Chapter 3
The cuckoo, like the woodcock, is supposed to have its forerunner. Just as the small horned owl, which reaches our shores a little in advance of the latter, is popularly known as the "woodcock owl," so also the wryneck, which comes to us about the same time as the first of the cuckoos, goes by the name of "cuckoo-leader." It is never a very conspicuous bird, and appears to be rarer nowadays than formerly. Schoolboys know it best from its habit of hissing like a snake and giving them a rare fright when they cautiously insert a predatory hand in some hollow tree in search of a possible nest. It is in such situations that, along with titmice and some other birds, the wryneck rears its young; and it doubtless owes many an escape to this habit of hissing, accompanied by a vigorous twisting of its neck and the infliction of a sufficient peck, easily mistaken in a moment of panic for the bite of an angry adder. Thus does Nature protect her weaklings.
JUNE
VOICES OF THE NIGHT
VOICES OF THE NIGHT
The majority of nocturnal animals, more particularly those bent on spoliation, are strangely silent. True, frogs croak in the marshes, bats shrill overhead at so high a pitch that some folks cannot hear them, and owls hoot from their ruins in a fashion that some vote melodious and romantic, while others associate the sound rather with midnight crime and dislike it accordingly. The badger, on the other hand, with the otter and fox--all of them sad thieves from our point of view--have learnt, whatever their primeval habits, to go about their marauding in stealthy silence; and it is only in less settled regions that one hears the jackals barking, the hyaenas howling, and the browsing deer whistling through the night watches.
There are, however, two of our native birds, or rather summer visitors, since they leave us in autumn, closely associated with these warm June nights, the stillness of which they break in very different fashion, and these are the nightingale and nightjar. Each is of considerable interest in its own way. It is not to be denied that the churring note of the nightjar is, to ordinary ears, the reverse of attractive, and the bird is not much more pleasing to the eye than to the ear; while the nightingale, on the contrary, produces such sweet sounds as made Izaak Walton marvel what music God could provide for His saints in heaven when He gave such as this to sinners on earth. The suggestion was not wholly his own, since the father of angling borrowed it from a French writer; but he vastly improved on the original, and the passage will long live in the hearts of thousands who care not a jot for his instructions in respect of worms. At the same time, the nightjar, though the less attractive bird of the two, is fully as interesting as its comrade of the summer darkness, and there should be no difficulty in indicating the little that they have in common, as well as much wherein they differ, in both habits and appearance.
Both, then, are birds of sober attire. Indeed of the two, the nightjar, with its soft and delicately pencilled plumage and the conspicuous white spots, is perhaps the handsomer, though, as it is seen only in the gloaming, its quiet beauty is but little appreciated. The unobtrusive dress of the nightingale, on the other hand, is familiar in districts in which the bird abounds, and is commonly quoted, by contrast with its unrivalled voice, as the converse of the gaudy colouring of raucous macaws and parrakeets. As has been said, both these birds are summer migrants, the nightingale arriving on our shores about the middle of April, the nightjar perhaps a fortnight later. Thenceforth, however, their programmes are wholly divergent, for, whereas the nightjars proceed to scatter over the length and breadth of Britain, penetrating even to Ireland in the west and as far north as the Hebrides, the nightingale stops far short of these extremes and leaves whole counties of England, as well as probably the whole of Scotland, and certainly the whole of Ireland, out of its calculations. It is however well known that its range is slowly but surely extending towards the west.
This curiously restricted distribution of the nightingale, indeed, within the limits of its summer home is among the most remarkable of the many problems confronting the student of distribution, and successive ingenious but unconvincing attempts to explain its seeming eccentricity, or at any rate caprice, in the choice of its nesting range only make the confusion worse. Briefly, in spite of a number of doubtful and even suspicious reports of the bird's occurrence outside of these boundaries, it is generally agreed by the soundest observers that its travels do not extend much north of the city of York, or much west of a line drawn through Exeter and Birmingham. By way of complicating the argument, we know, on good authority, that the nightingale's range is equally peculiar elsewhere; and that, whereas it likewise shuns the departments in the extreme west of France, it occurs all over the Peninsula, a region extending considerably farther into the sunset than either Brittany or Cornwall, in both of which it is unknown. No satisfactory explanation of the little visitor's objection to Wild Wales or Cornwall has been found, and it may at once be stated that its capricious distribution cannot be accounted for by any known facts of soil, climate, or vegetation, since the surroundings which it finds suitable in Kent and Sussex are equally to be found down in the West Country, but fail to attract their share of nightingales.
The song of the nightingale, in praise of which volumes have been written, is perhaps more beautiful than that of any other bird, though I have heard wonderful efforts from the mocking-bird in the United States and from the bulbuls along the banks of the Jordan. The latter are sometimes, more especially in poetry, regarded as identical with the nightingale; and, indeed, some ornithologists hold the two to be closely related. What a gap there is between the sobbing cadences of the nightingale and the rasping note of the nightjar, which, with specific reference to a Colonial cousin of that bird Tasmanians ingeniously render as "more pork"! It seems almost ludicrous to include under the head of birdsong not only the music of the nightingale, but also the croak of the raven and the booming note of the ostrich. Yet these also are the love-songs of their kind, and the hen ostrich doubtless finds more music in the thunderous note of her lord than in the faint melody of such song-birds as her native Africa provides. The nightingale sings to his mate while she is sitting on her olive-green eggs perching on a low branch of the tree, at foot of which the slender nest is hidden in the undergrowth. So much is known to every schoolboy who is too often guided by the sound on his errand of plunder; and why the song of this particular warbler should have been described by so many writers as one of sadness, seeing that it is associated with the most joyous days in the bird's year, passes comprehension. So obviously is its object to hearten the female in her long and patient vigil that as soon as the young are hatched the male's voice breaks like that of other choristers to a guttural croak. It is said, indeed--though so cruel an experiment would not appeal to many--that if the nest be destroyed just as the young are hatched the bird recovers all his sweetness of voice and sings anew while another home is built.
Although poetic licence has ascribed the song to the female, it is the male nightingale only that sings, and for the purpose aforementioned. The note of the nightjar, on the other hand, is equally uttered by both sexes, and both also have the curious habit of repeatedly clapping the wings for several minutes together. They moreover share the business of incubation, taking day and night duty on the eggs, which, two in number, are laid on the bare ground without any pretence of a nest, and generally on open commons in the neighbourhood of patches of fern-brake. Like the owls, these birds sleep during the day and are active only when the sun goes down. It is this habit of seeking their insect food only in the gloaming which makes nightjars among the most difficult of birds to study from life, and all accounts of their feeding habits must therefore be received with caution, particularly that which compares the bristles on the mouth with baleen in whales, serving as a sort of strainer for the capture of minute flying prey. This is an interesting suggestion, and may even be sober fact; but its adoption would necessitate the bird flying open-mouthed among the oaks and other trees beneath which it finds the yellow underwings and cockchafers on which it feeds, and I have more than once watched it hunting its victims with the beak closed. I noticed this particularly when camping in the backwoods of Eastern Canada where the bird goes by the name of nighthawk.
In all probability its food consists exclusively of insects, though exceptional cases have been noted in which the young birds had evidently been fed on seeds. The popular error which charges it with stealing the milk of ewes and goats, from which it derives the undeserved name of "goat-sucker," with its equivalent in several Continental languages, is another result of the imperfect light in which it is commonly observed. Needless to say, there is no truth whatever in the accusation, for the nightjar would find no more pleasure in drinking milk than we should in eating moths.
Here, then, are two night-voices of very different calibre. These are not our only birds that break the silence on moonlight nights in June. The common thrush often sings far into the night, and the sedge-warbler is a persistent caroller that has often been mistaken for the nightingale. The difference in this respect between the two subjects of these remarks is that the nightjar is invariably silent all through the day, whereas the nightingale sings joyously at all hours. It is only because his splendid music is more marked in the comparative silence of the night, with little or no competition, that his daylight concert is often overlooked.
JULY
SWIFTS, SWALLOWS AND MARTINS
SWIFTS, SWALLOWS AND MARTINS
When the trout-fisherman sees the first martins and swallows dipping over the sward of the water-meadows and skimming the surface of the stream in hot pursuit of such harried water-insects as have escaped the jaws of greedy fish, he knows that summer is coming in. The signs of spring have been evident in the budding hedgerows for some weeks. The rooks are cawing in the elms, the cuckoo's note has been heard in the spinney for some time before these little visitors pass in jerky flight up and down the valley. Then, a little later, come the swifts--the black and screaming swifts--which, though learned folk may be right in sundering them utterly from their smaller travelling companions from the sunny south, will always in the popular fancy be associated with the rest. Colonies of swifts, swallows, and martins are a dominant feature of English village life during the warm months; and though there are fastidious folk who take not wholly culpable exception to their little visitors on the score of cleanliness, most of us welcome them back each year, if only for the sake of the glad season of their stay. If, moreover, it is a question of choice between these untiring travellers resting in our eaves and the stay-at-home starling or sparrow, the choice will surely fall on the first every time.
The swift is the largest and most rapid in its flight, and its voice has a penetrating quality lacking in the notes of the rest. Swifts screaming in headlong flight about a belfry or up and down a country lane are the embodiment of that sheer joy of life which, in some cases with slender reason, we associate peculiarly with the bird-world. Probably, however, these summer migrants are as happy as most of their class. On the wing they can have few natural enemies, though one may now and again be struck down by a hawk; and they alight on the ground so rarely as to run little risk from cats or weasels, while the structure and position of their nests alike afford effectual protection for the eggs and young. Compared with that of the majority of small birds, therefore, their existence should be singularly happy and free from care; and though that of the swift can scarcely, perhaps, when we remember its shrill voice, be described as one grand sweet song, it should not be chequered by many troubles. The greatest risk is no doubt that of being snapped up by some watchful pike if the bird skims too close to the surface of either still or running water, and I have even heard of their being seized in this way by hungry mahseer, those great barbel which gladden the heart of exiled anglers whose lot is cast on the banks of Himalayan rivers.
It is, however, the sparrows and starlings, rivals for the nesting sites, who show themselves the irreconcilable enemies of the returned prodigals. Terrific battles are continually enacted between them with varying fortunes, and the anecdotes of these frays would fill a volume. Jesse tells of a feud at Hampton Court, in the course of which the swallows, having only then completed their nest, were evicted by sparrows, who forthwith took possession and hatched out their eggs. Then came Nemesis, for the sparrows were compelled to go foraging for food with which to fill the greedy beaks, and during their enforced absence the swallows returned in force, threw the nestlings out, and demolished the home. The sparrows sought other quarters, and the swallows triumphantly built a new nest on the ruins of the old. A German writer relates a case of revolting reprisal on the part of some swallows against a sparrow that appropriated their nest and refused to quit. After repeated failure to evict the intruder, the swallows, helped by other members of the colony, calmly plastered up the front door so effectually that the unfortunate sparrow was walled up alive and died of hunger. This refined mode of torture is not unknown in the history of mankind, but seems singularly unsuited to creatures so fragile.
The nests of these birds show, as a rule, little departure from the conventional plan, but they do adapt their architecture to circumstances, and I remember being much struck on one occasion by the absence of any dome or roof. It was in Asia Minor, on the seashore, that I came upon a cottage long deserted, its door hanging by one hinge, and all the glass gone from the windows. In the empty rooms numerous swallows were rearing twittering broods in roofless nests. No doubt the birds realised that they had nothing to fear from rain, and were reluctant to waste time and labour in covering their homes with unnecessary roofs.
Most birds are careful in the education of their young, and indeed thorough training at an early stage must be essential in the case of creatures that are left to protect themselves and to find their own food when only a few weeks old. Fortunately they develop with a rapidity that puts man and other mammals to shame, and the helpless bald little swift lying agape in the nest will in another fortnight be able to fly across Europe. One of the most favoured observers of the early teaching given by the mother-swallow to her brood was an angler who told me how, one evening when he was fishing in some ponds at no great distance from London, a number of baby swallows alighted on his rod. He kept as still as possible, fearful of alarming his interesting visitors, but he must at last have moved, for, with one accord, they all fell off his rod together, skimmed over the surface of the water and disappeared in the direction from which they had come a few moments earlier.
Swifts fly to an immense height these July evenings, mounting to such an altitude as eventually to disappear out of sight altogether. This curious habit, which is but imperfectly understood, has led to the belief that, instead of roosting in the nest or among the reeds like the swallows, the males, at any rate, spend the night flying about under the stars. This fantastic notion is not, however, likely to commend itself to those who pause to reflect on the incessant activity displayed by these birds the livelong day. So rarely indeed do they alight that country folk gravely deny them the possession of feet, and it is in the last degree improbable that a bird of such feverish alertness could dispense with its night's rest. No one who has watched swifts, swallows and martins on the wing can fail to be struck by the extraordinary judgment with which these untiring birds seem to shave the arches of bridges, gateposts, and other obstacles in the way of their flight by so narrow a margin as continually to give the impression of catastrophe imminent and inevitable. Their escapes from collision are marvellous; but the birds are not infallible, as is shown by the untoward fate of a swallow in Sussex. In an old garden in that county there had for many years been an open doorway with no door, and through the open space the swallows had been wont, year after year, to fly to and fro on their hunting trips. Then came a fateful winter during which a new owner took it into his head to put up a fresh gate and to keep it locked, and, as ill luck would have it, he painted it blue, which, in the season of fine weather, probably heightened the illusion. Back came the happy swallows to their old playground, and one of the pioneers flew headlong at the closed gate and fell stunned and dying on the ground, a minor tragedy that may possibly come as a surprise to those who regard the instincts of wild birds as unerring.
That the young swallows leave our shores before their elders--late in August or early in September--is an established fact, and the instinct which guides them aright over land and sea, without assistance from those more experienced, is nothing short of amazing. The swifts, last to come, are also first to go, spending less time in the land of their birth than either swallows or martins. The fact that an occasional swallow has been seen in this country during the winter months finds expression in the adage that "one swallow does not make a summer," and it was no doubt this occasional apparition that in a less enlightened age seemed to warrant the extraordinary belief, which still ekes out a precarious existence in misinformed circles, that these birds, instead of wintering abroad, retire in a torpid condition to the bottom of lakes and ponds. It cannot be denied that these waters have occasionally, when dredged or drained, yielded a stray skeleton of a swallow, but it should be evident to the most homely intelligence that such debris merely indicates careless individuals that, in passing over the water, got their plumage waterlogged and were then drowned. It seems strange that Gilbert White, so accurate an observer of birds, should actually have toyed with this curious belief, though he leant rather to the more reasonable version of occasional hybernation in caves or other sheltered hiding-places. The rustic mind, however, preferred, and in some unsophisticated districts still prefers, the ancient belief in diving swallows, and no weight of evidence, however carefully presented, would shake it in its creed. Fortunately this eccentric view of the swallow's habits brings no harm to the bird itself, and may thus be tolerated as an innocuous indulgence on the part of those who prefer this fiction to the even stranger truth.
AUGUST
THE SEAGULL
THE SEAGULL
So glorious is the flight of the seagull that it tempts us to fling aside the dry-as-dust theories of mechanism of flexed wings, coefficient of air resistance, and all the abracadabra of the mathematical biologist, and just to give thanks for a sight so inspiring as that of gulls ringing high in the eye of the wind over hissing combers that break on sloping beaches or around jagged rocks. These birds are one with the sea, knowing no fear of that protean monster which, since earth's beginning, has always, with its unfathomable mystery, its insatiable cruelty, its tremendous strength, been a source of terror to the land animals that dwell in sight of it. Yet the gulls sit on the curling rollers as much at their ease as swimmers in a pond, and give an impression of unconscious courage very remarkable in creatures that seem so frail. Hunger may drive them inland, or instincts equally irresistible at the breeding season, but never the worst gale that lashes the sea to fury, for they dread it in its hour of rage as little as on still summer nights when, in their hundreds, they fly off the land to roost on the water outside the headlands.
It is curious that there should be no mention of them in the sacred writings. We read of quails coming in from the sea, likewise of "four great beasts," but of seafowl never a word, though one sees them in abundance on the coast near Jaffa, and the Hebrew writers might have been expected to weave them into the rich fabrics of their poetic imagery as they did the pelican, the eagle and other birds less familiar. Although seagulls have of late years been increasingly in evidence beside the bridges of London, they are still, to the majority of folk living far inland, symbolical of the August holiday at the coast, and their splendid flight and raucous cries are among the most enduring memories of that yearly escape from the smoke of cities.
The voice of gulls can with difficulty be regarded as musical, yet those of us who live the year round by the sea find their plaintive mewing as nicely tuned to that wild environment as the amorous gurgling of nightingales to moonlit woods in May. Their voice may have no great range, but at any rate it is not lacking in variety, suggesting to the playful imagination laughter, tears, and other human moods to which they are in all probability strangers. The curious similarity between the note of a seagull and the whining of a cat bereft of her kittens is very striking, and was on one occasion the cause of my being taken in by one of these birds in a deep and beautiful backwater of the Sea of Marmora, beside which I spent one pleasant summer. In this particular gulf, at the head of which stands the ancient town of Ismidt, gulls, though plentiful in the open sea, are rarely in evidence, being replaced by herons and pelicans. I had not therefore set eyes on a seagull for many weeks, when early one morning I heard, from the farther side of a wooded headland, a new note suggestive of a wild cat or possibly a lynx. My Greek servant tried in his patois to explain the unseen owner of the mysterious voice, but it was only when a small gull suddenly came paddling round the corner that I realised my mistake.