Chapter 10

In the Vision of the Lots and Lives, when the souls chose their careers on a fresh register before taking another chance in the world above, Ulysses chose that of a stay-at-home proprietor, with a resolve, born of experience, never again to roam. If Plato had made a Myth of the Birds, he might have alleged some such reason to explain how it is that while most of them are incessant wanderers, ever flitting uncertain between momentary points of rest, so few remain fixed and constant, as if they had sworn at some distant date never more to make trial of the wine-dark sea. In the still, November woods, when the vapours curl like smoke among the dripping boughs, leaving a diamond on each sprouting bud where next year's leaf is hid; by the moorland river, on bright December mornings, when the grayling are lying on the shallows below the ripple where the rock breaks the surface; by the frozen shore where the land-springs lie fast, drawn into icicles or smeared in slippery slabs on the cliff faces, and hoar frost powders the black sea-wrack; on the lawns of gardens, where the winter roses linger and open dew-drenched and rain-washed in the watery sunbeams--there we see, hear, and welcome the birds that stay. Then and there we note their fewness, their lameness, and feel that they are really fellow-countrymen, native to the soil. The list of these home-loving birds is short; and those commonly seen are only a few of the total. In a winter stroll by the upper Thames, the absence of the birds which flocked along the banks in summer and spring, when the May was in blossom and the willow covered with cotton fleck, is among the first seasonal changes noticed. The chiff-chaffs, turtledoves, sedge-warblers, whitethroats, coots, sandpipers, and all the little river birds are gone. So are the greater number of the blackbirds, thrushes and missel-thrushes. All the fisherman sees, his daily companions by the deserted river, are the wren creeping in the flood-drift, the tits working over the alder bushes to see if any seeds are left in the cones, and the kingfishers. The grayling fisherman on the Northern streams has the water ousels for his constant and charming companions, true to the mountain river as in the days of Merlin and Vivien, busy as big black-and-white bees as they flit up-stream and down-stream, flying boldly into the waterfalls, dropping silently from mossy stones into the clear brown eddies, singing when the sunbeams shine and warm the crag-tops, and even floating and singing on the water, like aquatic robins. The ousels must have been the sacred birds of Tana, the Water Goddess, the ever attached votaries of her dripping and rustic shrines.

By the winter shore, untrodden by any but the fisher going down at the ebb to seek king-crab for bait, or by his children, gathering driftwood on the stones, one little bird stays ever faithful to the same short range of shore. This is the rock-pipit--the "sea-lark" of Browning's verse. But that is a summer song. It is not only when the cliff--

"Sets his bones, To bask i' the sun,"

but in the short winter days, that the sea-lark keeps constant to the fringe of ocean. It is the most narrowly local and stay-at-home of all birds, never leaving the very fringe and margin, not of sea, but of land, haunting only the last edge and precipice of the coast, nesting on those upright walls of granite or chalk, and creeping, flying, and twittering among the crumbling stones, the water-worn boulders, and the tufts of sea-pink and samphire. When the winter storms slam the roaring billows against the cliff faces and the spray flies up a hundred feet from the exploding mass, the little sea-larks only mount to higher levels of the cliff, never coming inland or forsaking its salt-spattered resting-place. Compared with these home-loving birds, all the gulls are wanderers, even though they do not desert our shores and come fifty miles up the Thames. Of the rock-fowl, the puffins fly straight away to the Mediterranean, and the guillemots and razorbills go out to sea and leave their nesting crags. Only the cormorants stay at home, flying in to roost on the same lofty crag every autumn and winter night, from the fishing grounds which the sea-crows have frequented for longer years even than the "many-wintered crow" of inland rookeries has his fat and smiling fields.

The discovery that rooks, with their reputation for staunch attachment to locality, are regular and irrepressible migrants, crossing from Denmark and Holland to England, and from England to Ireland, has been followed by other curious revelations about the mobility of what were believed to be stationary birds. Our own beloved garden robin, whom we feed till he becomes a sturdy beggar, though he pays us with a song, stays with us, as we know, because he applies regularly for his rations. But he sends all his children away to seek their fortunes elsewhere, and on our coasts flights of migrant robins, whom either their parents, or the bad weather, have sent from Norway over the foam, arrive all through the autumn. Even the jenny-wrens migrate to some extent.

Because we see birds of certain kinds near our farms, gardens, and hedges it does not follow that these are those which were there in summer and spring. Such common finches as the greenfinches and chaffinches migrate in immense flocks, and over vast distances, considering their short wings and small size. In the gardens and shrubberies round the houses the parent robins stay. So do some of the blackbirds, the thrushes (except in very hard weather), the hedge-sparrow, the nuthatch (more in evidence in winter than at any other time, and a firm believer in eleemosynary nuts), all the tits, except the long-tailed tit, a little gipsy bird wandering in family hordes, and the crested and marsh tits (dwellers in the pine forest and sedge-beds), and the wood pigeon. Occasionally that shy bird, the hawfinch, is seen on a wet, quiet day picking up white-beam kernels and seeds. Except this, every one of the garden birds comes to be fed, and is well known and appreciated. It is in the woods and the hedges of the rain-soaked meadows that the general absence of bird life in winter is most marked, and the presence of the few which stay most appreciated. Those who, on sport intent, go round the hedges in November and December, or wait in rides while the woods are driven, or lie up quietly in the big covers for a shot at wood pigeons in the evening, are almost startled by the tameness and indifference of the birds, eagerly feeding so as to make the most of the short, dark days. When the hedges are beaten for rabbits the bullfinches appear in families, their beautiful grey backs and exquisite rosy breasts looking their very best against the dark-brown, purply twigs. Another home-staying bird of the hedgerows, or rather of the hedgerow timber, is the tree-creeper. It has no local habitation, being a bird which migrates in a drifting way from tree to tree, and so bound by no ties to mother-earth. But it is in the woods that the stay-at-home birds are most in evidence in winter. There they find abundant food, and there they make their home. The woodpeckers, the magpie, and the jay, the brown owl, the sparrow-hawk, the kestrel, the pheasant, the long-tailed tit, and all the rest of the tribe; and in the clearings where the teazle grows, the goldfinches feed. The barn owl and brown owl both stay with us. So does the long-eared owl. But the short-eared owl is a regular migrant, coming over in flights like woodcock. No one has satisfactorily answered the question why there are sedentary species and migratory species so closely allied in habits and food that the quest for a living must be ruled as outside the motive for migration.

If the long-eared owl can remain and find a living all the year round in the copses on the downs, why should not the short-eared owl make a practice of what is its occasional custom, and nest in the fens and marshes? If the kingfisher can find a living and abundant fish in our rivers and brooks, why does the dabchick migrate? The migration is only a partial one, for many remain on the Thames all the year round, especially near the eyots by Tilehurst; but it vanishes from most of the Northern pools and returns almost on the same date. Perhaps a conclusion might be hazarded from the behaviour of wild migratory birds which have become semi-domesticated. In Canada, the largest and best known of the wild geese is the black-necked Canadian goose. It is a regular migrant. The Indians believe it brings little birds on its back when it comes. At Holkham, where a large flock of these is acclimatised, but lives under perfectly wild conditions, the Canadian geese never attempt to migrate, though they often fly out on to the sands at ebb-tide. They show less disposition to leave the estate than the herons in the park. Yet during the winter they feed every day with flocks of wild geese in the marshes. These geese fly every spring away to the Lapland mountains or the tundras, and could show the Canada geese the way northwards if they wished to follow. The conclusion is that the Canada geese have no desire for change; and the reason that other birds do not migrate is probably the same.

ANCIENT HEDGES

In the upper Thames valley, both in May and autumn, one of the prettiest sights is the great hedges which divide the meadows. In spring, those above Oxford look as though covered with snow, and in early October they are loaded with hips and haws, just turned red, with blackberries, elderberries (though the starlings have eaten most of these), with crab apples, with hazel nuts, scarlet wild guelder-rose berries, dog-wood berries, and sloes. Except the fields themselves, our hedges are almost the oldest feature with which Englishmen adorned rural England. They have gone on making them until the last parish "enclosures," some of which were made as late as thirty years ago, and when made they have always been regarded as property of a valuable kind. When Christ's Hospital was founded in Ipswich in Tudor days, partly as a reformatory for bad characters, "hedge-breakers" were more particularly specified as eligible for temporary domicile and discipline. "Hedges even pleached" were always a symbol of prosperity, care, and order. "Her fruit trees all unpruned, her hedges ruined," a token that something was amiss in our country economy.

One untidy habit, which the writer remembers as very common, has been discontinued in this connection. Twenty years ago the linen drying on the hedge, which Shakespeare evidently regarded as a "common object of the country," was constantly seen. It was always laid on well-trimmed hedges, or otherwise it would have been torn. Now it is always hung on lines, possibly because the hedges are not so well trimmed and kept. Bad times in farming have greatly helped the beauty of hedges. They are mostly overgrown, hung with masses of dog-rose, trailed over by clematis, grown up at bottom with flowers, ferns, and fox-gloves, festooned with belladonna, padded with bracken. The Surrey hedges are mostly on banks, a sign that the soil is light, and that a bank is needed because the hedge will not thicken into a barrier. But these, like most others, are set with the charming hedgerow timber that makes half England look like a forest at a distance of a mile or so. It is difficult to reconstruct our landscape as it was before the hedges were made. But any one curious as to the comparative antiquity of the fields can perhaps detect the nucleus or centre where enclosure started. Those having the ditch on the outer side are always the earlier, the ditch being the defence against the cattle that strayed on the unenclosed common or grazings outside.

The finest garden hedges in England are at Hall Barn, in Buckinghamshire. They must be thirty feet high, are immensely thick, and are clipped so as to present the smooth, velvety appearance peculiar to the finest yew and box hedges. The colour and texture of these walls of ancient vegetation, contrasting with the vivid green lawns at their feet, are astonishingly beautiful. One of the peculiar charms of such hedges is that where yew of a different kind or age, or a bush of box, forms part of the mass, it shows like an inlay of a different material, and the same effect is given merely by the trick that some yews have of growing their leaves or shoots at a different angle from that favoured by others. These surfaces give the variety of tint which is shown in such fabrics as "shot" or "watered" silk. Here there is a splash of blue from the box, or of invisible dull green, or of golden sheen, from different classes of yew. Box hedges of great size are less common than those of yew, and less durable, for the box is easily rent from the stem when old. But these two, the yew and the box, are the "precious" hedges, the silver and gold, of the garden-maker. Next, representing the copper and brass, are the hedges of beech and holly. Both are commonly planted and carefully tended as borders and shelters to the less important parts of gardens; as screens also to block out the humdrum but necessary portions of the curtilage, such as the forcing-pits for early plants, minor offices, timber yards, and the like; and to shelter vegetable gardens (for which the Dutch use screens of dried reeds). Holly makes the best and most impenetrable of all hedges when clipped, but it is not beautiful for that reason. Clipped holly grows no berries; it accumulates dust and dirt, and has a dull, lifeless look. Beech, on the other hand, should be in greater esteem than it is. If clipped when the sap is rising it puts on leaves which last all the winter. From top to bottom the wall of russet shines warm and bright. Its leaves are harmless in decay, for they contain an antiseptic oil, and no leaves of spring are more tenderly green or in more ceaseless motion at the lightest breeze. Privet makes the last and least esteemed of these "one-tree" hedges. Yet it is the most tractable of all hedge material, and was almost invariably used to form the intricate "mazes," once a favourite toy of the layers-out of stately gardens.

Keeping these hedges in good repair and properly clipped and trimmed is one of the minor difficulties of the country. In large gardens there are always one or two professional gardeners who understand the topiary art. But it often happens that a quite modest garden possesses a splendid hedge of yew or box, the pride of the place, which needs attention once or twice every year. These hedges have frequently been clipped by the same man, some old resident in the village, for thirty or forty years. Clipping that hedge is part of his regular extra earnings to which he looks forward, and a source of credit and renown to him in his circle. He knows every weak place, what parts need humouring, what stems are crowding others between the furry screen of leaves, and where the wind got in and did mischief in the last January gale. When in the course of Nature the old hedge-trimmer dies, there is no one to take his place. The men do not learn these outside accomplishments as they once did, and the art is likely to be lost, just as ornamental thatching and the making of the more decorative kinds of oak paling are in danger of disappearing.

Mending, or still worse remaking, field-hedges is a difficult, expensive, and withal a very highly skilled form of labour. The workers have for generations been very humble men, who have scarcely been honoured for their excellent handiwork as they deserved. They appear in art only in John Leech's pictures of hunting in Leicestershire, in his endless jokes on "mending the gaps" towards the close of the hunting season. In February and March the scenes shown in Leech's pictures are reproduced on most of the Thames valley farms in Berkshire and Oxfordshire. The men wear in front an apron of sacking, torn and plucked by thorns. The hands are gloved in leather mits with no fingers; in them the hedger holds his light, sharp billhook, shaped much like the knife of the forest tribes of Southern India. When a whole fence has to be relaid the art of "hedge carpentry" is exhibited in its perfection. Few people not brought up to the business, which is only one minor branch of the many-sided handiness of a good field labourer, the kind of man whom every one now wants and whom few can find, would have the courage to attempt it. A ditch full of brambles, often with water at the bottom, has to be cleared. Then the man descends into the ditch, and strips the bank of brambles and briars. That is only the preliminary. When he has piled all the brambles in heaps at regular intervals along the brow of the ditch, he walks thoughtfully from end to end of the fence, and considers the main problem, or lets the idea sink into his mind, for he never talks, and probably never frames for himself any form of words or conscious plan. In front, with the bases of the stems bare where the bank is trimmed and slashed, stands the overgrown hedge which he is to cut, bend over, relay, and transform, to make another ten or twelve years of growth till it reaches the unmanageable size of that which stands before him. Most of it is great bushes of blackthorn, hard as oak, with thorns like two-inch nails, and sharper. These bushes, grow up in thick rods and stocks, spiny and intractable, from the bank to a height of perhaps twelve feet. The rest of the fence-stuff is whitethorn, nearly as ill to deal with as the blackthorn, and perhaps a few clumps of ash and wild rose. Slashing, hewing, tearing down, and bending in, he works steadily down the hedge day by day. All the time he is using his judgment at every stroke. Some he hews out at the base and flings behind him on the field. Much he cuts off at what will be the level of the hedge. But all the most vigorous stems of blackthorn and whitethorn he half cuts through and then bends over, twisting the heads to the next stocks or uprights, or, where there are no stocks, driving in stout stakes cut from the discarded blackthorns. When finished the newly mended hedge consists of uprights, mostly rooted in their native bank, and fascine-like bundles--the heads of these uprights, which are bent and bound horizontally to the other uprights or stakes. This is the universal "stake and bond" hedge of the shires, impenetrable to cattle, unbreakable, and imperishable, because the half-cut bonds, the stakes, and the small stuff all shoot again, and in a few years make the famous "bullfinch" with stake and bond below, and a tall mass of interlacing thorns and small stuff above.

During the last era of prosperous farming there was a mania for destroying hedges and cutting down the timber. If ever prosperity returns it will smile on a better-informed class of occupier and owner. It is now seen that the hedges were of the greatest value to shelter cattle, sheep, and horses, and benefited to some extent even the sown crops, especially at the blossoming time. As cattle are now the farmer's main reliance, it will be long before he grubs up or destroys the welcome shelter given by the hedges from sun, rain, and storm.

THE ENGLISH MOCKING BIRD

One winter an unusual number of peewits visited the flats near Wittenham and Burcote, and remained there for several months. One or two starlings which haunted the house in which we stayed, and slept in their old holes in the thatch, picked up all the various peewits' calls and notes, and used to amuse themselves by repeating these in the apple-trees on sunny mornings. The note was so exact a reproduction that I often looked up to see where the plover was before I made out that it was only the starling's mimicry.

A correspondent of the _Newcastle Journal_, writing from Yeare, near Wooler, in Northumberland, recently described the performances of a wild starling which has settled near his house. It is such an excellent mimic of other birds' notes that no one can help noticing its performances. A record has been kept of the variety entertainments provided by the bird. Besides its own calls, whistles, and song, it reproduces the song of the blackbird and thrush absolutely correctly, and mimics with equal nicety the calls of the curlew, the corncrake, and the jackdaw.

It is appropriate that this eulogy of the starling should appear in a Newcastle paper, for Bewick when residing there always regretted the absence of these birds from the town, and hoped that they might in time become numerous, as in the South and West. Starlings are such intelligent, interesting, and really remarkable birds that if they were rare they would be among the most prized of pets. Their open-air vocal performances are quite as remarkable as their latest admirer says. They are the British mocking-birds, able, when and if they choose, to reproduce almost any form of song. They do this partly, no doubt, because their throats are adaptable, but more from temperament and a kind of objective mind not very common in birds. Like parrots, starlings are given to spending a good deal of every fine morning in contemplating other people, including other birds, and then in thinking them over, or talking them over to themselves. Any one who is sitting or working quietly near a room where a parrot is in its cage alone can fairly follow the train of thought in the parrot's mind. It is evidently recalling episodes or things which form part of its daily mental experiences. It begins by barking like the dog, then remembers the dog's mistress, and tells it to be quiet, as she does. Then it hears the housemaid, and imitates a window-sash being let down, or some phrase it has picked up in the servants' quarters. If it has been lately struck with some new animal noise or unusual sound, it will be heard practising that. Starlings do exactly the same thing. When the sun begins to be hot on any fine day, summer or winter, the cock bird goes up usually alone, to a sunny branch, gable, or chimney, and there indulges in a pleasant reverie, talking aloud all the time. Its own modes of utterance are three. One is a melodious whistle, rather low and soft; another is a curious chattering, into which it introduces as many "clicks" as a Zulu talking his native language; and the third is a short snatch of song, either its own, or one which has become a national anthem or morning hymn common to all starlings, though it may originally have been a "selection" from other birds' notes. Then, or amongst the rest of the ordinary notes, the starling inserts or practises its accomplishments. Not all starlings do this, and only a few attain great eminence in that line. Obviously it is only personal feeling that induces them to do it, and they get no encouragement from other starlings, though when kept in cages, as they very seldom are now, and rewarded and taught, they might develop the most striking talents. It should be added that, like all good bird-mimics, they are ventriloquists. They can reproduce perfectly the sound of another bird's note, not as that bird utters it, but as it is heard, faint and low, softened by distance. They can also sing over bars of bird-songs in a low tone perfectly correctly, and repeat them in a high one.