Birds in Town and Village

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There is one objection some may make to the scheme suggested here which
must be noticed. It may be said that even if exotic species able to
thrive in our country were introduced there would be no result; for
these strangers to our groves would all eventually meet with the same
fate as our rarer species and casual visitors--that is to say, they
would be shot. There is no doubt that the amateur naturalist has been a
curse to this country for the last half century, that it is owing to the
"cupidity of the cabinet" as old Robert Mudie has it--that many of our
finer species are exceedingly rare, while others are disappearing
altogether. But it is surely not too soon to look for a change for the
better in this direction. Half a century ago, when the few remaining
great bustards in this country were being done to death, it was suddenly
remembered by naturalists that in their eagerness to possess examples of
the bird (in the skin) they had neglected to make themselves acquainted
with its customs when alive. Its habits were hardly better known than
those of the dodo and solitaire. The reflection came too late, in so far
as the habits of the bird in this country are concerned; but unhappily
the lesson was not then taken to heart, and other fine species have
since gone the way of the great bustard. But now that we have so clearly
seen the disastrous effects of this method of "studying ornithology,"
which is not in harmony with our humane civilization, it is to be hoped
that a better method will be adopted--that "finer way" which Thoreau
found and put aside his fowling-piece to practise. There can be no doubt
that the desire for such an improvement is now becoming very general,
that a kindlier feeling for animal, and especially bird life is growing
up among us, and there are signs that it is even beginning to have some
appreciable effect. The fashion of wearing birds is regarded by most men
with pain and reprobation; and it is possible that before long it will
be thought that there is not much difference between the action of the
woman who buys tanagers and humming-birds to adorn her person, and that
of the man who kills the bittern, hoopoe, waxwing, golden oriole, and
Dartford-warbler to enrich his private collection.

A few words on the latest attempt which has been made to naturalize an
exotic bird in England will not seem out of place here. About eight
years ago a gentleman in Essex introduced the rufous tinamou--a handsome
game bird, nearly as large as a fowl--into his estate. Up till the
present time, or till quite recently these birds have bred every year,
and at one time they had increased considerably and scattered about the
neighbourhood. When it began to increase, the neighbouring proprietors
and sportsmen generally were asked not to shoot it, but to give it a
chance, and there is reason to believe that they have helped to protect
it, and have taken a great interest in the experiment. Whatever the
ultimate result may be, the partial success attained during these few
years is decidedly encouraging, and that for more reasons than one. In
the first place, the bird was badly chosen for such an experiment. It
belongs to the pampas of La Plata, to which it is restricted, and where
it enjoys a dry, bright climate, and lives concealed in the tall
close-growing indigenous grasses. The conditions of its habitat are
therefore widely different from those of Essex, or of any part of
England; and, besides, it has a peculiar organisation, for it happens to
be one of those animals of ancient types of which a few species still
survive in South America. That so unpromising a subject as this large
archaic tinamou should be able to maintain its existence in this
country, even for a very few years, encourages one to believe that with
better-chosen species, more highly organized, and with more pliant
habits, such as the hazel hen of Europe for a game bird, success would
be almost certain.

Another circumstance connected with the attempted introduction of this
unsuitable bird, even of more promise than the mere fact of the partial
success achieved, is the greatest interest the experiment has excited,
not only among naturalists throughout the country, but also among
landlords and sportsmen down in Essex, where the bird was not regarded
merely as fair game to be bagged, or as a curiosity to be shot for the
collector's cabinet, but was allowed to fight its own fight without
counting man among its enemies. And it is to be expected that the same
self-restraint and spirit of fairness and intelligent desire to see a
favourable result would be shown everywhere if exotic species were to be
largely introduced, and breeding centres established in suitable places
throughout the country. When it once became known that individuals were
doing this thing, giving their time and best efforts and at considerable
expense not for their own selfish gratification, but for the general
good, and to make the country more delightful to all lovers of rural
sights and sounds, there would be no opposition, but on the contrary
every assistance, since all would wish success to such an enterprise.
Even the most enthusiastic collector would refrain from lifting a weapon
against the new feathered guests from distant lands; and if by any
chance an example of one should get into his hands he would be ashamed
to exhibit it.

The addition of new beautiful species to our avifauna would probably not
be the only, nor even the principal benefit we should derive from the
carrying out of the scheme here suggested. The indirect effect of the
knowledge all would possess that such an experiment was being conducted,
and that its chief object was to repair the damage that has been done,
would be wholly beneficial since it would enhance the value in our eyes
of our remaining native rare and beautiful species. A large number of
our finer birds are annually shot by those who know that they are doing
a great wrong--that if their transgression is not punishable by law it
is really not less grave than that of the person who maliciously barks a
shade tree in a park or public garden--but who excuse their action by
saying that such birds must eventually get shot, and that those who
first see them might as well have the benefit. The presence of even a
small number of exotic species in our woods and groves would no doubt
give rise to a better condition of things; it would attract public
attention to the subject; for the birds that delight us with their
beauty and melody should be for the public, and not for the few
barbarians engaged in exterminating them; and the "collector" would find
it best to abandon his evil practices when it once began to be generally
asked, if we can spare the rare, lovely birds brought hither at great
expense from China or Patagonia, can we not also spare our own
kingfisher, and the golden oriole, and the hoopoe, that comes to us
annually from Africa to breed, but is not permitted to breed, and many
other equally beautiful and interesting species?

MOOR-HENS IN HYDE PARK

The sparrow, like the poor, we have always with us, and on windy days
even the large-sized rook is blown about the murkiness which does duty
for sky over London; and on such occasions its coarse, corvine dronings
seem not unmusical, nor without something of a tonic effect on our
jarred nerves. And here the ordinary Londoner has got to the end of his
ornithological list--that is to say, his winter list. He knows nothing
about those wind-worn waifs, the "occasional visitors" to the
metropolis--the pilgrims to distant Meccas and Medinas that have fallen,
overcome by weariness, at the wayside; or have encountered storms in the
great aerial sea, and lost compass and reckoning, and have been lured by
false lights to perish miserably at the hands of their cruel enemies. It
may be true that gulls are seen on the Serpentine, that woodcocks are
flushed in Lincoln's Inn Fields, but the citizen who goes to his office
in the morning and returns after the lamps have been lighted, does not
see them, and they are nothing in his life. Those who concern themselves
to chronicle such incidents might just as well, for all that it matters
to him, mistake their species, like that bird-loving but
unornithological correspondent of the Times who wrote that he had seen
a flock of golden orioles in Kensington Gardens. It turned out that what
he had seen were wheatears, or they might draw a little on their
imaginations, and tell of sunward-sailing cranes encamped on the dome of
St. Paul's Cathedral, flamingoes in the Round Pond, great snowy owls in
Westminster Abbey, and an ibis--scarlet, glossy, or sacred, according to
fancy--perched on Peabody's statue, at the Royal Exchange.

But his winter does not last for ever. When the bitter months are past,
with March that mocks us with its crown of daffodils; when the sun
shines, and the rain is soon over; and elms and limes in park and
avenue, and unsightly smoke-blackened brushwood in the squares, are
dressed once more in tenderest heart-refreshing green, even in London we
know that the birds have returned from beyond the sea. Why should they
come to us here, when it would seem so much more to their advantage, and
more natural for them to keep aloof from our dimmed atmosphere, and the
rude sounds of traffic, and the sight of many people going to and fro?
Are there no silent green retreats left where the conditions are better
suited to their shy and delicate natures? Yet no sooner is the spring
come again than the birds are with us. Not always apparent to the eye,
but everywhere their irrepressible gladness betrays their proximity; and
all London is ringed round with a mist of melody, which presses on us,
ambitious of winning its way even to the central heart of our citadel,
creeping in, mist-like, along gardens and tree-planted roads, clinging
to the greenery of parks and squares, and floating above the dull noises
of the town as clouds fleecy and ethereal float above the earth.

Among our spring visitors there is one which is neither aerial in
habits, nor a melodist, yet is eminently attractive on account of its
graceful form, pretty plumage, and amusing manners; nor must it be
omitted as a point in its favour that it is not afraid to make itself
very much at home with us in London. [Footnote: Note that when this was
written in 1893, the moor-hen was never known to winter in London; his
habits have changed in this respect during the last two decades: he is
now a permanent resident.] This is the little moor-hen, a bird
possessing some strange customs, for which those who are curious about
such matters may consult its numerous biographies. Every spring a few
individuals of this species make their appearance in Hyde Park, and
settle there for the season, in full sight of the fashionable world; for
their breeding-place happens to be that minute transcript of nature
midway between the Dell and Rotten Row, where a small bed of rushes and
aquatic grasses flourishes in the stagnant pool forming the end of the
Serpentine. Where they pass the winter--in what Mentone or Madeira of
the ralline race--is not known. There is a pretty story, which
circulated throughout Europe a little over fifty years ago, of a Polish
gentleman, capturing a stork that built its nest on his roof every
summer, and putting an iron collar on its neck with the inscription,
"Haec Ciconia ex Polonia." The following summer it reappeared with
something which shone very brightly on its neck, and when the stork was
taken again this was found to be a collar of gold, with which the iron
collar had been replaced, and on it were graven the words, "India cum
donis remittit ciconian Polonis." No person has yet put an iron collar
on the moor-hen to receive gifts in return, or followed its feeble
fluttering flight to discover the limits of its migration which is
probably no further away than the Kentish marshes and other wet
sheltered spots in the south of England; that it leaves the country when
it quits the park is not to be believed. Still, it goes with the wave,
and with the wave returns; and, like the migratory birds that observe
times and seasons, it comes back to its own home--that circumscribed
spot of earth and water which forms its little world, and is more to it
than all other reedy and willow-shaded pools and streams in England. It
is said to be shy in disposition, yet all may see it here, within a few
feet of the Row, with so many people continually passing, and so many
pausing to watch the pretty birds as they trip about their little plot
of green turf, deftly picking minute insects from the grass and not
disdaining crumbs thrown by the children. A dainty thing to look at is
that smooth, olive-brown little moor-hen, going about with such freedom
and ease in its small dominion, lifting its green legs deliberately,
turning its yellow beak and shield this way and that, and displaying the
snow-white undertail at every step, as it moves with that quaint,
graceful, jetting gait peculiar to the gallinules.

Such a fact as this--and numberless facts just as significant all
pointing to the same conclusion, might be adduced--shows at once how
utterly erroneous is that often-quoted dictum of Darwin's that birds
possess an instinctive or inherited fear of man. These moor-hens fear
him not at all; simply because in Hyde Park they are not shot at, and
robbed of their eggs or young, nor in any way molested by him. They fear
no living thing, except the irrepressible small dog that occasionally
bursts into the enclosure, and hunts them with furious barkings to their
reedy little refuge. And as with these moor-hens, so it is with all wild
birds; they fear and fly from, and suspiciously watch from a safe
distance, whatever molests them, and wherever man suspends his hostility
towards them they quickly outgrow the suspicion which experience has
taught them, or which is traditional among them; for the young and
inexperienced imitate the action of the adults they associate with, and
learn the suspicious habit from them.

It is also interesting and curious to note that a bird which inhabits
two countries, in summer and winter, regulates his habits in accordance
with the degree of friendliness or hostility exhibited towards him by
the human inhabitants of the respective areas. The bird has in fact two
traditions with regard to man's attitude towards him--one for each
country. Thus, the field-fare is an exceedingly shy bird in England, but
when he returns to the north if his breeding place is in some inhabited
district in northern Sweden or Norway he loses all his wildness and
builds his nest quite close to the houses. My friend Trevor Battye saw a
pair busy making their nest in a small birch within a few yards of the
front door of a house he was staying at. "How strange," said he to the
man of the house, "to see field-fares making a nest in such a place!"

"Why strange?" said the man in surprise. "Why strange? Because of the
boys, always throwing stones at a bird. The nest is so low down, that
any boy could put his hand in and take the eggs." "Take the eggs!" cried
the man, more astonished than ever. "And throwing stones at a bird! Who
ever heard of a boy doing such things!"

Closely related to this error is another error, which is that noise in
itself is distressing to birds, and has the effect of driving them away.
To all sounds and noises which are not associated with danger to them,
birds are absolutely indifferent. The rumbling of vehicles, puffing and
shrieking of engines, and braying of brass bands, alarm them less than
the slight popping of an air gun, where that modest weapon of
destruction is frequently used against them. They have no "nerves" for
noise, but the apparition of a small boy silently creeping along the
hedge-side, in search of nests or throwing stones, is very terrifying to
them. They fear not cattle and horses, however loud the bellowing may
be; and if we were to transport and set loose herds of long-necked
camelopards, trumpeting elephants, and rhinoceroses of horrible aspect,
the little birds would soon fear them as little as they do the familiar
cow. But they greatly fear the small-sized, quiet, unobtrusive, and
meek-looking cat. Sparrows and starlings that fly wildly at the shout
of a small boy or the bark of a fox-terrier, build their nests under
every railway arch; and the incubating bird sits unalarmed amid the iron
plates and girders when the express train rushes overhead, so close to
her that one would imagine that the thunderous jarring noise would cause
the poor thing to drop down dead with terror. To this indifference to
the mere harmless racket of civilization we owe it that birds are so
numerous around, and even in, London; and that in Kew Gardens, which, on
account of its position on the water side, and the numerous railroads
surrounding it, is almost as much tortured with noise as Willesden or
Clapham Junction, birds are concentrated in thousands. Food is not more
abundant there than in other places; yet it would be difficult to find a
piece of ground of the same extent in the country proper, where all is
silent and there are no human crowds, with so large a bird population.
They are more numerous in Kew than elsewhere, in spite of the noise and
the people, because they are partially protected there from their human
persecutors. It is a joy to visit the gardens in spring, as much to hear
the melody of the birds as to look at the strange and lovely vegetable
forms. On a June evening with a pure sunny sky, when the air is elastic
after rain, how it rings and palpitates with the fine sounds that people
it, and which seem infinite in variety! Has England, burdened with care
and long estranged from Nature, so many sweet voices left? What aerial
chimes are those wafted from the leafy turret of every tree? What
clear, choral songs--so wild, so glad? What strange instruments, not
made with hands, so deftly touched and soulfully breathed upon? What
faint melodious murmurings that float around us, mysterious and tender
as the lisping of leaves? Who could be so dull and exact as to ask the
names of such choristers at such a time! Earthly names they have, the
names we give them, when they visit us, and when we write about them in
our dreary books; but, doubtless, in their brighter home in cloudland
they are called by other more suitable appellatives. Kew is
exceptionally favoured for the reason mentioned, but birds are also
abundant where there are no hired men with red waistcoats and brass
buttons to watch over their safety. Why do they press so persistently
around us; and not in London only, but in every town and village, every
house and cottage in this country? Why are they always waiting,
congregating as far from us as the depth of garden, lawn, or orchard
will allow, yet always near as they dare to come? It is not sentiment,
and to be translated into such words as these: "Oh man, why are you
unfriendly towards us, or else so indifferent to our existence that you
do not note that your children, dependants, and neighbours cruelly
persecute us? For we are for peace, and knowing you for the lord of
creation, we humbly worship you at a distance, and wish for a share in
your affection." No; the small, bright soul which is in a bird is
incapable of such a motive, and has only the lesser light of instinct
for its guide, and to the birds' instinct we are only one of the
wingless mammalians inhabiting the earth, and with the cat and weasel
are labelled "dangerous," but the ox and horse and sheep have no such
label. Even our larger, dimmer eyes can easily discover the
attraction. Let any one, possessing a garden in the suburbs of London,
minutely examine the foliage at a point furthest removed from the house,
and he will find the plants clean from insects; and as he moves back he
will find them increasingly abundant until he reaches the door. Insect
life is gathered thickly about us, for that birdless space which we have
made is ever its refuge and safe camping ground. And the birds know. One
came before we were up, when cat and dog were also sleeping, and a
report is current among them. Like ants when a forager who has found a
honey pot returns to the nest, they are all eager to go and see and
taste for themselves. Their country is poor, for they have gathered its
spoils, and now this virgin territory sorely tempts them. To those who
know a bird's spirit it is plain that a mere suspension of hostile
action on our part would have the effect of altering their shy habits,
and bringing them in crowds about us. Not only in the orchard and grove
and garden walks would they be with us, but even in our house. The
robin, the little bird "with the red stomacher," would be there for the
customary crumbs at meal-time, and many dainty fringilline pensioners
would keep him company. And the wren would be there, searching
diligently in the dusty angles of cornices for a savoury morsel; for it
knows, this wise little Kitty Wren, that "the spider taketh hold with
her hands, and is in king's palaces"; and wandering from room to room it
would pour forth many a gushing lyric--a sound of wildness and joy in
our still interiors, eternal Nature's message to our hearts.

Who delights not in a bird? Yet how few among us find any pleasure in
reading of them in natural history books! The living bird, viewed
closely and fearless of our presence, is so much more to the mind than
all that is written--so infinitely more engaging in its spontaneous
gladness, its brilliant vivacity, and its motions so swift and true and
yet so graceful! Even leaving out the melody, what a charm it would add
to our homes if birds were permitted to take the part there for which
Nature designed them--if they were the "winged wardens" of our gardens
and houses as well as of our fields. Bird-biographies are always in our
bookcases; and the bird-form meets our sight everywhere in decorative
art Eastern and Western; for its aerial beauty is without parallel in
nature; but the living birds, with the exception of the unfortunate
captives in cages, are not with us.

A robin redbreast in a cage
Puts all heaven in a rage,

sings Blake prophet and poet; and for "robin redbreast" I read every
feathered creature endowed with the marvellous faculty of flight. Wild,
and loving their safety and liberty, they keep at a distance, at the end
of the garden or in the nearest grove, where from their perches they
suspiciously watch our movements, always waiting to be encouraged,
waiting to feed on the crumbs that fall from our table and are wasted,
and on the blighting insects that ring us round with their living
multitudes.

THE EAGLE AND THE CANARY

One week-day morning, following a crowd of well-dressed people, I
presently found myself in a large church or chapel, where I spent an
hour very pleasantly, listening to a great man's pulpit eloquence. He
preached about genius. The subject was not suggested by the text, nor
did it have any close relation with the other parts, of his discourse;
it was simply a digression, and, to my mind, a very delightful one. He
began about the restrictions to which we are all more or less subject,
the aspirations that are never destined to be fulfilled, but are mocked
by life's brevity. And it was at this point that--probably thinking of
his own case--he branched off into the subject of genius; and proceeded
to show that a man possessing that divine quality finds existence a
much sadder affair than the ordinary man; the reason being that his
aspirations are so much loftier than those of other minds, the
difference between his ideal and reality must be correspondingly greater
in his case. This was obvious--almost a truism; but the illustration by
means of which he brought it home to his hearers was certainly born of
poetic imagination. The life of the ordinary person he likened to that
of the canary in its cage. And here, dropping his lofty didactic manner,
and--if I may coin a word--smalling his deep, sonorous voice, to a thin
reedy treble, in imitation of the tenuous fringilline pipe, he went on
with lively language, rapid utterance, and suitable brisk movements and
gestures, to describe the little lemon-coloured housekeeper in her
gilded cage. Oh, he cried, what a bright, busy bustling life is hers,
with so many things to occupy her time! how briskly she hops from perch
to perch, then to the floor, and back from floor to perch again! how
often she drops down to taste the seed in her box, or scatter it about
her in a little shower! how curiously, and turning her bright eyes
critically this way and that, she listens to every new sound and regards
every object of sight! She must chirp and sing, and hop from place to
place, and eat and drink, and preen her wings, and do at least a dozen
different things every minute; and her time is so fully taken up that
the narrow limits confining her are almost forgotten--the wires that
separate her from the great world of wind-tossed woods, and of blue
fields of air, and the free, buoyant life for which her instincts and
faculties fit her, and which, alas! can never more be hers.

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