, gliding
and zig-zagging hither and thither on his dusky-mottled noiseless wings,
and now this still heavier disappointment was mine. I could not find the
wryneck. Those quiet grassy orchards, shut in by straggling hedges,
should have had him as a favoured summer guest. Creeper and nuthatch,
and starling and gem-like blue tit, found holes enough in the old trunks
to breed in. And yet I knew that, albeit not common, he was there; I
could not exactly say where, but somewhere on the other side of the next
hedge or field or orchard; for I heard his unmistakable cry, now on this
hand, now on that. Day after day I followed the voice, sometimes in my
eagerness forcing my way through a brambly hedge to emerge with
scratched hands and clothes torn, like one that had been set upon and
mauled by some savage animal of the cat kind; and still the quaint
figure eluded my vision.

At last I began to have doubts about the creature that emitted that
strange, penetrating call. First heard as a bird-call, and nothing more,
by degrees it grew more and more laugh-like--a long, far-reaching,
ringing laugh; not the laugh I should like to hear from any person I
take an interest in, but a laugh with all the gladness, unction, and
humanity gone out of it--a dry mechanical sound, as if a soulless,
lifeless, wind-instrument had laughed. It was very curious. Listening to
it day by day, something of the strange history of the being once but no
longer human, that uttered it grew up and took shape in my mind; for we
all have in us something of this mysterious faculty. It was no bird, no
wryneck, but a being that once, long, long, long ago, in that same
beautiful place, had been a village boy--a free, careless, glad-hearted
boy, like many another. But to this boy life was more than to others,
since nature appeared immeasurably more vivid on account of his brighter
senses; therefore his love of life and happiness in life greatly
surpassed theirs. Annually the trees shed their leaves, the flowers
perished, the birds flew away to some distant country beyond the
horizon, and the sun grew pale and cold in the sky; but the bright
impression all things made on him gave him a joy that was perennial. The
briony, woodbine, and honeysuckle he had looked on withered in the
hedges, but their presentments flourished untouched by frost, as if his
warmth sustained and gave them perpetual life; in that inner magical
world of memory the birds still twittered and warbled, each after its
kind, and the sun shone everlastingly. But he was living in a fool's
paradise, as he discovered by-and-by, when a boy who had been his
playmate began to grow thin and pale, and at last fell sick and died. He
crept near and watched his dead companion lying motionless, unbreathing,
with a face that was like white clay; and then, more horrible still, he
saw him taken out and put into a grave, and the heavy, cold soil cast
over him.

What did this strange and terrible thing mean? Now for the first time he
was told that life is ours only for a season; that we also, like the
leaves and flowers, flourish for a while then fade and perish, and
mingle with the dust. The sad knowledge had come too suddenly and in too
vivid and dreadful a manner. He could not endure it. Only for a
season!--only for a season! The earth would be green, and the sky blue,
and the sun shine bright for ever, and he would not see, not know it!
Struck with anguish at the thought, he stole away out of sight of the
others to hide himself in woods and thickets, to brood alone on such a
hateful destiny, and torture himself with vain longings, until he, too,
grew pale and thin and large-eyed, like the boy that had died, and those
who saw him shook their heads and whispered to one another that he was
not long for this world. He knew what they were saying, and it only
served to increase his misery and fear, and made him hate them because
they were insensible to the awful fact that death awaited them, or so
little concerned that they had never taken the trouble to inform him of
it. To eat and drink and sleep was all they cared for, and they regarded
death with indifference, because their dull sight did not recognize the
beauty and glory of the earth, nor their dull hearts respond to Nature's
everlasting gladness. The sight of the villagers, with their solemn
head-shakings and whisperings, even of his nearest kindred, grew
insupportable, and he at length disappeared from among them, and was
seen no more with his white, terror-stricken face. From that time he hid
himself in the close thickets, supporting his miserable existence on
wild fruits and leaves, and spending many hours each day lying in some
sheltered spot, gazing up into that blue sunny sky, which was his to
gaze on only for a season, while the large tears gathered in his eyes
and rolled unheeded down his wasted cheeks.

At length during this period there occurred an event which is the
obscurest part of his history; for I know not who or what it was--my
mind being in a mist about it--that came to or accidentally found him
lying on a bed of grass and dried leaves in his thorny hiding-place. It
may have been a gipsy or a witch--there were witches in those days--who,
suddenly looking on his upturned face and seeing the hunger in his
unfathomable eyes, loved him, in spite of her malignant nature; or a
spirit out of the earth; or only a very wise man, an ancient,
white-haired solitary, whose life had been spent in finding out the
secrets of nature. This being, becoming acquainted with the cause of the
boy's grief and of his solitary, miserable condition, began to comfort
him by telling him that no grief was incurable, no desire that heart
could conceive unattainable. He discoursed of the hidden potent
properties of nature, unknown only to those who seek not to know them;
of the splendid virtue inherent in all things, like the green and violet
flames in the clear colourless raindrops which are seen only on rare
occasions. Of life and death, he said that life was of the spirit which
never dies, that death meant only a passage, a change of abode of the
spirit, and the left body crumbled to dust when the spirit went out of
it to continue its existence elsewhere, but that those who hated the
thought of such change could, by taking thought, prolong life and live
for a thousand years, like the adder and tortoise or for ever. But no,
he would not leave the poor boy to grope alone and blindly after that
hidden knowledge he was burning to possess. He pitied him too much. The
means were simple and near to hand, the earth teemed with the virtue
that would save him from the dissolution which so appalled him. He would
be startled to hear in how small a thing and in how insignificant a
creature resided the principle that could make his body, like his
spirit, immortal. But exceeding great power often existed in small
compass: witness the adder's tooth, which was to our sight no more than
the point of the smallest thorn. Now, in the small ant there exists a
principle of a greater potency than any other in nature; so strong and
penetrating was it that even the dull and brutish kind of men who
enquire not into hidden things know something of its power. But the
greatest of all the many qualities of this acid was unknown to them. The
ants were a small people, but exceedingly wise and powerful. If a little
human child had the strength of an ant he would surpass in power the
mightiest giant that ever lived. In the same way ants surpassed men in
wisdom; and this strength and wisdom was the result of that acid
principle in them. Now, if any person should be able to overcome his
repugnance to so strange a food as to sustain himself on ants and
nothing else, the effect of the acid on him would be to change and
harden his flesh and make it impervious to decay or change of any kind.
He would, so long as he confined himself to this kind of food, be
immortal.

Not a moment did the wretched boy hesitate to make use of this new and
wonderful knowledge. When he had found and broken open an ant-hill, so
eager was he that, shutting his eyes, he snatched up the maddened
insects by handfuls and swallowed them, dust and ants together, and was
then tortured for hours, feeling and thinking that they were still alive
within him, running about in search of an outlet and frantically biting.
The strange food sickened him, so that he grew thinner and paler, until
at last he could barely crawl on hands and feet, and was like a skeleton
except for the great sad eyes that could still see the green earth and
blue sky, and still reflected in their depths one fear and one desire.
And slowly, day by day, as his system accustomed itself to the new diet,
his strength returned, and he was able once more to walk erect and run,
and to climb a tree, where he could sit concealed among the thick
foliage and survey the village where he had first seen the light and had
passed the careless, happy years of boyhood. But he cherished no tender
memories and regrets; his sole thought was of the ants, and where to
find a sufficiency of them to stay the cravings of hunger; for, after
the first sensations of disgust had been overcome, he had begun to grow
fond of this kind of food, and now consumed it with avidity. And as his
strength increased so did his dexterity in catching the small, active
insect prey. He no longer gathered the ants up in his palm and swallowed
them along with dust and grit, but picked them up deftly, and conveyed
them one by one to his mouth with lightning rapidity. Meanwhile that
"acid principle," about which he had heard such wonderful things, was
having its effect on his system. His skin changed its colour; he grew
shrunken and small, until at length, after very many years, he dwindled
to the grey little manikin of the present time. His mind, too, changed;
he has no thought nor remembrance of his former life and condition and
of his long-dead relations; but he still haunts the village where he
knows so well where to find the small ants, to pick them from off the
ant-hill and from the trunks of trees with his quick little claw-like
hands. Language and song are likewise forgotten with all human things,
all except his laugh; for when hunger is satisfied, and the sun shines
pleasantly as he reposes on the dry leaves on the ground or sits aloft
on a branch, at times a sudden feeling of gladness possesses him, and he
expresses it in that one way--the long, wild, ringing peal of laughter.
Listening to that strange sound, although I could not see I could yet
picture him, as, aware of my cautious approach, he moved shyly behind
the mossy trunk of some tree and waited silently for me to pass. A lean,
grey little man, clad in a quaintly barred and mottled mantle, woven by
his own hands from some soft silky material, and a close-fitting brown
peaked cap on his head with one barred feather in it for ornament, and a
small wizened grey face with a thin sharp nose, puckered lips, and a
pair of round, brilliant, startled eyes.

So distinct was this image to my mind's eye that it became unnecessary
for me to see the creature, and I ceased to look for him; then all at
once came disillusion, when one day, hearing the familiar high-pitched
laugh with its penetrating and somewhat nasal tone, I looked and beheld
the thing that had laughed just leaving its perch on a branch near the
ground and winging its way across the field. It was only a bird after
all--only the wryneck; and that mysterious faculty I spoke of, saying
that we all of us possessed something of it (meaning only some of us)
was nothing after all but the old common faculty of imagination.

Later on I saw it again on half-a-dozen occasions, but never succeeded
in getting what I call a satisfying sight of it, perched woodpecker-wise
on a mossy trunk, busy at its old fascinating occupation of deftly
picking off the running ants.

It is melancholy to think that this quaint and beautiful bird of a
unique type has been growing less and less common in our country during
the last half a century, or for a longer period. In the last fifteen or
twenty years the falling-off has been very marked. The declension is not
attributable to persecution in this case, since the bird is not on the
gamekeeper's black list, nor has it yet become so rare as to cause the
amateur collectors of dead birds throughout the country systematically
to set about its extermination. Doubtless that will come later on when
it will be in the same category with the golden oriole, hoopoe,
furze-wren, and other species that are regarded as always worth killing;
that is to say, it will come--the scramble for the wryneck's
carcass--if nothing is done in the meantime to restrain the enthusiasm
of those who value a bird only when the spirit of life that gave it
flight and grace and beauty has been crushed out of it--when it is no
longer a bird. The cause of its decline up till now cannot be known to
us; we can only say in our ignorance that this type, like innumerable
others that have ceased to exist, has probably run its course and is
dying out. Or it might be imagined that its system is undergoing some
slow change, which tells on the migratory instinct, that it is becoming
more a resident species in its winter home in Africa. But all
conjectures are idle in such a case. It is melancholy, at all events for
the ornithologist, to think of an England without a wryneck; but before
that still distant day arrives let us hope that the love of birds will
have become a common feeling in the mass of the population, and that the
variety of our bird life will have been increased by the addition of
some chance colonists and of many new species introduced from distant
regions.

I have lingered long over the wryneck, but have still a story to relate
of this bird--not a fairy tale this time, but true.

On the border of the village adjoining the wood--the side where birds
were more abundant, and which consequently had the greatest attraction
for me--there stands an old picturesque cottage nearly concealed from
sight by the hedge in front and closely planted trees clustering round
it. On one side was a grass field, on the other an orchard of old
cherry, apple, and plum trees, all the property of the old man living in
the cottage, who was a character in his way; at all events, he had not
been fashioned in quite the same mould as the majority of the cottagers
about him. They mostly, when past middle life, wore a heavy, dull and
somewhat depressed look. This man had a twinkle in his dark-grey eyes,
an expression of intelligent curiosity and fellowship; and his full
face, bronzed with sixty or sixty-five years' exposure to the weather,
was genial, as if the sunshine that had so long beaten on it had not
been all used up in painting his skin that rich old-furniture colour,
but had, some of it, filtered through the epidermis into the heart to
make his existence pleasant and sweet. But it was a very rough-cast
face, with shapeless nose and thick lips. He was short and
broad-shouldered, always in the warm weather in his shirt-sleeves, a
shirt of some very coarse material and of an earthen colour, his brown
thick arms bare to the elbows. Waistcoat and trousers looked as if he
had worn them for half his life, and had a marbled or mottled appearance
as if they had taken the various tints of all the objects and materials
he had handled or rubbed against in his life's work--wood, mossy trees,
grass, clay, bricks, stone, rusty iron, and dozens more. He wore the
field-labourer's thick boots; his ancient rusty felt hat had long lost
its original shape; and finally, to complete the portrait, a short black
clay pipe was never out of his lips--never, at all events, when I saw
him, which was often; for every day as I strolled past his domain he
would be on the outside of his hedge, or just coming out of his gate,
invariably with something in his hand--a spade, a fork, or stick of
wood, or an old empty fruit-basket. Although thus having the appearance
of being very much occupied, he would always stop for a few minutes'
talk with me; and by-and-by I began to suspect that he was a very social
sort of person, and that it pleased him to have a little chat, but that
he liked to have me think that he met me by accident while going about
his work.

One sunny morning as I came past his field he came out bearing a huge
bundle of green grass on his head. "Whatl" he exclaimed, coming to a
stand, "you here to-day? I thought you'd be away to the regatta."

I said that I knew little about regattas and cared less, that a day
spent in watching and listening to the birds gave me more pleasure than
all the regattas in the country. "I suppose you can't understand that?"
I added.

He took the big green bundle from his head and set it down, pulled off
his old hat to flap the dust out of it, then sucked at his short clay.
"Well," he said at length, "some fancies one thing and some another, but
we most of us like a regatta."

Pages:
1 | 2 | 3 | 4 | 5 | 6 | 7 | 8 | 9 | 10 | 11 | 12 | 13 | 14