Part 13
Of the three species of Anthus inhabiting the British Islands, and which are appropriately named of the tree, rock, and meadow, according to their respective habits, the tree-pipit alone is migratory, appearing in this country about the third week in April, to remain until the end of September, and sometimes longer. In size, colour, and general appearance it so closely resembles the meadow-pipit that the two species are hardly distinguishable, except by examination in the hand. They also resemble each other in their feeding habits, running about in the grass in a mouse-like manner in search of the small insects and seeds on which they subsist, and, when flushed, starting up suddenly, with a sharp chirp of alarm, and going away with a wild, jerky flight. The tree-pipit is distributed widely over the country, and is found at most wood sides, and where trees grow singly or in isolated groups about the pasture-lands. Where the conditions are favourable he is a common bird, but never abundant. In spring and summer the tree-pipit is solitary, and it is possible that the males, as with the redbreast and nightingale, are not tolerant of other singers of their own species near them, as they are always found occupying trees far apart--seldom, in fact, within hearing distance of one another. On the arrival of the birds in April each male chooses a home, a feeding-ground, with a tree or trees to sing on, and this spot he will occupy until the end of the breeding season, after which the birds resort to the fallows and stubbles, and sometimes before departure they are seen gathered in small flocks.
It has been said of the tree-pipit’s song that it is like that of the canary, and that it ‘is perhaps more attractive from the manner in which it is given than from its actual quality.’ Both statements are true in a measure: that is to say, they will be found true in many instances, but not always. For there are few birds in which the song varies so much in different individuals. The reiterated, clear thin notes and trills that so closely resemble those of the caged canary are heard in some songs, and not in others. As a rule, the bird perches on a favourite tree, very often using the same branch, and at intervals, rising into the air, ascends with rapidly-beating wings, and when it attains to the highest point--usually as high again as the tree, but sometimes considerably higher--the song begins with a succession of notes resembling the throat-notes of the skylark, but very much softer. With the song the descent begins, the open wings fixed motionless, and so raised as to give the bird a parachute-like appearance, falling slowly in a beautiful curve or spiral; on the perch the song continues, but with notes of a different quality--clear, sweet and expressive--repeated many times. Having ended its song, it remains perched for a few moments silent, or else uttering notes as at the beginning, until once more it quits its perch, either to repeat the flight and song, or to drop to the ground, from which it shortly ascends to sing again. The manner in which the song is given is thus always beautiful, and in some individuals there is a wonderful sweetness in the quality of the voice.
The nest is built near the male bird’s favourite tree, and is placed in a hollow in the ground, and so well concealed by the grass and herbage that it is almost impossible to find it, unless by flushing the incubating bird from it. It is formed of fine dry grass and fibrous roots, and lined with horsehair. Four to six eggs are laid, of a dull white ground-colour, spotted with dull brown, grey, and purple, sometimes with blotches and hair-like marks among the spots. The eggs of this species vary a great deal.
Rock-Pipit.
Anthus obscurus.
Hind claw equal to the toe in length, much curved. Upper parts greenish brown, the centre of each feather darker brown; a whitish streak over the eye; under parts dull white, spotted and streaked with dark brown. Length, six and a quarter inches.
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The rock-pipit is the only songster that inhabits the seashore, and this is the one distinction of this small dull-coloured bird. It is true that the starling sometimes nests, like the jackdaw, in cliffs, and that sparrows, wagtails, and a few other species, are occasionally to be seen on the sands and among the rocks; but they are only casual visitors in such places--they are inland birds, that live and breed in meadows, hedgerows, woods, and commons. The rock-pipit is of the seashore exclusively, and everywhere inhabits the coasts of Great Britain and Ireland where there are rocks and cliffs, and all the rocky islands and islets in the neighbouring seas; his nest is not found nor his song heard out of sound of the ocean. In summer he keeps very close to the sea, and his food then consists principally of minute crustaceans and marine insects and worms; in the autumn and winter months he unites in small flocks, and visits the salt-marshes and low grounds near the shore, and he then feeds mostly on small seeds. His song, if heard at a distance from the sea, would not be distinguished from that of the meadow-pipit; the action which accompanies the song is also the same in both species. Occasionally he delivers his notes while sitting on a rock; but as a rule he soars up to a moderate height, either silent or else repeating the first note of the song at regular intervals, then descends with a slow, sliding flight to the earth, and descending emits his best notes, short and simple, but with a melodious tinkling sound which is very pleasant to listen to, especially when several individuals are heard at once. When intruded on in his rocky haunts, or anxious for the safety of his young, his alarm-note, sharp yet plaintive, closely resembles that of the meadow-pipit. The nest, built in May, is carefully concealed among the rocks, beneath a tuft of grass, or in a well-sheltered hole or crevice in the rock, and is composed of small scraps of seaweed, dry grass, and moss, and lined with fine dry grass or hair. Four or five eggs are laid, white or pale bluish in ground-colour, thickly mottled with dull greyish brown or reddish brown spots.
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Besides those described, three other species of Anthus have been included among British birds. These are the tawny pipit (_Anthus campestris_), Richard’s pipit (_Anthus richardi_), and the water-pipit (_Anthus spipoletta_). The first two are occasional visitors to the south of England; of the water-pipit, a very few specimens have been obtained in different parts of the country.
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Two beautiful British birds, unfortunately not indigenous nor regular in their visits to our country, may be mentioned in this place. They represent two families: Oriolidæ, which follows Motacillidæ (wagtails and pipits); and Ampelidæ, which comes after Laniidæ (shrikes). One is the golden oriole (_Oriolus galbulus_), a rare straggler to England on migration from Central and Southern Europe. It has been known to breed in the southern counties, and, if protected, would probably become an annual visitant. The other species is the waxwing (_Ampelis garrulus_), an irregular visitor in winter, sometimes in considerable numbers, from the arctic circle.
Red-backed Shrike.
Lanius collurio.
Frontal band, lores, and ear-coverts black; crown and nape grey; mantle chestnut-brown; quills dark brown edged with rufous; tail-coverts grey; tail-feathers white at their bases, the other portion and the whole of the two central ones black; under parts rose-buff; bill and feet black. Length, seven inches.
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The shrike is distinguished among perching birds by its sharply hooked, toothed, rapacious beak, and its hawk-like habit of preying on small birds, mice, shrews, frogs, and lizards. The extraordinary custom it has of impaling its victims on thorns has won for it the unpleasant name of butcher-bird, by which it is best known to country-people. Some naturalists have expressed the opinion that the shrike does not often attack small birds; and this would seem a reasonable view to take when we consider that the bird is no bigger than a skylark. But it is impossible to follow with the eye all the wanderings and the actions of all kinds that go to make the day of any wild bird; we really see only a very small part of the killing that goes on. The little feathered butcher is small in size, but his spirit is bold, and his taste for flesh not to be doubted. In a question of this kind I believe our slight intermittent observation is less to be depended on than the reputation--if such a word may be used in this connection--which the shrike bears among his feathered fellow-creatures. He is by them reputed dangerous, a bird of prey to be avoided, or at least regarded with extreme suspicion. We are accustomed to say that we do not know a man until we come to live with him; and the small birds live with the shrike, and therefore know him best.
The red-backed shrike is a summer visitor, arriving in this country early in April, and is not an uncommon species in England and Wales, being most numerous in the southern counties; but its range does not extend to Ireland, and in North Britain it is only known as a straggler. It inhabits the open borders of woods, rough commons, and high hedges, and has the habit of sitting conspicuously perched, often for an hour at a stretch, on the summit of an isolated bush or low tree, or on a fence or any other elevated stand, where it has a pretty appearance. From its perch it watches for its prey, but is by no means a motionless and depressed-looking watcher, like the flycatcher: its movements on its stand, as it turns its head from side to side and jerks and fans its tail, frequently uttering its low, percussive, chat-like chirp or call-note, give the impression of a creature keenly alive to everything passing around it. The shrike is, in fact, attentively watching air, earth, and the surrounding herbage and bushes for a victim, which he captures by a sudden dart, taking it by surprise. Besides small vertebrates, he preys on various large insects--beetles, grasshoppers, wasps, bees, &c.--seizing them in the air as they fly past, or dropping upon them on the ground. He often devours the insects captured on the spot, then returns to his stand; but he also has a favourite thorn-bush or tree to which he is accustomed to convey many of the creatures he takes, to impale them on thorns or fix them on forked twigs. He has the habit of plucking birds before devouring them; and it is doubtless easier for him to pluck a small bird and pull anything he catches to pieces when fixed on a thorn, for, being without crooked claws, he is incapable of grasping his victim and holding it steady while operating on it. This is one of those instincts which simulate reason very closely. The number of remains of victims sometimes found suspended to a butcher-bird’s tree shows that he is occasionally very destructive to small birds. In a case recorded in the ‘Zoologist’ (1875, p. 4723), bodies of the great tit, blue tit, long-tailed tit, robin, hedge-sparrow, and young of blackbirds and thrushes, were found. The indigestible portions swallowed--bones, fur, and wing-cases of large beetles--are cast up in pellets.
In the pairing season the shrike utters at times a chirruping song, not unlike the attempted singing of a sparrow in sound. The nest is large, and placed in a thick bush or hedge, and is composed outwardly of stalks, and inside of fibrous roots and moss, lined with fine bents and a little horsehair. Four to six eggs are laid; these vary a good deal, the ground being pale green, pale buff, cream or pale salmon-colour, spotted and blotched, principally at the large end, with reddish brown and purplish grey.
After leaving the nest the young keep company with their parents until their departure in September and October.
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There are four more species of Lanius in the list of British birds, all stragglers--the great grey shrike (_Lanius excubitor_), a breeder in Central Europe; Pallas’s great grey shrike (_Lanius major_), from North Scandinavia and Siberia; the lesser grey shrike (_Lanius minor_), from Central and Southern Europe; the woodchat (_Lanius pomeranus_), also from Central and Southern Europe.
Spotted Flycatcher.
Muscicapa grisola.
Upper parts ash-brown; feathers of the head marked with central dark line; under parts white, the sides marked with longitudinal brown streaks; flanks tinged with red. Length, five and a half inches.
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The spotted flycatcher is one of our commonest summer migrants, and at the same time one of the least remarked. He is a late comer, arriving about the middle of May; but he does not come after the leaves are out, to conceal himself among them, after the manner of the wood-wren and of other small insect-eaters. From the day of his arrival he is exposed to sight in the places he frequents--parks, skirts of woods, orchards, gardens, and the borders of fields and meadows. The area inhabited by each bird, or pair, is very circumscribed, and contains a few favourite perching-places, which are regularly occupied at different hours of the day. The perching-place is on a projecting branch, or, better still, a dead branch of a bush or tree, a wire fence, or a paling or gatepost. He comes near houses, and he may have a stand within twenty or thirty yards of the door, from which those who come and go may have him full in sight for several hours each day. But little or no notice is taken of him. And it is not strange, for of all our birds he is the least attractive, in his pale, obscure plumage, as he sits silent and motionless, listless and depressed in appearance, showing neither alarm nor curiosity when regarded. Seen thus he is like a silent grey ghost of a little dead bird returned to haunt the sunlight. Despite this listless appearance he is keenly alive to outward things. As the motionless heron watches the water, with the creatures that move like vague shadows in it, the flycatcher watches the air and the living things, minute and swift-winged, that inhabit it. At intervals he quits his perch and makes a dash at some passing insect, which he captures, his mandibles closing on it with an audible snap; then returns to his stand and his watching once more.
His call-note is a feeble chirp, two or three times repeated; and he is said to have a song, which few have heard, composed of a few rambling notes in a low tone.
The flycatcher begins to build soon after its arrival, and a favourite site for the nest is in the ivy growing against a wall; nests are also made in holes in walls and in the trunks of trees, on horizontal branches, and in a variety of situations. The nest is composed of dry grass and moss, mixed with a few feathers, and lined with rootlets and horsehair. Five or six eggs are laid; they are bluish white or pale green in ground-colour, clouded, blotched and spotted with reddish brown.
Flycatchers return to the same nesting-place year after year. One brood only is reared, and the birds leave us by the third week in September.
Pied Flycatcher.
Muscicapa atricapilla.
Upper parts and tail black; wings black, with the central coverts white; scapulars edged with white; under parts white. _Female_: greyish brown instead of black; the white dingy; the three lateral tail-feathers edged with white. Length, five inches.
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The pied flycatcher is comparatively a rare bird, and is unknown to a great majority of the inhabitants of this country, being restricted to a few localities in the north of England and the south of Scotland, and to some parts of North Wales, and the English counties bordering on Wales. In its nesting and feeding habits, and its partiality for orchards and gardens, it is like the spotted flycatcher; but it arrives earlier than that species, usually during the last week in April or the first week in May. Its black-and-white plumage gives it a very different and a much more attractive appearance. The only other point in which the two species differ greatly is in the number and colour of the eggs. Those of the pied flycatcher number from five to eight, and are very beautiful, being of a uniform delicate pale blue, and unspotted.
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A third species, the red-breasted flycatcher (_Musicapa parva_), has been included in the list of stragglers from Central and Eastern Europe to this country.
Swallow.
Hirundo rustica.
Forehead and throat chestnut-brown; upper parts, sides of neck, and a bar across the breast black, with violet reflections; lower parts dull reddish white. Tail long and forked. _Female_: less red on the forehead and less black on the breast; under parts white; outer tail-feathers shorter. Length, seven and a half inches.
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The swallow, as we usually see him, gliding and doubling in the air with a freedom surpassing that of other birds, has considerable beauty, being richly coloured and of an elegant figure, with sharply forked tail and long, pointed wings. But this is not the reason of the charm he has for us, since there are other more beautiful birds that inspire no such feeling. He is loved above most species on account of his domestic habits and familiarity with man. There would be few swallows in a dispeopled and savage England, with all its buildings crumbled to earth, for he would then be compelled to return to the original habits of the wild swallow, and build his mud cradle in rocky cliffs and caverns. As things are he is not dependent on cliffs, for he has taken kindly to human habitations, and increases with the increase of house-building, until he has become one of the commonest and most generally diffused species. And being a house-bird, and accustomed to the human form, when our summer migrants return to us with the return of the sun, and the others seek their customary homes in woods and groves by the sides of streams and marshes, and on downs and waste lands, the swallow alone comes direct to us to deliver the glad message, so that even the sick and aged and infirm, who can no longer leave their beds or rooms, are able to hear it. What wonder that we cherish a greater affection for, and are more intimate with, the swallow than with our other feathered fellow-creatures!
The swallow is very evenly distributed over the whole of Great Britain and Ireland, but the date of his arrival varies considerably in different districts. In the south of England he makes his appearance early in April, and arrives in the northern counties about the middle of that month, but in the north of Scotland not until the first week in May. He is most abundant about villages and large country-houses and farms; but wherever human habitations exist, however modest in size they may be, he is to be met with. Swallows are eminently gregarious, and even during the breeding season all the birds inhabiting one neighbourhood are accustomed to feed and practise their aërial exercises in company. At this season their gatherings are, however, intermittent, and in part accidental. Where flying insects are abundant the swallows quickly gather. At one time of the day they may be seen coursing up and down the lanes and roads and village streets, gliding close to the ground with great speed; in rough weather they will assemble in scores or hundreds on the sheltered side of a wood, or lane, or a row of elms; but on a warm, damp day, they frequent the meadows and low grounds near the water, where insects are most abundant.
The swallow has a variety of sharp little chirps and twittering notes, and a loud, startled, double alarm-note, uttered at the appearance of a hawk speeding through the air, or at sight of a prowling cat. The appearance of a hawk excites as much anger as fear, and he generally goes in pursuit of it; but the note is understood by other small birds, and has the effect of sending them quickly into hiding. The song, uttered sometimes on the wing, but more frequently when perched, is very charming, and seems more free and spontaneous than that of any bird possessing a set song, the notes leaping out with a heartfelt joyousness which is quite irresistible. The sound differs in quality from that of other birds; it is, perhaps, more _human_: a swallow-like note may be heard in some of the most beautiful contralto voices. The dozen or more notes composing the song end with a little jarring trill, so low as to be hardly audible.
A favourite site for the swallow’s nest is the top of a joist supporting the rafters of a barn or other outhouse to which there is free access. It is a saucer-shaped rim of mud or clay, placed on the wood. The inside is lined with dry grass and feathers. It is quite open at the top, but usually close to the roof. The eggs are four to six in number, and vary much in shape and disposition of markings. They are pure white, spotted with rich coffee-brown, light reddish brown, and purplish grey. During incubation the sitting-bird is fed at intervals by her mate.
Two broods are reared in the season, and the young are fed for some days after quitting the nest. The early broods are believed to leave this country in advance of the adults and the young of the later broods. The final and principal migration takes place at the end of September or early in October, the birds congregating some days before departure in large flocks, sometimes numbering many thousands.
Martin.
Chelidon urbica.
Head, nape, and upper part of the back black, with violet reflections; lower parts of the back and under parts pure white. Feet and toes covered with downy feathers; tail forked. Length, five and a half inches.
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The martin, or house-martin, is as common and widely diffused in the British Islands as the swallow, and as it lives with man in the same way, making use of houses to build its nest on, it shares the affection with which that bird is generally regarded. Most people, in fact, regard them as one and the same species; for both are of one type, and are domestic in habit, and associate together, and unless looked at with attention they are not seen distinctly, and consequently not distinguished. The martin differs from the swallow in its slightly smaller size; in having its feet feathered and the rump and entire under parts pure white; and in its less sharply forked tail and shorter wings. On the wing it is not so perfectly free as the swallow: it cannot double so quickly, nor fly with such speed and grace.
The martin cannot be called a songster. His most common expression is a somewhat harsh note, often uttered as he sports with his fellows in the air; in the pairing and nesting time he occasionally attempts to sing, usually when clinging to a wall and to the rim of his nest, and emits a slight warbling sound, somewhat guttural, and so low that it can only be heard at a distance of a few yards.